28

Today is my 28^th birthday. This morning I woke easily. I put my bare feet on the cool hardwood floor and thought of how glad I am to be alive. I do feel the incline of the slippery slope between 27 and 30 grow that much more steep for the loss of a year. 2 years to 30! I only have a 2 year buffer between me and 30. Old people will accept me as one of them in 2 years. They certainly won’t do it all at once, but they will. Some of them already have. I was called boss at work today, and there was less of the typical jab to the comment than there used to be when I was 26 or 25. To be clear, I am no one’s actual boss at work. Sometimes I’m just head up a project or something. My point is that I am fast approaching that age where I am no longer called young man. I’ll just be called a man, or since that is a bit awkward, I’ll be called by my name.

I remember turning 27. It didn’t happen that long ago. A co-worker of mine said, “Ah… What was I doing when I was 27. I think that was the year my wife and I got married.” Then he gave me a look like, “What the hell are you doing with your life dude? I’m a slacker and even I think it sucks to be you.” I was 27, and I had no idea what I was doing with my life. I did know that whatever I was doing was not working. This has been a good year.

I had a cancer scare this year. I went to a regular appointment and after a short examination, the doctor type looked scared. He went and got another doctor type, who also looked scared, and this one looked a little sad too. They went and got an assistant. They all adapted a very sweet, encouraging way of talking, and I got scared. The whole cancer thing isn’t as open and shut as you might think. There is a lot of expensive testing involved, and the tests take a long time to return with results.

I just wish I could express to someone, anyone, what it is like to think seriously that you will be dead in less than 5 years. I read a statistic while I was ravenously researching my symptoms that said what I might have had proffered a 50/50 chance of death within the next 5 years, and the world washed out for three weeks. I know that sounds weak, but I don’t care. People said things I didn’t hear. I ate tasteless food. I had entire conversations I don’t remember. I went to a place of only functioning and I survived each moment filled an eternality expressed as a fractal moving to the next moment. This went on for about 6 weeks before tests came back. I had something a little less life threatening than cancer. The feeling stuck with me.

The feeling was a voiceless thought that told me to do it now. I learned that I really like living. Living is great. I could stand to get by a lot worse off than I do, and continue to just love living. Oh, living is great. I can’t tell you how great living is. I can’t tell you how much it is possible to love going to work; how sweet everything is when you are sure you are saying a quick goodbye to it all. When I am unhappy, I know that I’m really not as sad as I’m making out, and I get happy. I found out this year that I’m happy. I’ve been happy for years and I didn’t know it. I’m happy because I’m in love with breathing, and anime, and blues dancing, and jazz, and that TV show the Mentalist, and the voice of that person I don’t like, and fast food, and coffee, and the way mountains look in the dark, and the night sounds, and a room filled with conversation and laughter, and the dullest day at work, and all of it, all of it, all of it, all of it is so sweet, so good, so beautiful. I love the feel of a breeze on my arm, and that of a sip of water. I know I sound so full of crap. I’m not. I love life for being life, and it is a good thing to know.

I also learned that things worth doing are worth doing now. I’m not saying to lose all patience or moral standards. What I’m saying is that things you want to happen won’t just happen eventually. There is no eventually. There is now. Desirable things require effort, and boldness. Actions bring about change. All the things I wanted were very close to me, and they all required asking. I started asking, and being bold, and asking, and working, and staying. I like my life now. I just didn’t care so much about getting it right. I care about getting things done.

Oh, this is a good one. I learned that the things that I really cared about were obvious to me. That might seem like a no brainer, but most things are no brainers. The really smart people are the few people that can articulate the no brainers to themselves in a clear enough way to keep track of them in their daily lives. I learned that I knew what my priorities were. I started acting in accordance to my value set, and got even happier.

I learned that I believe that God is good. I learned that I believe that if God killed me right now, he is good. See, I’ve experienced so much good stuff in my life, so that when I am honest with myself I am filled with gratitude. As to the whole, “Is there a God issue

I learned to stay away from safe, because there is no safe.

I have worries. I get down. I can be a jerk. I try to say sorry and not be a jerk.

Anyway, I had a pretty rock’n year. I’m glad to be alive, and you can too.

I should also note that most of the garbage I wrote up there has to do with my finally dealing, somewhat, with an existential crisis. Who knows if such a thing can ever be fully handled? Anyway, the stimulus of being faced with a very real mortality, caused me to be glad to be alive. It is all very simple and there is a bit explaining the simple formula of one's knowledge of their own mortality being equal to one's joy to be alive found in the first few chapters of Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder. I expect the book handle’s existentialism, which is a different and related way of thinking, more thoroughly in a later chapter, perhaps having to do with Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, and Satre. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism I don’t know. So while this may all be very textbook, just know that it meant a great deal to me. It still does, and I’m still a slightly less manic version of happy for it. Thanks. May you have a very happy …day.

A Heart of Flesh: Part 2 of 3

The congregation then sang from the Psalter Psalm 32 which begins, “O blessed is the man to whom is freely pardoned, All the transgression he hath done, whose sin is covered,” and ended in a long plagal cadence “Aaaaaaaahhhaaameeeeeeeeeeeeen.” By the end of the psalm, I felt awful. I felt so tired I could sleep. 

That is when and old man in a nice suit walked to the lectern, bowed his head, and began to pray. He prayed for a long time before I ever started to listen to what he was saying. I was looking at the great arching roof beams climbing high over my head to the vast canopy of the sanctuary. I was looking at the ornamentations of the fixtures where two beams would cross in the ceiling when I realized the man was still praying. He prayed for the new member’s class for a while, and he prayed about the ice cream social. He prayed for the sermon, and that the hearts of the congregation would discern truth. He prayed for the congregation that was there, and for those who were sick or away. He prayed for the leaders of our nation and of many nations that would be seeking wisdom in how to handle affairs in Syria. He went on to talk about the nature of the offence, how children died in the streets. This is when I noticed that everyone around me had their eyes closed. I did not feel like closing my eyes. I wanted to watch what this old man was doing. He was standing perfectly upright. The only thing that bowed was his eyes, and the slightest inclination of his head. His hands fell naturally on the lectern. I was amazed at how still he was, and that his face expressed the conviction of one who was sure.  He was sure that his words were drifting up, or where ever they go to become a fragrance in the courts of Heaven, in the presence of the LORD. He was talking as he would to someone he knew well, and for whom he had a trembling respect. He began to pray for the sick in the congregation. He called them by name. He mentioned a little girl who had the misfortune of having both parents grow deathly ill at the same time. I wondered what God would do for the little girl. He prayed for the moms, and the dads, and for the strength of the families. He prayed for Greenville. He prayed for the lost souls of Greenville, and for the physical needs. He prayed and he prayed, and I stared at the stain glass window with the words “Come unto me all who labor…” I felt very tired. A long time passed. I stopped listening to the old man pray. I looked dumbfounded at all the bowed heads around me. They were all praying, and if there was a God, their prayers were filling his Sanctuary. If there is a God, He was right next to each of them listening. If there was a God, He was changing the future for his love of them. I felt very tired. The old man stopped praying, and the congregation entoned, “AAAAaaaaaaaaaAAaaahhhahammmeeeeeeneeneennenenen.”

