Every man should have a daughter. She will break him into tiny pieces and keep him in her special shoebox in the top dresser drawer. I know of no more honored a place to reside.

Singletude.com

I made my podcast debut this week on a segment of MormonMatters.org. If you have 7200 spare seconds, give it a listen. The lovely Lauren Johnson, the incredibly articulate Jenny Morrow, and myself discuss what it is to be a mid-single mormon with moderator Dan Wotherspoon. It was a pleasure to be part of this panel. Be warned, the entire podcast (split into two sections) is epic in length, if not in depth. And Jenny Morrow says the F word a dozen time. Click to enjoy/endure HERE!

works. pshhh.

"We are saved by grace, after all we can do."

Misreading: There are TWO (2) things that save us:

1. grace
2. all we can do
   

If this is what we believe, then I agree with those that say Mormons are not Christians. Because salvation is not a partnership. It is not "You bring the grace and I'll bring the works." Salvation is a train ride. I can't picture myself saying "Me and this train brought me to Pittsburgh." The train brought me to Pittsburgh. I got on it. Jesus train. Passenger me.

After all I can do - after all of my efforts and works and obedience and contrition - I hope to generate enough faith in Jesus Christ to believe that he will save me. Believing that he can and will is the only prerequisite. But if I don't try - if I don't sacrifice and work and strive - I find it harder to believe. I doubt everything. And as my belief slips away, so does my salvation. So I work. Not to save myself. But so the Spirit will remind me that Christ is the way, the truth, and the life.

Rereading: "I am obedient so that my mortal mind and body can either receive or generate faith in Christ. So that he can save me. I work so that I believe."

A walk is a revelation (is a revelation)

Sunday evenings I take walks around the myriad streets of Millcreek and Canyon Rim. I wait until the sky is half blue, half orange, and the breeze from the mouth of the canyon has safely chased the sear of the sun to the far west. I put on my flat cap and jacket and set out. The houses and streets in my immediate neighborhood are nondescript and I treat them like an elongated threshold; a necessary breezeway to be passed through before entering the real world. As I amble eastward, the houses slowly turn to homes and I begin to smile at their thoughtfully simple architecture. A homemade arts and crafts door, unpainted. A perfectly pitched grey roof. Shutters. Ivy. A misplaced window above a garage - evidence of a family getting bigger than expected. And because it's Sunday, and the air is just starting to autumn, I take it as a sign of a love getting bigger than expected too. These modest and shapely houses - and the trees and curtains that make them homes - remind me each week of an alternate reality in which an alternate me lives. I see him pull into the driveway. The night is now dark and lamps shine up at the middle-aged trees in the yard. He opens the back door of the car and lifts out a sleeping child in one arm, then leans in and picks up a tiny pair of dispatched shoes with his free hand. His wife walks around the front of the car with a sleeping lump in her arms too. With ease they slip into the safety of their home. They close the door and leave the porch light on. Inside there is tiredness. And love.

As I turn back to head home - leaving alternate-reality me to get his rest for the upcoming week - I realize that I have been watching an old rerun of a dream I used to have. And in fact still have. These walks are a reminder. They are a revelation. What I want is not complicated. It is not something I need to spend endless hours philosophizing about with friends. It is not scary or unknowable. It is a simple home, hard work, and a happy family. A walk is a revelation. And the fact that a walk is a revelation is a revelation in and of itself. When what I really want seems untraceable dimensions away, all I have to do is put on my flat cap and jacket and wait for the sun to drop. And I can know just how close I am. To the home. And the sleep. And we'll walk.

9eleven

This day belongs to those who, even now, wake up every morning swimming desperately against the relentless, hydraulic sucking of grief. To those who lost a Someone. I was a witness, we all were, to the horror and the fear of that September Tuesday. To the television screens painted red and grey. To the unsettled afterdays without laughter. And in small background ways the ramifications continue to touch us all, though likely only pricking our conscience when the cold slate of an airport floor reaches our bared toes. But to those with the swallowing, to those with the emptiness that will never be filled…what can we say? We don’t know. But we know. We know that whatever loss the rest of us suffered, even if it means the loss of the Known and the Secure – even if it means the loss of Humanity itself – will never eclipse the loss of a mother’s only son, or a sister, or a brother, a mommy, a daddy, a daughter, a love. Thus is the cruel calculus of the human heart. By proxy of your fallen you are the inheritors of the right to grieve however you want. For as long as you want. May the prayers of the millions weave a net sufficient to hold the heads of you few today. God bless.

The Heart (Part I)

A large footbridge, hidden around the first bend of the well-marked trail, straddles one of the main arteries to Cottonwood Creek. The dark wood of the bridge has been worn smooth by the mix of damp air, treeshadows, and the alternatingly eager then exhausted touch of happy hikers. In Springtime, water sprints under foot in a decided and timeworn path until it meets the main waterway just forty vertical feet below. In Summer, after the snows have melted, the stout and sturdy bridge turns nearly superfluous as the stream lazies into a trickle. But today, though it’s already late June, water is thundering its way (not down but) seemingly straight forward, pounding its shoulders into the newly frail streambed walls. The sound is…more than deafening. It is frightening. It is somehow humiliating. I feel weak and young standing just inches above the angry locomotive; its hydraulic pistons driving thousands of gallons of minutes-ago-snow through this usually sleepy artery. This artery which takes trillions of snowflakes from the heart of my journey and shuttles them down the canyon, along a crescent route through central Utah, into the Colorado, and eventually out to the extremities of the Pacific Ocean. Misguided Californians would claim that their ocean is in fact the heart where the circulatory cycle begins, but on top of my mountain is where purity is restored. What finds its way to the coast is full of every pollutant the western states have to offer, including copper, lead, streptococcal bacteria, staff, chlorine, the moral greys of Colorado City, petroleum, sulfur, the oily spring break backwash of Lake Mead, animal feces, battery acid, and generic mud. The Sea of Cortez is a kidney. Lake Blanche is the wet engine. On to the heart.

Just a few dozen paces past the bridge and into the first switchback, the vista opens up in front of me and I can see clearly uphill nearly to my destination. The air is cooler than it was forty paces back and it hangs with the dampness of water-darkened rocks and respiring vegetation. Five minutes into my hike and I notice that I have slowed to a crawl. The air and the green are intoxicating, but they are not the only things stroking my senses. There is a haunting. And a reason I came up here to forget. And though it remains unnamed and unformed in my head, I know that it is only because I have refused to name and form it.

***

Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Reason. Belief.........................

Belief is our only connection to eternity.

seagulls and notary publics

This morning Ellie and I went to the temple. We smelled just about every flower, floated a blossom down the cascading waterway running west to the temple, stood by the OC Tanner fountain and let the wind blow water in our faces, ate cookies and carrots on a bench near the old meeting house, learned about pioneers, priesthoods, handcarts, Samaritans, tribes, angels, patriarchal blessings, Jerusalem, tabernacles, swirling wind patterns, baptisms for the dead, Spanish, and seagulls. Six or seven times she said, "This is my favorite place on earth." And after circling and circling and circling around the miniature cutaway model of the temple in the visitors center, she finally stopped, squeezed my arm, and said, "I can't wait til I can go inside one day." Then she stared a few minutes longer into a miniaturized world of crown molding, garden murals, and tiny golden lights. And it struck me that that is all I want in this life. For my sweet inquisitor to one day be inside. And right there my religion was decided upon, stamped, notarized, solemnized, and defined for good. For good.

Ode

Ode to Spring

Ere the summer sun doth glare
A golden hue doth light the air
To signal weather calm and fair
The boys are out to play.

Dave is light and country fair
Mark a man with dashing dare
Jentry long without a care
A handsome trio gay.

