Steve's Chowder Bar

Praise the Lord and pass the ammo!

2007-12-12T23:16:00.000-08:00

I'm quite proud of Jeanne Assam, the woman who whacked the recent would-be Columbine copy cat. How many more would he have killed? We'll never know, but at least one more, right? She saved at least one life, but probably 10-15, the way random massacres go these days. What if she was in Columbine High School in 1999? What if she was in Omaha recently? Will the anti-gun Left take heed? Security guards need to be strapped. My uncle, a prison designer who recently contracted for a year in Iraq, thinks terrorists are aiming at schools next. Why shouldn't there be one gun at the school, locked in a gun safe, hidden somewhere? A gun is a dangerous thing, but not inherently evil. For all of you who think guns are evil, would you rather be alone in a room with a gun, or with a terrorist? If terrorists know we pack, they may not even try to overrun a school.

5 Reasons I Quit Writing

2007-11-14T20:41:00.000-08:00

"Are you writing?" She said.

"No."

I was at church tonight, and someone heard I used to be a writer. Am I still writing? I haven't written in a while, and several things are to blame.

First, I wrote and wrote, but never ended up with much to speak of, and what I had, I sent all over the place. Some of it stuck, but never with any significant positive criticism. I had one story go to print, but it was voted in by my friends. Others were published electronically. My last story to be published was a fiction but they wanted it for social commentary. I said I'll take what I can get, but it seemed like God saying to me: You aren't writing, you're commenting. Which is true.

Second, there was never a feeling of belongingness (how's that for a word!) in writing as a career. No one and I mean no one in my family embraced me as a writer. Few friends cared or supported it. I was completely alone in my ambition. Is that unique? No. Most writers stand alone this way, but I've always needed some kind of support from someone to feel valid as a writer. Writing felt like I was in someone else's home, and as kind as they were, I always knew I'd have to get up and leave.

Third, writing felt like a self-absorbed sin in my life, like a waste of time. I've been writing for years and look what it's got me. Nothing.

Fourth. No discipline. I read several books (Bird by Bird, Moveable Feast) by writers on writing and they all shared one thing - discipline. They wrote four hours a day, in the morning, or they would rent a cabin and write for three months. If I did that, I'd just stare out the window at the mountains and begin an inner dialogue that would crescendo into loud cries of madness.

Fifth. I never felt like God wanted me to be a writer. I felt like it was a shameful passtime, a diversion from true ministry. People need help in this world, why are you sitting in Caribou Coffee? Besides, I could never be a Christian writer. I swear too much, and even if I didn't, Christian publishing has been hijacked by assholes who can't write an interesting story to save their lives.

Am I happy now, not writing? It's the same thing, I work, eat, sleep, work, eat and sleep, and never think about it. When something reminds me of writing, or doing anything creative, I instantly feel a burning fire in my ribs. I want to create, but there's a cage around me. Other people are in charge of all the creative stuff at church. The best I've been able to do is play guitar on the worship team. How exciting it would be to write and produce a play. How fun to start a creative blog with poetry and stories.

Did writing go out with the bathwater of my Emergent Church journey?

Possibly. It was writing got me into it. I drudged for something I could agree was both church and not church. It was a naval gazistic penury, this Emergent stuff, and hippified Christians with arbitrary soul-patches and piercings controlled it. It was church as usual, church on Sunday that is, and hippyanity the rest of the week. Many of those I encountered were always in character. It was life en voyeur, doing everything for the sake of being watched or admired for your interpretation of life. See, it can be this, too! In fact, it is this, and how dare you oppose me? Many emergents had long spiny barbs all over them to ward off all other interpretation, and especially absolutes, and specifically absolute interpretations of scripture.

They'd say, "what is church?" "What does it look like?" I would answer, "well, the Bible says..." but these questions weren't meant to be answered. They were supposed to be left as questions. "What is redemption?" "What is salvation?" "The Bible says salvation is...." Wait! You can't answer, not even from the Bible. That's presumptive. You can quote a church father, or John Piper, or you can say it's like this or that, but that becomes your interpretation. You're stuck with it. "Church is a community, where people share their belongings and serve one another." Okay. That's what it is to you, but not me.

"Can it be called church and be full of people with tattoos, soul-patches and piercings who drink beer? Can church look like the world? Can church be full of philosophers and still be church?" What if it can't? Will you leave? That's my question. Or is it important enough that you'd give up certain things? You don't have to, as we read in Romans, but what if you did? Maybe the remodeling of the church has taken a turn away from what pleases God and toward what pleases man. Did Jesus' disciples stop at a tattoo/piercing/beer/soul-patch parlor? In one passage, Jesus told a man to sell all his belongings and follow Him. He knew what was important to the man, his material belongings. Sell. Follow Me.

That was the eye of the needle verse, and I was always impressed that I had the answer to that one, so I'll share it now. It's like you're a spirit, but you've grown attached to material. As spirit, you can pass through anything, even a wall, as Jesus did. But if you grow attached to your Ferrari, it will prevent you from passing through that tiny hole. You have to strip the things off, or be willing to instantly give them up, or able to curse them, or become detached instantly, knowing what their true properties are, and that you're essentially different.

Wanna know what Church looks like?

People. Church looks like the people in it, and it will progress or not based on the people in it. One church in Richmond, VA is full of tattooed/bearded/pierced people who don't drink because drinking ruined their lives. Another church in Portland, OR is full of younger versions of the same thing but with masters degrees and they drink because they have the mettle to enjoy it and resist alcoholism. Both are church. One church in Colorado is full of wooden people and prescribed liturgy, another, in Africa, is full of dancing, tongues, prophesy, and healing. People encounter God differently, but they're still in the church.

Several things church is not, and I'll write about that later. Maybe. As I said, I've given up writing.

God's Heretic, Greg Boyd

2007-08-25T08:52:00.000-07:00

I actually agree with this guy:

(Click Greg's face to see website)

Yes, I'm still a right-winged, angry repub, but Greg Boyd's right. Our Kingdom is not of this earth, and neither do we see Jesus carry on about politics. Everything is directed to the individual - slaves, masters, deny yourself, pick up your cross, pay your taxes, leaders are established by God (was that Paul?). Greg Boyd's title, "the Heretic," in Christianne Amanpour's recent CNN special, "God's Christian Warriors" references the most common result in her Googling of his name. Is he? To be a heretic, don't you have to misinterpret the Bible? Has he done that? Not so far, but I'm new to Greg Boyd and I'm doing my research.

Either way, I was impressed by the report. Besides being one of the best things I've ever seen on CNN, it was balanced to a fault. Christianne could have been an internal house cleaner for the Church the way she presented our issues. Was she harsh? No. Too balanced for CNN, I'd say. She didn't get the memo about picking on right-winged Christians in an election year. I have yet to see "God's Jewish Warriors," and want to, because the phrase slams an "Eye of Sauron-like" image into my brain of Mel Brooks driving a tank backwards and holding a wooden short sword.

Anyways, check it out. Knowing they have made something good for once in a long while, CNN is running it ad nauseam.

New Post

2007-04-26T09:28:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in a hot window at Saxby's waiting for my car. They're replacing the windshield because a rock split it in two. Then the tinting place is going to tint the side windows and block out 99.7 per cent of UV rays. Why? Because I need UV rays blocked more than ever. UV rays cause skin cancer. What to say about that, now, two months after the diagnosis.

It was a nodule, high on my chest, so that I barely saw it. I usually put my shirt on right after I shower, before the fog clears off the mirror. I cover up, then comb my hair and shave, or whatever, with my shirt on. Stupid, I know, but that's just how I learned. I saw the nodule and called a dermatoligist out of the phone book and had an appointment within a week.

Four years ago I found two bumps on my back. In your thirties, you get these, and they take them off and say "they're nothing." Infected sweat glands, benign cysts, "bumps." I had a lipoma and a cyst. Basically, a fat deposit and a big zit. They said check yourself every month, which I did, for a few months, then lost interest. Now, there was a small, eraser head-like thing, nasty looking, like it should be on an alien's face. The doctor said it was a... "(insert long word here)" which I didn't understand, but he did a punch biopsy, which is like coring an apple, and sent it off.

Two weeks later, a call at 8AM: "Hi, this is Dr. Feuston. We couldn't determine what it was, Steve, so we're sending it off to University Hospital for stains. I'll refund your pathology fee. Goodbye, click." And a check came in the mail. Interesting. What about the "(insert long word here)"? I was a little worried, but had no idea what was to come. Life caught up and took over my attention. Then, on February 15, another call: "It's serious. It's melanoma. You need to see an oncologist." I wrote it down on the back of an envelope by my bed, like I was taking a message for someone else. I said, "anything else you can tell me?" He told me a couple of things and I wrote them down, "skin-cancer-spindle-cell, got it," then hung up. I stared at the envelope for a minute, then my mind started up.

This is because of sin. This is because you haven't followed the Lord. This is because you never finished seminary. This is because you looked at internet porn. This is because you never got married - a woman would have taken care of you better than you took care of yourself. This is because you didn't take care of yourself. This is because you left the church and started going to house churches. The devil flooded my mind with anger, guilt, confusion, terror, and all the things that are not characteristics of God.

I called my brother and told him to get Dad on three-way. He knew I had a "thing" and it was getting looked at, so he worried. I told them what it was. My brother cried, he wanted to get to the prayer part. Dad began speaking like an old Indian chief by the fire, "Well. Your aunt had that and she died." I knew he wasn't trying to screw with me, he was just reading the Google results in his head. He was just as scared as I was. We turned to the only thing we knew. Prayer. That short call was the most I had said to my dad in three years--God's first result in a long list.

They say not to surf the internet. The information you get is unrealiable. Statistics were all over the place. Everything that came to mind, I'd search. I was 37, so maybe I'm on the younger side. The average male age is 40. Scratch that. I'm dark-skinned. Didn't matter. I have good genes. Didn't matter. Nothing mattered, except that I got a lot of sunburns as a kid. Period. I can't even blame God. As much supernatural meaning I looked for, it still was just as real as to anyone. Science says wear sunscreen, I didn't. My chances were about 5 out of 6, which isn't bad, but yesterday they were 100%.

My diet was an issue. I read that you can actually prevent cancer with food. That was an easy decision. I went vegan. Dad, who I now spoke to twice a day, sent my step-mom's old cancer books from the 70s. She had Hodgkin's in the lung, on the heart side. She had to have chemo and radiation right over her heart. Fortunately, her doctor was the guy who found the cure for Hodgkin's, and she's still here after 25 years. He also sent another book. The Life Teachings of John G. Lake. John G. Lake was a country preacher who layed hands on people and healed them in the Name of Jesus. He's said to have healed over 200,000 people in a ten year period in his healing rooms in Tacoma. I read. Then I found a healing room in Boulder, Sunday's from 2-4.

I went to my brother's church that week. I hadn't gone to a mainstream church in years. My heart was filled with so much criticism for the church system because of so many things, but that day, I just cried. Worship filled the air, and the people looked like me, hurting, weak, totally reliant on Jesus. I walked in and embraced it with every cell on my body. My brother usually sat in back with his family, but he moved up with me to the third row, and his family has been there since. He and I began attending prayer before the service. We all took the beginning believers courses, 101 and 102, and I soaked it up like a beginning believer.

The healing room was a Godsend. Before they prayed, they had to re-educate me. "Do you realize that Jesus healed everyone who asked for healing?" "I guess so." "Do you know that He's the same yesterday, today and forever?" "I guess so." "Okay, we can get started." They followed the Bible strictly. No one poured oil on me. I asked why. "Because there are no elders here. Only elders can annoint you." Okay. The biggest thing I had to get my head around was why do some people get healed, and others don't? The "healers" believed that healing was a priviledge, a right, of the believer, and I couldn't argue with them scripturally. It was tough, but I was on the pallet, and if my friends had that kind of faith, they'd surely tear a roof off.

Sunday was now my favorite day. It was like a bouy in a terrific storm. I thought of Peter when he saw the waves. There were nothing but waves around me. I got into my old emails one night. A brother of a close friend of mine battled cancer for two years and then died. I tried to see what he had, so I searched for the first email. Melanoma. I slammed my laptop shut and threw it on the floor. My heart went cold and my face was numb. I dove onto my couch and prayed out loud.

Joy cometh in the morning. I don't know how many nights I went to sleep crying and woke up joyful. Those who sow in tears reap in joy. The sowing, I found out, is the prayer. Prayer, when you have to make yourself pray, is work. And joy always comes. It comes full of the character and love of Jesus Christ, pure joy in the heart, every morning.

I used to pray in tongues. For years, I did, but now it had dried up. Do your own research on gifts. I began praying in tongues again, except this time it was the only language I could pray in. I didn't know what to ask for in my mind, so I prayed in tongues, and the Holy Spirit prayed for me. Again, do your own research, but that's how it was. I thought about things while praying and blurted them out, "Jesus, bind fear from me!" All fear is a lie, said a girl at the healing room. Pretty much true, except the fear of the Lord of course. All fear is a lie. All fear is a tool of Satan to make you lose faith in Christ.

By March, I had a surgery date. They were going to do a wide-area excision and a sentinal node biopsy. The excision is like an ice cream scoop of skin, two inches wide and all the way down to the muscle. The biopsy is where they inject a nuclear dye around where the "thing" was and then watch it on a scope. The first lymph node it gets to, they take out and test. I had to go to the Cancer Center - have you seen those before? They're everywhere. It's the little building, by the big building, that you never want to go to. Mine had free valet parking and a piano player. Might as well treat these people good, I thought. Soon, I began to realize it wasn't so bad. Everyone there had cancer, and most of them were going to do just fine. Most people survive cancer. All fear is a lie. Satan began to lose footing with me everyday.

The blessings of God make rich, and he adds no trouble to them. Having written fiction for years, I thought in terms of dramatic convention, which says whenever you show hope, it's a set up for bad things to come. It's the only way to make a story interesting. I had to forget that. God is not dramatic. He doesn't imply he's going to save you only to leave you - to make the story interesting. He isn't fickle. He heals. He saves, He blesses, and adds no trouble to it. The night before my first visit to the cancer center, I had a dream. I was in a doctor's office and a young guy came in and started putting on makeup. He said he was going to a costume party. I worried. "Are you my doctor?" I said. He said, "No, I'm an intern." Then the door opened and seven old men came in, guys with beards, stethascopes, white coates, glasses, old, experienced-looking guys who wrote books. I said, "are you my doctors?" One of them said, "Shhhh," and he took my hand and they all kneeled with me in prayer.

On March 19 I went in to see the oncologist and surgeon. I hated the oncologist. He told me how it was and gave me statistics. I didn't learn anything new. He said most people do just fine, but a small number don't. That was it. The surgeon was nicer. He was an old Jew. I thought of him as a circumcisionist, cutting away the evil flesh. He had been a cancer doctor for 41 years, and had done thousands of these surgeries. That was Monday, and Friday was my surgery. I worked hard that week, knowing I'd have to take a week off, and also it kept my mind clear. But God was present all week. By Friday I was calm, at peace. Jesus is our peace. He was with me. My surgery went well, except that they couldn't do the lymph node biopsy. By the time they got in, the dye had spread to all the lymph nodes in the area, and they couldn't tell which one was the sentinel node. He said it's rare, only about 25 cases he knows of. All my brother heard was "we couldn't find anything," and he told everyone.

By now, Dad and I were speaking daily. I repented of everything I could think of, out loud, to other people. I wrote letters, called old friends, joined my church, signed up for everything. I wanted God. I wanted to be close again. I dug up my old CDs. Kirk Franklin was covered with dust. I put on "Something About the Name Jesus" and just sobbed. I stood in my little apartment and worshipped. God seemed so close, suddenly so close that I couldn't bear Him without tears. I imagined heaven. I'd heard pastors say you'll finally be able to worship for eternity. That's limiting. No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for us. Worship is a part of it, but we can worship here, now.

My body began to ache. About a week after going vegan, I had pains all around the area where the "thing" was. I also had pain inside my legs, under my arms, all over my chest. I got online and searched for pictures of anatomy. There were lymph nodes everywhere that I had pain. Now my fear became shock and paralysis. I had such a bad night that I moved out of bed and began sleeping on my couch, where I could listen to worship music all night on my stereo. I went to the gym, ate fruit and vegetables all day, and prayed in tongues with abandon. I had two speeds, fast and stop, and had to stay in fast.

A pain developed in my liver area. It was deep, around the breastbone, then referred down to below the ribcage. It was terrifying. Melanoma is usually treated with skin surgery, but it is malignant, and can spread to other organs, like the brain, the lungs and the liver, at which point it's "not curable, but treatable." I got a message on my phone: "Steve, your x-ray was normal, and we found one elevated liver enzyme in your blood. Doctor will talk to you about that when you come in." The pain doubled, tripled. The only way to allay it was to eat strictly fruit and organic foods. Prayer seemed to treat the pain as well.

God spoke to me. I was on a fence, on one side was faith and on the other side, cancer. It was like one of those fences in a Philipino duck farm. As the tide rises, these ducks stay in their herds, even if the fence disappears underwater. It's funny, but true about me. The Holy Spirit rises and you don't even have to jump, just float over to grace. The more I stared at the waves, the more I sank. I had to look God squarely in the face, through the veil of Christ, and believe. Where sin increased, grace increased all the more.

A week after surgery, I was at the cancer center. The surgeon came in. "We got the path back this morning and there is no sign of tumor." I cheered, then said, "is that good?" He said "very good." I cheered again. I went in a week later to get the stitches out and asked more questions. He said "we'll watch you closely, but there's a 95% chance that we're done with this thing." I couldn't contain my happiness. I had faith in God's report, but He can speak through doctors too. It was the day before my birthday. I had lost 24 pounds from the vegan diet, and had a new outlook on life. It sounds like cliche, but every minute is a gift.

I speak to people about healing now. "God heals the whole man today," I say. There's a young guy at church with "terminal" cancer. I tell him, "God heals cancer today." Cancer is a lie, Jesus is the truth. When Elisha prayed, God showed his servant the truth, horses and chariots of fire all around. Some people pray like a pallbearers, "God, prepare us for the bad news, oh God, receive his spirit." Wait, he's not dead yet. Oh. "Recieve his spirit when he dies, because he will most surely die because the doctors said so." How do we know? Because of doctors? Too many pray to prove the doctors right. (Pray for Trent, by the way, I believe he will be healed.) You can pray for doctors, for the hospital, for pathology reports, and you can pray that your flesh will obey the Spirit of God, and bring it into submission. Wierd? Sorry. I've been on the pallet now, and I'm permanently wierdified by God's Word. I've been Wordified.

If you show me from scripture that death from disease is God's will, then I'll believe you. Those who asked Jesus for healing were healed. It's not bossing God around, it's faith. Paul healed a whole island. Peter's shadow healed more than most churches today. Were they gods? No, men just like us (James 5:17). Some don't get healed, and I'll never know why, but I'd rather take the Bible at face value and wonder, than justify it in light of human experience, which is untrustworthy. My faith wasn't even that strong, mind you, but those around me believed. I had four pallet-bearers who were willing to tear off a roof for me. Jesus, seeing THEIR faith, told the paralytic to pick up his bed and go home.

Enough preaching. Thanks for reading if you made it this far. Steve

myspace

2007-02-14T00:25:00.000-08:00

I might as well post my Myspace since I've been spending more time there than here, blogging, like I should be. www.myspace.com/stevesheppard =o]

Does "Lord willing" mean He isn't?

2006-12-09T09:20:00.000-08:00

Why are Christians so afraid of success? There is a theme in church, which I've usually supported, by the way, that God does not want us to earn lots of money. But when I look closely at this passage (James 4:13-17), it speaks to action verses inaction. The action is boasting and bragging and the inaction is knowing what God wants us to do and not doing it. When we experience God's natural laws of success, the basic stuff we've all heard from Tony Robbins and dozens of other self-appointed guru's--work hard, make a list of goals, saturate yourself with images of your goal, surround yourself with people who support you, etc.--when we put to action these biblical principles, we often see results, and those results can be deceptive. We earn the house, the new car, the income, the ability to fill the gas tank all the way instead of just partially. We see the results and forget the God who created them. He made success possible. We pump the pump and water comes out, but God gives us arms, a pump, and water, and a system whereby water comes out when we do something an animal could do.

The work that we put into earning money decieves us into thinking we did it alone, and then we boast and brag.

The Bible says the Love of money is a root of all kinds of evil (1 Tim 6:10). It doesn't say money is the root of all evil. It is a root, but the emphasis is on loving the money. When your love is directed at the money and not God and others, that root will grow into evil branches. This is true all around me. I see people get rich and change. When they were trying to get rich, they made promises to God. They promised to honor God with their wealth, to not be possessed by it, to use their mansion for ministry. But the problem is within the promise itself. Why do they want wealth so bad that they'll make promises to God in order to get it? Are they using their tiny apartment for ministry now? Are they giving their lives to God now? Aren't they now possessed by the desire for wealth? When they have it and no longer desire it, what will they be possessed by then?