Then we stood and sang another hymn. I knew this hymn, and I sang out as loud as I could. The hymn ended in another long “Amen.”

The preaching pastor stood and preached for a long time. He had this massive voice that resonated rather than booming. He was a class act, and everything about the message had polish. He began by reading from Hebrews. He said:

“For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.

Let us therefore strive to enter that rest so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing to the divisions of soul and spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him whom we must give account.

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin,” The pastor paused to look at everyone in the room,

“Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

The pastor looked up from the text like he was swimming back to our realm, back from the words to the world of people with arm watches, cell phones, and dinner appointments. He said,

“The grass fades and the flower withers but the word of the Lord lasts forever and ever. Amen.” His voice reverberated off the rafters, and I was troubled. I felt weary. My exhaustion was enormous. I was hooked on every word this man said, and he said a lot. 

I knew that this tiredness was a tiredness of the spirit, and that I was only feeling it now because what was happening here was a source of relief, the way a runner might feel very tired during the last hundred yards of a long run. I felt I might sink into the pew and get lost in the cushion. I felt I might liquefy. I felt I might turn to vapor and waft away, but the pastor was booming away about how we might enter the throne of Grace with confidence.

My head filled with my own thoughts. How could anyone enter the presence of God with confidence? The old man in the suit prayed with confidence, but was that the same? So what if it was? How could anyone enter with confidence what they did not know as there? Then I thought, wait. This can’t all be true. I’ve been a believer since I was nine, but I’m always surprised that I really do believe this Gospel message. I’m always arguing against Thomas Aquinas in my mind, thinking the tenants of Christianity and the portents of reason cannot work together seamlessly. I want to hear Thomas Aquinas say “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible,” and I want to bap him in the face for saying it. I want to find A. W. Tozer as he scribbles, “Any faith that must be supported by the evidence of the senses is not real faith,” and I want to scream at him and say, “So sue me!” I know what it is to know in my guts and nowhere else, but I am forever afraid of being taken in by something that seems too good to be true. This rest, this ‘come unto me all who labor and I will give you rest’ kind of rest, seemed just too wonderful to grasp for. I did not grasp for it. I thought, “Dear God, if you are not real, have the good heart to tell us.”

Just then the pastor started to read from Ezekiel. He made a few snarky comments about baptism and sprinkling, then he read, “Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new  heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will be carful to observe my ordinances…”

Something in me gave way. I started to pray, and ask a lot of questions about rest. I wanted to know why I should have to strive to enter into rest. I wanted to know why I couldn’t just have it, and what it cost. I wanted to know why I did not have it, since the stain glass window Jesus was offering rest, and I had gone to him at age 9. Why was that not enough? Why did the eternal rest always end, and this was accepted by those who really believed. Did the woman at the well feel jipped two hours later when she got thirsty again? How did she feel when Jesus left the city, and left her there? I wanted to know how much I had to come to Jesus to have rest, and what exactly coming to him was. Was it a state of mind? Was it like seeking Zen or whatever? Was it a matter of right conduct, and if so, wasn’t all that garbage about grace really just garbage? I felt like the answer to all of these questions had to do with something obvious I was omitting from myself, and that I would admit it later, sorrowfully, and come crying back to God. I would, but where would I run. I wasn’t ready for that yet. I had some unformed question that needed answering just on the tip of my tongue. I whispered, “I believe, please help my unbelief.”I was willing to haggle with God over rest. I wondered how likely it was that an object of infinite density and zero volume could have ever existed. I wondered what type of catalyst it would take to make such a thing explode at 100 billion Kelvin. I wondered if the Universe really was homogeneous and isotopic. I wondered if dark matter was just a cheeky way to make a hypothesis correct when the math didn’t add up. I wondered how any of that explained the human psychological makeup; personality. I wondered if I could ever just feel ok. I was tired. I was just very, very tired.

The sermon ended. We sang another hymn. There was another long amen. The preacher man blessed us all in the name of Christ Jesus. I took the hand of the nicest, most lovely woman in the world, and started toward the staircase when a man (we’ll call him Jack) held out his hand and said,

“Hi, I’m Jack.”

We shook hands.

He was a young man of almost 30. He was dressed in a blue suit with a blue and yellow bow tie. He had a big grin, and big bright eyes. He was talking very loudly and the greaser swoop of his hair, with his cleanly shaved face gave him away as clergy, new clergy. He introduced his wife who was holding an infant, and asked me my name and the name of the gorgeous woman by my side. He asked us if this was our first time visiting. Our time at Church was not over.

People Who Wear T-shirts with Their Own Faces On the T-shirts

                There are people who put their own faces on t-shirts. Those same people in those same t-shirts bearing the visage of their own faces are also prone to wearing these t-shirts in public. It gets better. These people are also prone to enlist a third party to take a picture of them wearing the shirt and post that picture on the internet. Without taking the time to account for the person who took the picture or the person who searched the internet for a picture of a person wearing a t-shirt with their own face on it, I would like to take a moment to marvel at this singular odd fact of life. Wow. …wow. Just…wow.

                Oh, this is a very good rabbit trail, and my day is bound to be less interesting than this for the next 8 hours. Let’s follow the trail and see where it takes us shall we? Lets.