Now the sun descends its stair
Its warming rays no more to share
The sky, the moon is soon to tear
The curtains of this day.

Good night, Dave.
Good night, Mark.
Good night, Jentry.
Good night, Spring.

Asher brought caraway. Devi erstwhile found gold hidden in Jakarta. Korin left missing nine opals. Prestwich quietly refurbished seven trinkets. Uriel valued, weighed, examined yesterday's zen.

I'm sitting on my couch in my apartment. It smells like vanilla and peppermint. There's music I can barely hear coming from the radio. And I'm just sitting here on my couch in my apartment. Smelling vanilla and peppermint. And listening to music I can barely hear. And I'm comfortable. And there's nowhere I want to be and no anxiety about what I should be doing. Just apartment. Vanilla. Radio. Sunday. Contentment. And a weird sort of humility. And I think I'm doing okay.

From my couch I'm looking at a jar full of flame and clear wax wafting out vanilla and peppermint. Behind the jar is a small radio lending music I can barely hear. Next to the radio is a small white statue of Jesus with his hands outstretched. He seems to be staring into the jar of wax. As am I. He is working hard to hold that pose. Arms forever reaching outwards. Head forever tilted downwards. Tonight I suspect he's working hard so I don't have to. I feel like a child in his parents' house. With nothing to do. Completely taken care of. Completely okay.

My couch is firm but friendly. It is firmly but friendily holding me. In the jar three separate flames dance around sporadically, not even attempting to keep time with the mouse music tiptoeing out of the radio. Shadows from the folds in Jesus' robes stutter and jump across his neck and face. His left hand points to a photograph of me and Ellie. We are both smiling in the picture. I am holding her in my arms. We are cemented in time with happyproud smiles. We aren't working hard to hold the pose. We could stay like that forever. We are cementedly okay.

I am sitting on my couch in my apartment. It smells like vanilla and peppermint. There's music I can barely hear coming from the radio. Light flickers across a statue of Jesus. A photograph of me and Ellie smiles out at me. And there's a thin book at Jesus' right hand that recently won a Pulitzer prize. I am going to read now.

the fight for freedom

This guy gets it.

The Rings of Saturn (redux)

Around her head - one million frozen rocks. To care about this, to worry about that, to love this, to judge that, to carry, to lift, to throw, to endure, to solve, to heal, to give, to serve, to care. Oh the care is there. One million cares. One million tiny orbits. One million fireflies disturbing the dark of her sleep. No sleep. A stony haze.

Quick, take my arm. I'll hold your mind. One million miles lie ahead. Half way through she stops and looks back at herself. What do you see? A stony noose. One million miles you've promised me. We walk, time fades, we turn to look. One million flecks of glass a halo they have made. A halo, for thus a saint is made.

The Lion

(this is an unfinished post I started 16 months ago)

Sadness is not an art form. And those that dabble in melancholy for beauty's sake are the emotionally affluent and spoiled. Akin to the wealthy who move to Africa to shoot lions because their pocket books and schedules can afford it. Happiness is a lion. The sound of happiness a lion's roar. Joy a tiger. Peace a crane. Love a motherland. Sadness is a snake. Sadness is a hiss and a slither and a snake.

into the new year

As we lay down,
my elegant elephant and I,
and bat back and forth the shuttlecock
of favorite days-
hers a Christmas morning,
mine a Sunday afternoon,
hers a day in the sand,
mine this very evening-
our thoughts sift into a tawny dust
that rises to fill the universe
as we drift off
into the new year.

and while our blood's still young

It will probably be winter.
You will probably be wearing a black shirt.
I will probably be waiting in line for something.
The snow will be gray. The streets melting. The air decembering.
I will probably stare. You will probably notice.
I will imagine myself wearing Max's wolf suit.
You will be anywhere but within my gaze.
I will probably step out of line.
Maybe I'll discover you by a poster of Yuri Gagarin.
Maybe I'll catch you through a beige bookshelf.
Maybe you'll kineticize like Stef.
Maybe your eyes will searchaskopen like Gretchen.
Maybe you'll screamlaughcrumble like Brooke.
Maybe you'll stand even smaller than you are like Em. In a winter doorframe. In a teardrop of fuzzied focus.
Maybe that's how I'll recognize you.
There's probably a party this weekend at a house I've never been to.
It will be black and yellow and warm and hot and black then orange.
I will be standing on the porch. You will have been followed there.
Maybe the Temper Trap will start playing.
I won't know how to dance to it.
You probably won't either.
Maybe that constant beat isn't a heart.
Maybe it's my feet. Maybe it has been the whole time.
Maybe my feet have been moving me here from the beginning.
Maybe for no reason.
Maybe your shoes will remind me of water.
You will probably walk back inside.
I will probably stand in the cold.
Maybe this is the beginning of the longgame.
Maybe I can taste the salt of the wood beneath my feet.
Maybe it's summer.
Maybe I'm six months early.
Maybe I'm six months too late.

a little

Every Saturday, from November to March, from as far back as he can remember until he was fourteen-years-old, he would tiptoe out of bed while the winter sky was still black and make himself two pieces of white toast with butter and sugar, turn the furnace up to eighty, sit with his feet over the heating vent, cover himself with an orange and brown afghan, and watch snow fall onto the three giant pine trees in the front yard. There was always snow. It was always quiet. And he could wrap myself in the smell of dustymetal furnaceheat and crispysweet butter. Safe and alone he would fill the silent slate of predawn with boondoggle dreams. And he would think himself cared for. And he would think himself loved. And he would think himself prince of a quiet moment. And he would eat his toast in circles - starting at the crust and working his way to the center - carefully aiming his course to ensure that the very last bite would always be perfect, as a child's yearning. A little toast. A little butter. A little sugar.

diary: adult

Thursday
The black sky is wholesale purging its stores. I stand leglocked by the window and stare as the rest of the office clicks and tittles away. I have never seen rain like this. I am a shameless gawker. I turn to the girl sitting closest to me but realize I have nothing to say. I look out the window again just in time to see a man's shoe fall onto a parked Buick.

Friday
I run over an (apple?) the size of a terrier on my way out of Dodge. Better than a terrier the size of an apple. I think. My car starts complaining.

Saturday
The only difference between your portobello sandwich and my caprese sandwich is that your squeaky mass is black and mine is white. Also today, I fall asleep to the sound of clouds arguing.

Sunday
Stripped to his intentions, man is but a tantrum of seagulls. Woman, a riot of wildflowers. Or a painting of windmills.

Monday
Phone.

Tuesday
Meet Dave for lunch at a romantic patisserie. Reminds me of the time we almost saw 500 Days of Summer together. Alone together. Cultural doesn't supplant romantic. Dave uses the word 'erect' in a non-sexual context. We are finally adults. (Ten minutes later when Amber comes we use the word 'poo' 17 times.)

Wednesday
Discover that orchids are most desirable as a plant, not a flower. Orchids belong to the same family as Vanilla. Some can self-reproduce. The name orchid literally means testicle. Happy first day of school, girlfriend.

"You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one."...

"You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on." "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you--the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the glass; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose."

Who was, but is not

On page 539 of my mission copy of Jesus the Christ, written in a tiny pencil scribble along the crease of a mangled dog ear, are the words "promise and do."

On page 358, next to the title As A Little Child, is written "believe believe believe."

On page 612, below "Behold thy mother!" --"promise and love."

On page 443: "my treasure = God. Wife. Children."

Ten years ago, sitting at a makeshift desk balancing precariously on the edge of the equator, a boy wrote secret messages to a stranger who he thought he knew. A boy who wasn't afraid to promise, or do, or believe, or love, or treasure his treasure. A boy who had no idea that his greatest enemy would be his future self. A boy, as I recall, brave enough to face me now with all of my experience and learning and say simply "You don't know. I do."