My mom wants to be rich. She sees her ability to sustain a lifestyle with a double income and knows it's going to get harder and harder. She's a creative person and wants to cook up an idea where all her children can move back to Georgetown, CA and work on a big successful business with her. She wants security and closeness to family, not the image of wealth, or ego or pride. If she charged money for all the things she did free, she'd be wealthy now.

If the root is holy, so are the branches (Rom 11:16)

One economist says "evil is the root of all money." I like the quote, but I'm not sure what John Moore means by it -- I'm still trudging through his article. In America, that haunting statement may be true. The prettier things get that money can buy, the more it becomes rooted in evil. Have you looked at this years Christmas catalogs? I glanced over the REI catalog yesterday. How do they make the same stuff look prettier every year, so that I go buy them again? I have five fleece shirts, but this year's fleece shirt looks cooler than last year's. Maybe I'll wire REI's building in exchange for some fleece shirts. Then I'll pull the wire out and replace it with Monster Cable, because that's real hot now.

We need money because we don't trust one another. Money is proof that a trade was made, but instead of trading something of yours, I just want money -- or I have only money to give for what you have, so here you go. In Colorado, the love of money is rampant. Half of my life, my working life, is spent around rich people. I wire their homes so they can have speakers and liquid crystal display TV's in every room. Now there's a gadget that makes the stereo speakers play what's on the TV in that room. It's called ASAP. Asap is a good word, because it means as-soon-as-possible. Not only do we want the TV to play through the speakers, but we want it as soon as possible, so here's some money, get to work. Some spend $100,000 on stereo equipment and add it to their million dollar mortgage.

Wealth is honored in Colorado. The wealthy figured out something the rest of us haven't, they took risks, they read Sun Tsu's Art of Warfare. Many work hard for years and never achieve wealth, but some work doubly hard to create the image of wealth. I could get wealthy. I could hire some people, train them, follow behind them to make sure they wire the houses correctly, fix their mistakes, pay for their damage, pay their wage plus benefits and social security and workman's comp. I could duplicate myself six or seven times and create a little wealth, or at least the image of wealth, in a few year's time. I think I'll just buy lottery tickets. Actually, I'm already wealthy compared to the rest of the world. After all, I have a laptop computer and a car!

What is the root of your desire for wealth?

I see myself getting older, so there will have to be some changes in how I earn money. I live in America, where you are free to start a business, so, Lord Willing, I'll start another. I can't promise anything to God but obedience, and that was James' point anyway. I can't even guarantee I'll be obedient, but I'll try. One deception about money is this: it's so hard to get and so easy to lose that you change the rules once you have it. The premise before you have money is that the Bible is true and God is right no matter what. After you have money, the Bible is up for interpretation, and prayer about a business transaction is a cop out. Money complicates life. Poverty is simple (unfortunately). But you can get wealthy and still be blessed. The blessing of the Lord brings wealth, and he adds no trouble to it. Prov 10:22. What kind of wealth does this blessing contain?

I went to two malls in Denver last Saturday, Cherry Creek and Flatirons. To say materialism is a problem in our country isn't enough. Each mall had valet services, and only the $100,000 cars were parked by the entrance. Why not minivans? Mom's with kids are more important than rich people with Lamborghini's, right? Maybe I don't understand because I don't have one. We went to a jewelry store that had it's own security guard and dozens of rich people buying diamond studded watches. The contents of that store could have fed Kenya for a month. I asked if they had the new Casio Pathfinder Solar Atomic, but they didn't even carry Casio. That's all I want for Christmas, if you're taking notes, but beware, it will set you back about three bills.

Does God bless us with material wealth? Does the proverb strictly mean we can get rich and not have all the problems money brings? Maybe what we believe when we are poor grows into what we have when we are rich. Are we planting a root of ego or humility?

Dr. Wayne Dyer has a list of five ego driven beliefs. When ego drives our lives, we tend to define ourselves with faulty principles like: I am what I have, I am what I do, I am what people think of me, I am my body, and I am my own God. When these things prove not to be true, we have to redefine ourselves. Who am I now that I don't have this? Who am I when my body changes? Who am I when I can no longer work? One woman defined herself clearly in 1977, when she was buried, by her request, with her 1964 Ferrari. Ego-driven beliefs are one of the many branches growing from the "love of money" root.

Does God want me to be rich? Yes, in many ways: Rich with friends, a rich giver, rich toward others with my time, rich with encouragement, rich in poverty, rich in spiritual discernment, rich in sensitivity, and rich enough to support myself and others, and even wealthy! (Pr. 10:4, good buddy!) But what does God mean by wealth? A Ferrari sized coffin?

God doesn't want us to say "Lord willing" just because he isn't. He wants us to grow wealthy within His blessing, without the trouble. Amen?

Final rewrite of this story...

2006-10-11T15:20:00.000-07:00

Final! Won't rewrite it again. Never. Okay, never say never.

Myspace ghosts - Still Manifesting

2006-10-07T04:39:00.000-07:00

How did I find your myspace, and why the eff am I reading your flippin' blog?

Backstory: We went to undergrad together, had a morning Jazz radio show together, didn't get along worth a bucket of warm pooh, and now you got me reading your blog into the wee hours. You know how late it is? It's -- AMC channel went from B/W to color to B/W to color again -- late. It's -- somebody just got up to go to work -- late.

First thing's first. I didn't hate you in college. You were a little... nervous? I was effed up too. (you know what, let's just skip all that) As for your blog: have I ever seen this many words? To say you are prolific is not enough. I see portions of chapters, memior. But criminy, it's like Les Misarables (in length, not content). Is that why I'm a guy? I don't say everything I think? And, speaking of, your blog is revealing. As is mine, I'm sure, and spookily so, in that I reveal things subtly. Oh, there's nothing wrong with journaling as part of worship - see, King David.

So. Long, revealing, and what was the other? Oh. Good, actually. At times I was taken in, when you were writing honest, hard-pressed thought. (Here's where she throws something.) Fine, was the thing on Joan Rivers hard-pressed thought? (Throws something else, yells. I answer.) No, I'm not a big published writer, but I worked as a story developer for a year in Hollywood, and I know from bad writing. I've never seen your fiction, but from parts of your blog, I see a new face coming to your genre -- maybe YOU as a peripheral, but then vital, entity to a crime scene. And the "guy" you "get" is the ally, but then he turns out to be bad, oh well, can't win 'em all? Okay, I'm bad at genre fiction.

Here's where I say holla back, girl. If there's anything you can say that's not written on your blog, please do. There's a bonus, something that happened at KCOZ I never told a soul about, and you know you want to hear it. It'll be entrez nous...

Caving In (not a think piece)

2006-10-06T15:32:00.000-07:00

Late last night, on one of Portland's 250 cable access channels, I saw Sister Paula. Her sermon was God supplies all our needs, but the main point was that you have to work with your hands, and if you don't work for long enough, you begin to feel empty. I agree. I feel emptiness in my soul sometimes because I'm not working a job right now.

I sent out four emails yesterday on job openings and got two responses, one by phone. There are lots of hourly jobs, but I'm not wired hourly. I go crazy. One summer I worked at a dry fruit plant, which is already a problem because I hate dried fruit. Talk about taking the best part of fruit away to make it dry and more conventient, but yucky! But my job was to stand in one place for 8 hours across from another guy and pick up pallets of fruit and move them to be hauled off by a forklift. One place. 8 hours. That's the definition for madness, for me anyways. Hey it paid well, but you still go mad.

Couple of options. Go crawling back to Fibersphere, who probably hired somebody the next day, but I could con them. That was great opportunity, but I found I had to explain that more to myself than to other people. Or do what I know, which is wiring houses, which I've done for eight years. Jobs in technology bore me, though. I interact with people. I enjoy talking to people, and wiring and programming the alarms is the boring part. I don't fit in with the other tech-guys. They chain-smoke, cuss, and go to strip bars. Not that I couldn't do all those things. I just don't want to, does that make sense?

Jagshemash!!!

2006-10-03T21:36:00.000-07:00

Rejection, the Sequel...

2006-09-26T15:43:00.000-07:00

Whoohoo! This one's a doozy. Jordan Green from Ankeny Briefcase, Donald Miller's long awaited (2 years) literary journal, rejected my story - finally! What a relief. I thought from his dozen emails (over the past 2 years) praising my work, he'd actually publish one damned story. Instead, "we just picked 30 we liked and went with them." Great.

Now, I'm not mad. I just want to say one thing.

Jordan, kiss my butt, you buttkissing notalent - (strike) actually I don't even know if you have talent, because I can't find a damn thing you've written! As for Don Miller, I haven't read him in two years, since he sold out to the shallow CBA money trench. "Keep it edgy" you said, but I found some of the shit you're using - and it's edgy allright. It's perched on the dull edge of gay-Christian, happy-ending, seekersensitive, reacharound babble. Enjoy the navel-gazing-revolution that is Christian try-too-hard literature. All the arbitrary pipe smoking, ear-piercing and beard growing won't save bad, unoriginal writing.

As for the next issue, you'll excuse me if I don't hold my breath. I'd rather write fortune cookies than be in the Ankeny Briefcase. At least one person would read it, and they'd have something to digest afterwards. Oh, and good luck trying to Emergify CBA, but if you pull your head out of you-know-who's bung for two seconds, you'll see that it's pointless.

Pirates and Ninjas are Soooo, incredibly over

2006-09-24T15:46:00.000-07:00

So this will be my only and final reference to the fad:

See? haha, with the keys and the one word, and that's all pirates can say! Get it? haha. Okay, Done.

Boobs, boobs, boobs...(read on)

2006-09-22T12:28:00.000-07:00

Dear Princess Leah,

Okay, I know the breastfeeding in public debate is pretty much over, but here's the thing: this chick comes into Concordia Coffee everyday, at least everyday I'm there, purposefully, just to flop 'em out. Everyday! Now, I laugh at people who think it's wrong. My reaction is like anyone in my family who has a kid, the focus is on the baby. I think "if he's hungry, get 'er done!" It's a little odd, though, that she stands up and twirls around, kid latched on, no covering, for all to see. "Yay, look at my me!" And you want to obey, because it's a baby, but a boob too, so you can't look at the boob, but you can look at the baby, but not now, because the boob is there, and this is a private moment, done in public, like people kissing, so look and you're a perv!

Then, I'm at New Seasons and behold, another one. This girl's a hawk. Her eyes dart around, making sure nobody looks. Did I mention she was in a crowded line at the deli? She sees me and gives a look of disgust, like I was Dirk Diggler with an inflatable luge doll under each arm. It's not fair. I'm not lusting. I'm looking at the kid and thinking, gee, when's my turn? (to have a kid, duh)

Breastfeeding is good. It's natural, and some phenomenal things happen through breastmilk. I've heard a mother can take in a bacteria or virus, build an immunity, and pass it on to the baby through milk. Breastmilk is used to heal infections - someone I know said she rubbed it on her baby's eye and the rash went away. Breastfeeding burns 500 calories a day. Heck, that's good enough reason. Still, it's an awkward thing in public.

Grey, where are you? You'd have the right take on this.

Here's what I propose:

Guys, (uses the vocative) you get one glance at breastfeeders. Lesbo's, as well. One glance! And if you're caught, no penalty. You get the same allowance for people kissing. You look, but don't stare, because who cares?

BTW - Princess Leah, you need to drop a comment soon, or I'll have to re-address my blog to the middle distance, or to Claire, my new beloved barrista! =o]

Oyster Love

2006-09-18T12:47:00.000-07:00

Oysters are yummy. I know that because I was told so for many years, yet I couldn’t stand them, and no human being should eat them, but by my late twenties, I ate them happily. Call it coming-of-age. Somebody handed me a shell with a little white growth on it, and, luckily, alcohol wasn’t far. I drank the sluggy sea lugie and it’s cold amniotic fluid, rinsing my throat clean with Sauza or whatever cheap thing we had. A quick shiver in my thorax and it was over. Since then, oysters are not so spare, but a function of availability. If they’re on the menu, I’m having them. Now I live in Portland, and oysters are as common as Krispy Kreme in Kentucky, Popeye’s in Virginia. They’re on every corner, not even advertised, because everyone knows you can order them at a hardware store. You can walk into Meineke Muffler and have a half dozen Hood’s with a glass of chard.

But I’ve slowed down my oyster eating in recent years.

Summer of ’05, I went oyster crazy and bought a quart of fresh Hama Hama’s from Washington. They had to be eaten right away or they’d go bad, so I did, and it never occurred to me that oysters have no fiber at all. They were good, though, and one felt a wild sexuality eating them. You felt manly for conquering a fear of something so gross and slimy. Face it, oysters, to be sure, look and feel like something you’ve coughed up in one of those lung-clearing, end of a bad cold coughing spells, put over ice, then dipped in some sauce and down-the-hatch. The taste is a little like sweet, raw, live mollusk with a good bite that’s hard to put words on—maybe that’s the oyster’s little pipi bag. With a good wine and a dipping sauce of horseradish and ketchup, a little lemon and dill, you can eat three or four a day until your shit becomes so impacted and claylike you’re stuck on the pot in a gleefull, constapatory clench.

And so for a week my diet was wine, oysters, crab and salmon, and I paid dearly. My brain felt like someone shat in my head, gave it neurons and called it good. My stomach felt like a sockfull of marbles was lodged there. I only found relief in my Aunt’s backyard where she kept a wicker swingset, which I ate, and pooped like a decapitated fire hydrant. The end.

Rewrite of PNW, aka, Smell of Cedar, now...

2006-09-17T18:47:00.000-07:00

A Suspicion of Cedar. Please forgive the crappy formatting - it's blogger's fault, won't post as-is. =o[
Steve

Portland Bullett Points

2006-09-14T08:39:00.000-07:00

In my dream last night a very old Poodle crept up from the woods, at least 18 or 19, white and wobbly, skinny, mangy, and had black spots. He carried a piece of paper in his mouth, a report card, with several of different colored metallic stars, plenty of written praise for the year, but the grade was D+. I was with my half-sister, and we tried to find out about the dog and found pictures of him sitting with rich people and winning dog shows. This Poodle was barely alive and he had crawled upon a pedestal to die. Initial dream analysis states a dying dog means deterioration of instincts. In ancient times, dogs were viewed as keepers of the underworld and can be guides into the unconcious or land of the Dead. Dogs can also represent sexual drive (haha).

Today is my 11th day in Portland. It's also the first real Portlandly day, and I notice the world reigning in a little and people finding thoughtful quiet tones in the absence of sun. I have been hiking, exploring, camping, and some reading and writing (not enough). I even injured my finger -- probably broke it. Portland reminds me of a Western Greenwich Village, or Williamsburg, NY. Lot's of "cool areas" or "ecclectic neighborhoods" as they are described, which are really streets where 8-10 blocks are dedicated to groups of restaurants, pubs, cafes and galleries. They are tamped tightly into small, ancient buildings, or alleyways, or behind buildings, even a small building with a trailer behind where crepes are made.

My bedroll is in the basement of a house on Sumner and 29th, a nice home with a large garden full of tomatoes and plenty of things going on, parties, birthdays, outtings, church, what not. I saw a rat run across Alberta yesterday, stealing from South to North for a new life. People get along here. A man struck up a conversation with a lady at Concordia Coffee and they talked for over an hour while their dogs played beneath them. Then they sat together outside with another lady and laughed like English gentility.

There were two job offers, for those who really care. I turned one down, in effect, by calling up and saying I'd like to learn the business and learn sailing, since the guy had a sailboat. Probably didn't sound very eager. I haven't heard back. The other was more "we'll use you for various jobs that come up" which is more my speed and frees up time to write. I think of that movie, The Misfits, where Clark Gable keeps saying "it beats wages!" He sure was a funny old bastard in that movie, always drunk and happy.

A Sad Day...

2006-09-05T10:25:00.000-07:00

Steve Irwin 1962-2006

My friend, whom I never met, died yesterday by rare stingray attack. Steve Irwin, aka, The Crocodile Hunter, took a deadly stab from an otherwise docile stingray yesterday while filming underwater.

“If ever he was going to go, we always said it was going to be the ocean. On land, he was agile, quick-thinking, quick-moving, and the ocean puts another element there that you have no control over," says friend and manager John Stainton.

Unrelated:

Watched DAVID HOROWITZ on C-Span last night (in Portland, he would only be on at 2AM) giving a speech at Duke University. His is a book I need to pick up. Amazing 2 hours - the only other conservative I have seen take on a whole auditorium of liberal students was William F. Buckley.

PICS, pics, pics

2006-09-02T12:08:00.000-07:00

Lot's of totally random pictures.

Sisters, Oregon. Second stop on my way to P-Town.

Random pics of Sisters I took today. I'm a crappy photographer, I admit.

Chad, my host, toils at Sisters Coffee.

Left: is a '46 Willy's, which is the jeep my brother always wanted to build. So here's one already built to the hilt, parked by Mar-Val.

Below: A fox we trapped.

Above: Brett Waddle's Bronco - I rock-crawled this baby in Sierra Trek, it's the sweetest-assed Bronco ever! Check out the article.

This is Joe, my little bro, and his sweet jet. He just got captain so he can finally tell people what to do.

The Verb in Brooklyn, NY, where I hung out and wrote a lot of stuff. You can feel safer there than at alt.coffee in my opinion. The Verb is featured in my story New York Moses.

Skunk we trapped - any questions as to why the plastic?
Pagosa Springs, Co. Non-gay public baths are fun (Not that I've tried the other). They had 18 baths, all ranging from 80 to 112 degrees (the Lobster Pot).

Portland T-Chart

2006-08-26T21:13:00.000-07:00

Dear Leah (haven't done that in a while),

It occurred to me that I never did a T-chart for moving to Portland, so here it is. I don't have graphics, so it will have to be pluses and minuses:

Pluses: Old houses with wood floors and squeaky doors, urban but cheap living, organic co-op gardens (I hope), walking distance to libraries and cafe's which has never been the case, Christian hippies, communal living, lots of cool churches in the area, okay to be myself and to have a dream instead of a good job with a title, married and rich (not that there's anything wrong with those things), maybe I'll meet a nice chick up there you never know; lot's of art, writers are not looked at as people who should get jobs, I can still snowboard, except now add to that salmon fishing, the ocean, Seattle is closer, Hood Canal, Uncle Wes, crabbing, oysters, all seafood, maybe I can get in shape; it will be my town because no family lives there, so it's my idea to live there. If I get licensed to wire houses, there'll be tons of work, right? Because it's so hard to get licensed? Rain, gotta love rain.

Minuses: Big pay cut, gotta face it; might take a month to get licensed to wire houses -- which maybe I'll just give that up altogether and write and shlep coffee somewhere, which will mean big pay cut, gotta face it; New, I hate being new, I have to sit quietly and hear stories of all the things people did before I was around and it takes about two years to be somewhere long enough to be in a story; hard to keep up with young, witty, smart people; Christian walk isn't what it used to be in seminary -- do I need to be perfect first, or can I grow while up there? Seattle is closer (where Dad lives) and I'll be obligated to see him, which might be good in the end; along those lines, I still have to face all my demons; Rain, who likes rain?

Portland might be a whole new epoch for me, and I'm open to it, heck, I'm excited. I feel like Ethan Hawke when he fanagled his way to Mars, except, like Ethan, I'm pretty much cheating my way along. I ain't the real thing. First educated one in my family. Come from working class, gentile-type, loggers and deli-owning immigrants. Everyone wonders about me, everyone has a suggestion about what I should be. "You should be a chef. You should move to Ireland. You should start an alarm company." Nope, I'm satisfied driving around, chasing work, writing my short stories, novels, scripts, plays, blog entries, etc. Some get published, most don't, and that's cool.

Hey, I've already met some cool people up there, namely Chad, who seems like that guy who comes over and drags your depressed ass out of bed, splashes water on you, and makes you go hit the town, and you feel better for it. He goes to Evergreen Life, which is a church that meets at the Luckly Lab brewery and consists of lots of community houses and what not -- all interesting things we tried doing years back but never got off the ground. I'll be checking in with Chad next week, then borrowing his room, while he's out of town, and scoping out the scene up there. At least I can see if it's for me and God can't steer a parked car, so I'll move around a little and see where He steers. So far my whole summer has gone as planned, I just haven't made near as much money as I thought. haha.

The road from Cool to Auburn...

2006-08-24T16:24:00.000-07:00

...goes down three miles and back up three and has fifty billion curves, some 15mph, some 10, and so I see this log truck down at the bottom nudging his way up towards Auburn and he's totally full of huge, long logs, I count like 28, and he's in first gear because he can't go any faster than about one mile-per-hour all the way up the hill out of Auburn Ravine

...and in my CD rotation for about the last five years has been this CD, by lauryn hill, which I love (except that now it's starting to skip) and it's a double, and most of the songs reveal some kind of Christian transformation, just by her mention of God and so many Christian tag words and even some scriptures...