                We can marvel by analyzing. Yes. First, the person who thought they should put their own face on a t-shirt probably feels alright about the way they look. That follows right? I mean, it would be preposterous for a person to put a face on their shirt that they did not find to be aesthetically pleasing. It is a good guess then, that this person has good and happy feelings about their looks. They may be confident even as far as conceit. It is also fair to say that most truly ugly people are aware of their condition. So, this person is fairly good looking, and knows it. … or what is worse, they might be ugly and not care in any way it wouldn’t take a psychologist to see. Interesting.

                Next, this person has enough money and drive to have a specialty shirt made. A person wearing a shirt with their own face on it is not dying of hunger.  No, they are not saving their money for a big bag of rice. No, they had the idea, “Man, you know what? I want, no, need a shirt with my pretty face on it. This is a good idea I had. Yes.” Then this person went to the place where they keep their money, and they paid a professional t-shirt maker, and a designer, to make a t-shirt with their face on it. This idea was an idea they would invest money, money that was capable of buying other things like sodas, or a trip to the movies, or candy, or to pay the electric bill, buy gas; they exhausted resources to have a shirt with their own face on it. This person will spend money on anything. I bet they send money to organizations they know nothing about, and vote a party line. I bet they buy kitchen appliances from late night infomercials and take the unopened boxes of neat-o junk straight to the attic when they get it.

                The person who buys a shirt with their own face on it is also a frighteningly driven person. I go to work. I go home. I go out. I put my time into things I think are worthwhile. I do enough cleaning so that the people in my life that could get mad at me for not cleaning are appeased. It is a pretty good life, and I think I am a fairly driven person. I don’t hold a candle to the person who is willing to put energy and time into buying a shirt with their own face on it. This person has maniac energy, and must be very capable. This person on top of having bills paid, and a place set up, the laundry done, food prepared, TV shows watched, family visited, job kept, phone calls and emails phoned or written, correspondences maintained, parties attended, books read, music listened to, conversations had, also managed to contact a designer and a t-shirt making company with enough clarity and forethought to communicate the need for a shirt with their own face on it in a particular color etc. The world quakes before such a power.

                The person who made a shirt with their face on it fits into society somewhere. They are confident. They are reasonably good looking. They are driven. They work with people to achieve a goal. They have a decent job. It only makes sense that this person is successful. They probably have a good job, which means they are probably someone’s boss. They might be your boss. They might be your boss, and the best boss you’ve ever had. It isn’t hard to imagine that person who blows money on a shirt with their face on it, will also blow money on coffee and doughnuts for the team every now and then. Doughnuts from the boss equal love for the boss, and everyone knows it’s a wicked little trick, but I’ve been distracted. Haven’t I?

                The world is strange, and I like to maintain my wonder. The person who wears a shirt with their own face on it deserves a moment’s observation. I hope I’ve garnered that. Well, have a nice day, and if you boss doesn’t own a shirt with their face on it, at lease you’ve got that. Right? Happy Friday.

A Heart of Flesh: Part 1 of 3

We sat in the far left corner of the balcony and tried to remain inconspicuous, which was a bunch of rot because I forgot my bow tie. I’d forgotten my blazer and button up too. I was sitting in a curved pew wearing the same blue shirt I’d worn since Friday, a pair of green pants, my devil may care impish grin. I bought the blue shirt 3 for $10 at Wal-Mart. I inherited the green pants or stole them outright somewhere along the way. I’ve just always had the impish grin, and I wear it often. The lazy Sunday afternoon brought on Sunday evening too quickly, and we, this gorgeous woman and I, had scrambled to the closest 6 o’clock service we could find downtown. We walked in and stood through hymn number 123 in the pew hymnal which ended in an extended plagal cadence, “Aaaaaaaaaaammemamemamemeeen….” Then a baby-faced large man in a black robe stood behind the lectern and told us to sit. We sat.

The baby-faced large man gave a very serious presentation of announcements. He told us about the new members class which was a good time to learn about this place, and to get to know about this place, and about the Lord, and his ways, and the church that we were sitting in, and the members of that church, and what they believed, and the message that they believed, and that it was a good thing to believe, and to confess, and that they did confess what was their confession which was the meaning, and the purpose of their meeting, for the edification of the spirit, and the worship of God, God who was our Father, and the Spirit, and the Son Jesus Christ our Lord, and about the ice cream social which would be held after the service to the glory of God, and about his request for peach ice cream, and that we would find out if anyone was listening to announcements last week based on the presence or absence of peach ice cream at the ice cream social. He was adorable.

After a few more invocations from the baby-faced large man, a young beautiful couple tried to move from their seats to the center of choir stall without being noticed by anyone, as if they could make themselves quiet enough or small enough to avoid being seen by the congregation until they were standing at the center of the choir stall. This struck me as irrational, and I giggled. Catholic churches do processions better than protestant churches. Teleportation is a protestant idea. The gorgeous woman looked a question at me. I shrugged. Then the beautiful young couple began to sing a hymn. The young lady in the couple had a well developed voice. She sang the hymn like it was an aria. Her clean looking husband tried to keep up by singing a thin sounding tenor with a forced vibrato that made him sound like a sophisticated goat that could match pitch. Oh, but her voice was beautiful, and nobody really minded her husband’s goat singing.

It was during this aria duet rendition of a hymn that I noticed the stain glass windows. They were massive, and I could only see the one behind the choir stall and the one on the right wall of the sanctuary. We sat too close to the left side of the balcony to see the stained glass window on the left side of the sanctuary. The window beyond the lectern, and the choir stall was over 30 feet tall and almost as wide. It was made of six different panes, five along the bottom and one more triangular piece on top. The whole thing formed a pointed arch. The window showed the apostles bathed in light as they looked up to see the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ. I looked at the window as the young bride’s voice soared through the sanctuary, and I thought how nice it was to see the Lord Jesus Christ ascending, instead of hanging on a cross. I thought it was a fitting focal point for the room, and its message was strong. I felt it a little. Then I looked at it again, and I was afraid. This was a massive work of art, and its message was fanatical. A person would have to be mad to believe a man floated away to the right hand of God.

I looked away from the front of the sanctuary to the right. The window there was formed similarly with the five panes of glass fitted with at top piece. The first pane of the window had the Greek symbol, “A.” The second pane held the cross and crown. The third pane connected one image to the top pane and presented an image of Christ teaching with the words, “Come unto me, all ye who labor” written across his chest. The fourth pane of stained glass held the image of a goblet or maybe it was a communion cup. The fifth pane of glass held the Greek symbol, “Ω.” I stared at all of this and held hands with the gorgeous woman. I thought of how tired I was, I put my arm around her shoulders.