Shhhh. Listen to the boy who was, but is not, yourself.

PROVIDEnce

The words "I can't imagine," and "that could never happen," appear on nearly every page of my journal. They are always written in reference to something I am begging for in my life. Something I am praying for out of mercy, not worthiness. And even though I pray for it, I tell myself it's impossible. I am wrong every time.

the assurance of love

(for mom)

She keeps leaping
and the sun sets on her silhouette.
In the dark I can hear her heart beating
her throat breathing
her legs leaping
as she dances her way to the moon.

She starts to sing
with a pink and periwinkle voice
about a bee bouncing 'round from tree to tree.
She is not shy in the dark.
She is not scared
of what her daddy thinks of her.

Mom looks down
from her treeless mountain in the clouds
and smiles a living smile at her baby.
And her baby's baby.
And I am bookended
by two soft-as-sunlight lilies.

Her silly dance
is a six-year-old's translation of your rocking arms.
Her busy song is your noiseless lullaby.
I see you both in the dark.
And I am not scared
of what you think of me.

daily bite

2 lines that deeply affected me this morning from conference:

"The ultimate end of all activity in the church is that a man and his wife and their children might be happy at home, protected by the principles and laws of the gospel, sealed safely in the covenants of the everlasting priesthood."

and:

"Now, fathers, I would remind you of the sacred nature of your calling. You have the power of the priesthood directly from the Lord to protect your home. There will be times when all that stands as a shield between your family and the adversary’s mischief will be that power. You will receive direction from the Lord by way of the gift of the Holy Ghost."

My Turtle, who is about to turn 6:

I don't know if I have been the best father. But you have been the best turtle, the best sunrise, the best mermaid, the best pearl. Last night you told me you wanted to be an author, and I went in my room and cried. Partly because you are old enough to know what an author is. Partly because my dreams are becoming yours. But mostly because you had something to say, and you wanted to say it to me. I love you more than when you were a turtle. I love you more than when you were a sunrise. I love you more than when you were a mermaid. I love you more than when you were a pearl. I love you almost as much as I will tomorrow.

Life

Add to a playlist More from this artist

(This post is meant to be read out loud along with the above soundtrack)


The straining violin of God's voice.
A tiny light made infinitely bright.
A heave and a sigh.

The manic banging of keys.
An astronaut cut from his lifecord.
A birth. A cry.

The iambic pulse of God's heart.
The stuttered steps of his boyfawn.
A gentle youthsong.

An opera of unknowable words.
A treefrown, a wounding, a lie.
The broken everything.

An opera of unknowable words.
A treefall, a tearing, a pieta.
The broken everything.

An opera of unknowable words.
(...)
(...)

The quiet.
The empty.
Startover.

....
....
....

After this tangled shoestring:
The Milkwhite Peaceriver
Of God's ether.

What it is

This is it. A little while ago Sierra asked me how I feel love and I had a hard time describing it. But this morning Mr. Denver did the explaining for me.

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Annie's Song

You fill up my senses
like a night in the forest
like the mountains in springtime,
like a walk in the rain
like a storm in the desert,
like a sleepy blue ocean
you fill up my senses,
come fill me again.

Come let me love you,
let me give my life to you
let me drown in your laughter,
let me die in your arms
let me lay down beside you,
let me always be with you
come let me love you,
come love me again.

Dear the World

To the people of Earth,

I would love to read your comments if you feel so inclined to post any. For the longest while I thought that nobody read my blog. Which was nice in a way because I could use it as my online personal journal. But a few people have told me recently that they enjoyed such and such post or that they were offended by this or that. I had no idea they even knew where to find my blog. So to you people I say "Prove it." Let me know what you think. This is a shameless plea for comments. I want to hear from you, people of Earth.

Love,

Garred

PS - Start with the poems. They're short and easy to read.

You Are...

I Am...

Shalom

O ellie, this is the heart

Mount Fuji

Skeletons

mine mine mine

Two Pears

Two Pears

(
two
yellow
pears hug
on a plate in
the kitchen
window)

mine mine mine

Dear Ellie,

This is Jesus. Who lived and lives.
He is the wiggling baby.
He is the gentle friend.
He is the humble healer.
He is the man on the cross.
He is the empty tomb.
He is the deliverer of prayers.
He is the singing crickets.
He is the whispering trees.
He is the winking stars.
He is the roof over our heads.
He is the warmth of your blanket.
He is the softness of your pillow.
He is your laugh when dad is happy.
He keeps you asleep when daddy cries.
And just as you are mine mine mine,
He will always be yours yours yours.

theunexpectedmiracleofsundayfebruary14th2010.

If you want to do something invaluable for yourself today, put on your puffycoat of gratitude. I realized that there is no greater gift that we are able to give in this life. It is a gift we give to both ourselves and the Lord. A salve for our own souls. A tiny basket of glory for Christ. With gratitude we rise above the mucky muck of dumdum troubles and see life for what it really is. We find the happiness of a thousand points of light in our past. We see the bright new star of today. We allow our spirits to comprehend the endless nebulaic blessings that are yet to come. Gratitude is a rope we throw over all time and space, corralling all Eternity into the singularity of our heart. It is the tailor that fits us with the three piece suit of faith, hope, and charity. It is fried potatoes that finally taste good again.

The Pomegranate Heart

"And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it became pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make her wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat..."

"... and I, the Lord God, said:...cursed shall be the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also, and thistles shall it bring forth to thee....By the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, until thou shalt return unto the ground - for thou shalt surely die..."

Opening scene: A haggard little garden in the foreground. The sun rises on the Euphrates in the background. An old woman stands up with weeds in her hands and wipes blood from her fingers on a dingy apron. An old man takes the weeds from her hands and kisses her on the cheek.

Act I: Later that night at the dinner table.

Eve: My wrists done swelled up agin. Don't know if I'll be fit to clear 'dat garden b'fore Sundee.

Adam: You will. Last week it was yo knees. This week it's the wrists. You'll git it done. With time to spare, I reckon.

Eve: Sometimes I wonder if you're just fakin' belief in me just so I help you wit yo chores when I'm done wit mine.

Adam: Sometimes I wonder if your just fakin' yo pains so that you don't hafta. Ain't no way you could clear a whole gard'n by yoself if you wuz really in all 'dat pain. Only a goddess could do dat. Or an angel.

Eve: (blushing) Boy, I swear. Sometimes I don't know if yo extra good to me, o extra bad.

Adam: Extra good, I reckon.

(A baby cries from off stage)

Act II: Several years later. 4 children are running around the house. The house is much larger and more comfortable now. Outside the window lie rows and rows of perfect crops. Eve sits in a rocking chair sewing a patch on some small pants. Adam enters stage left with a broken board in his hand.

Adam: Guess what 'dis is?

Eve: Oh no. Don't tell me Cain was out hittin his 'lil brother agin wit 'dat ol' stick.

Adam: Guess agin. This time I wuz da one doing the beatin'. 'Dat Cain of yours done told me off fer feedin' the cows by hand. He says I'm wastin' ma time doin it 'dat way. Says I can just throw some hay on the ground 'n da cows end up findin' it anyways.

Eve: Ya?

Adam: Ya. An he says he's thought up all sorts a ways to make it so he don't gotta work so hard. He says life should be a piece a cake. So I tells him how ev'ry time he feeds the cows, I gotta tend 'em back to health for weeks cuz a all da rocks they eatin' with da hay. He just looks at me an says, "That's yo problem. Not mine." I ask 'im if he ever wants ta be great some dee. Ya know what he says t' me? He says, "Great sounds like alotta work. Let Abel do da great stuff if you so set on havin' big shot kids. I'll be workin' three days a week an' mindin' ma own bizness."