(by the way, instead of buying a new CD, I'll hold on to this one, like when my sister's record player batteries ran low and she wouldn't let anyone replace them, but instead, would hold on tightly and all you could hear was, "puuuuuufffff ttthhheeeeee maaaaggggiiiiccc Drrraaaaggggooooonnnnn..." in that slo-mo voice... that's how I am sometimes about things I should let go of.)

So I watch this truck, like he's huge, going one mile-an-hour with cars stacking up behind him, and start to think, "what are my logs? what am I hauling 28 of that I can let go and let roll down the hill because I'm going one mile-per-hour sometimes, but not to a logyard?" This is a stretch, but maybe it's Jesus' job to be a log truck and to haul our shit up the Ravine, three miles to Auburn, where dozens of banks competed with Placerville to store the most gold about 150 years ago, not that that's related, but a lot of gold must have been trudged up that same hill.

Maybe Jesus wants the job, which I often do myself, and just about the time the truck comes to the passing lane and lets all of us zippy, unburdened cars drive by, Lauryn says, "your will is a gift and everytime you submit your will to somebody else, a part of you dies." Which she's right when she puts it that way, and I think a lot of me had died many times.

***

Here's me and my FZ1, which I sold a month ago, but I long to ride her again, my baby, 135 mph up many curvy roads and long highways and pass many log trucks along the way. That's my riding buddy's Virago next to me. I'll try to scare up a picture of her, too...here's Debzers. I miss those days, especially Deb's homemade birthday card with "mathosaurus" stickers on it, 'cause she's a huge math genius/auditor for some outfit in Denver - props girl!

Writing and Jetskiing

2006-08-20T15:39:00.000-07:00

I'm writing a new script. Details later, but I wrote 68 pages in two days, all of which have to be dumped already. It's a comedy and I put some funny, comedic scenes in, but that damned thing that all scripts require, Plot, crept in and ruined everything. Not that all movies today even have one. I see quickly why so many Adam Sandler movies have odd, out-of-place elements dropped into act I, one's where you already see the payoff, or it's so obvious that you're now looking for a payoff and can't focus on the plotless plot. It's writing, folks. You have to "give people what they expect in ways they never expected." So here's one big prob, I need my copy of Story, known as the screenwriter's bible, which is in a box in Colorado. Anyone wanna go by EJ's and ruffle through my boxes looking for it? Just kidding. I'll pick up a paperback somewhere.

My little brother and I went jetskiing last Sunday. Here's a few pics.

In case you're wondering, we rented the Seadoo RXT and the Yamaha VX110.

MTV Trivia Question

2006-08-12T09:28:00.000-07:00

In honor of MTV's 25th anniversary, I'm posting my answer to the question "what was the 2nd video ever played on MTV?" Most people have heard the first video was "Video Killed the Radio Star" by the Buggles. According to this link, the second was Pat Benatar's "You Better Run." Do you remember your first time watching MTV? (and it'd better not be Real World!!!)

"Fifteen Men..."

2006-08-05T18:20:00.000-07:00

Finished Treasure Island today, and here's a snippit from one of my favorite parts. Young Jim Hawkins mistakenly falls into the pirates' camp by night and here is defended by their captain, Long John Silver...

"That's your sort, is it?" he added, returning his pipe to his mouth. "Well, you're a gay lot to look at, anyway. Not much worth to fight, you ain't. P'r'aps you can understand King George's English. I'm cap'n here by 'lection. I'm cap'n here because I'm the best man by a long sea-mile. You won't fight as gentlemen o' fortune should; then, by thunder, you'll obey, and you may lay to it! I like that boy, now; I never seen a better boy than that. He's more a man than any pair of rats of you in this here house, and what I say is this: let me see him that'll lay a hand on him - that's what I say, and you may lay to it." p. 179

Burning Man Project 2006

2006-08-02T14:26:00.000-07:00

Dear Princess Leah,
Okay, there it is. Burning Man, 2006. One week, 40,000 people, one desert, thousands of theme-camps, a thunderdome*, a full-size pirate ship, masses of painted people, no rules, and one giant wooden man to be set ablaze. And me? I'm 200 miles from where they have it. I have to go right? It's the rules. Tickets are $250. Hey, it's an experience. So, for the sake of this decision, your comments will sway me. Of course, all are invited to come join.

The thing is, some people think the Burning Man is a big pagan, pot smoking bash, and they're not entirely wrong. But then I came across this article, and it put things in better perspective. I emailed that guy and asked if I could meet and hang out with his group. The thing is, I'm not going to stand by and condemn the artistic expression, and hopefully, they'll understand that I want to help minister, but also to join in at some level, so long as I'm not joining in what I feel is sin.

*Thunderdome: right when I wrote that word, the girl behind the counter at It's A Grind said "Mad Maxx" while naming drinks off to a customer. A sign! Or not! How did she know to say Mad Maxx right when I was writing the word Thunderdome? Wow, is all I have to say. In case you don't know how the two are related, see here.

Recent movies: Miami Vice ***, Pirates ****, Cold Mountain ****
Currently reading: On Writing, Stephen King; Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson.

New Author Fotos

2006-07-23T17:09:00.000-07:00

Allen Ginsberg
“Bearded robots drink from Uranium coffee cups on Saturn's ring. May 1990”
— American Sentences

The ol' bastard who taught his class looked just like this, a true fan. "Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps most fatal to true happiness." Bertrand Russell, Nobel Prize 1950

Blog Review from Her Highness

2006-07-23T16:51:00.000-07:00

"You are fantastic." - Princess Leah of Aldaraan.

(Princess Leah now secretly works as a barista somewhere in Colorado. A Blog Review from her should be esteemed as highly as the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Pulitzer, or the Nebula Award for Science Fiction.)

life survey (I'll finish the other post later)

2006-07-23T15:50:00.000-07:00

Copy and place an X by all the things you've done, or remove the X from the ones you have not, and send it to all of your friends (including me). This is for your entire life.

(x...) Smoked a cigarette
(xxx) Drank so much you threw up
( ) Crashed a friend's car
( ) Stolen a car
(xxxxxx) Been in love
(xxxxxx) Been dumped
(xxxxxxxxxx) Shoplifted candy
(xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) Been laid off/fired
(x) been in a fist fight
(xxxxxxx) Snuck out of your parent's house
(x) Had feelings for someone who didn't have them back (one x, because I never asked most of them, so you never know)
( ) Been arrested
( ) Gone on a blind date
(x) Lied to a friend (I must have, don't remember though)
(MMXXX) Skipped school (I wonder how it must have sounded to all those people "Sheppard. Sheppard. Sheppard. Sheppard...")
(xx) Seen someone die (seen people get hurt so bad they probably died, but didn't witness the actual dying)
(x, eh) Been to Canada (Canoed there, got out and walked around just to say we'd been. Boundary Waters, MN)
(XX's) Been to Mexico (Again, don't remember, but some think I was born there and was smuggled out)
(x) Been on a plane (see above)
( ) Been lost (told to get lost? xxxxxxx)
(x) Been on the opposite side of the country (been on every side of it)
(x) Gone to Washington, DC (Easy to get lost on them streets - although, if you see above, I've never been lost)
(xxxxx) Swam in the ocean (Both)
(gas-ex) Felt like dying
(xxoo) Cried yourself to sleep (over a girl)
( ) Played cops and robbers (Has anyone ever played this?)
(x) Recently colored with crayons (colored pencils)
(x) Sang karaoke? (Always - Anyone game?)
(x) Paid for a meal with only coins (wouldn't call it a meal, but tortillas are free at Chevy's)
(x) Done something you told yourself you wouldn't (Ordered the large)
(x) Made prank phone calls
(x) Laughed until some kind of beverage came out of your nose (My friend Jason had a Cup-O-Noodles noodle come out of his nose)
(x) Caught a snowflake on your tongue
( ) Danced in the rain (Nope, missed Woodstock by a few years)
( ) Written a letter to Santa Claus
(xyz) Been kissed under the mistletoe (can't remember, but it must have happened once)
( ) Watched the sun rise with someone you care about (if they cared about you, why did they wake you up?)
(x) Blown bubbles (hell yea, man!)
(x) Made a bonfire on the beach (too many times)
(x) Crashed a party (Haven't we all?)

Any nicknames? (ummmm. Sure.)
any piercing?? (pierced my ear once, mom wouldn't let me in the house with the earring on.)
How much do you love your job? (What's my job?)
What day is it? (Sunday, amen)
Current home? (I live out of my car - haha)
FAVORITE VACATION SPOT: (San Fran, Tahoe)
Ever been to Africa? (Does Suffolk count?)
Ever steal any traffic signs? (Stole an a-frame caution light and used it to pull cars over. Weed does strange things to the 16 year-old mind)
Ever been in a car accident? (A couple)
2 Door or 4 Door? (2 door both times)
Salad dressing? (Salad's bad for you)
Favorite pie? (blackberry, of course - call it a blood thing)
Favorite number? ("5," Speed Racer's number. What kind of name was that anyway? "Speed-Racer" - it's so 2nd language, like #1 Super Great Chinese!!! Hahahahaha.)
FAVORITE HOLIDAY? (Christmas)
Favorite food? (Indian)
Favorite day of the week? (I like Friday, maself)
FavoriteToothpaste? (Tom's All Natural. Hey, what if the whole dental industry was lying to us, and plaque was actually good for your teeth, like a protective layer? I'll get my people right on that one)
Favorite smell? (Spring rain, curry, cut grass, this shirt I found in my suitcase once and realized it was my cousin's girlfriend's but it smelled like WOMAN and I loved it, women.)
What do you do to relax? (sleep; public baths - okay I did once, but they were springs, and coed, and not gay)
A Message to your friends reading this? (Hey y'all, weather's great, be back in a month or so)
How do you see yourself in 10 years? (Thin, married, then fat again - haha)
What do you enjoy receiving? (letters written in big, bubbly girl-hand; Compliments on my writing, actually that one should be first; invitations to exclusive things, that should be first, then compliments, then letters. Money. Wait. Make money second, after compliments, then letters, then invitations.)
Furthest place you will send this message? (you never know with these computer contraptions)
Who will respond the fastest? (I'm putting it on my blog, so the three people who read it will probably respond.)
Least likely to respond? (Everyone else)

Arrived in CA, and...

2006-07-15T21:52:00.000-07:00

...everyone's sitting in the same chairs I left them in. However, some chairs are higher and more mighty than before. Case in point: my brother comes up to Mom's waving a DVD called "The Secret," which has no actors, writers, producers or directors written on the DVD case, just "Property of Prime Time International" or some shit. Basically, I'm closed minded, stupid and evil if I don't sit and watch the whole damned thing, so I do, and it's behaviorism repackaged as I suspected, with a huge production budget. It's all stuff I basically agree with - you are what you think, you can create your own attitude, you can visualize success or failure - except they attribute all power to a giant "Universe" where I would call it "God." One reason is "Universe" appeals to a wider audience because it has an all-inclusive, even-sci-fi-nerds-are-welcome, ring. "God" is limited, closed-minded, in-the-box thinking.

The problem is, God created the mind. Some would say we are sustained within God's thoughts, i.e., "in Him we live and move and have our being." And these ideas are not original. They are old as the dirt which now contains most of thier authors. The big appeal with "The Secret" was money. How can I get more money? It's enough that you call your new thing "The Secret..." More later, my brother's coming...

Just Keeping it Real

2006-07-10T00:22:00.000-07:00

Dear Princess Leah,

My brother called from California saying, what's new in your life? and I said I'll tell you what's new: I took off my shorts to go to bed and went ahead and dropped my boxers, too, and now am a nude-sleeper. I never knew one change could make such a difference in my overall well being. I have decided to remain a nude-sleeper for the rest of my life!

loneliness

2006-07-09T23:42:00.000-07:00

loneliness is like two bullfrogs mating in a dried out creek bed off Mission Boulevard. loneliness reminds me of the big green trout that sat in the same place in Lake Ralphine and wouldn't let anyone catch him no matter what manner of fishing device they used. loneliness is like the man who fished there everyday with corn and ham, by the pier where you rent pedal boats. loneliness is like the day I had to clean up my room and found an old chocolate Easter bunny and took a small bite because it was going to have to last all day. earth is lonely.

2006-07-09T23:35:00.000-07:00

Gee, You're So Beautiful That It's Starting To Rain

Richard Brautigan

Oh, Marcia,

I want your long blonde beauty
to be taught in high school,
so kids will learn that God
lives like music in the skin
and sounds like a sunshine harpsicord.
I want high school report cards
to look like this:

Playing with Gentle Glass Things
A

Computer Magic
A

Writing Letters to Those You Love
A

Finding out about Fish
A

Marcia's Long Blonde Beauty
A+!

Dead Author Photos

2006-07-08T14:54:00.000-07:00

Dear Leah,

I'm beginning a collection of my favorite authors, or famous ones who aren't necessarily my favorites, in funny or odd positions.

Can you guess who this is?

None other than Pygmalian scribe, George Bernard Shaw. I did a monologue in high school from that play. I was 'Enry 'Iggins, and said something like "the angels will weap for you!" to RaeAnn, a chick I knew from all the way back in kindygarden, who always sort of looked cute and became a cute, teenaged, rocking smoker. RaeAnn played Eloiza Dooli'lle. When it was over, I got much the usual response, but I'll never forget my costar. She was dark and had big brown sad eyes and tiny patterns of black hair coursing all over her skin.

I'd keep writing, but Shaw's buttcrack has turned into a vortex of creativity.

Dear Leah,

2006-07-08T14:08:00.002-07:00

This is how my new posts will start, since you're the only one who reads my blog. If anyone else reads, then prove it by leaving a comment!

Dear Leah, I'm planning a trip to California to work for some alarm outfit and tile my mom's bathrooms, which are still under construction after three years. From there to Seattle to hang out and kill salmon, but not before I visit Portland, my someday new town.

Too bad we couldn't all go to the Ren Faire in Larkspur. If I heard all you girls were going in Elizabethan costume, I'd fly back, because oh, the humanity!

Here's a list by Jack Kerouac called

"Belief and Technique for Modern Prose"

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your
own joy
* 2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
* 3. Try never get drunk outside yr [sic] own house
* 4. Be in love with yr [sic] life
* 5. Something that you feel will find its own form
* 6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
* 7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
* 8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
* 9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
* 10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
* 11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
* 12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
* 13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
* 14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
* 15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
* 16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
* 17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
* 18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
* 19. Accept loss forever
* 20. Believe in the holy contour of life
* 21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
* 22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better
* 23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
* 24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language &
knowledge
* 25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
* 26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
* 27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
* 28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under,
crazier the better
* 29. You're a Genius all the time
* 30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

Dear Leah, if you prefer to remain anonymous, then leave a COMMENT!!! and I'll address my blog back to my friend, the Middle Distance.

My New Honda Elephant

2006-07-01T13:05:00.000-07:00

At least, that's the custom license plate I'm getting.

And this is what I want to do to it....

I almost bought an orange one from the dealer, but it was rough inside, and the salesman was a boner. These guys are all the same. They know nothing about the car they've been selling for three years. They can't answer one question, everything's in the paperwork back in my office, we'll check that out when we get back. It's just a car, man. Let's talk numbers.

The Silver one I had to drive to the 'Springs for, but it was worth the trip. I met a nice young couple and saw their magnificient house and she was hard pressed to let the new car go and settle for their Honda Civic 4wd wagons, both 15 years old.

Update

2006-06-28T23:40:00.000-07:00

Ebay sales: Tipping $3,000
Motorcyle sold: $4,700
Truck: No takers
Element purchase: Pending
Soul: Crushed

Life beats down and crushes the soul, and Art reminds you that you have one.

2006-06-19T01:44:00.000-07:00

- Stella Adler

Clay Retreat Last Weekend

2006-06-15T01:25:00.000-07:00

Had a great time in Podunk Egypt last weekend. Here is a pic of the crib we rented:

It was awesome, needless to say, and we hung out and did spiritual looking stuff, like have Bible studies and heard sermons. It's sort of funny when you're cracking jokes with someone and five minutes later, he's preaching a sermon from his lawn chair right in front of you, but that was the format, and, as usual, I wasn't in charge.

There wasn't much going on around our cabin, but it didn't matter. Between eating, talking, playing games and enjoying sermons, there wasn't much time for anything else, like art. I brought my new set of oil paints, intending to try my hand at a medium I've been scared to try for years, but the opportunity never came. Instead, we went around the room drawing M&M's from a cup and telling stories based on their colors.

Funny, if you look around at other blogs, many people are blogging now, suddenly, after long hiatuses (hiati? No, that would be too close to Haiti), long periods of not writing. I guess it's time to chime in for everybody.

Ebay

2006-06-15T01:10:00.000-07:00

So I sold like $1,000 worth of junk on eBay this week and it's all going away, including my awesome subwoofer and my killer backpack, which my mom paid $300 for 8 years ago on my birthday. Sorry, mom, it's gotta go. I'm also selling my V-Amp II for pennies on the dollar. Now there's a gadget! Hundreds of sounds for your guitar so you can sound real cool when you're playing in a band, which I don't do anymore. Plus it looks cool. (By the way, you're welcome to check out any of my auctions and bid) I had so much junk that people wanted, alarm crap from the last 7 years piled up in boxes. I arranged it all in groups and took pictures and people bid like thirty, forty bucks for them. eBay rules! I've tried to buy off eBay, but I always lose in the last second.

Review of First Chapter of How the Irish Saved Civilization, by Thomas Cahill

2006-06-14T13:29:00.000-07:00

This is a book I've been afraid of since 1995, when I first tried to read it. Any book that begins by quoting Aristophiclesamayaphus in Latin first, then English for us dummies; any book that names dozens of rivers, valleys, cities and people of history, who are all dead, renamed, forgotten or built on by people who don't care, have never heard of, or just haven't studied that far into it; any book that takes two to three readings of each paragraph before you can swallow that the author is just trying to say that the Irish are forgotten, neglected, picked on, and underappreciated; any book that uses words like pussillanimity; I avoid.

But, years later, I have had a few history classes, read a bit, and know that Charlamagne was a tall guy, and the Roman Empire fell, slowly, for many different reasons. I'm a little more prepared, but still lost, and the paragraphs still look like Chinese the first and second readings through. However, on the third and fourth readings, there are some powerful revelations from Cahill. He says, quoting Edward Gibbon, that the decline of the Roman Empire was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. They were so great, they stopped being great. Poets and artists grew in fame as their writing declined to bland, predictability. The government was top-heavy and existed for self-preservation. The old ideals of what it meant to be Roman were no longer clear, and fewer outsiders wanted to be Roman. The military no longer attracted high nobility, but anyone willing to live the hard life for a pittance. Rich landowners ruled politicians and the poor. And, because of all this, the Barbari, the barbarians, and their bands of raiders, stood at the gates.

Sound like a country we know?

Can't wait to swim through chapter 2, even though it feels like drying concrete.

I Don't Want to Do Anything Today

2006-06-09T12:51:00.000-07:00

This is one of those days where you wish it would start raining or something so at least there's a reason not to go outside, but as of right now, there's no reason not to go outside and do something, I just don't want to. It would be good for me. But I don't want to. What's wrong with being genuinely happy, without having to "do" something? I can do something to feel happy and useful, but I just don't want to. I don't want to do anything. People know this about me. They say have you figured out what you want to do? And I say no. Most people, if I ask them, don't know what they want to do either. Can't we just do nothing? Why do we have to do something? Why do we need a title? I'm a lawyer. I'm a doctor. I'm a pastor. I'm a mechanic. I repair commercial espresso makers for Starbucks and I've got it made. I'm a baker, and I sell my pasties directly to delis all over Colorado. I'm a barrista. I'm a writer. I'm an artist. Those careers are usually questioned, unlike doctor and lawyer. We all know what doctor and lawyer mean, but when you say I'm a writer, I'm an artist, the natural progression is, have you had anything published? Are you actually successful, or did your mom tell you your writing was good and you call yourself a writer based solely on that?

Sixty Bucks

2006-06-01T20:51:00.000-07:00

Today I got to work and realized, after unpacking my truck and moving everything into the house, that I had left tools in Arizona. This bugged me because they are perfectly good tools. The reality of my chances of ever seeing them again rushed into my head and showed on my face. I was enraged. I called the people in Arizona who said they hadn’t seen them, which was a waste of cellular minutes. I looked through my truck, which was also a waste of time. I told “Sparky” I’ll be back after I go and buy tools that I already own so watch my stuff, and if anyone tries to load it in their truck go ahead and help them, and we always tell each other that, jokingly, see ya in a few, bye.

I drove to my house, where I usually live, but I rented my room out to some girl, so I have to sneak around when I go there because I actually don’t live there. On my way, I yelled at God several times, my main point being that He is kicking me when I am down because I am down right now for several reasons, but won’t go into that now. I got to my house and I knew going in that the bag and toolbox I left there this morning didn’t contain my missing tools, but I stomped into the garage anyway, checked for my missing tools, then stomped out.