The congregation then sang from the Psalter Psalm 32 which begins, “O blessed is the man to whom is freely pardoned, All the transgression he hath done, whose sin is covered,” and ended in a long plagal cadence “Aaaaaaaahhhaaameeeeeeeeeeeeen.” By the end of the psalm, I felt awful. I felt so tired I could sleep. 

That is when and old man in a nice suit walked to the lectern, bowed his head, and began to pray...

Rest is a Verb

According to the oxford dictionary the word rest is a verb meaning, “to cease work or movement in order to relax, refresh oneself, or recover strength,” or “to be placed or supported so as to stay in a specified position.” The Webster’s dictionary goes on defining the word forever saying it is, “Repose, Sleep; specifically: a bodily state characterized by minimal functional and metabolic activities: freedom from activity or labor: a state of motionlessness or inactivity: the repose of death: a place for resting or lodging: peace of mind or spirit: a rhythmic silence in music: a brief pause in reading: something used for support.” I like the oxford dictionary better. It prattles less or more to the point it is more to the point, which is a wordy way of saying it is conceptual. I’d like to understand the concept of rest. You see, I’m tired, and just gosh awful at resting. It is a thing I over think, and ruin. I think my mind is more like the Webster’s dictionary, categorizing things to death in an attempt at self-defeated, overstated clarity. I get so worked up about resting that I just can’t choose what kind of resting to do. I stess myself out, and that’s a bad job. I’d blame American culture, but it’s just my own neurosis. Oh, I could blame it all on human nature, but I blame American culture and human nature for adding the word ‘twerk’ to the dictionary and that’s a lot of blame.

               No, but resting is just terribly hard to do. I am alive, and I’d like to be about living. My heart palpitates. My blood moves. Air moves through my lungs causing my chest to rise and fall. I feel the air around me moving. I hear the buzz of traffic. The bumps, thuds, clunks, in trinkleing of a woman cleaning in the other room remind me of a thing I should be doing. I promised a friend we would go for a run. I should keep my job. I should set the alarm. I should make the bed, clean the room, and fix the thing in the yard. There is a critter in the attic. There is a phone call to make, and after lunch it is time to plan dinner. A friend of mine is sick. There is a dance tonight, but the laundry is not done. My father says we should go fishing. There is an event down town. I am conscripted to support the cause… and how does one cease from movement?

               The concept of rest evades definition, so that everyone has their own definition for rest, just like everyone has a definition for love, or what it is to be a man. I cannot take rest and boil it down to a clever phrase without cheapening the meaning. What I can do is say that my favorite quotes about rest are the ones that acknowledge the inability to fully rest…completely stop; the ones that accept the slight movement that is inextricable from the stillest living thing. Terisa of Avila said, “Love makes work into rest.” Steven King said, “A change is as good as a rest.” Sri Sri Ravi Shikar said when speaking about the rest and activity, “Finding them in each other - activity in rest, and rest in activity – is the ultimate freedom.” I think I am tired. I think that whatever rest is, I want it. I think there is something that is rest is that goes beyond sitting in a chair or laying in bed and it – whatever it is – must be a gift.

               One more thing… It is funny that rest is a verb. Enter the paradox.

Bill Watterson Speach vs Gavin Aung Than Cartoon Thing

                The Huffington Post posted, along with the rest of the internet, a comic written by cartoonist Gavin Aung Than that illustrated some words from a commencement speech Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbs, gave in 1990. The post was posted and reposted across the internet and up the lawn until it came across my front door. Here is a link. http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/08/27/bill_watterson_s_cartoonist_s_advice_in_comic_form_by_zen_pencils_aka_gavin.html

I read it. It is illustrated in the style of Calvin and Hobbs, and the words were so good, I just got excited. I thought how great it was that someone understood me. Someone knew that I was an artist. Someone knew that the one and only intelligent thing for me to do was to quit my job and bask in my own glow, as an artist, casting aside the bonds of meaningless stuff I have to do and free myself up to do the one thing I was meant to do, and bask in my own glow as an artist. I showed the comic to an artist friend of mine thinking that person would be just as enraptured as I was after reading it. They were not. Instead of expressing the fount of blessing and self abasement before the wisdom of the comic that I was personally feeling, this person made a convincing argument that the text was somewhat manipulated by the illustration. They thought comic presented a message entirely different than what Watterson had communicated in his speech. They even seemed a bit miffed by the subject. My curiosity was perked. I investigated.

                I printed the comic, and a copy of the speech from 1990. The speech, by the way, was a commencement speech entitled Some Thoughts on the Real World by One Who Glimpsed It and Fled, given by Bill Watterson to Kenyon College on May 20, 1990. Here is a link. http://web.mit.edu/jmorzins/www/C-H-speech.html

I read the comic. Then, I read the speech. The speech took longer to read. I read the comic. Then I read the speech, and I did that until I had a few thoughts.

First, I see what Gavin Aung Than did with the cartoon, and it is good work. Bill tells his own story throughout the speech. His story is the source of his credibility after all. Bill talks about his time at Kenyon. He talks about his spending hours at a stretch painting Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” on the ceiling of his dorm his sophomore year. Then he talks about his smugness at graduation over the cushy job he had lined up. He talks about his complete failure after college as a political cartoonist, and about his time spent working for an ad agency, time he hated and eventually left. The cartoon picks up Bill’s story at the point when he is unhappily working for an ad agency, and over that point of the story he puts some of the best lines of the speech. The speech is quotable start to finish, but these lines are the lines three fourths of the way through the speech where according to the rules of rhetoric he is really preach’n it. The lines go like this:

 “Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sold measure of human worth.

You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them.

To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.”

These words are filled with an illustrated story of a man who leaves the ad agency to do a job he likes, and raise a family. The last panel shows the male protagonist riding down a hill in a little red wagon in the Calvin and Hobbs characteristic manner.

I think that what Gavin did good work, and I think the piece follows a logical formula. I also see where some people would feel attacked. What if my idea of the good life IS to stay with my corporate job? What if I’m not the kind of guy that is brilliant and creates a million dollar character idea? What if I am happy doing what I do already? What if I’ve been a starving artist, and starved? What if cream rises to the top, and I’m whey? How then, do I have a fulfilled life? Eh?