Eve: So ya got 'im good wit 'dat stick, uh?

Adam: You bes believin' I did.

Act III: Adam-Ondi-Ahman. A great green field is filled with sons and daughters of Adam and Eve.

Adam: (Finishing his speech) 'Dis I seal upon ev'ry one a you, with all my love. You my children, an' I will always be yo grateful dad.

(Adam sits down and Eve begins to speak seated in her rocking chair on the grass hill.)

Eve: Oh my. (Pause) Oh my oh my. If all you ain't a sight. Y'all know I can't stand, but seein' y'all like dis makes it hard ta even speak. A mother's heart is a life all its own. If you'z ever held a baby, y'all know 'dis. It beats diff'rent 'cuz it's heavy wit love. Children, inside a me is a great red pomegranate. I got no doubt it looks all weather'd 'n worn 'n ugly on da outside. It's gotta hard coverin' 'cuz dere's so much rain 'n so much angr'y wind always blowin' at it. An' it's worked 'n worked 'n worked till there ain't nothin' pretty 'bout it. But inside...oh mercy. Inside is ev'ry single one a y'alls. Ev'ry last one. You each a seed in my heart. A sweet bless'ed seed all full 'a life 'n promise. An' each one a yo seeds is wrapped in a wet blanket a tears. That's how I keep'd y'all safe. I work'd. An' I cried. An' dere ain't no otha way to love a seed mo' than 'dat. Yo daddy done bless'd y'all real good. I can't say mo than 'dat. He is da best daddy you ever gonna know. I promise ya 'dat. We both made some real hard choices 'fore y'alls was born. But I tell ya this... ev'ry single one a ya alone woulda been worth it. Ain't no work dat ain't pleasure when it's done for love.

Act IV: Modern day. Everything is clean and ritzy. Every amenity you could imagine. There are throngs of children. Me. You. Some do great things because they are brave, hard things precisely because they are hard. Others shrink with fear.

Girl: (In prayer) Mother Eve, I was not called to be great. This boy that wants me to marry him...I mean he's great and all...but that's just it...he's so set on being great. He wants to change the world. I admire him for it and all, but that's just not me.

Mother Eve: Why ain't 'dat you?

Girl: I don't know. That's not what I want. I just want to have my own little life and take care of my own little family. There's too much out there anyway. I can't change any of it. I think Heavenly Father just wants me to be small.

Mother Eve: Ya know, 'dat was a lie started a long long time ago by someone I sure did love. He hid his God-given goodness from da Lord and called it 'umility. 'Cept der weren't no 'umility 'bout it. He jus wanted to do is comf'table thing and have da Lord accept it as his best. He gave a bit here 'n dere but he wasted most 'a what da good Lord gave 'im cuz he was scared. Or lazy. Or some'n. He had a comf'table life 'cuz a all da work his parents done did. But he never did da work hizself. 'Dat ain't 'umility. Dat's jus takin' an never giv'n back.

Girl: I'm not like that. I JUST WASN'T CALLED TO BE GREAT.

Mother Eve: Then you wuz not called to be one a my children.

Girl: But we're all your children.

Mother Eve: Then you wuz called. (Pauses while she gazes out over the landscape. Finally she turns her head with decision and repeats while nodding assuredly) Then you wuz called.

Girl: (...)

Closing scene: A haggard little garden in the foreground. The sun sets on the Euphrates in the background. A young woman is bent over, struggling to pull the last weed out of a long furrow. A young man stands next to her, wiping his brow with a white handkerchief. She stands up with the weed in her hand, takes a red handkerchief out of her back pocket, and wipes a smudge off the young man's cheek. She gazes at him for just a moment. And smiles.

The Radleys (redux)

We all, in a self-censoring way, believe we are Scout. We aspire to be Atticus - strong, noble, and godly - but realize we will always be children looking up to an ideal. But here's the hard truth: we are all just Boo Radleys. Nothing more, and nothing less. We are all forsaken, misshapen, scared, and scary. We hide out in the dark corners of our lives - coming out only when there is no one to truly see or recognize us - to drop small pieces of ourselves in the hollow of a tree. And in the end, if we do anything worthy or noble, it is to expose our ugly selves in order to carry another. This is love. This is that vulnerable, lonely, awkward power that alone coerces us out of our house at the end of the lane.

Jesus in the Valley

There is no pain that I have felt. No sorrow that I have had to endure. Mine is a blessed life. Ridiculous with overabundance. To believe that I have suffered anything is the grossest forsaking of love. There are those that suffer. There are those who do not live the lives that we live. May Jesus live in the valley of their hearts.

In about March 1946, less than a year after the end of the war, Ezra Taft Benson, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve, accompanied by Frederick W. Babbel, was assigned a special postwar tour of Europe for the express purpose of meeting with the Saints, assessing their needs, and providing assistance to them. Elder Benson and Brother Babbel later recounted, from a testimony they heard, the experience of a Church member who found herself in an area no longer controlled by the government under which she had resided.

She and her husband had lived an idyllic life in East Prussia. Then had come the second great world war within their lifetimes. Her beloved young husband was killed during the final days of the frightful battles in their homeland, leaving her alone to care for their four children.

The occupying forces determined that the Germans in East Prussia must go to Western Germany to seek a new home. The woman was German, and so it was necessary for her to go. The journey was over a thousand miles (1,600 km), and she had no way to accomplish it but on foot. She was allowed to take only such bare necessities as she could load into her small wooden-wheeled wagon. Besides her children and these meager possessions, she took with her a strong faith in God and in the gospel as revealed to the latter-day prophet Joseph Smith.

She and the children began the journey in late summer. Having neither food nor money among her few possessions, she was forced to gather a daily subsistence from the fields and forests along the way. She was constantly faced with dangers from panic-stricken refugees and plundering troops.

As the days turned into weeks and the weeks to months, the temperatures dropped below freezing. Each day, she stumbled over the frozen ground, her smallest child—a baby—in her arms. Her three other children struggled along behind her, with the oldest—seven years old—pulling the tiny wooden wagon containing their belongings. Ragged and torn burlap was wrapped around their feet, providing the only protection for them, since their shoes had long since disintegrated. Their thin, tattered jackets covered their thin, tattered clothing, providing their only protection against the cold.

Soon the snows came, and the days and nights became a nightmare. In the evenings she and the children would try to find some kind of shelter—a barn or a shed—and would huddle together for warmth, with a few thin blankets from the wagon on top of them.

She constantly struggled to force from her mind overwhelming fears that they would perish before reaching their destination.

And then one morning the unthinkable happened. As she awakened, she felt a chill in her heart. The tiny form of her three-year-old daughter was cold and still, and she realized that death had claimed the child. Though overwhelmed with grief, she knew that she must take the other children and travel on. First, however, she used the only implement she had—a tablespoon—to dig a grave in the frozen ground for her tiny, precious child.

Death, however, was to be her companion again and again on the journey. Her seven-year-old son died, either from starvation or from freezing or both. Again her only shovel was the tablespoon, and again she dug hour after hour to lay his mortal remains gently into the earth. Next, her five-year-old son died, and again she used her tablespoon as a shovel.

Her despair was all consuming. She had only her tiny baby daughter left, and the poor thing was failing. Finally, as she was reaching the end of her journey, the baby died in her arms. The spoon was gone now, so hour after hour she dug a grave in the frozen earth with her bare fingers. Her grief became unbearable. How could she possibly be kneeling in the snow at the graveside of her last child? She had lost her husband and all her children. She had given up her earthly goods, her home, and even her homeland.