Next stop, Home Depot. I bought my tools all over again. The hammer was twenty and the stapler was thirty. I picked up some staples and a diet coke. Sixty bucks.

Damnit, I hate to leave Arizona

2006-05-29T02:29:00.000-07:00

It's almost foreign, this keyboard, after months and months of not writing, not even typing, barely hen-pecking emails and running. And now that many of my friends who were never self-proclaimed writers are out-writing me, I guess it means I have given up writing. C'est la vie! Instead, I'm working. I work. Work comforts me. It's making money, with other men. We work and then eat and drink together, and talk about work, then we go to bed and get up and growl and gnarl at each other and pile in our trucks to do more work. Work.

What do working men talk about?

Peter about his ex and how she's trying to screw him over their house and daughter. Steve about computers and satellites and technology and mother boards and this friend we have in common who was a complete snake. Ben talks about chicks. George (pronounced Hor-Hay) barely talks inglee, but blathers on in Spick to his woman and his helper and they take over whatever room they inhabit and speak Spick and laugh out loud like they were cracking jokes about us crackers, and we know they are.

We’re putting Lottery satellites on the roofs of 7 Eleven’s and grocery stores so their system can communicate better and so people can buy tickets faster and spend more money on the dream. And this is Vsat work, which pays a lot more than going to some guy’s house and putting the little satellite dish on his wall and running cable and lighting up 438 stations, 400 of which he’ll never look at. That stuff pays “shit,” but Vsat pays four times as much, and you can do as many as you want per day. It’s good enough that people drive here from Virginia and transplant their lives and say goodbye to their families and rent a nicer house than they have at home and sit by the pool and smoke.

So we sit around and smoke, me by second hand, and bitch and eat meat, because there are no women to make sure we eat our greens, and the pool is warm, 85 degrees, and the air is 110 in the shade, and this is great work. My first day, we got on a roof with an 8 foot parapet wall and sat on the wall and hoisted shit up thirty feet and over the side and back down and kept doing it until we had the dish, the mount, and cinder blocks sitting there. Then there’s running the cable, unboxing all the boxes of Lottery crap, plugging it all together, pointing the dish, fine tuning it so you get a passing grade, then power it all up and you’re done. 6 hours. Then you travel to another site and do it again. Then there’s the paperwork, the redundant computer work, the picture uploads to prove you did it, then you take all the old systems back and load up a moving van once a week with new boxes, which is an all-day job. It’s about 15 hours a day plus.

But if that gets you down, don’t worry, it’s great work, and the chicks are hot. Very hot. They sizzle. They’re even beautiful looking at them through their spit in your eyes. They’re gorgeous, rude creatures with the indifference of sleeping, caged tigers and plenty to be rude about. There are no guys down here. Just dropouts and Mexicans. Very few rockstars and pro athletes to go around. But we regular guys can look. They can’t take that away. So they look back with smug, rude faces and smile and say, “could you catch the windows, please?” and you say, “sorry, I don’t work here, ma’am,” and they say, “oh,” as the window slides back up.

Then there was this older woman from South Africa. She was proud of her chest and made it known, and Ben competed with a strange, torn-shirt wearing little man for her affections (I posted a pic, but took it down last minute - available by request). I guess even the elderly are hot down here. Maybe they don't know better. They don't know that you can eat and be fat and not exercise or play tennis or have sensational legs at 60. There are no buffets. The grocers sell health food. Fried chicken is rare, and I still haven't seen a KFC. It's a different culture. It's brand new cars, no windows rolled down because everyone has AC, and the stores are all huge and new. Costco is the biggest I've ever seen. The Costco women are even hot, which is odd. I was in a convenience store with a McDonald's inside, and the girl working there was hot. And they're all mean, so it balances out.

So this guy, Lee, came to help us out. He’s so pure Indian it’s scary. He even talks in that jerky, Indian cadence, where each sentence sounds like a fireside story, and his ponytail hangs down to his ass, and he can scale a ladder up to a roof like nothing. I keep waiting for him to produce a knife and grab my hair and swipe me clean, leaving a glistening, white skull. But he has a couple kids and needs the work. He’s Cherokee-Navajo, from Northeast Oklahoma.

Well, that about completes the list of things. Except that I invented a motorcycle cup holder for when you go to Starbucks on your motorcycle and want to take it home. I’m working out the kinks, because the other day I got mocha all over my FZ1.

See how happy my bike is down here???

After Chapter One of To Own a Dragon...

2006-02-19T14:27:00.000-08:00

To Own a Toyota Hilux

It’s 6:06 AM and I never fall asleep but feel a little sickly, so no better time than now to drop an Airborne into a glass of water and watch it fizz. I swab out my ears with a Qtip, not much on either end, but I see a book of matches and light it up, the Qtip, thinking it would look like a flaming Hawaian pugil stick, but it barely ignites, and poofs out. And this makes me think about voice, and I wonder about mine, and if I’ll ever have a writers’ voice and what will it sound like, and where do I fit in literature today, if Donald Miller fits where he does, and will my voice ever sound as friendly and funny as Don’s, or will I always be humourously distant and pugilistic and poof out?

I think how does Don pull so much glass-is-half-full crap out of his past, and how is the glass, in fact, half full, or is he kidding himself, and his audience? I think why is my glass neither half-full nor half-empty, but cracked from the dishwasher’s rinse cycle because it was put between pots and pans.

I can write happiness. I can make up stories about how greatly it benefitted me to drive my ’72 Toyota Hilux with a bed so rusted out from fifteen years of pool chemicals and muratic acid that the tailgate falls off in traffic, and the window lies shattered in pea-sized chunks on the bottom of the door, and how I lost the key, so I have to start it with the "roach clips and wire from the battery to the coil, and a screwdriver across the starter terminals" trick.

I can draw positive conclusions out of those days, like wax out of my ears, and satisfy any Christian’s ears. But it wouldn’t be sincere nor deal with the reality that maybe I am no closer to understanding life now as I was on Brush Creek Road with my rusty tailgate bouncing down the street towards the hood of a 500SL.

Reality isn’t chock full of funny stories. It’s full of dearth and measuring up short against the insatiable world, it’s my little brother the first day with his license, hitting a retarded old woman with his truck and her dying and the cops being lenient because of no priors, and him never being quite the same since.

My life is about being punched and too confused to hit back.

There were no mentors, MR. Miller, just a few boyfriends in my mom’s bed in the mornings and getting water from next door when it gets shut off. It was finding an used rubber in the street by my house, stealing a box of rusted nails to work on my fort, it was friends who stuck around until their folly came out and that was the end of the freindship. And it was a trip to Dad’s for a month that turned into two, then three, then four years of living hell, of being a limbless punching bag and a mute tampon soaking up one man’s wrath toward his mother. I didn’t starve for a father figure. I didn’t ask the steam shovel “are you my father?” I hated fathers, mine and everyone’s. Men, for that matter, and most of all myself. I could find the back door of every man, where he snuck all his shit out so you couldn’t see. Every man had a pile of deception stacked outside his back door, and eventually that’s where I started with people, straight for their back door, not through the front.

I checked the back doors of churches and the allys between pastors, and the one’s with new Volvos and new Saabs always have a box-full there. Do I long for a bunch of great guys to whom I can submit and grow under and whose wisdom I can gleen and possibly rejuvinate parts of my stagnate soil? Yes. So I call a guy, a pastor I kinda like, and cast him on the water, as it goes, and he calls right back (three months later) wanting help on his house and a good deal on speakers.

Mentors aren’t listening, or I’ve not read the signs, or something, but he was the guy who wrote that “More Time With Fewer People” article I liked so much, and maybe I was wanting to sample that. Yes, I had cute moments with church people, pestering them and hiding my desparate need for attention from a male figure, but with different outcomes. Most church personnel aren’t sweet like David Gentile. Most want to assimilate you into place, starting with a signed faith confession and an intro class, and a trip to camp where you have some touch, feely, crumple-up-the-list-of-sins-and-throw-them-on-the-bonfire experience, and come home saved, just like everyone else, ready for Christianity 102, Traditions & Paradigms.

For me, Christianity isn’t some epiphany and a copy of Pat Robertson’s “Secret Kingdom,” but a maze through a thousand inert human sandtraps and the only thing driving you for ten years is one glimpse of truth you had, past them trees, and you want more. Every man of God, every Amway distributor and every friend in between is a self-employed harbinger swinging hay hooks to get a good purchase on your thigh, so to hook bone, and help you along the path of becoming just like them. But the irony is you want to be just like them, just like anyone but you, because you can’t, since the days you drove that rusty Toyota Hilux, make two dots and draw aline between them without the first one moving.

Do I sound like a walking volume of pathologies? I don’t blame you for already thinking that, but I’m not, really. I actually do good and am a decent, flawed Christian. I could become perfect if a few things went away, and they might, and my whole life would be half-full, like yours. At that point I’d have a decision to make. Do I retract everything I’ve ever written and destroy it, or do I start anew, painting white stripes on all the black experiences, or do I quit writing altogether, and start a landscaping business? For what does it profit a man to gain the world and lose his writing voice.

Sometimes this whole emergent thing, I think, is it really new? Or just a trip back to square one for me, a short trip to full-circle? Because, shamefully, I don’t need a book on pop culture to know what roach clips are, or why I need them to hotwire my Toyota Hilux. Is it an exercise in learning all the precise notes of religion, then growing some form of soul patch and long surfer hair and forgetting them? Because I just stopped treading and stood up and saw I was right where I started, on the beach in two feet of water, and I may recall some notes along the way, for when I have to "emerge" back into Christianese, but they’ll be less like Blue Jazz and more like dissonance.

I'm like Peter with his buddies back at the fishing nets after the long ordeal, after three denials, and this whole thing was just one big silly adventure, until you have this last controversial Chapter 21 in John, and breakfast with Jesus by the fire, which some scholars think was written by imposters.

I had breakfast with Jesus. It’s years ago, and I’m numbly reposing in a deep mire of self-unworth. The people around me put three bucks in their tank and buy used tires and have no education because college is for better people who come through and teach us stuff and leave. My tires get so bald that they pop and my dad says Go find a tire outfit that will let you wash windows for a set of radials. Which I do, calling every number in the book until this girl puts me through to the owner of a huge, thirty-store chain. The owner says Go pick out some tires and they’ll mount them if you say I sent you, and I say thank you, thank you. Tend my lambs.

Now I have brand new tires, expensive tires, and no one knows what to say. They look at me with a sense of fear, because I crossed into some forbidden, lucky zone, or grabbed a bar and raised myself up a notch, and where will he be in a month? they wonder. I work the tires off and there are more windows, and the lady has no desire for me to stop washing, so I get rims. Aluminum rims, swirly ones from a special catalogue customers haven’t seen yet, and I have to order them, and they put them on for a case of Coors Lights, and now I have swirling, shiny rims and black, new tires with deep tread, and mouths are agape. Shepherd my sheep.

I was a new man. I stayed up late sanding my Bronco and painting it, and I start filling my tank full of gas, instead of putting three bucks in at a time, and I applied to colleges and got in and at age 23, not a moment too soon, I’m out of there, never to look back, or take up a squeegy again. Tend my sheep.

I'm convinced...

2006-02-18T21:45:00.000-08:00

...that my middle school is possessed by evil spirits. Just today I read how a small group of six girls called "the Rooks" have plotted to kill the assistant principle with rat poison, or by luring her into the woods to beat her to death. Times sure have changed since I went there, from1981-1983. We did have some noticeable pathologies, mostly girls, however. One girl, Rose, had a total freak-out attack one day and started crying and manifesting. She was sure her friend was going to die or be killed. I was part of a class called GATE, where we talked and talked and talked about I still don't know what, and some people did wierd things in that class to get attention. Two of my classmates died, Chris and Christie, and one teacher had a special discussion of it and drew the connection between their names, Christ. I wasn't listening until she said that, so I'm not sure what she was trying to say. Most of my time was spent sitting at the big round table in the back of class and scrubbing dandruff out onto my Peechee folder.

Diarrhea Names revised list

2005-12-29T19:11:00.000-08:00

1. Liquid Bummer
2. Projected Picasso
3. Dispeptic Diaspora
4. Mushu Melange
5. Flailing Acid
6. Slinging Hot Tiramisu
7. Splattering Acid Stew
8. Mad Muffin Soup
9. Burning Gall Spraint
10. Cactus Enema
11. Liquid Cactus
12. Homage to Matisse
13. Burning Bumspray
14. Merde Mayhem

Poems I found in my truck:

2005-11-28T22:40:00.000-08:00

Poems I found in my truck:

I
Cannot
Recall things
Because my mind
Is not a safe place
For memories, or for
The names of men who worked at Primax five years ago.

Fibonacci

Walls, screws, lines, ten windows, a roof, wood, hay & stubble, seats and a steering wheel, fasteners, foam, a fire hydrant, a fence, a sidewalk, dead grass, a puddle of muddy water, a mound, a pit, a man, cracked chunks of concrete, windows, walls, screws, fasteners, and nails.

Biotron

It was so sleek and looked so good that I could never fully play with it the way it deserved, so I stared, like it was my mountain of marble. My brother got a stereo.

Christmas Tree

White globes of silk,
A string of lights,
Glass bulbs from a tissue filled box,
A package of tinsel,
An Angel with tiny red dots for eyes and a mouth.
It was better than a house full of feasting with strife.
I turned to Mom and said,
“Joey’s got nobody if I leave.”
I should have said that,
Twenty Christmas trees ago.

Moose

I remember him because he sold my brother a bag of shake
Which we smoked until our heads felt like they were in a vice
And he was large, like a moose, with the testosterone of ten.
Now he’s a butcher making scale, and brings cuts home to his
Mother, who’s the same size, and they’re both small.

Bill the Ferrier

He told us this story, looking out over our heads at God's face. “My wife died, but I have three sons, and I still love her, and I love her more each day.” His eyes sparkled as he went back to his rasping. He offered us a Coors from his cooler, and they’d rolled around so much in there that the “Coors” was rubbed off, and they looked like simple silver cans. His sons despised horseshoeing. They were tough, jowly, occidental featured kids with blonde heads.

Trick or treat

2005-10-31T18:14:00.000-08:00

1. Three ninjas (brothers)
2. some kind of princess
3. A doggy (2 year old from next door)
4. The numbers 1 and 2
5. "a person from France"
6. "I don't know" (kid with a hoody and a wig)
7. Fairy (Faery?)
8. Pteradactyl (and a good one at that)
9. Russian princess
10. a vampire, a witch and a cow! no implied theme.
11. another vampire, without her cape because it was too long and made her trip.
12. Five high school kids at 8:30 - one had no costume. "What are you?" "A high school student."

Thanksgiving

2005-10-25T22:50:00.000-07:00

If you ever Google-map a place, hit the little button that says "satellite" and watch in wonder. Every place you've ever lived has been photographed by satellite put on Google so that you can view it from as close as a thousand feet. So, the house I grew up in, 2114 Pueblo Court North, Santa Rosa, California, I can see anytime I want. It's 1/4 by 1/4 inches. I look up all kinds of places. There's a park in Eureka where we used to play and get lost in the tall Sequoias, and there was a huge, black locomotive parked there, with it's control arms and levers welded into place -- but it was still fun to climb on. You can see that train on Google satellite. No crap.

There was also this dairy we went to, not far from there, where we had cowpie fights and played in the rain, and a lady made the best tuna sandwiches I've ever had, still, to this day. It's all there, the Moxon Dairy, on Moxon Lane, in Arcata, California. I found a picture of a barn up the street. It looked just like the one we played in, except the roof was torn off, and the sun shined through it's dust-caked rafters. It was an old photo, circa 1977, and the caption read, "Roberts Barn, torn down in 1977." Moxon Dairy was down the street from Bay School Road, named after an ancient schoolhouse that some of the Moxon's lived in.

I learned a lot hanging around there. I learned that a cold engine will die, but not permanently. I learned how to ride a wild mustang. I learned how to shit outdoors, blow snot rockets, throw cowpies, play piano, pool and harmonica. There was a birthday party, my brother's, and a girl with braces got icing on her headgear and couldn't get it off. We used to go there for Thanksgiving, and there would be dozens of people, tons of food, and two or three birds and several pies. Word is, they still have it every year, although many of the old folks are dead and gone. I wonder how it would go. No phonecalls, no letters, just show up, Thanksgiving Day, almost thirty years later. I think I'll bring some kind of pie.