The trouble with this cartoon is the same trouble with most communication of our age. It is just too brief to contain a full and defendable thought. (More on that later) The lines in this comic are great, but they came at the end of a great story filled with little details.

The full speech had a much more uplifting message than the cartoon, because the speech spoke of cultivating a space of mental playfulness. The speech focused on developing a place for art to happen inside you, and following that place. Circumstances and jobs be damned. Right? The speech was about everything that is great about not having a clue what you are, or where you are, or what exactly it is you are doing. It was about doing a thing because the thing you are doing brings you joy, and letting that be the end of it. The speech was about playing, and the complications that arise from making a life of play. At the end of the speech, a person is likely to feel completely prepared to curelessly meander through the next stage in their life with conviction. The speech was not about sticking it to the man, or being the caricature of an artist. It was an invocation to diligently seek a life you like, just because you like it.

So… though I could go on for days, I think the cartoon was a valid representation of the speech if only for one reason. This is the reason. The last frame was of the protagonist flying down a hill in a wagon in the Calvin and Hobbs signature fashion. I’ve already mentioned that once. I know, but I want to point out that the last frame is of the protagonist playing. Bill Watterson’s speech was about having the integrity to live a life of play. The Cartoon works. I like it. Go Team.

The New Guy and Tall Jo

                My boss surprised me this morning, and gave me a new guy to babysit. He walks in, introduces the man, and leaves just like that. I had been hoping for an easy Friday. This little development put me a little further away from that goal, but I decided to make good with it. I played nice. I said congenial things. I hobnobbed with the boss. The boss left. The new guy showed me a great site for job searching. We laughed about that a bit. I gave the poor new guy some really lame work to do, and he went to it.

                We had been working quietly in the same room for a while when I started to feel bad about the lame work I’d given this guy. He had sharp eyes, so I thought he might feel a little like Marvin the Robot from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy with a brain the size of a planet doing minial tasks and all that. I thought I’d lessen the blow by putting on some music he likes. I said,

“Hey, what kind of music do you like?”

“Good music.”

I opened a tab on my computer to grooveshark, and one to youtube. Then I persisted

“Good music? You like good music. Good. Care to be a little more specific?”

He said something I did not understand.

“What?”

He said the same thing I did not understand the first time, again. I gave him a dumb look. He typed something into my computer, and brought up a page for a website called Jazzradio. It was like Pandora, but instead of a search for specific bands, it had jazz genres. He said,

“Jazzradio. I like smooth jazz. Is good music.” I hadn’t been able to understand him for his accent. I couldn’t place the accent yet. He wanted to listen to smooth jazz. I asked if we could do cool jazz instead. He agreed. We worked for half an hour without a word. I was working so I could not keep track of every song that played as much as I would have liked. I did distinctly hear a tune I recognized from Miles Davis’s album Birth of the Cool. I also heard a tune I recognized from my time working at Panera Bread. I’ve never known the name of that song. The web page was glitching when I looked at the display. I may never know the name of that song. The new guy walked to me and said,

“It’s so hard to find someone who likes this music. Music in America sucks. You know what music I think is good in America right now? Christian music. Christian music, the lyrics are ok. The rest is,” he made a trifling guesture with one hand, “the lyrics are no good. There is so much garbage.” He went on. I asked him where he was from. He said he was from Brazil. We did some more work. Jazzradio played a series of commercials. I started looking for a new sound track for my Friday morning. I went for an old standby, Explosions in the Sky, but this was not really doing the job. The new guy’s face was doleful.  Just then I remembered a song I had studied called Inutil Paisagem by Antonio Carlos Jobim. Jobim wrote that song in Portuguese because he was from Brazil. I searched Antonio Carlos Jobim in youtube and someone had posted an album Jobim called Stone Flower. I played the album. Then, a bit too proud of myself I asked the new guy if he had ever heard of Antonio Carlos Jobim. He said,

“Yeah, but we call him Tall Jobim, or Tall Jo.” I remembered that I had read that somewhere, and reflected for a moment on the way knowing a thing by reading it once is not very much like knowing it at all. I told him of my revelation that about the song I had studied by Tall Jo. He said,

“It wasn’t Inutil Paisagem was it?” I said that he was. He laughed at me. I laughed too. He started to tell me about Jobim’s talent and that is was a good talent, that it was a loss when he died. He told me about the way Jobim could make very complex music sound very simple. When you listened to it, you thought “Oh, yeah, I could do that.” But that was just because he played so well. It was a great talent. I asked him a few things about Brazil, and he told me. This was a good morning.  We took a break from work for coffee and the restroom. When we came back the album was still playing. A song called Old Brazil was playing. He told me that was not one of Jobim’s songs. Jobim was playing it, sure, but it was not one of his songs. The next song that came on was a song Jobim wrote. The new guy from Brazil pointed out to me that the song was going back and forth between jazz and a Brazilian style called Frevo. He would stand at attention listening to the song, and when the style would change he would say “You see? Now it is different. See how it was something else, and now it is jazz…and back…and jazz.” I listened, and agreed. “Yeah, I hear it.” The new guys said, “Jobim, he is not jazz, he is not frevo, he is fusion.” I listened and agreed some more. The next song came on, and the new guy from Brazil started humming along. We were in a good rhythm of work now too. He said,

“I think this is my favorite song by Jobim. When you go to Brazil, you ride an airplane and come into Rio de Janeiro, and that is what this song is about. Samba do Aviao, Samba of the Airplane. When you ride in the airplane to Brazil you see Rio de Janeiro and everywhere you look is wow! You look and say wow! Oh wow!” He pointed at his arm to show me the goose bumps on his arm. “You see? It is just wow! Even now thinking about it…and that is what this song is about. It is what it feels like to see. Hearing this song makes me think of that, and that is why it is my favorite.”

We did some more work, and then it was time for lunch. This was a good morning.

The Silly Old Man, and the Working Traffic Light

                I was stopped at a traffic light when a silly old man did a silly thing in the middle of the road, and I understood human nature a little more clearly.

He was the younger kind of old man. He looked like he might be in his 50’s. He wore an adorable white mustache over a stubbly soft chin. He had kind eyes, and he was wearing the kind of hat Bill Murray wore in Caddyshack. He carried a cane and had the look of a man lost in a kitchen with too many women, but he was not in a kitchen. He was a long way from any kitchen. This funny old man had walked out to the center median, and was trying to direct traffic. The traffic lights in the city were all in working order. This one traffic light certainly gave no cause to doubt it. Were I to speculate, which I intend to do, on why the old man was directing traffic, I would say he probably thought he was helping.