In this moment of overwhelming sorrow and complete bewilderment, she felt her heart would literally break. In despair she contemplated how she might end her own life, as so many of her fellow countrymen were doing. How easy it would be to jump off a nearby bridge, she thought, or to throw herself in front of an oncoming train.

And then, as these thoughts assailed her, something within her said, “Get down on your knees and pray.” She ignored the prompting until she could resist it no longer. She knelt and prayed more fervently than she had in her entire life:

“Dear Heavenly Father, I do not know how I can go on. I have nothing left—except my faith in Thee. I feel, Father, amidst the desolation of my soul, an overwhelming gratitude for the atoning sacrifice of Thy Son, Jesus Christ. I cannot express adequately my love for Him. I know that because He suffered and died, I shall live again with my family; that because He broke the chains of death, I shall see my children again and will have the joy of raising them. Though I do not at this moment wish to live, I will do so, that we may be reunited as a family and return—together—to Thee.”

"Together - to Thee." This is the prayer. Of us all.

JS Bach

Whenever I listen to Bach I feel like I'm putting math inside of me. I've posted the full Suite No. 1 for Cello on the right of this page. See if it doesn't send your mind racing through the periodic table of elements. Or at very least a trip down integer alley.

PS - Mr. Bach deserves a more thorough treatment then this skimpy post. I will likely be adding to it in the next few days when I get a minute.

Around Eight-Thirty

I am never unfascinated when Ellie reads me a book. Every night, the red hen has wet legs. Or the hot dog plays with a bat. And every night I stare at a tiny face that is too young to comprehend but too smart to ignore. She finishes her books, and I start mine. The wild rumpus lays out over 3 whole pages and we growl and whoop and tear and claw and bang our knees like drums. We chase the wild things to bed. Then we lay down our own heads and say a prayer. She is thankful for daddy mommy grandma gretchen buela nana jesus. She asks for nothing. In the name of Jesus Christ. I kiss her on the forehead and close my eyes. She politely reminds me to kiss Tia the Lioness goodnight too. I kiss Tia. And Al. And Eleanor. And Giraffi. And Ellie one more time. She closes her eyes and races to sleep with an impossible grin on her face. Ellie’s face. The universe.

Los Pajaros (redux)

There's the awkward couple, the sober couple, the odd couple, the prideful man with the yearning girl, and the three happy happy happy couples. On a Saturday morning in the temple, I am blessed to see them all.

I came this morning simply because I was awake. Had I known that it would be the most apple-crisp golden delicious Autumn day in 28 years, I probably would have gone somewhere else. To the mountains. Or the park. Or my mother's backyard. But at 5am it is dark and still and equally as ominous as it is promising. So it was the temple. The safe choice, even on this most cranberry of days.

There in the Celestial room, a lone twenty-something early riser can feel quite like a curry on Thanksgiving day. Eccentric. Sweaty. Wholly out of place. But not today. For some inexplicable yet undeniably sensed reason, today is a good great granddaddy day. In fact, even here in the Casa de Dios, surrounded by angels and saints, I can only describe it as a bona fide damn fine day if there ever was one. For twenty minutes it is me. And the Samoan Queen sitting across the room. And no one else. And despite all of her grace and graciousness, the Queen does not give me even the slightest hint that the entire sum of life is about to be played out before my eyes.

In they come.

The most picture-perfect bride and groom I have ever seen. Not in contrasting black and white, but both dressed in the color of heaven. It is their faces and their hands. It is their eyes. They are not disgustingly happy. They are exultingly happy. Every inch of smile on that girl's face is equaled by that young man's own. I am happy just to see them. An unnoticed matron seats them on a couch and leaves them to their own best every moment of their life. There is no way that my presence could intrude on this. From where they sit, I do not exist. Even the Queen has been mentally exiled. There are just smiles, and faces, and hands, and eyes.

More couples are ushered in, one by one. This one is sober. Stoic and self-assured. There are no smiles like the first couple, but there are plenty of hands. And eyes. And happiness does not skip a beat. Then comes an awkward couple. Both standing on stork legs and looking on with deer eyes. But they are not uncomfortable like I think. They are just funny. They make each other laugh. They poke and they coo and they smiles smiles smiles. Then another perfect picture. Then a middle-aged man a full 6 inches shorter than his middle-aged bride-to-be. But when they sit there is no shortage of eyes. Or hands. Or even feet for this giddy couple that has been waiting oh-so-long for this perfect October day. I am glad they waited. They are glad they waited. God is glad they listened.

Then comes in a kid. His hand lays open at his side. A girl with a face like a New England beach grasps desperately at his lifeless hand. Her eyes are full of clouds. It has been raining. And I suspect there will be many more rainstorms running down that Cape Cod face long after I'm gone. She is searching for his eyes. He is coolly scanning his surroundings with all the false bravado of a junior high drop out. He is probably 25 years old. He is 12 years old. For the second time today, I swear in my head. "Damnit boy! What are you looking for? What on this Great Green Earth could you be looking for at this moment? Is it your confidence? If so, you have at most ten minutes to find it before you'll need it every day for the rest of your life."

I take a few breaths and continue my mind lecture.

"Listen, I don't know you and I am not a prophet. I don't have to be to tell you that the entire sum and substance of what you're looking for in this life is standing by your side. If you will stop being cool for twenty minutes, you will make your grey-eyed promise the happiest girl in the world. And she will work to make the infinite minutes that follow happier than you can imagine. For one day, for twenty minutes, be a dork. Smile. Cry. Feet hands face eyes kiss. This is it. She. The Joie de Vivre. She is about to promise you her existence. And more importantly for you to understand, you are about to promise her yours. Let her crush you with those grey eyes. Let her swallow you with that quivering line of a smile. She. And then everything."

And then...

They sit down. She buries her head in his neck. He gives a quick glance around...throws caution to the wind...puts his arm around her shoulders...rests his head on hers...and closes his eyes. Queen looks over and gives me a knowing smile. Jesus looks down, his eyes also closed, and nods.

***

I walk out of the temple to find that the dark morning has turned to Autumn. The air is light and the light is flowing in amber sheets across the square. Two birds carefully raise out of a golden ball of oak. The branch where they sat shutters for an instant at the memory of their weight. With no more communication than the happy beating of their wings, the birds trace a winding and parallel path through the sky until, sooner than I can fathom, they disappear over the temple.

skeletons

I finally dreamed again.
And although I was only a skeleton
it felt good to breathe again.
Standing on an empty highway
my whitebones clinked as I shivered
in the 6am grayfog.
I stooped down and hugged my knees
to keep the heat in.
But there was no heat to keep in.
There was no heart.
No brain or lungs or grimywarm guts.
Just skeleton me. And a pair of eyes
to see a dried leaf rattle
through the cage of my chest.
And I remembered what Kathy said.
That every boy is a skeleton.
And every girl is a heart.


That every boy is a skeleton.
And every girl is a heart.

Down To Your Grave...

Time Is...

Dripping (Redux)

I can still remember the sound of Ellie trying to suck in air between fits of crying. The inward gasps were worse than the screams that echoed through the house, not because of any particular sound they made, but because I could feel the exhaustion in her lungs, in her flexing arms and legs and fingers and toes. I remember thinking that I was just as spent as she was and wished with selfish sympathy that she would stop for me. Stop for Dad. But she wouldn’t. She was six months old and, though it seems like a lie now or at very least a reckless memory, she had never stayed up to cry in her life. But she was sick then and What to Expect the First Year pointed us to a general explanation: the flu. I was contented with the diagnosis but Brooke was not convinced. She held onto our baby with the same prayerful grace that she held onto her father with just before he died. I hovered around mother and child trying in an uncomfortable effort to say I understood, to say that I was there in case it was serious. But after an hour or two of awkward fatherness, I went to bed. I know Brooke has forgiven me for falling asleep through Ellie’s cries, but I wonder sometimes how she feels about a father that slept through those helpless inward gasps.