The Smell of Cedar

2005-08-06T16:13:00.000-07:00

The Smell of Cedar
Steve Sheppard
Sometimes a memory disappears inside a pile of tragedy and gets buried under six feet of slag. My first kiss was from a cowgirl in Oregon, and the only way I can remember is if I close my eyes, bury my head deep in cedar shavings, and breathe.
“Where the hell are we supposed to be?” Dad says.
“Barn Six,” Perry, my brother, says.
“Six?” Dad says out the window, and a man in a golf cart points and his mouth moves. I try to hear, but Charlie Daniels and a hundred other ambient sounds – hooves, loud speakers, vehicles, people – drown him out. Dad has a rapport with strangers that I still don’t understand. I don’t listen is why. I keep to the barns, help the help, work for Wayne, our horse trainer. We are up twenty-hour days at shows, Perry and I. Sometimes you get numb and concussed, like you were run over by a speeding golf cart.
“Where?” Perry says.
“Down there. There’s Wayne’s trailer. There’s Barn Six.”
Barn Six. Right by the arena. That’s where the show happens, and Dad’s on the planning committee. I think his title is Chief Planner and that allows him to strategically place people in barns. It’s a grown-up way of getting the best seat in the classroom. “Saul, disconnect. Perry, unload,” Chief Planner says, and I slide down the seat out of our Chevy Silverado and the Oregon air hits my face and bare shoulders like a hot breath. I had made all my t-shirts into muscle-shirts, which is where you rip the sleeves off and show your muscles, which I hadn’t any. But that was okay, because my rocker friend, Jimmy, says the muscle-shirt coolness carries limpy arms like Spandex carries any sized ass—plus, I have my rad scar, with the stitches still in, we’ll just call it a summer of accidents, but I have my rad scar and it looks like a scorpion with no claws, and I hope the girls notice.
Dad waits for me to pull the hitch release and grinds away, crunching and spitting gravel down the long road to somewhere else, but the brake lights light up and there’s a man who looks important. Hands jut out, how ‘ya doin’, good to see ya, place looks great, rapport, rapport. I figure that guy’s somehow like gold to Dad the way he stops and tosses him into a pan and swishes him around.
Perry crawls in and eases Monarch, our prized stallion, back down the ramp of our Miley four-horse. His hooves stomp the floor like short sledge hammers. He’s a brute and has the strength to lift a stall door off it’s hinges, which has done. Perry leads him into Barn Six, and we see Sandy, the oldest Galloway sister, and her horse, Blackjack. Both stallions tense up and plant feet, a sign that they’re ready to fight. Perry jerks the line, setting Monarch straight. Such is not necessary with Blackjack as Sandy heaves her stall door shut, separating the horses.
Sandy Galloway is a short and sturdy blonde who uses two hands for everything, even holding a brush, or shaking hands. It’s a childlike habit, though she’s sixteen, and she looks out over my small, Chief Nobody head. I pat Blackjack and he’s hard, like polished granite. Sandy pulls his sheet off and his coat is slick and dappled like redwood burl under Shellac, like they towel him daily with Show Sheen. “He has better color than Monarch,” I tender, because you should always say this to one with fewer trophies.
“Thanks. Are you showing Monarch?”
“We have lots of horses here. Where Camille?”
“Registration.”
“I’ll come by later.”
Perry and I bed stalls, which should have been done for us, but this is a new show and many things are out of order. Down our aisle is a bright pink swathe of cedar shavings and tightly wrapped bags of it are left for us. The smell is bitter and potent at first, and we try to recall ever using it. Perry takes a razor and pops the bags open while I hold them up, and the cedar spills onto the ground, and what a waste, I think, knowing what the horses will do to it.
A click-click-click comes out over the loud speaker, then a trumpet—bump bump badda bump, bump bump badda bump— like Golden Gate Raceway, and bright tones swirl around as the announcer says words like Yearling, Futurity, Stallion, Park Saddle, Registration, Equitation, Welcome to PNW, yada yada, thank you and see you tomorrow, click-click-click and no one listens anyway.
We sleep in the barn and inhale cedar until we grow coniferous needles out of our skin. I wake up Friday to the sounds of grumbling horses and Monarch kicking his door and my watch says 4:36, but Perry sleeps soundly on the bale of hay beside me—he didn’t have the rough night I had, getting up to put rubber bells on Monarchs precious hooves to protect our hours of work shining them. Perry’s a social bug, like Dad, and wakes up saying, “you feed, and I’ll bring back breakfast,” and he’s gone, and I don’t see again, and that’s every day.
Now, feeding is your basic wheelbarrow down the aisle with the hay and grain type thing, half an hour. The bitch is cleaning stalls, and Wayne teaches us this crappy, drawn-out method of building a mound on the wall with the rake and letting turds roll down, which seems like turd-worship to me. Why don’t we just scoop the shit and haul it out? Plus, you never really know when you’re done because Wayne’s never satisfied. And with twenty stalls to clean—and at shows we clean twice a day, in case rich people show up—you do the math. Rich people aren’t aloud to see crap, or horses crapping, or mistakes, or any kind of youth in a muscle shirt, or a horse fight. That’s why the turd hits the fan the first day, after the first morning class, when I hear a scuffle, horses screeching, and screams from the arena gate. I go down and see Camille’s mom, Linda Galloway. She tell’s me there was a horse fight right after the last class.
“Idiots!” she says, “they’re using the same gate as an entrance and an exit!” She doesn’t look down but reports, as if life was seen through her own spyglass. “They come face to face. They should wait their turn. Never let two horses come face to face, Saul. Who’s running this show anyway?” Which I knew the answer, but didn’t say. Linda Galloway was a concerned woman with nice curves for somebody’s mom. She worked and spent a lot of money getting Sandy and Camille to a few shows—and Perry and I benefited—and she always had her opinion and might have made Chief Planner. Maybe she could marry my dad and they’d be Mr. and Mrs. Chief Planner, but that wasn’t in her spyglass.
“Are you showing this weekend, Saully?”
“I help.”
The truth is, I never even think about showing horses. There is enough to do, though it seems everyone, even the son of the man driving the golf cart, is in a class. Showing is of least interest to me. Why show when you can meet girls, go to dances and concerts, party at hotels and drive golf carts, which we did at Plymouth. Showing is not the point and I don’t see the fuss, yet it is the only point, and even Perry shows, Western Saddle.
Linda stands up, tousles my hair and walks away. She’s wearing dressage breeches, the best garment ever created for a woman, and I wonder when I’ll see the One Galloway I was looking for. Rounding the corner, I head back to Barn Six to resume the chores meant for Perry. I look down and see the destroyed raking pattern we accomplished the night before, the worthless extra work demanded by Wayne, where we dress the entire aisle in a pseudo-thatch “which sets us apart,” he says.
Then a voice smacks me like a golf cart on fire.
“Saul”
“Camille,” I say, and she hugs me Grandma-tight and I smell her, and she smells like girl and makeup and cedar. I course her body, bottom to top, landing at her face, at the Obvious Thing, the tragedy, concealed under a lock of hair, and she speaks quickly, interrupting the reaction in my eyes.
“I show Blackjack this weekend, thirteen-and-under,” she says. I’m enthralled, numbering all the ways in which thirteen had been better to her than me.
“Can you ride a stallion thirteen-and-under?”
“Sure. He’s docile. Gentle.”
“I know.”
So it goes, always with this first meeting, which has to be hard for her, because she likes me and wonders when I’m going to abandon her because of the Obvious Thing. But I don’t, and we become better friends every show, and I follow every ritual, traverse every thatched pattern of eggshells she lays. She is beautiful otherwise, simple but shapely in her Wranglers. Her brown hair is thick and wavy and her olive skin shines in the dim barn lights. She grins, hiding her braces, and the Obvious Thing, the third degree burn, like a giant tongue, dabs over her thin, Asian eye, a sparrow’s eye. I can tell the scar has grown, and she knows I can tell, but we look at it together like the headstone of her face.
“If Blackjack keeps winning, we’ll stud him out,” Camille says.
“Cool.”
“We’ll charge a thousand bucks a pop,” and she giggles with that, because ‘pop’ has double-meaning, and with that, the moment is over, and we move on.
“Should we hang out tonight?”
“Yea.”
That night, Perry leaves early, and I go to the public showers to clean up and see a couple of guys walking around naked, which I ignore. “Nothing but cold water,” they say, which is the case, but I rough it, get dressed, and find Camille and we set out together. The whole fairgrounds is desolate. Everyone has plans, secret plans they whispered to each other because neither Camille nor I heard of anything to do, but everyone’s out doing it. We walk through certain barns hoping to glean some sort of activity.
“Hey, come in here,” says Brook, a cowboy who works for Chuck Walker Stables. He’s in a stall in Barn One. We go in, and it’s a tack room full of expensive, silver appointed saddles stacked five-high and show bridles hanging, glistening like jewelry, over the walls. On the ground are two large ice chests and a big-chested woman, sitting with Brook. He kicks the lid off one of the ice chests and it’s full of champagne bottles. “You can have all you want. Just need you to watch the barn for a bit.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Be back in an hour,” Brook says, laughing, and he leaves, with the woman. Camille and I stare at the bottles.
“You ever try champagne before?” I say.
“Of course I have,” she says. I take a bottle and grip the cork like I’d seen done many times, and after one turn, it pushes itself off, making a small ‘pop.’ A fine mist curls out, like smoke, and Camille has two plastic cups, so I pour.
“It’s all—bubbly,” she says, coughing as she sips. “What kind is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Read the label.”
The bottle is dark green with a gold label in the shape of a shield.
“It says ‘Champagne Cuvee Dom Perignon, Vintage 1980.’”
“Mmmm. That’s what I thought,” she says.
The champagne tastes like sweet, cold air, and the room begins to sway around us.
“Can I ask you something?” I say, and the room stops and her stare lands on me like a bright light. “Why do you dress like a cowgirl but ride English?”
“Because we only have one saddle, dummy.”
“All your butts fit in it?”
She laughs. “Yea, all our butts fit in it!”
There’s an awkward teenage silence.
“Why do you wear 501’s, not Wranglers, like your brother?” She says.
“Because I’m not a cowboy, nor do I want to be a cowboy, nor do I want to hang out with my brother, or any of his cowboy friends.”
“Sor-ry.”
An hour goes by and Brook returns with Perry, but no woman, and they see Camille and me holding hands and twirling in circles together. They laugh as we twirl away, back towards Barn Six, towards the arena, the arena gate, and the tiny amount of champagne we had makes holding hands a necessity. “You know what’s cool about you, Saully?” Camille says, and she turns and grabs my other hand, so we’re standing face to face like two people at the altar.
“My muscle shirts?”
“No, those are actually pretty stupid.”
“What, then?”
“You treat me normal, and that makes other people treat me normal.”
“You are normal.”
“What about this.” she says, and lifts her hair, and now, for the first time, I have to say something about the Obvious Thing. She permitted me to ask about it, or say whatever I wanted but I never wanted to say something, because she was a girl, with boobs and everything, and I was a boy, and dang if I was going to let a scar get in the way of that—besides, now I’m drunk and who knows what I’ll say.
“How did it happen?”
“Sandy spilled boiling water on me. We were kids.”
“Did she get burned?”
“No.”
“Did it hurt?”
“Don’t remember.”
“Well. It’s hardly noticeable. Do you like my scar?” I say, and without warning, Camille’s lips collide with mine. They are soft and squishy, and her spit doesn’t taste bad at all, and she kisses right into my soul. Everything about her is soft and smooth, even the Obvious Thing, which my cheek touches briefly.
“What was that for?”
“I don’t know,” she says, laughing, and she runs into the dimly lit arena doing handsprings, dancing like a dove in the air. I watch, giddily, and her kiss might have planted a fizzing thing into my chest because now I shiver, even on a hot August night. We go to our tack stall and close our eyes and kiss more, like people in movies. It’s just pressing our mouths together, but I never want it to end, and the mirthy smell of cedar circles our heads like a drug and my shivering reaches a crescendo. By midnight, we both have to pee so badly that we say goodnight, and it’s all over.

The next day it rains and another fight breaks out by the arena gate. This time, a man gets kicked in the ribs and a mob of people rush by, besieging him. I think for sure they’ll cancel the show, but the trumpet sounds, and it the show goes on. Western Saddle means a break for me, so I sit with Camille, holding hands, since we’re now boyfriend and girlfriend, and we watch Perry get third place. Lizzy Welsh sits down. She’s eighteen and smokes in front of her parents, wears gothy clothes, and is a duck in all the waters I only dreamed of testing.
“You two are adorable!” she says, kissing me on the cheek, and I kiss her back, because I’m a kisser now. “Are you coming to the Hyatt tonight?”
“You know my dad won’t let us near the Hyatt.”
“Screw him! Come anyways, it’ll be fun!” she says. Lizzy’s family has a hundred million dollars and a hotel chain, and she has the strange piercings to prove it. Her face is pleasured, yet worn, like a rock star, and her hair twirls in a serpentine flame above her head, making her impossible to refuse.
“I may need to watch Chuck Walker’s barn,” I say, glancing at Camille.
“I need you. I need you!” Lizzy says, lacing her stringy arms around my neck, and oh, if it were true, I think, but Dad goes to these parties and makes deals and impresses people; and our presence would be like a wrecking ball because rich horse traders don’t like muscle shirts. The history book of Dad’s life is thick with deals, arrangements, trades, silent partners, and people I’d never heard of, and I’m just a seed planted in hay, shavings and dung, dispatched to the needs of others, until some invisible painter paints strokes in my favor.
Later that night, I rake the aisle. “Did you have a shower?” Perry shouts from the back seat of a bright blue King Cab Silverado. There are three other guys in the truck dressed like Country Music stars.
“The water’s still cold…” I say.
“Get in, let’s go,” Perry says, and I do, and we creep out of the fairgrounds.
By the Galloway’s camper I see Camille, wearing a skirt and a tube top, looking non-cowgirl, and I notice her hair is pulled up and her face is exposed. She waits, looking toward Barn Six, never once thinking I would be in a truck driving away.
The Hyatt is slick and sturdy with pillars, polished checkered-marble floors, high ceilings and large furniture. The Welsh party is high brow, and rich people teem in a ribbon of suits and dresses from the lobby to the ballroom. Perry and I see two tables of food with mountains of chops, raw fish, cheese, crackers, and bread. We build tall sandwiches and squish them together like xylophones and take big bites, giving no care to how we were going to chew.
From a vacant part of the room, Lizzy Welsh materializes. She’s the biggest fish this town has ever seen. Her black suit, tanned, scarless face and bright diamonds part the crowd as she strolls in, shaking hands and kissing the cheeks of gentility. She stops right front of Perry and me. “Welcome to PNW, boys!” she says, smelling of alcohol and perfume. I feel like the lizard who crept into the king’s chamber, or like that poor friend rich people keep on the side. She likes me, or something about me, maybe raw youth, or that I don’t know or care what’s going on. Lizzy mingles, laughs, smiles, then when she’s about to ask me to dance, I revive those shivers in an instant. But a hand of stone takes my shoulder and I see a terror in Perry’s eyes.
“Hey, Dad,” he says.
“Put the sandwiches down,” Dad says, quietly, wearing a perfectly sinless white tuxedo. His face shines like smooth, bearded concrete. “Why are you here?” I turn toward Lizzy, but she disappears like fly spray, and is off dancing with some rich horse trader. We put down our masterpiece sandwiches and go to the lobby, where Dad speaks to the front desk man for a while. Then we get on the elevator to the tenth floor and to room 1016. “Don’t go out this door. I’ll see you in the morning.” SLAM, he’s gone.
“This is better than sleeping on hay,” I say. Perry ignores me and turns on the television.
“Don’t you have anything but muscle shirts?” he says, and I don’t know what this means, but maybe with nicer clothes, we wouldn’t have been seen, two kids, thirteen and fifteen, at the front table, eating like starved dogs.
A half hour later, Chuck Walker and Brook show up, Perry’s cowboy friends who drove us. Chuck pulls out his Copenhagen, forms a dip on his thumb and furls it, quickly, into his lip. “What’s that?” I say, knowing full well. Chuck tosses the can and I open it. The warm, moist “worm dirt” is like a hot pickling barrel and I wince, but then partake and toss it back. Now we’re buddies, out in the desert, wrangling wild mustangs. But the chew burns my lip and I get wheezy. The room spins. By the time the guys leave, I puke whatever sandwich I ate and swish cold water until not a grain of tobacco remains in my mouth. Now, any fun I had at the Hyatt is flushed down the Willamette River.
We watch Saturday Night Live and James Belushi break dances and that’s funny enough back then to be it’s own skit. “Thanks for bringing me anyways,” I say. Perry is silent. He, too, is a grown-up trapped in a kid’s body, and I realize these failed attempts to reach out of our station have a quality of themselves. They mean we aren’t as low as we appear, and cleaning stalls, picking hooves, and working twenty-hour days was merely a function of age.
The next morning we take long, hot showers, and Wayne picks us up and we go out for breakfast. He and Perry talk about horses and showing, like nothing happened. That afternoon is Camille’s class, so I watch from the stands with Linda Galloway. “What happened last night?” she says, not inquiring, but accusing. I think she half expected me to ditch Camille, as all men will do to all women.
“We got in big trouble.”
“Here she comes,” Linda says, uninterested, and I look up and see Camille. She looks elegant riding Blackjack, himself a beauty with his long, full tail dragging behind, and at that moment, and only then, do I ever understand showing. I see her and I want to show. I want to ride Monarch, or one of our mares, into the ring and have people shout for me. But that glory is reserved for people who work hard all year, and I never seem to know where to start, and never end up in a class.
I look around and see something odd by the gate. A man waits with a golden eagle perched on his arm, and it’s claws are the size of human hands. It wears a leather hood over it’s eyes, and I wonder just how stupid eagles have to be to think nothing’s wrong just because they cannot see. I remembered why the man was there. He was supposed to fly the eagle as Monarch came into his park saddle class and it would be a cool visual gimmick for the rich people to coo and flap about. It’s the sort of thing people do at horse shows.
Screams. Loud, like I never would expect from Linda Galloway. I turn and see Camille won her class. First place out of only four, but it’s still first. I realize I must matter even less to Camille now that she’s a champion. I notice Dad with Wayne, our trainer, and Lizzy’s mother, Carolyn Welsh. He motions for me to stay, and now I realize that Monarch’s class is next, but I go with the crowd down to the gate to meet Camille.
Lizzy Welsh waits on Monarch, in full show attire, for the next class. Her derby is pulled down tight and her face is set like flint and her lipstick bright red. She’s all about business and ignores my wave, but I think what perfection of beauty this pale, waify doll is on our dappled, black stallion.
Camille lingers in the empty arena while the photographer snaps flashy big photos, and as she rides out, Lizzy starts in, full trot. One gate. Two horses. Lizzy was told to make a grand entrance and the eagle will fly high, and rich people will coo and flap. For a foolish second, nothing happens. Everyone’s genteel. But it doesn’t last. The eagle’s hood comes off and it spreads it’s wings and flies up, dipping, then soaring into the center of the arena, as planned. Blackjack rears at the sight of this and Monarch pins his ears down and whips around. He throws Lizzy off like a doll and squats low, backing up to Blackjack. From there, he springs up high, ramming two hooves into the other horse’s chest. His shoes rip clean streaks of hide off Blackjack’s shoulders so fast it looks like flesh colored paint strokes.
Blackjack flails, making sparks in the concrete below with his show shoes, then crumbles to the ground, Camille beneath him. There’s a stunned silence. Sandy Galloway appears instantly and grasps the 1,000 pound horse by the neck with both arms. She twists and clenches every muscle to leverage him off her sister. Camille escapes and darts to the edge of the crowd. Monarch kicks into mid-air with deep, hollow, screetches, sounds only the old horse people know, having seen it before, and every story I’d ever heard comes to mind—every buggy fork lodged through a horse’s chest, every broken trough gashing a leg, every broken neck from running into a fence—and the fine demarcation between man and animal is the gun, in every case, stayed by money in a rare few, but not for the Galloways, who barely make it to a few shows on a single mom’s income.
Voices scream, “Stop him!” as Monarch strives, but his kicks are a function of nature, and no one intervenes until nature takes it’s course. There’s a loud “POP” near Blackjack, and some of us look around for a gun. As he rises from, he paws at the ground, but his hoof is broke off and separated from the shin exposing smooth, shiny white bone. Dark blood sprinkles and the confused horse holds his leg up, his hoof dangling by a small tendon.
Monarch trots away from the wreckage, his reigns dragging and his saddle halfway down his side. Lizzy springs up, unhurt, and leads him away, and how strangely rare are human casualties in this business, I think. Bruises, for sure, and scars, like my scorpion, but broken bones and deaths are not common. The horse gets the short end. Blackjack. The one bleeding and trembling, his tongue hanging like a wet, foamy eel, gets the short end.
An arrangement of spectators hobble him away, gently, like movers carrying priceless china. “We’ll take a thirty minute break. Thirty minutes,” says the announcer, trying to restore order. “Up next – the CHAMPIONSHIPS!” Click-click-click and Charlie Daniels comes out softly. I run to Barn Six and a crowd hovers around the Galloways’ stalls. There’s a blue Miley two-horse, backed in next to the Dr. Whitney’s truck, which they load with bales and horse blankets.
“Why the bales?” I say to Camille, who I find sitting, shaking.
“We’re transporting him to U.C. Davis. It’s eight hours away.”
She was civil and distant, lumping me into the crowd. I feel like we never kissed or twirled or drank bubbly or held hands.
“He’ll be okay,” I say.
“We’re not sure,” she says through a crack in the sturdy wall that has formed between us. Her hair is proudly pinned back displaying the Obvious Thing, while this new, bigger wound takes the stage.
The Galloway’s pull away that night and there’s a hush at the fairgrounds. Perry hears the news and tells me they “put Blackjack down” which is a nice way of saying “they injected sodium pentobarbital into him.” I know from my ride-alongs with Dr. Schaeffer back home. Blackjack was probably chewing on a carrot when he felt a prick in his massive neck and slumped, dead, as fast as one heartbeat.
The gun is just a figure of speech.
Camille’s sorrow haunts me. I want to run out to the manure pile and take deep breaths so I don’t pollute the other memory. But it’s too late, and the entire weekend smells of cedar, forever, beginning to end, good and bad. I’m the son of the owner of the horse that killed her horse, and, in a thirteen year-old way, that’s enough to sever the small tendon holding Camille and me together. A tiny, one night tendon. One kiss. One twirl. One scar.

Dad backs the Silverado up to our four-horse Miley and, click-click-clump, the fifth-wheel hitch slams home, and the truck and trailer are one again. Monarch’s loaded. He kicks the floor and picks at his hay. It’s just another annoying ride.
I crank up the drop jack, hook up the chains, connect the lights, we check ‘em.
“Brakes?”
“Yea.”
“Left?”
“Yea.”
“Right?”
“Yea.”
“Don’t worry about running lights. We’ll be home before dark. Let’s go.”

Copyright © 2005 Steve Sheppard

Age before beauty...

2005-08-06T09:47:00.000-07:00

Aimzers: "You look good for your age."
Customer: "How old do you think I am."
Aimzers: "Thirty-nine?"
Customer: "I'm thirty-five."

It's all about semantics...

2005-07-27T10:48:00.000-07:00

Mom: "Jackson, did you pee on the floor?"
Jackson: "No."
Mom: "Accidentely?"
Jackson: "Yes."

The Beard Growing Contest, and Other Stuck-In-Georgetown Musings

2005-07-26T11:46:00.000-07:00

A Japanese photographer once asked a monk to bless some water samples he took from the bay and he would take pictures of the water at the molecular level. Some interesting things happened. The waters he blessed had beautiful molecules that looked like snowflakes. The waters the monk cursed looked like splatterings of vomit. We are comprised of 90% water as humans. Do you know what that means?

How to fish a stream.

You can take any fishing pole in that you want. The principles are still the same. Even some fishing line with no pole, but it has to be thin line. Most people use 4 or 6 pound line, which breaks at 4 or 6 pounds, but I’ve used 1 pound before, which looks like old lady hair, and feels as fragile. Attach a single egg snell hook to the line. It’s called that because it is so damned small that you can submerge it into a single salmon egg. This way, the fish sees only a red dot floating by. Go about one to two feet above the hook and attach one or two split shot (lead weights). Now you’re ready. Approach the stream cautiously. The larger trout are smart and can see you. Never cast a shadow over the stream. Find a large pool with a small waterfall flowing into it and approach from downstream. Now’s a good time to bait up with the egg. Find a way to approach the waterfall from the side and gently swing the line over it, so the egg drops in like it was flowing along the stream. The largest fish will wait at the base of the waterfall so they have first dibs on what comes down. Try this a few times, if you don’t catch a fish on the first try.

In Georgetown, they are always having a beard-growing and worst-truck contest. I found the winner of both categories today. They have a most-days-without-a-bath contest as well. There’s a man who rides his burro into town once a month. He lives down in Canyon Creek in a shack and comes in for supplies. The burro is draped with guns, plastic bags and strapped-on junk, and the man’s face is black with dirt. The woman at Four Sisters Coffee wins the award for creating the worst café vibe in the state.

A herring flew into our pond this morning and stood on the plank that juts out from the shore. There, she waited for a fish and, seeing one, swooped acrossed it’s length in one flap of her wings, landing on the opposite shore, where she waited again, until she was full.