 The light had turned red in front of me. I stopped. The road crossing the road I was on had a green light. Traffic went by. That light turned red. The old man came out with his cane and his hat, and he started waving my lane to go on by. My lane did not move. That would be stupid. My lane still had a red light. The little green arrows for the turning lanes came on. The old man kept waving. The cars in the turning lanes went through the intersection. The old man looked at them genially, and he kept waving my lane through. My lane did not move. That would be stupid. My lane still had a red light. The cars in the turning lane all made it through the light, and then my lane was given the green light. The old man saw the light for my lane change, and as if seeing this he felt affirmed in all he had done for us, he smiled a great big friendly smile, and waved my lane through. This time my lane did move. That was smart. My lane had a green light. I never saw the old man again.   

He was a pedestrian, and pedestrians see traffic lights as suggestions… or just very bright obstacles. To a pedestrian, a traffic light goes in the same category as a steep hill, or a bit of loose dirt, or a road of tricky or maybe a dark corner in a dangerous part of town. Pedestrians are sweating creatures that must leap at the first opportunity to keep moving. Motorist sit in air conditioned seats, and obey laws. At the very least a motorist is constantly calculating the benefits of risky behavior against the likelihood of their actions catching up with them by causing an accident or an expensive chat with an officer of the law. These two ways of thinking collided as the silly old man crossed to the center median waving his cane and bursting with good intentions.

I think that when he saw that the road he was traveling along had a red light, he assumed that the intersecting lane must be given the green light. He did not look to see the green light. He did not consider the existence of turning lanes. He took what he knew, made a logical conclusion, and went with it. I have no problem with that. It is easy enough to be wrong about just about anything. What had me thinking about this little episode as I lay in bed drifting to sleep was the way he reacted when he saw the light change from red to green. There was no acknowledgement that things had changed. He just kept waving cars by, like he had helped. I don’t want to run a nice old man into the ground. I don’t think there was anything insidious about what he was doing. It’s just that, I saw clearly right there what is hard to see in situations with less defined absolutes. When a person has a little information and chooses a course of action, that person is likely to continue in that course of action long after the information they used to make that decision is shown to be incomplete or outdated. They will make no acknowledgement that the information they are receiving now requires a different course of action. They will continue to do what they were doing without so much as a visible laugh at themselves to express to everyone that they noticed they were wrong.

It isn’t the worst thing people do. It is harmful. Most people do it without ever noticing the extent which they shut out new information willfully. It is a thing, and I can dispassionately say, that it is pretty neat to see. The opposite of this method of thinking is also harmful. There are those who never choose a course of action and obsess over gathering new information constantly. Every magazine article changes their life forever, until the next magazine article. They get the weebles and aren’t good for much. Seeing this, I can dispassionately say, it is pretty neat. The seeing it as a thing is neat. Balance is neat. Old men are neat. Third party observations are neat.

I wish that old man was wearing aviators. That would have made the story better. Then again, the story would be better if he was holding a bazooka and a samurai sword too.

If this post gave you a thought, please comment. Thanks.

The Lady with the Hess Book

          
I picked up Herman Hess’s Demian because I’d heard his name in a coffee shop. There was one not unattractive lady, nearing 40 by my guess, who would sit reading her book by Hess with an obvious effort that the cover would be visible to store traffic. I made an attempt to crochet a scarf for my little sister, a project I did at the shop, and that lady was happy to sit very close to me, very close, and getting closer all the time, to me, and teach me how to crochet correctly. As it happens, I am decent at crochet now.  It also turns out that the coffee shop owned the book she was broadcasting. It was a book called My Belief. I read a couple essays from that book and enjoyed them, so when I was in a used book store looking for anything by Hemingway, the Hess section was next to the Hemingway section. I thought, “I know both these names. This is a sign.” I bought 7 books that day for less than $20. So…I have all of these books by Herman Hess and I recently started reading the shortest one, which is called Demian.

                The first chapter of the book is called “Two Realms.” It is about the way his early life seemed to him to be constructed of two realms. There was the home life, of God, and good, and duty, and safety etc. The other realm was the bad realm, with murders, and evil, and liquor, and sex, and secrets. I insterted the words good and bad. I don't think he used those words. He relates feeling drawn to each realm.

My first thought upon reading this was to wonder what Jesus would say to this, since he was the one who said that we will love one master and hate the other, or we will love the other master and hate the first. I’m faced with the concept that a kingdom divided cannot stand, meshed against knowing Hess’s experience coincides with my own. I grew up knowing two worlds. One world was good and home, and the other was bad and other than home. I’ve known this, and I have struggled, always feeling that the two worlds were always too one sided. Each world was incomplete without the other world, and I longed to live only in the good world…until...Eventually I wanted only to live in one world without regard to if it was the good one or the bad one. I wanted to live in either world without the other world infringing on that world’s perfection. I wanted to be without scope, and I could not.

                I’m interested to find out where Hess is going with this book that seems to be an autobiography of his thought-life throughout his development. I’m interested to see where I will make a solid break from my agreement with him, and start disagreeing with him. I’ve found that working out exactly where I can no longer go along with a thought process is very enriching to me. I enjoy it.

                Oh, and the lady who helped with my crocheting had just suffered a terrible breakup. She was wonderfully informative about crochet as well as philosophy, and good company to boot. She was probably younger than I said before. Last I saw her, she had found someone new, and is currently living happily ever after.

Local Nerd Hosts Cook Out in a Low Income Neighborhood and Does Not Die Like We Thought He Would

http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/comm_planning/affordablehousing/

I live in a low income housing neighborhood. I know it is low income housing because I know what I pay for my housing, and I have talked to my neighbors. I didn’t ask what they pay, but they dropped hints. I live in a neighborhood where walking at night might not be safe, and where racial tension is tense. I live in a neighborhood where a lady pushes a buggy by my door as I leave the house to go to work. I wave to her some mornings. Some mornings she looks up at me. I’m not sure she has waved back yet. Shoes hang from the power lines in my neighborhood. The walls of the houses are thin in my neighborhood. A critter lives in the roof of my house. We will need to call the land lord. The lady down the street is moving out because her land lord won’t take care of the rat problem. Cars are loud in my neighborhood. My neighborhood is on the other side of the tracks.