*

Two years before Ellie got sick, Brooke’s father died. I had only had a year to avoid Marvin Heath’s steely eyes before I lost the chance to find out what was behind them. The Multiple Myeloma cancer ate his bones from the inside out, but he ultimately died of kidney failure and starvation. The man my new wife loved even more than her husband wasted away to an empty chrysalis, and I know for a time she was left with nothing. I did not know how to be there for her. I did not even know where there was.

We all hovered for days before it actually happened. I was on the outside looking in. My tears weren’t Heath tears and I did not want to pretend I understood, even if I did. I was scared to mourn as Marvin’s wife mourned, as his children mourned. His bread of life. I did not want to intrude on something that was uniquely theirs. My feelings became transient and I found myself crying when I was alone. Not crying out of loss or pain. Just crying. Perhaps I should have intruded. I should have let them know I feared and mourned and understood in some small way. Or perhaps they found some unifying solace in their distaste for my distance. I won’t ever know now. The time is past and the subject is as welcome as a gravestone in a flowerbed.

That was the first and only time I have ever been around death. It is a process like the melting of an icicle. The memory goes, the body withers, the mind drips drips drips until there is nothing left to hang onto. One day, expectedly but quite arbitrarily, what is left crashes to the ground and it’s over. I spent the majority of the only year I knew Marvin Heath standing in the hallway outside his bedroom while his family watched him die within. He is the white walls of a dimly lit hall in my memory. He is gone. And all I hear are the echoes of dripping.

*

It has been two months since Ellie kept her mother awake and I slept two doors away. After having taken her to see a pediatrician, Brooke rushed Ellie to the emergency room while I was at school. When I came home six hours later, there was a note on the cupboard. Come to the hospital as soon as you get home. Brooke. I tried to concentrate on simply pushing the air in and out of my lungs, pushing the echoes out of my head, as I drove the fifteen miles to the hospital. I got there in time to hear the doctor say the word serious twice. Ellie has a serious bone infection called Osteomyelitis. It helps that you caught it early. It’s a serious condition. It is an unfair word for a doctor to use. It cuts. It cuts whatever tendons or muscles hold your heart in your chest. Does it mean long term illness? Does it mean paralysis? Does it mean amputation? I looked at Ellie’s little legs and tried not to imagine their absence. Ellie was not crying anymore and Brooke was holding her in that way again. That watchful, prayerful, terrified way again. And I knew what serious meant. It meant eating from the inside out. It meant melting and withering. It meant drips.

Time in the hospital was marked by blood tests and beeps. Ellie gained strength and we finally took her home with just an IV in her arm and a six-week treatment to show for her scare. She has been up and down since then, mostly up, and the word serious has disappeared. But there are still nights when I look at her fragile baby body lying in her crib and I am forced to consider what death might mean. What will it be like when I’m on the inside? When there are no white walls to hide behind? I can sense it at times. It flattens me out. It is an ice storm. It freezes then shatters my heart and my lungs. Will I be left with nothing like Brooke was two years ago?

I think on the times when Ellie is laughing. When mom and dad and baby are dancing with our home wrapped around us, dancing in each other’s arms like leaves in a whirlwind and baby squeals with angelic bliss and mom starts crying, smiling and crying like her very essence might burst with joy and anguished ecstasy. I will not be left with nothing. I will have this. And I finally understand that prayerful grace that Brooke holds Ellie with. That same embrace that she gave her father. It is her dance. Her moment. She was not left with nothing.

Ellie is sleeping and there’s an echo in my head. No dripping. Just the sound of my baby breathing.

Oh, G

While Jesus was winding his way down the dungeon corridors, plowing through every evil enemy that Satan could throw at him, unlocking every cell door to set every prisoner free...I was running deeper and deeper into the dark. There in Gethsemane Jesus chased down every last soul. And the billion papercuts on his heart would not stop until he had reached the final one. And I was running deeper and deeper into the dark. I imagine that the first cell door that he opened freed my brother Damion. I imagine that he carried little Ellie on his shoulders, out of the reach of the hissing snakes of Satan's servants. And I imagine that I kept running. And when he checked on PeterJamesandJohn one last time before going back into the garden for one last hour of hell, he told them, "All are rescued, except one. Wait for me if you can. This may take awhile." And wearied and broken he hurdled himself back down the dungeon corridors. And after eons of tortured searching at last he found me. And I cowered in the corner of a tiny secret passage at the very end of the deepest tunnel. And he reached out his hand. And I tucked mine into my armpits. And he took me by the ear and said, "Garred. Love." And he groaned, "It is finished," and finally restedsleptdied. And this is the mystery of a salvation that has already been executed, that will one day be discovered by me. Garred. Love.

Mom in tsunami: I saw my daughter floating away

This was a brief video story on CNN.com. The headline made me sick and I'm not sure why I opened the link. I can't get the child's last words out of my head. I hope this mother's faith is larger than mine is. I would not survive the night.

Taitasi Fitiao was holding her six-year-old daughter's hand when a tsunami
wave crashed onto their coastal village in American Samoa.
"I held her hand.
The wave got us and that's when her hand just left mine and I could hear her
say, 'Mom, please.' And then I saw her, I saw her floating away. And I knew
right then that she was gone, she was taken from us."

You can read the rest of the article here.

Cradle (redux)

The first story I ever remember writing was about a boy who became an astronaut and then turned into a star. The first short story I wrote in high school was about an old man fishing in a pond trying to catch the bobbing reflections of the night sky. And the first personal essay I wrote in college was about a spiritual epiphany I had while following the Milky Way on a dusty Ecuadorian road.

If I ever publish a book, you can bet the nighttime expanse will be prominently featured.

I don't know what it is about the heavens that so distracts my subconscience. I mean rarely do I purposely think about the stars and the blackness in between, but it seems that every time I put pen to paper my thoughts automatically reach upwards. I suppose it's akin to coastal people writing and thinking about water. As I consider it, many of my fondest childhood memories come from the back seat of our family car. On long drives home from who-knows-where I would lay in the back seat and stare out the window into the heavens until I fell asleep (or pretended to fall asleep so that my mother would carry me into the house). It was as if the arm of our Milky Way somehow held and rocked me in the darkness.

I remember the first time I noticed that my Cradling Galaxy was missing from the sky. It was the Fourth of July. My parents had divorced several years earlier and I was just starting to notice the strangeness of their relationship. Deep inside my stomach swelled a murky green storm as I watched my father try to light a firework, fail, get advice from my mother, mutter something under his breath, and hand the unlit menace over to her in an overly macho way. It was, quite remarkably, the first time I realized that they didn't love each other. I was 8 or 9.

That night I slept on the lawn with my older brothers and sister. They fell asleep almost immediately and I was left to shoulder what I believed to be an infinitely unfair and lonesome burden. For in my mind, I believed that I was the only one, youngest though I was, to come to this loveless realization. And it was too cruel and the storm was too green for me to ever share the news. I was 8 years old. And I was scared. I was 28-year-old scared. I was 87-year-old scared. I was 3-month-old scared. And as my eyes instinctively looked upwards, I cried. My starry mothering arm had melted away into a big-city sky. There were a few mocking stars. And the sound of my sobs. I was alone. I 8-year-old cried.

Oh Ellie, please don't ever turn 8. But you will. You will probably turn 8 when you're just 5 or 6. You will turn 8 before I know what to do. My baby bear cub, my angel, please remember this: God is Love. And that forever.

Testing. Testing. Is this thing still on?