I drove by where I lived for the worst four years of my childhood the other day. It was overgrown and overpopulated by livestock. The Christmas trees we’d left to grow were thirty-five feet high, and the new barn was old, but the old barn looked new. The rental house was rented by a lady. Fences fenced horses in where there were neither before. The ones my brother and I so proudly built were twisting and pulling apart with age. Electric wire, which my father always despised, circled the property, five feet from our old black railroad tie and boxcar floor fences. Painting them in the heat of summer was the only thing worse than building them.

If I were a horse, I could easily kick down the old fence and be free. But that tiny, thin electric wire would never let me close enough.

We went to Nevada City for a day of galleries and brunch at the American Victorian Museum. It was closed since the early ‘90s, so we settled for Ike’s. Our waitress had miserable BO and bossiness, but the food was good. One gallery in four was nice, and we drove home down the highway I used to live on. Everything went so fast. It was only an 8 mile stretch, after all, but as a kid it felt much further. The ranch seemed to be shrinking. I know why the Jews say don't rebuild Auschwitz.

More Deep Thoughts, with Jackson...

2005-06-11T06:57:00.000-07:00

Zach: "Uncle Steve, guess what, were going to see Kicking and Screaming."
US: "Cool, where?"
Jackson: "At the movie theater."

And another Jacksonism...

Zach (9) "Jackson, go downstairs and get Spidermand 2."
Jackson (4) "Okay. But it's mine, because I got it for Christmas, so let me think about it. Okay."

J-Lo Hemingway, a short story

2005-05-16T14:27:00.000-07:00

J-Lo Hemingway

By Steve Sheppard

“I don’t feel confident anymore,” Claire said on the phone to her brother Rick, “I don’t feel like anyone cares what I do. Everybody’s critical of me, and so am I. And worse yet, my kids are disobedient.”

Rick answered, “When you said that last part, I knew right away. You need a blessing.”

“A blessing?”

“Yes. No one has ever blessed you.”

“But what about sneezes?”

“That’s different. You need a real blessing. It makes you into the person of your dreams.”

“Where can I pick one up?” She said.

“Have you heard of Blessings R Us?”

“No.”

“They sell blessings.”

“You can buy a blessing?”

“Where do you think they come from?”

“I don’t know. I just thought some people were blessed, and some people were cursed.”

“Nonsense. Come to Denver and I’ll take you.”

So Claire came to Denver and they got into Rick’s Jeep and drove downtown to 15^th and Iris Streets, where Blessings R Us was located in an old Gap store. It was right by the park, and Claire noticed beautiful people throwing Frisbees to their Australian Shepherd/Border Colley Mixes.

“See? That’s what I mean,” Claire said.

“What?”

“Those people. They look blessed. I want that.”

“They look happy.”

“I don’t have time for a dog and a Frisbee and a park. All I do is work and solve problems. A blessing would make me more like them. I’d make time for dogs and Frisbees and parks. I’d make time for a mountain bike. I’d get rid of my Escort and buy a black Audi A4 with a Thule rack system on top, and get a better job. Right now I can’t do any of those things.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Rick said.

Rick and Claire went into Blessings R Us and approached the girl at the counter. She was young and wore expensive jeans, and a cool t-shirt with an angry remark. The perfect edges of her tattoes were only slightly visible under the sleeves, and she had a nose ring, some rings on her thumbs, and perfectly messy hair.

“Excuse me, we’d like to see some Women’s Blessings?” Rick said

“Upstairs,” she said, quickly scanning the two. Her eyes kept talking, saying “That girl needs a blessing. Look at her clothes, look at her hair, look at her sadness. I’d better not think what I think about them, or they’ll see it in my eyes. Whoops.”

“She looks like she shops here,” Rick said, privately, to Claire.

“Why do you say?”

“I don’t know.” Then he turned to the girl, “What blessing do you have?”

Walking away, the girl said, “Jaded-Emo-Model.”

“Hmmm.”

As they entered the elevator, there was a giant display, a mannequin dressed as a painter, painting a large mural. It said: REMBRANT

“You sure know a lot about blessings,” Claire said.

“I’ve studied them for years. Do you realize you can make your own?”

“I thought you said they only come from stores.”

“Well, I did, but like anything, you can make one yourself, by experience. It’s not as good as store-bought, but it’s cheaper; and besides, I hear store-bought blessings aren’t even real.”

“Not real?”

“It’s too complicated to explain. But don’t worry, you’ll never know the difference.”

Just then, the elevator opened and there was a big sign. “This must be the directory,” Rick said. “Let’s see, Career Blessings, Life-Of-Service-Toward-Humanity Blessings, Married-in-Six-Months Blessings, Perfect Body-Forever-Blessings–”

“Perfect Body-Forever-Blessings! Let’s go!” Claire said, grabbing Rick as she went.

The Women’s Blessings department was so beautiful. Each blessing had it’s own chart with mannequins portraying how the blessing looked in six months, twelve months, etc. The décor was exquisite, like the store was designed by the best interior designers in the world. “Do you think this was done by an Interior-Designer blessing?” Claire said.

“No ma’am,” said a voice. It was a man with a giant key-chain, pushing a mop cart. “They only use natural-blessed folk for that.”

“Natural?” Claire said. Rick shrugged his shoulders.

They strolled into the Perfect-Body-Forever blessings, and noticed one at the same time. It was a simple Perfect-Body-Forever blessing but came with People-Attractor and Literary-Talent blessings.

“I need look no further,” Claire said.

“May I help you?” said a woman. She was blonde and slender, but wore thick glasses.

“I’m Rick Carter, and this is my sister Claire. We have some questions about your blessings.”

“Call me Emerald. Hmmm. Impressive. Did you make it yourself?”

“Yes. She’s talking about my blessing,” Rick said.

“You can tell just by looking?” Claire said to the woman.

“Oh, yes. You read the eyes. He’s got a selfless confidence with a bit of courage and some explorer. How did you make the explorer?”

“A month in the Boundary Waters, some Yosemite, but mostly fixing my Jeep on mountain trails. That spills into courage.”

“I’d love a copy. There’s a lot of demand for explorer here in Colorado.”

“You copy self-made blessings?”

“As easy as synthesized drugs.”

“I’m not sure you’d want it. The thing is, I’m unhappy.”

“That’s okay, unhappy’s really hot right now.”

“That so,” Rick said.

“I see you’re admiring our newest arrival,” Emerald said.

“She’s in great shape, but has literary genius,” Claire said.

“We call her J-Lo Hemingway. Just came this month. She has the courage and stamina to complete a literature PhD. Plus the perfect bod forever.”

“Can I try it on?” said Claire, at which Emerald laughed.

“This must be your first visit. Blessings cannot be tried on or returned. You have to know what you want. But who wouldn’t want to be J-Lo Hemingway?”

“But how can you be sure it works?” Rick said.

“I have this one myself,” said Emerald. “I’m in my first month. Already have a book deal with a major CBA publisher, and my Youth Pastor boyfriend is talking marriage.”

“Sheesh,” said Claire, shaking her head.

“That’s impressive,” said Rick.

“It’s a simple process. Simpler than anyone would think.”

“How does it work?” Claire asked.

“Well, I can’t tell you much, but we use a Scientific Surrogate Proxy-Parent. Usually male with women, female with men. The SSPP reads a scientifically prepared scientific script to the customer. That’s if the parents are out of the picture. If not, we use them to read the scientifically prepared script. Then, after a certain period estimated by science, the customer adopts new behavioral patterns, like kayaking, climbing, computer programming and dog-walking and Frisbee.”

Rick turned to Claire, “What do you think?”

“What about mountain bikes and black Audi A4’s and Thule rack systems?” Claire said. Rick laughed.

“All included. Anything’s possible with your blessing,” Emerald said.

“How much and can I make payments?” Claire asked.

“Actually, our blessings don’t cost anything.”

“You mean it’s a free government service?”

“Not quite,” said Emerald, “we give you the blessing, and we take something.”

“Nothing’s for free, Claire,” said Rick.

“So what do you take?” Claire asked.

“Curses.”

“Curses?” both said.

“Yes, curses. You see, in order for you to come in here, you must have a curse, or you would never want a blessing. All we charge is your curse.”

“Like a trade-in,” Rick said.

“But what would you do with a curse?” Claire said.

“We make good use them,” Emerald said. “Actually, curses are really just malfunctioned blessings. For example, a man came in and traded I-Can’t-Draw-Worth-A-Bucket-of-Warm-Spit for Unlimited-Ideas. He’s doing great, getting lots of ideas for things to do. We turned around and gave I-Can’t-Draw-Worth-A- Bucket-of-Warm-Spit to another client, who went on to become a famous artist. It turned out that I-Can’t-Draw-Worth-A-Bucket-of-Warm-Spit was just a virus, a curse mixed with an artistic blessing.”

“I see,” said Rick.

“Anyway, we cleaned up I-Can’t-Draw-Worth-A-Bucket-of-Warm-Spit, renamed it Rembrandt, and it’s one of our best-selling blessings. Thomas Corncade has a new slip-cover series because of it.”

“I have them,” Claire said, “they’re soft.”

Rick looked at Claire. “What do you think? Wanna give J-Lo Hemingway a try?”

“What curses do I have?” she said.

“We can’t tell until we clean it out, and by then we would have already replaced it with your new blessing.”

“Can’t you repair the blessing that’s inside of her? Maybe it’s a good one that’s just malfunctioning. Can you do that?” Rick said.

“I wish you could, but it’s impossible. Let me put it this way: Can you take the brain out and repair it and put it back again? I don’t think so. Taking your curse out and not putting in a blessing would leave you soulless, like a dog. I’m sorry. It’s just science.”

“Do you care if we talk privately, Claire and I?” Rick said.

“Please do. It’s an important decision, and you should be absolutely certain. Go into that J-Lo Hemingway promotion brochure and video room, that should be private enough.”

Rick and Claire went to a fitting room instead, because the store used to be a Gap years before. They tried the door but it was locked.

“I’ll get that,” said the man with the giant keychain and mop cart. Sure enough, he had the key.

“Thank you,” said Claire.

“Which one you going for?” he said.

“We’re thinking of J-Lo Hemingway.”

“You know where that came from don’t you?”

“Tell us,” said Rick.

“I knew J-Lo. Her real name was Jenny. She was a beaut! She wanted to write children’s books, and be an aerobics instructor, and a model and an actress and a bartender, and be on Elimidate. And she could have been all those things, but somebody cursed her. He said, ‘you won’t amount to much, and your ankles are thick.’ I talked her into getting a blessing, and she did, but it didn’t take. Her calling fought it. You see, then can never take that away.”

“Her calling?” said Claire.

“It’s what you’re born with. Blessings come after. They just help the calling. It’s all scientific,” he said.

“What blessing did she get?”

“Business-Acumen-Killer-Instincts. She’s trying to do international real estate stock brokering in Hong Kong, but she’s unhappy.”

“I hear unhappy’s really hot right now,” Rick said.

“Hush!” said Claire. “How do you know so much about Jenny?”

“She’s my daughter.” He said, leaning on his mop.

“I see.”

“Hey, why don’t you get a blessing?” Rick said.

“I was gonna get Wise-Old-Man, but don’t guess I deserve it,” he said, laughing.

“He doesn’t need it, Rick,” Claire said, “He’s got it self-made.”

“Thanks. Same to you,” the man said.

“Not really, but thank you. I need J-Lo. I’m loaded with curses.”

“I thought for sure you already had Problem-Solving and a little Rembrandt. Are you an interior designer.”

“Thanks. You’re very kind,” Claire said, and the man with the keys left.

“He’s right,” said Rick.

“Maybe, but what does he know about interior design? He’s just a custodian.”

“I don’t know. I’ll go get Emerald.”

Rick brought Claire back to Blessings R Us several times for her treatments. He could see the difference. She brought her kids to Denver and they began to obey more. She bought a really cool dog and applied at several new jobs in the city. She worked at Starbucks and enrolled at Front Range Community College. The blessing worked swell, and soon, Claire’s treatments were over.

Then Roland Carter, Rick and Claire’s father, came into Starbucks one day. Neither had seen him in years, and for good reason. He was a real curser. It wasn’t his fault. “He was cursed, too, so that’s all he knows,” Rick always told Claire.

“I heard you were doing quite well for yourself. Do you keep your house clean? That’s important. A clean house makes you feel good,” Roland said. “This isn’t a bad job. You know a good career I heard of you ought to try? International real estate stock broker. You buy stock in real estate all over the world, and you can travel and get rich.”

“Hello? Emerald? This is Rick Carter, Claire’s brother. We had a little problem. Can I bring her in tomorrow.”

Rick and Claire met with Emerald.

“She’s suffering a Parental Breach. We offer an emergency treatment called Scientific Indirect Blessing, or SIB. Instead of speaking directly to Claire, we have the SSPP talk to someone posing as her father. He tells him how wonderful Claire is doing, and how proud he should be, and so on. It takes about an hour, and I recommend once a day for two weeks.”

“Does it work?”

“Most of the time. PB’s are tough, so it’s hit and miss. The best thing is to come in after you’ve had a PAP.”

“A what?”

“Parental Apology Procedure. Getting him to apologize in person. But those are rare.”

“Not gonna happen. How much are the sessions?”

“Two hundred dollars.”

“Two hundred dollars?”

“Wait,” Claire said, “I thought it was free.”

“J-Lo Hemingway is free, but you have to pay if she gets damaged.”

“Criminy,” Rick said.

“You should warn your father next time he curses you, you’ll sue. You can recover the costs of repairing your blessing. We offer lawsuit insurance.”

“This is crazy.”

Claire went into the blessing room, and the SSPP opened a door, and left it open while he bragged about Claire to someone standing out of sight, and, looking closely, Claire could see it was the man with the keys. Claire felt better. She returned to work at Starbucks and Rick went to see Roland Carter.

“Dad, you need to stay away from Claire for a while,” he said.

“What do you mean? I have every right to see her. And I’m unreasonable and in denial.”

“I realize all that, but you have to give her space. Figure it’s like she’s wet paint.”

“Space, what the hell does that mean? Don’t you people appreciate having a father?”

“Just do what I ask. She’s vulnerable to everything you say.”

“Vulnerable? How long? Can’t I see my grandkids? What’s going on?”

Eventually, Roland agreed to drive home to North Dakota, and Claire progressed. She went on to complete her Associates Degree and got a new job. Within a year of purchasing her new blessing, she got her black Audi with the Thule rack system, and taught their new dog, J-Lo, how to play Frisbee at the park, and took up mountain biking.

Life was swell.

Then Claire called Rick up, on a Wedneday. “Do you think I should move to a bigger city,” she said, “and get a better paying job. I’m not happy here. My co-workers are jealous back-biters and this whole town is just a large, metropolitan version of Jerry Springerville. I’m sick of the Midwest, and my life is full of problems. Would you go with me to an East Coast city? Ever since I graduated, I wanted to move back east and be an angry, unappreciated essayist.”

Rick was silent. Then he said, “What about J-Lo, and the kids? What will you do with them?”

“Dad always wanted to see them more. Maybe he can come to Denver. I don’t know. I just know I’m not happy. This blessing is great, but so limited. I wonder what they did with my curse. Do you think they renamed it and it became a bestseller?”

“Anything’s possible,” Rick said.

Whisk

2005-05-13T12:00:00.000-07:00

Whisk

By Steve Sheppard

Lee and Kerry Grimes weren’t really married, but would have been considered common law spouses because they lived together and shared their bills and a house and a bed. They lived down Highway 12 about five miles from the Martinelli’s. Lee was a VW mechanic and Kerry raised and bred and groomed Golden Retrievers, which were really just Goldens mixed with Labs. They were hard people who lived ranch lives and did ranch things.

And it came about, partly because the Martinelli’s had a male Retriever and a female Lab, and some horses, and some old vehicles, that Lee and Kerry worked for them on occasion, babysitting, grooming, working in the barn and fixing stuff. And the Martinelli boys interchanged between home and the Grimes’s whenever it was convenient for the adults.

Kevin Martinelli was at the Grimes’s watching Lee work on a VW engine one time. He was tightening the output shaft with both hands until it stripped.

“There it is. There it is. That stupid, baby raping son-of-a-bitch!” Lee said.

That was the first time Kevin heard “baby-raping,” and he thought it was a pretty cool cuss-word, and as they became more familiar, the Martinelli boys saw Lee Grimes mad more often. “When you meet somebody,” Kevin thought to himself, “it’s like you go through his front door, and the more you get to know him, the more of their house you get to see.”

On the first floor of the Grimes’ were the impressive rooms, the rooms you may see through a window. Lee could lift an entire engine block and carry it across his yard, and most people knew that, and he knew a lot of fun poker games, which was common. Kerry looked like Gwyneth Paltrow in Wranglers, was sweet and smiled a lot, and never narced when the Martinelli boys said bad words, as long as they were “well placed.”

But deeper into the Grimes house were a few questionable rooms. Jordan, Kevin's older brother, came home from school and saw Lee Grimes on the porch smoking a joint. “Hey, boy. You need to mow this lawn,” Lee said, as he scuttled the evidence. The drug, put with this situation, made him giggle uncontrollably.

“That’s Kevin’s job,” Jordan said, seeing a chance to talk back. The Grimes boys were hard working, but also knew how to negotiate.

“Fine.” Lee’s pants were down. “Tell him when he gets home not to take such a wide cut with the mower.”

Jordan told Kevin all about it that night, when they took showers. “Lee said, ‘fine,’ and I said, ‘cause I don’t have to do what you say, fatso!’ Then I Jeet Kung Do’ed his ass!”

“Liar. So he was smoking a ‘J’? What did he do with it?”

“I don’t know. But they probably both get high.”

“Are we gonna tell Dad?”

“No. Don’t say a word or I’ll kill you.”

He was right. Mr. Martinelli was stern and fair and never wasted time, or left things unpunished. He liked the Grimes’s but wouldn’t let them around if he knew they were stoners. Before leaving on a trip, Mr. Martinelli held a family meeting in the master bathroom. “Keep the grass mowed, feed the dogs, and do whatever Lee and Kerry say,” he said. He was sitting on the pot when he held this meeting, and the smell drove the point home to Kevin and Jordan.

“Fine,” Kevin said, “I won’t say a word.” And they went downstairs. Lee was waiting for dinner, sitting in Mr. Martinelli’s chair, which was an old, antique smoker facing the TV. Kerry cooked Rigatoni, Lee’s favorite.

“Are we playing poker tonight Lee?” Jordan said. Silence. Lee’s eyes never left the 6 O’Clock News. The Grimes’ brought company that night, which was good and bad, Kevin thought. New people bring others back to their foyer, so the exploration of the Grimes’ lives was on temporary hold.

“Dinner’s ready,” Kerry said, and they sat down and ate. The guest was Rance Roullard, a friend from Lee’s rougher days who didn’t seem to be of the bathing strain of humanity. He wore ironed jeans, however, and a belt, and tucked his snap-shirt in, and wore a leather vest. He was boney and long, with a deep voice and a walrusy mustache that blended back to his ponytail. Kevin figured he was a biker who didn’t own a bike.

Lee leaned over to Rance. “How’s the Rigatoni?”

“Perfecto!” said Rance. The two started giggling, then laughing. Rance’s eyes were puffy and thin. Jordan glanced over at Kevin with a look that said, “I told you so.”

There was an awkward silence that only Kevin, Jordan and Lee could detect. Rance was in his own world, eating and drinking. He finished his beer in one gulp and slammed the mug down, then let out a belch that shook the silverware on the table.

“BURRRRPPP!!!”

Laughter broke out. Hysterical laughter.

“’Scuze me,” Rance said, wondering if he might have done something wrong.

“It smells like beer,” said Kevin, adding in. As the laughter died down, Lee leaned back and admired the Martinelli boys, swirling his wine in the glass.

“You guys ever play Whisk?” Lee said. “It’s pretty easy. You just play a game of Seven-card, but instead of low-club-in-the-hole-splits-the-pot – ”

“Are you staying to play, Rance?” Kevin said.

“Yeah.”

“But!” said Lee, “the difference is, the winner plays a side game of Whisk – or best out of five – with the low-club. One down, three up, one down. The low-club bets out of the pot.”

“Sweeeet,” said Jordan.

“Winner takes all.”

“Yeaahhhh – ” the boys said. Lee was in the red from getting high, but won back pole position by his sheer coolness. This game was sure to go past nine. It was clear to Kevin why Jordan didn’t want to tell on him. Kerry started clearing the table.

“The boys will get the dishes,” Lee said, looking at his wine.

“Sounds like a great game,” Rance said.

The Martinelli boys did dishes with lightening speed while Lee and Rance set up poker. Mr. Martinelli kept a basket full of change and a couple decks of cards high on an end log. They played Whisk, a couple rounds of No-Peek, and some Indian Poker. Somehow, even though Lee had great hands, Jordan always came out ahead and won, and a new understanding came between them.