If a person were to drive a mile down from where I live they would find neat rows of houses that are so empty they look empty. They exude vacancy along with their perfection. The houses have perfect lawns, are perfectly painted, and have no perfect people to go in them. They are what my father would have called crackerjack houses. I never understood this phrase as a child, but I think it just means they aren’t worth shit. He also called them matchstick houses, which most likely means they aren’t worth shit. These houses are built using the same floor design, and general blueprints. They go up shoddy as fast as can be managed by a small crew of underpaid carpenters. Sometimes I drive by to look at the empty houses and freak myself out. There is something really scary about a cookie-cutter place like that.

Yesterday I watched a nerdy guy show that he had big manly man-sized balls. I know him ok. He is a nerd. If you were to talk to him for fifteen minutes he would tell you about his achievements. He was first chair in an orchestra, and he managed a restaurant. He would squint at you, and talk intelegently about a sermon or a thing in the news. He did such and such on his SAT. He is a smart guy, and a likeable guy. He is no Marlin Brando. This guy is a dork, and as a dork, he managed to do something more badass than anything I’d seen in a long time.

He bought burgers. He bought a grill. He bought beer. He bought bottled waters. He invited all his friends to a cookout. When I say friends, I mean people in the low income neighborhood, some of whom might be white, who he had introduced himself to by knocking on their doors. His white friends showed up to the cookout in their cars since the white friends all lived in other low income neighborhoods. Then noticing that not all his friends had come to the cookout, he made a round of the neighborhood, knocking on doors and pointing to the grill. If I felt like telling you what neighborhood he did this in, I could tell you about the increased crimerate in that area of town. I could tell you how dangerous what he was doing really was. I could make you see how beautiful it really was. Trust me. It was beautiful. It was just beautiful.

When he was done going door to door, he came back and kept cooking hotdogs without a word about what he had done. I imagine that to him there wasn’t anything to talk about, because to him what he was doing was as normal as water going downhill. I imagine he is right. He resettled his glasses, and squinted the way he does. He started talking to a family he had invited over for the event. They live just down the street. The family, by the way, was a man and his wife and their three adopted little black boys. That family thought they were normal, and they were normal. I’m wrong to have noticed there was ever anything worth a comment, but I did. Noticeing is what I do. I noticed that what my friend had done was just normal to him; just like the family he was talking to was normal. What he had done was normal, unless you were anyone affected by the prejudice, avarice, and racism that come with growing up in the South. Those things are present all over, but I know them in the South. Apparently this one nerdy dude had escaped all that. He was just inviting his neighbors to a cookout. He actually was just inviting his neighbors out to a cookout.

I’m not the only one who noticed something else though. I overheard one of the gentlemen who came out this afternoon talking to my friend. He said, “You know, when you first came knocking on my door I said to myself ‘You must be shit’n me.’ But you weren’t shit’n me. You are real.” This was not the first time the nerdy dude had knocked on his door.

I was encouraged, and challenged as I watched him walk around the corner with a stranger to look at a garden or whatever it was. I never asked what they had gone to look at. I realized that I’d been trying to be bold, but I was doing it wrong. It is easy to think that being bold means standing up to someone who is bugging you. Sure, it can mean that. Today I was fortunate enough to see boldness used to be kind. It was good to see boldness look normal.

Yesterday I was invited to a cookout in my neighborhood and I met my neighbors. I sat and watched a little boy play a video game where he went around killing zombies, and talked with his parents about the weather/economy, and I ate hodogs, and I got mad as anyone else did when we couldn't keep the flies away from the food, and I had a few good laughs, and I heard a baby cry, and I drank a few beers, and I shook a few hands and I realized that a lot of what happened today was not about racism. It wasn’t socio-economic either. I was about a guy who wanted to have a cookout with his neighbors. I live in a neighborhood now. I know the name of the man who lives across the street. We talked about motorcycles. I know the guy that lives to the right. He told me about Jesus. I did know the lady that lives to the left of my house, but she moved out because of the rats. I think if there is any hope for the world, it is going to happen at a cook out, because there is some strange magic in hotdogs that makes people like each other better. Yeah, it was the hotdogs..... or maybe it was the beer.

A Sloppy Wet Kiss for Peter J. McGuire

http://www.dol.gov/laborday/history.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Day

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_J._McGuire

I’m not going to work today. Some of you will go to work today, and so the bright rays of fortune will reveal themselves to you in another way. Tant pis. Still, I’m glad, tickled, giddy…whirlingly, staggeringly stoked about 8 hours outside what I have been trained and forced to accept as my reality. I will not commute. If I leave my home, I will call that travel. All my destinations this first Monday in September will be unusual for I will not be daydreaming down the interstate to that same place, prioritizing phone calls, emails, and jobs, and hoping, just hoping to arrive on time even though I left 3 minutes late, 3 minutes which will transmute themselves into 15 and have some person or persons giving me looks as I make my way to my station. No! None of that is going to happen today. Imagine me doing a little dance, because I just did a little dance.

I’m going to do what I want. I’m going to sit with my coffee, reading a book. I’m going to sit in a room with friends, and listen to them say whatever it is they say. I’m going to sit playing a little of that videogame I’ve been neglecting, and wash the dishes in the kitchen sink. I might even have time to get all OCD about my bathroom. I might, if I am very lucky, have time to walk down to the coffee shop, and do nothing but nothing. I might wake up early, walk to the living room, and just sit for a while listening to the City wake itself. It is Labor Day, and America is celebrating me instead of a dead guy today, so I wanted someone to thank for the downtime. I found a person.

Peter J. McGuire is one of the people credited with proposing Labor Day as a national holiday. He made his proposal in 1882. There is also some credit given to a Mathew Maguire, and even though their names sound similar I do not think they are related. I’m going to talk about Peter, honestly, because I found more information on him in Wikipedia. You can read the article yourself. He was a man who spent his life fighting for labor rights. He was a major player in several organizations, and he paid for a lot of expenses out of his own pocket. There was a time when the 40 hour work week was not established. There was a time before the 8 hour work day. Peter J. McGuire was a man involved in that change. There was a lot of turmoil that happened around, leading up to, and after Labor Day was established in 1887 having to do with the Labor Movement.