Joseph Tellier

He laid his head on the mahogany and took a deap breath in. From this angle he could see the heavy layer of dust that covered the floor, broken only by the game trail plotted by his own feet. The bed. The refrigerator. The couch. The bed. His red pulse slowly began to pool in his view, stage right. He could feel his eye twitch against the dust, and immediately thought how superfluous it would be to blink now. How pointless. But against his mighty reason, he did.

He knew he had made a mistake. He raised his hand to feel the wound in his chest, noticed an orange peel by the foot of his bed, thought of a story he had once heard about Christmas, and died.

grey girl

I took a little piece of brown bark and folded a boat.

We pushed off into the stream, bobbed over the lake, and drifted into the ocean.

You took the ribbon out of your hair and stood there on the bough like you were naked.

You, my sadly happy Edith Piaf.

Lately...

Some of you have been wondering what I've been up to lately. Well, the truth is I'm really into a lot of diverse activities these days. I like to mix it up. I just need variety, you know?

YES WE CAN!

Thank you, Mr. Obama.

Mount Fuji

in you,

the symmetrical,

sensuously

serene

lives

of the Japanese.

Finally

While you were sleeping...

I haven't posted in almost 2 months. Many of you have reminded me of this fact. I have been busy working on 3 short stories, none of which I am able to finish for some reason. They are:

1) The Sins of Mary Krystkow
2) The Tallest Wince
3) Singer Black and White

Please let me know which of the three I should focus on finishing. I will finish it. I will post it for your grubby criticism. You will stop telling me that I haven't posted in almost 2 months.

Thank you dearly,

Garred

For Andrew and Emilee (and seven years)

The Pajaros

There's the awkward couple, the sober couple, the odd couple, the prideful man with the yearning girl, and the three happy happy happy couples. On a Saturday morning in the temple, I am blessed to see them all.

I came this morning simply because I was awake. Had I known that it would be the most apple-crisp golden delicious Autumn day in 28 years, I probably would have gone somewhere else. To the mountains. Or the park. Or my mother's backyard. But at 5am it is dark and still and equally as ominous as it is promising. So it was the temple. The safe choice, even on this most cranberry of days.

There in the Celestial room, a lone twenty-something early riser can feel quite like a curry on Thanksgiving day. Eccentric. Sweaty. Wholly out of place. But not today. For some inexplicable yet undeniably sensed reason, today is a good great granddaddy day. In fact, even here in the Casa de Dios, surrounded by angels and saints, I can only describe it as a bona fide damn fine day if there ever was one. For twenty minutes it is me. And the Samoan Queen sitting across the room. And no one else. And despite all of her grace and graciousness, the Queen does not give me even the slightest hint that the entire sum of life is about to be played out before my eyes.

In they come.

The most picture-perfect bride and groom I have ever seen. Not in contrasting black and white, but both dressed in the color of heaven. It is their faces and their hands. It is their eyes. They are not disgustingly happy. They are exultingly happy. Every inch of smile on that girl's face is equaled by that young man's own. I am happy just to see them. An unnoticed matron seats them on a couch and leaves them to their own best every moment of their life. There is no way that my presence could intrude on this. From where they sit, I do not exist. Even the Queen has been mentally exiled. There are just smiles, and faces, and hands, and eyes.

More couples are ushered in, one by one. This one is sober. Stoic and self-assured. There are no smiles like the first couple, but there are plenty of hands. And eyes. And happiness does not skip a beat. Then comes an awkward couple. Both standing on stork legs and looking on with deer eyes. But they are not uncomfortable like I think. They are just funny. They make each other laugh. They poke and they coo and they smiles smiles smiles. Then another perfect picture. Then a middle-aged man a full 6 inches shorter than his middle-aged bride-to-be. But when they sit there is no shortage of eyes. Or hands. Or even feet for this giddy couple that has been waiting oh-so-long for this perfect October day. I am glad they waited. They are glad they waited. God is glad they listened.

Then comes in a kid. His hand lays open at his side. A girl with a face like a New England beach grasps desperately at his lifeless hand. Her eyes are full of clouds. It has been raining. And I suspect there will be many more rainstorms running down that Cape Cod face long after I'm gone. She is searching for his eyes. He is coolly scanning his surroundings with all the false bravado of a junior high drop out. He is probably 25 years old. He is 12 years old. For the second time today, I swear in my head. "Damnit boy! What are you looking for? What on this Great Green Earth could you be looking for at this moment? Is it your confidence? If so, you have at most ten minutes to find it before you'll need it every day for the rest of your life."

I take a few breaths.

"Listen, I don't know you and I am not a prophet. I don't have to be to tell you that the entire sum and substance of what you're looking for in this life is standing by your side. If you will stop being cool for twenty minutes, you will make your grey-eyed promise the happiest girl in the world. And she will work to make the infinite minutes that follow happier than you can imagine. For one day, for twenty minutes, be a dork. Smile. Cry. Feet hands face eyes kiss. This is it. She. The Joie de Vivre. She is about to promise you her existence. And more importantly for you to understand, you are about to promise her yours. Let her crush you with those grey eyes. Let her swallow you with that quivering line of a smile. She. And then everything."

And then...

They sit down. She buries her head in his neck. He gives a quick glance around...throws caution to the wind...puts his arm around her shoulders...rests his head on hers...and closes his eyes. Queen looks over and gives me a knowing smile. Jesus looks down, his eyes also closed, and nods.

***

I walk out of the temple to find that the dark morning has turned to Autumn. The air is light and the light is flowing in amber sheets across the square. Two birds carefully raise out of a golden ball of oak. The branch where they sat shutters for an instant at the memory of their weight. With no more communication than the happy beating of their wings, the birds trace a winding and parallel path through the sky until, sooner than I can fathom, they disappear over the temple.

REWARD!

If anyone can find me the original opening credits sequence from "To Kill a Mockingbird" online, I will TOTALLY make it worth your time (if you know what I mean). But it has to have the original score, not the slow oboe piece on YouTube.

Thanks.

The Rings of Saturn

Around her head - one million frozen rocks. To care about this, to worry about that, to love this, to judge that, to carry, to lift, to throw, to endure, to solve, to heal, to give, to serve, to care. Oh the care is there. One million cares. One million tiny orbits. One million fireflies disturbing the dark of her sleep. No sleep. A stony haze.

Quick, take my arm. I'll hold your mind. One million miles lie ahead. Half way through she stops and looks back at herself. What do you see? A stony noose. One million miles you've promised me. We walk, time fades, we turn to look. One million flecks of glass a halo they have made. A halo, for thus a saint is made.

Salve

Buy this album now. Ask questions later.

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Writers' Block

This is a call to arms. A few of you have been privy to the "Ultra Mega Classic Writers' Workshop and Tea Room" rumors that have been circulating for years. The idea is simple. People get together, they decide on a given topic or style to write on, they take a month to write something, they get back together and share their writing and give feedback. It's like school without nuns. It's like a bookclub with a different kind of gayness. The beauty is that it can all be done over the world wide weeble these days. So you never have to look a critic in the face. Although the sharing of tea becomes more difficult with the technological disconnect.

If you think you would be interested in such an ultra mega classic forum, please comment on this post and let me know. I'm trying to get a head count to make sure this thing is even worth it. IT'S WORTH IT!

Peace, love, and sympathetic touches.

82 (The Corner)

He is quick; that much is clear. But the glow of his ever-increasing fame pulses every time he hits someone. He slides back and forth effortlessly in his backpeddle - like water that knows its way down a riverbed - then bolts forward an instant before the world flinches to plant his head in a pair of unfortunate numbers. Lights out. That's what his coaches have started calling him. And he smiles a broad ethnic smile every time they do.