After about a month, they found a pot plant growing in back of the house, below where Lee was smoking. No one cared, and then it disappeared.

Lee and Kerry stayed over again. There were no drugs or wine, no Rance or rigatoni. Lee cooked sirloin steaks with lots of pepper and there was a tense mood in the house. Kevin could do nothing right, and he and Jordan were under Lee’s microscope.

“I want you to re-mow the grass. You’re taking too wide a cut,” Lee said.

“Too wide a cut?” said Kevin.

“You’re cutting too wide. With the mower, you dumb bastard!”

“Okay.”

“Look at that. You see the lines? The piles of grass? Go down there.”

“Leave him alone,” Kerry said.

“I’m not talking to you!” Lee said, with a feral look in his eye.

“Don’t talk to me that way.”

“Go down there, right now,” Lee said to Kevin. Kevin went out and down the steps of the porch to the grass. “Kick over that grass,” Lee said through the window screen, “you see? More grass that hasn’t been cut. I want you to re-mow the grass.”

“Now?” Kevin said. Lee’s eyebrows raised up and he started toward the door, looking at him fiercely. Kevin ran to the barn, looking back to his brother. Jordan stood on the porch in shock.

“Did you feed the dogs yet?” said Lee.

“I’ll do it now,” Jordan said. He went down the steps, bending away from Lee’s reach, and followed Kevin to the barn. Later on, when Kevin was trying to start the lawnmower, he heard a loud BOOM. He looked and there was Lee in a window above his head holding one of Mr. Martinelli’s antique shotguns. A blue jay dropped, lifeless, out of the oak tree. Kevin never saw anyone but his father handle the guns.

“They eat hawk eggs,” Lee said, slithering back into the house like a snail to it’s shell. Kevin was terrified.

Something was wrong between Lee and Kerry. At dinner, Kerry said something Lee didn’t like, and he smacked her leg with his VW engine block-lifting arm. She screeched, then slammed the plate down and ran out of the house, got in her ‘73 Bug and drove away. That was a long week for the Martinelli boys, and their previous silence to Mr. Martinelli was tested.

“I know much more about Lee than I ever wanted to,” Kevin thought to himself.

That fall, Kerry came over without Lee. They’d split up, and the boys were glad to see who their dad leaned towards. And lean he did, for she accompanied the family on a two-week trip to the East Coast. They were going out to pick up the horses they bought that Spring, which were too young to transport. Mr. and Mrs. Martinelli flew ahead and Kerry and the boys took the fifth wheel. The trip was a blast for the boys, and Kerry enjoyed getting away too.

“You want to drive?” Kerry said to Jordan.

“Drive?” Jordan said. She may as well have said “do you want to kiss?”

“Yea, I’m tired,” she said. Both boys were familiar with driving, having learned when they were eleven. Jordan was fourteen now, and Kevin twelve. Their eyes were wide at the prospect.

“Sure,” Jordan said.

“You won’t tell your father?”

“Are you kidding?”

So Jordan drove, from Flagstaff to Albuquerque, 320 miles. Kevin was co-pilot.

“This feels manly,” Kevin said.

“Don’t be a gay rod,” said Jordan as he rolled down the window to hang his arm out. Kevin found sunglasses for both of them in the glove box. Jordan kept it at 55 all the way, then exited into a truck stop and parked right by the pumps, like a truck driver would do. They never saw a cop once. Kerry slept in the back seat under her windbreaker the whole time, like she was sleeping off a hangover.

They got home on a Sunday at around 3PM. The Ford was blocking the barn doors, so Jordan went up to the house to get the key. Stepping in the front door, he heard men talking, then silence. He froze, looking out the window where the pot plant grew in back of the house. There was a black VW Bug, not Kerry’s. Kevin looked down the hall into his parents room and saw the gun cabinet was open, and all the guns gone.

His heart thumped loudly and he thought he’d been heard. There were people in the house, burglars. His body wouldn’t move, so he stepped out of it to say, “you’re the guy who has to do something, so do it.” Then, he remembered where Mr. Martinelli kept a loaded gun. It was in a secret compartment under the waterbed. He found it, a .300 Savage, a good deer rifle, with a scope.

Outside, Lee Grimes and Rance Roullard ambled toward the car. Each carried an armload of guns, holding them like firewood, but neither one noticed Kevin on the porch behind them. He was perched, his elbows nailed to the rail, aiming the .300 Savage right at Lee’s heart. Lee turned and nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Freeze, you baby-raping-son-of-a-bitch!” said Kevin. Lee froze like a damned soul. Rance put up his hands, a gesture he was akin to, dropping the guns in all directions.

“Kevin!” said Lee, “I thought you were coming back tonight.”

“Shut up!” Kevin said, “I just called 911.”

“Look, just let us go and we won’t say nothin.’”

Kevin was terrified, but had his sunglasses on, and all the men could see was an unhinged teenager with hunting rifle. The way Lee saw it, his best chance was in Police custody.

“We’re gonna play a little game called Whisk. Ever heard of it? It goes like this: If you move, I’ll shoot you. If Rance moves, I’ll still shoot you.”

Within minutes they heard sirens. Kevin laughed.

“What’s so funny?” said Lee.

“If you came yesterday, you could have got away with it.”

“So?”

“So. You cut it too wide.”

The cops came and the men were arrested. A basket full of change was recovered from the Bug, as well as all of Kevin and Jordan’s records, some fancy dishes of Mrs. Martinelli’s, some cash, and 27 guns.

A man named Detective Mike McMurtrie came around a few times. The boys loved him because he was big and had a ponytail and earrings, and looked nothing like a cop. He gave Kevin his mirrored sunglasses, a gift he cherished more than being in the newspaper. “They’re probably worth five bucks,” Jordan said, but Kevin knew he was just jealous.

Kerry moved to town and the boys saw less of her. They ran into her and Detective Mike McMurtrie in a restaurant in town, one night. “Hey Mike, Kerry,” Mr. Martinelli said. As with everything, he already knew about them being engaged. Mike’s beard was huge, and he had new sunglasses which he mounted on his forehead in a cool way. It turns out he looked the way he did so he could infiltrate drug outfits, but he occasionally worked robberies when drugs were involved. Kevin and Jordan were pleased to see Kerry had a new squeeze.

“He can eat a VW engine block and then pick his teeth with the output shaft,” Kevin told Jordan in the car later, “then jackhammer Lee’s house down with his fists. He probably knows Jeet Kung Do.”

“Whatever,” Jordan said.

That was the last time the boys saw Kerry before she moved to Arizona with Detective Mike. They kept their secrets about driving across New Mexico, and the joint, and Lee’s temper. Kevin thought, “Lee’s house came down, but Kerry moved into a mansion.”

Three very short stories

2005-05-13T11:51:00.000-07:00

Groucho Marx

I sit in my cheap leather chair, watching a black and white TV episode of some old quiz show filmed in 1961, starring dead people who thought $2,500 was everything, and a trip to Honolulu was the berries, and I wonder: “can they still get credit for this? Are they in some holding pen somewhere, hoping someone tunes in to one of their TV shows and is changed for the better, and finds God, so they can attain to some higher position, or even get into heaven at all, or be spared from hell, because someone watched their TV show 44 years later. Is Groucho Marx in limbo, and if so, what should I do, seeing his TV program now, to free him into heaven? Should I say, “this touched my life?” Or do I just go on, flipping channels? I think Conan’s on.

Bradburn Row

There are always balloons where I drink coffee because the sales agents use them to attract potential buyers of these overpriced homes near the place where I drink coffee. Something about the marriage between multicolored rubber and helium has a bewitching effect on home shoppers. The balloons are purple, pink, green and silver/pearl. The silver/pearl balloon is the newer color, and gives the feeling of newness, and makes you think these homes and condos are newer and progressive. If you see them, you will probably want to buy one, so you’ll go to the office and the sales agent will give you a ride in her pettycab.

Christo’s Fence

Back in the days when artists had balls, Christo Javacheff built a 24 mile fence across Northern California. We saw it on Hwy 101, down near San Rafael area. My grandmother always pointed it out. She respected art and admired the artist like a higher being within society. Christo’s fence was white and tall and made of one piece of woven acrylic, and it took five years to build. It was eighteen feet high. Everyone opposed the idea. Everyone but other artists. Now it’s gone, but who remembers anyone doing anything like that? It’s against the rules to build a fence across California like that anymore. People can only look back at Christo’s fence and that’s all they have. So he was right.

Our first new car was a...

2005-05-05T16:52:00.000-07:00

1972 Honda Z600 - a masterpiece in engineering.

Blue Hand

2005-05-05T16:33:00.000-07:00

Blue Hand

When I was new to Grass Valley, I joined the DeMolay’s, hoping to make some friends. It was a small organization where geeky boys wore ties and recited long poems in front of each other, and very old, geeky old men sat in approval.

In the winter, though, the DeMolay’s had an angle on getting snowmobiles. An ex-member ran a big equipment outfit in the city, like one of those Caterpillar tractor places, and had two Ski-Doos he didn’t mind us using, however brutal we treated them. So we packed up and went to Bear Valley Lodge to ride the snowmobiles around in Bear Valley for a day.

The lodge was old and large, built for miners or something, but very old and very large. There was a huge fireplace in the center, with mangy, duct-taped couches around it. I sat by Jim Warnke all the way up to Bear Valley. He had an extra few measures of testosterone for thirteen, giving him instant popularity and adoration from girls and envy from some guys. He dressed in O.P. pants, shirts and shoes. I was hoping to bond.

“I’ve got the best room for us. I heard it’s right by the door and close to the fireplace. It’ll be warm, but there’s a way to sneak out too,” I said.

“Cool,” Jim said.

I convinced him to bunk with me, not that I would benefit by his popularity up in the mountains, hours from school, but knew it might pay off someday. We got there and the lodge smelled like mold and pine. Tony Portola and Pete Martinez found a better room right away, and ours was not as nice as I had described.

“This room sucks,” Jim said.

“I thought it was better than this,” I said.

“Let’s move across the hall.”

Our leader, Mongo, pulled out some #10 cans of chili from an old closet and, when he opened them up, they had an inch of hard, bright orange grease on top. Mongo swore it would be tasty. The closet was also full of candy that was for sale, but since the M&Ms had white spots from old age, we thought they should be cheap. Jim gave Mongo a buck and grabbed a whole handful of M&Ms bags, and that became the price.

Jim had a natural authority and beauty. At school, nerds were like his pets. One time, in English, he sat on a desk between Mark Hoofnagle and Jake Graversgaard, chewing an entire pack of Bubble Yum, and tousled their scalps, singing “balls itch, ball’s itch, baaaaall’s itch; ball’s itch, ball’s itch, baaaall’s itch.” It was barely enough to occupy his mind and sate his need to demean lesser boys.

Jim and I ate spotty M&Ms and some chili Mongo gave us in the kitchen. We were buds for now.

Later on, we explored the Lodge. The further you got from the central living room, the more broken down and dilapidated it was, and the colder it got. Whole sheets of ceiling had warped and fell, causing protrusions of the old bark insulation above. Condensation dripped and formed puddles on the floor. Blue and black mold made designs on the walls like dried watercolor paint. There was a furnace that they couldn’t get running, so we wore jackets, hats and gloves around to keep warm, and came close to the fireplace only when the fun died down.

Jim’s gloves, being a city boy, weren’t necessarily good for snow. They got wet when we had a snowball fight, because they didn’t have Gore-Tex, and when he took them off, his hands were dyed blue.

“We have to find some way to scare Tony and Pete,” I said.

“Let’s go to the attic,” Jim said.

On the second floor of the lodge was a secret ladder to the attic and we crawled around in there for a while. There was a hole down to the rec room where some kids were shooting pool, and it was directly above the pool table.

“Stick your hand through.”

Jim did. We were giggling hard, but trying not to make noise. Below us, in the rec room, they were shooting pool and talking. It went silent.

“What is it?”

“Somebody’s hand.”

“Is it alive?”

“I don’t know.”

Jim laughed.

“What?” I said.

“They’re poking it with the pool stick.”

I laughed, too.

“Shhhh!” he said, as the voices below stopped. We heard movement. They all left.

“They’re getting Mongo,” I said.

“Let’s go!”

We ran across the rafters and down the ladder. It was so dark. Jim put on his gloves and we went outside and around the lodge to the front entrance. By the time we made it back up to the rec room, they were playing pool like nothing had happened.

“What’s going on?” Jim said.

“What do you mean?” Tony answered.

“Someone said you saw a hand.”

“Yea, it was you,” said Pete.

“How do you know?” I said, but it was over and I was already dwelling on it. Tony challenged Jim to a pool game and I went down to the main area, where the fireplace was, to get warm. That night we ate more chili and watched a movie on the Alaskan Pipeline.

When we took the sleds out, the valley was smooth and white, like Cool Whip, and completely untouched. We had it all to ourselves. Mongo exercised his right to drive each sled off the trailer and tool around. He was the first to draw on the Valley floor. By noon, we’d scribbled all over it in no recognizable pattern but the dictations of whim.

Pete jumped one of the snowmobiles about seventy-five feet and broke it. I remember his face to this day, which I saw while he was in mid air. He looked confused and scared.

“Are you alright?” Mongo said.

“Yea, I guess so.” Pete said.

“That was killer!” I said.

Pete was a quiet guy who didn’t like me much, and didn’t know why anyone else could. I was a sperm introduced into a very content egg back in those days.

Some riders rode in patterns, forming trails which hardened the snow and enabled a faster ride. One trail had a sharp curve and that’s where I tried to pass Tony and landed on top of him. I was on the broken sled, which we had temporarily repaired, but now it was even more beat up. One of the skis was bent upward, like Daffy Duck’s bill when Elmer Fudd shot it. Some elected to keep riding “Daffy” even though it spat snow up from the ski, and pulled hard to the right.

The next night at the lodge was quiet. Like kids should, we became bored of the usual distractions. There was nothing left to explore, so we found ways to compete with each other at what we were doing the night before. We had a pool tournament, watched another film on Jacques Cousteau, and turned in early.

That Monday I saw the guys on the at school. Tony and Jim turned slightly to let me in the circle. Pete walked away.

“Come on, man. He’s cool,” Jim said.

I got out a pack of Bubble Yum and passed it around, like a burnt offering.

“Don’t you have M&Ms?” Tony said. I was in.

The Hitchiker's Guide to British Humor

2005-04-29T23:07:00.000-07:00

An education in imagination, from the Vogon planet, where original thought is punished by giant fly swatters to the head, to the computer that takes seven and a half million years to decide that the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42, "The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy," though a little slow at times, is a Briticised, Terry Gilliamesque yarn with a happy, geocentric ending. Isn't Earth always picked on, destroyed, or targetted, then figured out to be the source of all goodness in the universe and warned never to hurt some sea mammal again? Such is the case. Live action is combined with narration over animation, to preserve writing, and given a decent pace, captivating book purists and newbies (like myself) alike.

Certain things are downplayed, having either been done or become outdated, like British frustration with micromanaged government (well treated in "Brazil"), the incompentance of greedy men (which destroyed the earth in the first place), and the overall questioning of the existence of God -- and then, since He doesn't exist, the overall critique of His work in creating the universe.

The most important part of the film was done quite well, and saved it for me, the CGI!!! Computer Generated Imagery!!! Was it believable? Yes. The lips of the Vogons, the tour of the planet building factory, Humma Kavula's feet, all believable, all downplayed - properly - to the story, which, I contend, was the reason Star Wars hit a home run in the first place. Amazing things have to happen in CGI, then the characters must carry on like it's all normal. At least one character must do so while another character reflects the audience's awe. Then he rejoins his petty concerns, furling us back into the plot. CGI is like chocolate, and plot is the coffee that washes it down. Or CGI, humor, sex, love, and character are all like liquid sugar, and plot is meat. Something like all that. Anyways, good film. Go see it.

Every Sixty Minutes Out of Water

2005-04-15T09:08:00.000-07:00

“Every Sixty Minutes Out of Water”

By: Steve Sheppard

Few know that the Forks Library carries a good Audio/Visual selection, mostly marine related, or fishing related. Today, returning some video tapes I checked out, including my favorite, “Jaws,” I wondered into the Hoh Indian section, and there I saw an audio tape series on fishing called “The Hundred-Pound Fish.” I checked out a cassette player and plugged the first tape in:

“There are six dimensions to the hunnerd-pound feesh. It’s length stretches from the highest point you can hold your arm, while supporting it with the other, all the way to the ground.”

The tape sounded home made, and that’s because so few people are interested in catching a hundred-pound fish, or even an eighty-pound one. My old man caught a hunnerd-pound fish once, when I was about twelve. It was a King Salmon.

“I got him, Hanky. Damned if I didn’t. A hunnerd-pounder!”
“You did?”

“I hooked his ass. Right off Quilcene. And you know how I got him? He swam right into the back of the car!” he said, as if the local television station cameras were rolling. It was true. Dad lost his brakes while backing down the boat launch and slid right into Hood Canal, had to have Hack “Proudfeather” Wilson winch him out. When the car drained, there was the fish. “I always told you this was a lucky car.”

“We need a truck, Dad,” I said, admiring his catch.

“You’re right, a Ford.” He was out of breath, like he had a hard day.

“Where is the boat?” I said.

“Where’s the boat? It’s at Hack’s. I had to unhook it to bring the fish home.”

“He’s all dry.”

“That’s because the whole thing took place in the morning. So, I haven’t had time to clean him.” And this was how Dad carried on, like he was giving his story a dry run on me. But I knew him to be a clean man, with a tidy life, and was efficient with his time, even while drinking, so not cleaning the fish was peculiar.

“Get the scale,” he said, “the big one, from the shed.” The screen door slammed. I lifted the trunk door and saw the salmon curled throughout the length of the trunk of our 1963 Fairlaine, and the caudal fin covered the license plate.

It’s weight is a hunnerd pounds, wet, but she’ll lose a pound every sixty minutes out of water, so you need to weigh her fast, to see if she’s truly a hunnerd pounds.

“Has anyone ever caught a hundred pound salmon?” I yelled. There was no answer. I found the scale in the shed, the big one, with the pulley system, and a rope. I threw the rope over a wood beam in the awning, hooked up the scale, and hoisted the fish out of the trunk. It’s gills were large, hard and slippery, and dang was he heavy. I avoided the mouth, because even dead fish can bite. The scale stretched and the back of the car lifted as the fish came out. My dad stepped out in his tank top, a bottle of whiskey and glass in his hand, and sloped into the stoop of our porch, chuckling.

“Look at those springs. Have you ever seen the car so low? I don’t care what it weighs, it’s the biggest fish I ever caught,” he said.

I pulled and pulled, with all my strength, until I was in the air, hanging in the balance with the hunnerd-pound fish.

“Ninety-two,” I said, turning to Dad.

“You’re readin’ it wrong,” he said, and laid back. I’d thought he died, because he let out strong breath that altared the flight pattern of a swarm of gnats above his head. The red skin on his chest rose and dropped and he made irregular sounds through his nose. He was just tired.

It was five o’clock. There was a long discrepancy between the morning ordeal and now, and it involved going to the bar with something of a whale in the trunk, water draining out of the pipes, and Hack “Proudfeather” Wilson close by; a line of men oogling at it, and Dad describing what combination of baits to lure it in. That’s probably how it went.

I took the whale back to the shed and hung it over a horse trough. There was a giant basin where Mom gave me baths before she died, and the faucets were threaded so you could hook up a hose, so I did, and a nozzle, so I could spray as I went. Dad kept a sharp filet knife in his tackle box, which I went for, but it was gone. Must have lost it in the Canal, and he should have been sore. I went to ask, but he’d ambled into the house and was gone, so I found a knife in the kitchen.

The width is like your upper thigh and the girth elongated, like a skinny dog. The hunnered-pound feesh is bigger than most dogs, it’s mouth long and curved on either jowl, like a pair of coal tongs.

The guts of a hundred pound fish being a quarter of it’s weight, I’d hoped the horse trough would contain twenty-five pounds worth. I should have had a camera, or a plan. What a waste. How often do you unleash twenty-five pounds of guts into a tub? I should have had friends over, or sold tickets to little kids for the event. I should have video taped it and sold it for stock footage, or to the Forks Library.

But I had few friends, and no video camera, so I settled on re-enacting a scene from Jaws. I played Matt Hooper, oceanographer and shark expert.

“Hooper approaches the dark, ghostly, cold fish with his big knife and dips it in with a major incision. ‘First, I’ll cut into the pelvic fin, then pull all the way up to the pectoral. That should give us a clear view of what it’s been eating over the last 48 hours. Prepare yourself, Chief Brody.’”

A pile of tires by the basin made a good Chief Brody.

“The shark’s flesh slurps as Hooper rips and gouges through, wincing at the various smells of digestive fluid and rotting fish.”

So I did, and the salmon’s endless roe folded out onto my arms. It was bright pink and transleucent, with millions of pearl-sized eggs. This hen must have spent eight years wondering the ocean before coming home, maybe twelve – maybe she was my age exactly, and just as plum full.