I know very little about Peter J. McGuire, but I brought up the name for a reason. Peter J. McGuire was a real person. Peter J. McGuire had a name. He had a face, and he knew people. This is speculation, but he probably laughed at a joke or two. Peter J. McGuire was one of the people who pushed for a day when everyone celebrated the worker. He did more than write in a suggestion one day in 1882, and say, “Hey America, let’s just not all go to work one day out of the year, just for kicks. It’ll be just faby.” He dedicated a life to this movement, and there was a whole movement behind him. I’d like for the reality of that to be noticed today, so I told you a name of one guy.

There was a time in our country when the worker went uncelebrated. There was a time before labor laws. The Labor Movement is a big issue. It is much more than I can to handle in one post. It is more than I’d ask a reader to handle before noon, but I’d like to thank Peter J. McGuire for my day off.

Note: Peter J. McGuire has a terrific mustache.

The Delicious Bagel of Life

                I just ate a delicious bagel without going to a cafe. It was an everything-bagel with slices of tomato, garlic and Swiss cheese toasted together in the oven so the cheese melted through the tomato slices. Oh my word! So good!

I grew up thinking nice things were expensive, and that is true. Nice things cost. Where I was wrong is in thinking the cost was always monetary. I thought that rich people had nice things, and poor people had crappy things. Rich people had good tasting food, and poor people ate frozen food. That was the way of it, and there was no use complaining. I was wrong. The bagel proved me wrong. The bagel, tomato, garlic, and cheese all had a cost. Sure, but the work it took to combine those things and the patience to wait for them to cook transformed the experience.

That bagel changed my life and made my day, as the Swiss cheese and the garlic mixed with the tomato juice, and the texture of the tomato made a place for the sweetness of the cheese to mix with the sweetness of the tomato while the sour tartness of the cheese also mixed with the garlic and butter on a soft warm bagel with a salty, pleasantly burnt savory aftertaste of the poppy, sesame and onion. The combination was simple, and complex.

I am also learning to make tasty meals that are enough to serve 4 people, for only $7. Maybe in a later post I will talk about the new creations I’m inventing in the kitchen with more detail.

Right now, I just want to say that the really nice things in life come from spending a little more time to do a simple thing well, rather than just getting it done. Take time to be inefficient. Occasionally, coffee can be an event. A walk can be unrushed. Dinner can last long after all the food is eaten, or it can be an all night event of buying food, then cooking, then eating, and talking and talking, then coffee, and a night cap, and a sit on the porch.

That extra 15 mins is not available all the time, but when it is…it is just really nice. So it doesn’t take that much money to have nice things. It costs the same as it costs to have the bare essentials and a little extra effort. I really liked that bagel.

3 Quotes from 1984

I recently went through 1984, by George Orwell. These are a few quotes that struck me:

1.      "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."

-1984 by George Orwell

There was another line I liked a lot. It read, "...the neat handwriting of the illiterate." The phrase summed up a big idea, and I won't jip you for the meaning with words of my own. It is such good writing. I am flipping out about that little phrase and with any luck getting the meaning all wrong right now, but I just love it so much.

2.      "You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane."

-O'Brian speaking to Winston in the book 1984 by George Orwell

The insight of this book, other than the looming and impending doom of free society, is that such an end is accomplished by fortifying the preexisting epistemological problems of post-modernity, and that such an end is an end in itself. It is hard to know what is true beyond what has been termed, ‘a justified true belief’. All anyone has to do to control another person is to make them doubt. All they have to do is make the other person try to be sane. Once a person is working at being sane, that person has surrendered their concept of sanity to a third party, which is terrifying, because it does take work to be sane.

3.      “The bird sang. The poles sang. The party did not sing.”

-Winston 1984

This quote hits like a ton of bricks. It goes well with something Hemingway said. He said, “But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed by not defeated.” The human soul sings, and everything that does not sing is not human. That is why the book is so powerful. It describes a fate worse than death, a fate worse than destruction. The party defeats its enemies fully, by making them no longer human, no longer man; a moving shell of a once living thing. It freaks me out.

This book is well writen, and quotable from cover to cover. It is a good read. Thanks for reading.

Seamus Heanney died today and that is sad.

Seamus Heaney died today. He was 74. I am affected by his death. I never knew him, and I will know him better after his death than I ever knew him while he lived. He was a writer. He did his digging with a pen. He is dead, after being born very Irish in April of 1939. Seamus Haney’s death is only as sad as any other person’s death. It is terribly sad.

Even as I read the news article about his death in the online USA Today page, I’m struck that somewhere there is a mother who lost her son, or a son who has lost a mother, and this did not make the news. It is mathematically impossible for every death to be mourned equally, it is unfair. There are many well meaning atheists, religious or otherwise inclined people who would make out like death is not so sad. They all have good arguments. There may even be truth to what they say, but death just makes me sad. I think that is sane. I understand that death is universal. Sure, and it universally sucks. Even Jesus cried when his friend died.

When someone dies, I always wish it would rain. I think the world should revolt and be miserable. I am always surprised when does not. Truly, I am. But no, the sun shines, and the wind rustles through the leaves of happy sapling trees. I think it is horrible unfair and unfeeling of the world to be so impassive, but then, it occurs to me that the natural world may be run by forces which are not juvenile. A cool sunny day is what is in order, or a fresh hot one. Perhaps death and life, and the weather are best left to their caretakers, and I can butt-out. What is fair is what happens. There is no way to know another possibility. I just think it sucks…but I’ve left the topic altogether now.

We may not be able to mourn all the dead fairly, but occasionally, we might be able to mourn a few aptly. It is fitting that Seamus’ death affects me, because his life affected me. His words changed my culture.  Seamus shared himself with us, who never knew him, and so the news of his death is carried to us for our sake that we will know to mourn him too.

I wonder how the execs at Faber & Faber feel. Faber & Faber has been his publisher for over 50 years, and this is very good advertisement. I hope they are sad for the loss, and happily sell more books. I hope they take some time to grieve the man. I hope we all send a toast his way tonight and a prayer (if you pray) for his family. I hope we read his poems, and find something good to show a friend…and if we really hated his poetry, we should hush up about it for a month or two. I hope we never leave the habit of seeing death as the terrifying sorrowful maddening peaceful enigma that it is, and that we always remember men as men, and worth a moment of mourning at their passing.