He is good with the ball in his hands. The four red stars on his helmet are proof enough that he is the most valuable pair of legs behind the line of scrimmage. But 27 white tomahawks that surround those stars are the reason he lays sleepless at night. Reading a quarterback's eyes. Following a running back's hips. Listening to a receiver's footsteps. All for the pop. The kill. Even through the blinding light that crashes through his brain at 'the moment' - even through his own blood and snot - he can hear the bench erupt with every hit. He is a lithe and lightning hero. He is a bullet and a gun.


There will come a time when he doesn't play anymore. It is already almost upon him. No, he won't suffer a broken spine or a torn ACL or a brain-battering concussion. Time will simply reveal to him what he already suspects in the back of his helmet: he is not that good. And that is fine. But one far-away day he will teeter dangerously on the edge of 30. And he will realize that he has ever been backpeddling. Any jolts forward have been met by a violent crash. The bench will have gone silent. But he will continue to smash and punch and throw himself to the wall. A broken marriage. A single parenthood. A failed schooling. An empty job.

Boy, in that day, remember four red stars. Turn your feet around. Take the ball. And run.

O ellie, this is the heart

.....this is what it looks like.
(touch my wrist) it is red like a summer apple.

.....this is what it sounds like.
(hush baby) it is orange like a calling child.

.....this is what it tastes like.
(kiss my cheek) it is yellow like a popcorn kernel.

.....this is what it smells like.
(close your eyes) it is green like a morning world.

.....this is what it feels like.
it is brown like your eyes.
it is black like your hair.
it is pink like your voice.
it is blue like your overalls.
it is purple like your dreams.
it is white like your name.

(laugh, child. ring out)

the heart is white like your name.

What's on my mind today...

HAZELNUT!!!

Hummingbird Daughter

"Everything about a hummingbird is a superlative" - Tom Colazo

What I saw in the school that night 17 years ago.

There in the hall. In the light of night. In the dark of secret. He kissed her. For luck. For passion. For madness. For mercy. For loneliness. For Heaven. For Hell. For freedom.

There's a hand on the wall. 3 feet on the ground. A shadow slinking down the hall, out the front door, through the schoolyard, down the wet street, over the open field, resting its tangled hair twisted lips double helix head on the gravestone.

In that gristly, mucusy, closed-clawed moment of waking up from a poor night's sleep, a swift and ruthless thoughtsword stabbed my mind: This life is too short to live it like this.

It is time to sprint.

The Fiercest

"I was the meanest lion with curls around my head and the sharpest fingernails. I was the meanest lion, but I was nice to you, huh? I was nice to you..." Her voice trails off. Tiny tugboats push her eyelids ashore.

You - who could paw my heart into a thousand purple pieces. You - who could swallow me whole into the gaping abyss of your mouthsoul. You - who holds me your terrified helpless cowering pleading prey...thank you. For being nice. To me.

The Six-Minute Catholic

Tonight I listened to the radio in my house. In the last 10 years this has happened precisely once. From deep within the bowels of 89.1 FM’s death-by-classical-music dungeon static’d a cathedral choir into my living room. The tinny sound buzzing out of my thirty dollar Phillips veiled a much richer, much more regal affair that probably brought an audience to tears when originally performed. Despite the rattling dissonance of prostituted technology, I closed my eyes and surrounded myself with gothic spaciousness. Every pointed arch, every buttress and cloister and spiny-pillared space was filled with a relentlessly reverent harmony riding on the back of a wandering melody. And for six minutes…I was Catholic. I was crimson and grey. I was blood and stone. In the few decades between ChurchOpression and InsignificantShell I knelt in a buttery pillar of sunlight and gave thanks for all the pomp and circumstance. My Catholic church is an aesthetic church. It smells like gold. It has rubies in its eyes. My senses are filled with the glory of the Earth. My mind is filled with the glory of God. I understand this. I understand this. But the music ends. The light cools. And my church returns to the socio-political white-noise giant-shrimp American-movie Catholicism that we respectfully disrespect today. It once was beautiful. It once made sense. But the senses cannot hold.

Inexplicable Phenomenon #202

When Man starts dating Woman, Man stops blogging regularly.

Man will try harder from here on out.

The 2 Minute Writing Drill

It goes like this: You write for 2 minutes. Not a second less or more. No premeditation. No other rules.

Go.

I sweat. i sweated tonight and now i go to bed salty and sandy and leathered. Salty like the sea like a tiny teacup that i put her in and float her off into the ocean. until she reaches a stop light. a semaphore is good for nothing if not red and green. a christmas tree. a memory. a laying back and staring at the squinted white halos of a million christmas wishes strung on a tangled green vine. a silver ornament at ross's house. and sitting on the outside looking in on an adult party, sneaking bites of baked creamed corn and wishing for a life full of wine and tile and terracotta and a roasted turkey dressed like a movie. there was a life that haunted my adolsecence and now stands at the gateway of my looking-backness and tells me not to dre

YourFriendDave

An abbreviated list of what a best friend sees you through:

A fistfight
A breakup
A first spring break
A mission
Another breakup
A marriage
A divorce
A spiritual quandry
Another breakup
A lame vacation
A hard night with a daughter
A spiritual renaissance
Another breakup
An exile from Mexico
A lost parent
A lost friend
A long walk home
A new job
A crappy girl
Another breakup
A midnight mass
A traumatic encounter with a 6th grade teacher
A silence of the lambs
A senior trip trying to avoid sex, drugs, and a drunk Trygg
A thing for Lauren Holly
Another breakup
A long, strange journey

Creativity comes in waves...

It must be low tide. Please stay tuned...

11 a.m., Easter Morning, 2008.

There is nothing small or selfish about the reception of a gift. Let all other cliches stand aside, this one is true: it is the thought that counts. The thought of the giver, and the thought of the receiver. This morning Brooke gave me an Easter basket...because she knew that no one else would. There was a thought, and now there is appreciation.

Up until this point, two things have kept me from truly appreciating Easter: Perfection and Magnitude. I simply cannot understand or fathom a perfect Christ. Or more exactly, I cannot empathize or sympathize with the trials and victories of Deity. Was the Atonement and Resurrection hard? Undoubtedly. But He's God. He's It. He's All. There just doesn't seem to be any suspense in the story. Nor character arc. And what about magnitude? A universal gift? An infinite atonement? My mental ken travels out about as far as the nearest cloud in its journey through the expanses. I simply don't know what universal means.

But as Garred drives home this morning, Easter basket perched next to him on the passenger seat, a miracle feathers itself into his mind. The Mighty God, Creator of creation, for two moments in time (one 2000 years ago, one at this very point in spacetime) was simply Jesus. My Jesus. A skinny man who put together an epiphanal Easter basket for me while still in the tomb and traveled through 2000 years of History to deliver it to me precisely as I'm passing Ikea on I-15. Here are the contents of my basket:

- One realization that the Atonement was Hell. Literally Hell. When Christ saw me that night in Gethsemane, he saw a boy not worth saving. He saw an animal. A hate. A lust. A lie. A blasphemy. A devil. He saw it in you, too. It broke Jesus' heart. My Jesus. It was enough to make his royal blood flee from the same frame that housed these ungodly pictures. What happened that night was uglier than you and I will ever have to know.

- One realization that the same Christ that suffered for the world was the very Jesus that had nothing but love and benevolence for me after the Resurrection. He thought of me, he smiled, and now there is appreciation.

- One reminder to slow down before I passed a cop hidden behind the median.

JM Barrie would have put it this way: Every ray of light that shone off of our Savior's face that first Easter morning was a happy thought or a hopeful prayer about me and you. Whatever darkness that had perpetrated His soul a few nights previous was answered Sunday with a smile, a glimmer, a happy light. Easter brings Spring. Winter is over.

I don't understand the infinite atonement. But I am moved this morning to know that someone (my Jesus) was thinking about me.