“‘What’s that?’ Chief Brody says, curled in the corner holding the flashlight. ‘Looks like a cod, Chief,’ says Hooper, ‘swallowed him whole.’”

More guts fell into the tub as I cut away. The intestine, the bladder, the swim bladder.

“‘What else do you see, Hooper?’ – ‘A burlap sack, a paint can, a sock of marbles, a machete, a complete China set from the Ming Dynasty – AHA!’ Brody startles. ‘What? what? Did you find a human hand, still grasping for life?’ Hooper pulls out a large round object. ‘No, Chief Brody, it’s just somebody’s HEAD!’”

It was the stomach. Small for this size a fish, but it was still big, bigger than a bowling ball. Spawning salmon don’t eat anyway. They have one thing in mind, spawning. I tried to think about this salmon’s life as I sprayed it down with the hose.

The spinal artery was last. It’s a huge pocket of blood running up the spine that takes forever to clean. I ran a small stream of water and scraped the dark brick colored blood with the tip of my knife until my hands were numb with cold.

Salmon lead an involuntary existence. They’re amazing, cold blooded, fast swimming creatures that can barely decide between eating one squid or another. They speed through life in the darkness of the sea, urged by instinct to get larger and then swim back to within three feet of their birthplace. Their meat feeds land animals and humans, and their eggs feed fish. Some survive to become other salmon.

I stepped back to admire my work. The fish dangled wide by my noose, her dry caudal fin wilting, blessing me, the Mesolithic butcher. I dragged her guts to the backyard and dug the hole, never having felt more like a man.

The hunnerd pound feesh is bad eatin. It’s meat is too tough by then, so you may as well throw it back, or keep the trophy.

That night I dreamt about fish. I was hauling in salmon by the netfull, until Coast Guard boats surrounded me, their sirens and engines blaring. The noise woke me, and there were trucks, cars, and men talking outside. A flatbed was parked in the yard with our boat and trailer on top, covered in kelp and weeds and dripping all over. Dad sat on the porch, smoking, while the police argued with him. They took him, cuffed, to a car and put him in with the other passenger. It was Hack “Proudfeather” Wilson. They all sped away except for one car, an Escort. A heavy, butch-haired woman came to the door.

“Hanky Stockman? Come with me,” she said.

We left in the Escort. I could barely speak, my mouth was dry.

“Where are we going?”

“Downtown.”

“Why?”

“You’ll get to see your father eventually. They found his boat in the Canal – there was a dead man in the forward tank. I’m sure there’s an explanation. The police just like doing things their way.”

My aunt picked me up from the courthouse and took me home and I spent the rest of the summer with her and my uncle. The months wore slow and hard on me because of my Dad and because I broke out in a rash the day I arrived at my aunt and uncle’s, and it festered, growing worse every day. Then, just before school, I went back to the old house. Dad asked about the hundred-pound fish and wanted me to check on it. We spoke by phone through a glass wall once a week, but that was temporary, he said.

I rode my bike to the house, and saw that the doors were locked and the car was backed up on the side. Things looked like someone other than Dad put them away, and they stayed that way for a while. I went to the shed. It was a hot day, like a chain you found on black pavement, or a hot vinyl seat when you have shorts on. The shed was padlocked, but the old man said I could break a window if I wanted to, so I did.

It was musty and dry, like a hay barn. I could smell crankcase oil, dust, and a hint of rancidness. I came around to the back, near the basin, where I had left the fish in a box of ice, and there it was. Chief Brody was there, too, in his corner, nervous, knowing I was going to look.

“‘Mornin’ Chief. Let’s see how this shark’s doin.’”

I opened the box and the ice was gone, the water was gone, but the fish was there, bone dry. It was as light as Styrofoam, and crispy, like a big chunk of that stuff on Kentucky Fried Chicken. It might have weighed ten pounds, max. There was no chance of a record now, or a weighing. It may as well have been the hundred pound fish that got away.

I always dreamed of catching a fish of that size again, but never could get Dad to tell me how he got his. The tape was informative, though, the man had several good tips on catching a hundred pound fish. I checked it out again, a year later.

“Never lead on that you’re fishing for one when you are. They’ll know it. Don’t be pretentious. But for God’s sake, keep a scale in your boat, and weigh her as soon as she comes out of the water…”

Quotes

2005-04-09T21:38:00.000-07:00

"My favorite kind of sunflower seeds is sunflower seeds." - nephew Jackson Sheppard, 4.

Dirty Feet and Saggy Diapers

2005-03-26T14:07:00.000-08:00

It was the kind of summer where the heat was like someone took a hammer and layed it on a furnace for half an hour then handed it to you, not by the handle, saying, "here, hold this while I go and have a freezing Kool-Aid," and the heat was also so anxiously bad that it drew your eyes downward, to the ground, where little black ants lived in small cities and combed the edges of the trail for dropped food.

For the first time I wore my clothes to bed, to save time, and when I got up, the sun was already beating a path down the barely rested earth, and I knew if I hurried, I could get to A&B before the ground was too hot for my feet; so I grabbed my dollar from page 351 of my Guinness World Records book and ran out the door, but not before I felt a pain on my left foot which felt like someone threw my body into a hot tub full of porcupines and rubbing alcohol. I'd stepped on a nail, and before I knew it, was laying on my back with my foot elevated and dark brick colored lines of blood drying on my ankle. Earl found me in a panicked state on the front lawn and he ran, his diaper sagging low with a faint darkness inside, and returned with Francis, our neighbor, a giant Italian man.

Francis scooped me off the ground like I was a bundle of dried corn stalks and hauled me inside. Mom never hung up the phone, but directed Francis to lay me on the counter, the one we're never allowed to sit or climb on, which she made fudge on only last week, but today became an operating table. "I'll be twenty-nine, again, if you need to know. Chop off my leg and count the rings," she said, laughing, into the phone while running water over her hand and holding my ankle with the other. John woke up and joined Earl, watching. Mom washed, rinsed, flushed, irrigated, wrapped and kissed my wound, and I took off wearing sandals. The offending nail was clean enough, Francis said, so I wouldn't need shots.

On the corner was CameronPollock and some other bad kids. I crossed the street not looking at them, but keeping my face forward, like flint, and feeling their stares all the way. The corner couldn't have come quicker, and when I was out of their sight I ran. I ran to the beginning of the trail across the abandoned field, which was a residential zoned five-acre plot that was never bought by rich developers then, but is now adorned with the nicest condominiums in the valley. Back then it was just a field, with tall white grass and garbage, including a turned over shopping cart, and some cardboard, and from the head of the trail through the field you could barely see A&B over the top of the grass.

Halfway through the field, I heard bikes, gaining on me. I didn't look, but did nice and moved to let them pass, expecting some kind of token of their evil, such as spitting on me or bunny hopping a rear tire onto my foot. I thought they'd spit, like Rolling Johnson did from the roof of Madrone School. But they just rode by. Cameron Pollock was deep in conversation about himself and his new bike, which he probably stole over the weekend. My nerves were strained so that my body went into long term battle stations, which is where any ballasts are sent to be jettisoned. In other words, I needed to go number two, badly.

When I saw the evil boys one-at-a-time jumping their bikes over the hump toward the end of the field, it was safe to speed up my pace. I had to get somewhere fast, because I had something like a sock-full of marbles pressing on my butt. A&B had a smelly public restroom, probably because of a drainage or ventilation issue, but I had no choice. The store was cool and the floors were shiny, and the place smelled like Dolly Madison pastries and floorwax. The bathroom was through a door behind the butcher's counter so I briskly walked down the candy eisle to get there.

As I went through the door, it was cold except for a gust of smoke and hot wind, and I saw a door ajar to the alley, where people go for their breaks or where drivers come in to open the rollup door and empty their trucks, but this time, there was Cameron Pollock and his friends, smoking cigarettes with an A&B guy. I dropped behind a stack of boxes of lettuce and peered through the holes therein, hoping they wouldn't see me, but Cameron Pollock must have, because he looked right at me, and yet his business was much more important, because their friend, the A&B guy, handed him a case of Budweiser.

I waited for them to leave and let me go to the bathroom which was right by the door they were loitering behind, because they would never let me go in there, and I knew of no other bathroom I could get to in time without a long explanation why I needed to use it. So I waited, testing different poses to see how I could rest without exploding like a shook up Coke bottle.

The manager came through the meat department and saw me immitating the movements of a speed skater, staring intently out the door at Cameron Pollock and his friends, and so he asked me what I was doing there.

"What are you doing here?"

"Looking for the restroom."

"Right there," he said. He had long, important sideburns, and the voice of a man who went to war and then smoked for twenty years. He saw the open door where Cameron and the employee stood, and by then Cameron was gone, and the coast was clear, and besides I had to do obey the manager and quit standing there for no reason, so I went to the smelly bathroom and came out feeling light, like I took off a heavy backpack and my shoes and pants and jumped into a cold quarry, naked.

Now I was an empty void and walked right through the candy eisle and picked out a dollar's worth, down to the penny, of Hershey's and M&Ms and Reeses, and took them to the cashier, and waited while old jazz music played, weakly, in benediction over me. I bought my candy, and by then, Cameron Pollock and my pierced foot were old memories, and even older when I opened the M&Ms.

I headed down the trail toward home.

Skullcap Manna

2005-03-26T13:47:00.000-08:00

Here are some recipes you can count on when your single, broke, alone and or searching for yourself somewhere on the West Coast, and can only rely on that which is found cheaply in those parts.

Skullcap Manna: Boil down for three hours the shells of various mollusks; that of mussels, a pound, and of clams and crab, not oysters, but conch if you can get it, and one goeduck. Reduce and add paprika, zests of lime and mandarin, ground walnut and minced garlic, both a pound, and sea salt. Simmer with a can of anchovies, oil and all. Serves 6-8.

Rucky Chucky’s Chubby Daughter: Add banana and cream to a blender, then shots of exprexo, chocolate and ice, blend until smooth. Top with whipped cream and syrup. Enjoy with a whole chicken.

Mango Chili Stew: Chop 3 ample mangos and sear, skinless in peanut oil. Then steep in mango ceylon tea for twelve minutes. Add zest of mandarin, anchovy paste, each a pound, and a pound of sea salt, one cup of port and Marsala, a pound of cubed lamb and of peppercorns, a tablespoon. Pressure cook for 2 hours. Garnish with green figs before serving.

Sour Wheat Pain Au Levane! Pinch wet yeast into 2 cups of 71 degree water and the same of 20 percent germ bran flour, stirring vigorously, and store in a cool place in an air tight container, like a stone mason jar with a rubber gasket under the lid. Nourish every week by scooping out a cup and adding equal parts of flour and water. In 2-3 months, take a cup or two and combine with 4 cups of flour and knead. Raise twice and bake loaves at 425 degrees F.

Cowpoke Douche: This is an all purpose wash for extreme outdoor excursions of weeks without showering. Add ammonia to a can of comet, roll into bits of cakey clay with powdered soap and pack tightly into Alumaseal containers for travel. Use: unpack and lave in palm with water, applying to armpits, asshole, and feet. Rinse or wipe with a towel or cloth. Works for washing clothes or repelling ferrel animals.

Ukrainian Angler: Dry and pack tightly twelve fresh trout in virgin olive oil with oyster sauce (a cup) and rosemary. Keep for a winter thus, then spread over fire on a 15 inch frying pan with peppercorns and anchovies, mace, allspice, cloves and bay leaves. Sear on both sides, then hydrate with Chardonnay and whole, skinned peaches. Add yogurt, cottage cheese, and butter and broil for twenty minutes, then serve with the remaining wine.

Rucka Chucky Beef: Grind in a grinder the following: annato seeds, rosemary, peppercorn, whole cumin, parsely, allspice and dill. Dump into a blender with a fine Merlot and an equally fine Port and some water, blend. Chop five pounds of London round into large cubes and place in a container with sald and the blended marinade. Refrigerate overnight. Prepare a poultice of white flour, olive oil and sea salt and toss beef. Brown in a frying pan, then return beef to the marinade and dump the whole quantity into a large ceramic or stone baking pot, lined with banana leaves. Wrap contents tightly and cover, and bake for four hours. Serve with conch fritters, garlic bangers or yams in chip oil.

Octoberfaust or German Schpitzda – a roulade of beef: Butterfly two pounds of London broil and beat flat with a mallot until you’ve covered a large area. Chop a mix of the following: onions, garlic, celery and carrots, into small bits, until you filled a two quart bowl. Season appropriately. Add pounds of ground beef, lamb and chicken and two eggs to the mix, stir, and spread over the broil. Roll tightly, adding sliced Fuji apples at the end, and tie with string. Brown in olive oil, then douche with Port and Marsala and simmer for twenty minutes. Add new potatoes, onions and repeat. Serve with Jewish rye toast, beaters, and a North Coast cab.

The Press

2005-03-24T18:23:00.000-08:00

Let me take the time to tell you about the greatest people on the planet, the Press girls. The Press is my other office, where I can write, or stop and stare out the window at snow falling and minimal traffic, or strike up a conversation with the employees.

Amy's the manager. When you go in, she smiles at you like you were friends, because you are. And she always has a homeopathic solution for your ailes, not knowing her face already healed you. Her sister, Carrie, has the same quality. I hope they both bear children and populate this dreary planet with their goodness. When you're with them, you feel like thorns are being lifted out of your flesh.

Sometimes, when they're not in school, Shelby and Erica work the Press.

Erica's a rarity, actually, but when you find her, it's like finding a four-leafed clover. She speaks with high energy, proudly proclaiming her "nerdy" qualities, but makes you believe in nerds like they're the saviors of the world. She'll surely save the world from something, someday.

Shelby - Shelbzers - my little sister, is a small and spunky spright with a mop of fierce brown hair she waves like a pompom, mainly when she's expounding on the topic of boys. And it's hard not to get brotherly. I supply her with bag lunches full of advice, daily, knowing she's not obliged to hear me, but saying it makes me feel safe. Her innate nurturing qualities are pushing through, if only we can suppress them until after college!

Then there's Jordan. What can I say about Jordan. First of all, he's not one of the Press "girls." He and Shelby keep me furnished with laughter and feeling young, and sometimes they listen to me.

They're all decent, good people, all of whom I'd consider taking if I was assigned to a quarantined safety bubble to undertake saving the human race for future generations because a mass virus broke out all over the world. I'd be chaplain/humorist, naturally.

(More later...)

Aprilia Caponord

2005-03-23T21:45:00.000-08:00

Paid a visit to Black and Read today. Criminy. Take Barnes & Noble, have an earthquake, and add 20 years. It's so messy fun! They have two main rooms; vinyl, skirted by porn, pipes and rock vid's; and books. I found lot's of Brautigan, Keruoac, Hem, and everything else, but they're not used-bookstore-cheap. They're "cool" cheap, which isn't really cheap. I got a handfull of books I'd been looking for, like this one. They also had killer games, like the Bard's Game, a Shakespeare thing where you put on a play and compete for good reviews, or something. The employees were colorful and talkative, like Bard's themselves, loudly expressing opionons on stuff. Maybe it is what City Lights was.

Then, went to my doctor's, then here for lunch.

This....

...is my dream bike, case you were wondering. Aprilia "Capo" - sounds like an Italian piece of shit, don't it? Probably is, but it rolls off the tongue, like Lamborghini, or Linguine.

No diabetes! Whew, that's out of the way - I need a frappucino. The blood sugar thing was just that. A blood sugar thing.

Amazing: I got comments on my blog today! I can't believe it. Keep 'em coming - and don't be too gentle. It's about the writing, and you can find some if you look hard.

"Amsterdam's a cespool of humanity. With some nice museums." - Black and Read guy.

Hemingway's in hell...

2005-03-23T09:17:00.000-08:00

...and so is Hunter S. Thompson, that's why you can't be like them. You can't stomp through life wringing every experience for all it's got, you can't drink two bottles of wine with lunch, you can't screw or shoot anything that moves, send dead rats to Jack Nicholson's daughter, invent gonzo journalism, challenge authority, write about the Hell's Angels, light things on fire, shoot things in your own house, write mean letters to the president, go to jail, blow things up, vote democrat, marry more than once, or drink absinthe.

Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005)
You must obey the rules, bathe, and wear coulattes. There has to be this high Plexiglass wall between you and anything evil, even in your own life, and all characters must get saved in the last chapter. Okay, maybe this is too Pink-Floyd-song.

Are they in hell? I don't know. Will you go to hell for being like them? I doubt it. Should we all write the truth? Always. Did they? I don't know - Hunter said if he told all the truth he knew, he and about 600 others would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle.

"Call on God, but row away from the rocks." - HST

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." - HST

"All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time." - EH

"My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way. " - EH

"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. " - EH

"It was a pleasant cafe, warm and clean and friendly, and I hung up my old water-proof on the coat rack to dry and put my worn and weathered felt hat on the rack above the bench and ordered a cafe au lait. The waiter brought it and I took out a notebook from the pocket of the coat and a pencil and started to write. " - EH

Anne Lamott and Donald Miller Book Reviews

2005-03-22T14:10:00.000-08:00

What can I say? She's great. She's Anne Lamott. You're gonna get Anne Lamott. She's creative, self-concious, and runs her space. She's like the writer you read about when you read about writers. They're lonely, but eventually they created their own lonliness. You may not want to hang out with Anne Lamott because she seems annoyed by people; but when she does like somebody, they're the greatest human being on earth. She hates George Bush, and refers to God as a she, and always mentions her female pastor's name, Veronica, like she invented them, and none of this bothers me.

What bothers me is this new writing style: You jot down journal entries, hilight the good-ones, and make a book out of them every three years. It's a machine, and your name's the brand. It's also a giant wall and no one, by doing this same thing, gets can scale it.

To be fair, I love this book. I want to send my copy right to my mother, hoping the "she's" and "Veronica's" and the "I hate George Bush's" will lure her closer to Jesus. Or maybe she'll be drawn by the chapter on losing her mother. My mom has two boxes of cremated humanity in her house, my grandma, and this old lady my mom befriended. She has other boxes of ash in her soul that she needs to bury as well, and Lamott's metaphor was not wasted on me. Read it, but be female first, and live a few years, too.

Miller, who may or may not be reading my story right now, has a similar style and love's (I hear) Anne. The book I just finished reading by him has it's share of journal entry-like entries, some stretched to fill chapters; and the big one is saved for last, the Romeo and Juliet/Church comparison, which I loved. It was actually a great book, because he maintained his theme and paid it off. It's a step further, theologically, than his first book, and you can tell he's been taking some classes. I like a raw look at God, unincumbered by establishment theology and Church paradigm.

Okay, if I seem pissed right now, it's because I already wrote this long article and lost it, because blogger crashed, and if it crashes again, I'll be doubly pissed, and will write worse reviews of both authors! (Sorry about that)

Anyways. Both books are great, but I need to pick up some Hem very soon, and get back to the real thing. Of course, Hem's in Hell, probably, and that will be a good title of my next entry.

Here it is...

2005-03-22T11:42:00.000-08:00

Anne Lamott's a great writer, but I wouldn't want to hang out with her, and that won't be a problem, because she seems annoyed by people anyway. Expecially numb nuts like me, who are over-juiced on testosterone and opinion, and exercise both regularly. If I said I didn't laugh out loud, or underline many things in her book, I'd be lying. She's good, but she's no Hem, and I admire writers who can make something up, you know?

At the gym there was this divorced dude yammering about his lifestyle to this young hotty. He was like, "Basically, here's how I answer that question..." or "You know, I've given a lot of thought to that, and, basically, do I want my children? No. Not now, but I would later. I'm this big traveller, and..." I reached down to feel around for a self-destruct button on my Life Cycle, but there was none, and the volume on my headphones wasn't working. I was stuck. "I've been to Europe seven times, so, I really like to travel, and aaaahhh, my son's eleven, and at that age, they really don't like to travel like that..." He checked for a reaction when he said "seven times." The worst thing was, she was half his age, so I hope he was only expecting rejection. He should have followed rule #863, according to Metro-Joe: never talk to girls at the gym.

Today is an off day, because my weekend was spent at motorcycle safety school (required to get a license in Colorado). I can't say much about it, except that it was long and arduous, and there was this little guy teaching. He looked like George Costanza with a full body of hair, and took his job very seriously, longing for the little moments of "cool" that teachers seem to experience; limited authority, telling bad jokes that oblidge laughter, stories. I did learn a lot about riding.

I'm having wierd reactions to my 2,000 calorie a day thing. Smiling Amy says it's because I'm not eating as much fat as before, but it seems like I'm totally allergic to sugar, and if I have anything with a concentration of carbs in it, I have this wierd attack. I feel nervous and irritable, shaky, weak, like I want to pass out. If I have something with tons of protein in it, or roughage, like lettuce or egg whites, I'm fine. Whatever.

More on places to write...

2005-03-20T23:37:00.000-08:00

The Verb cafe in Williamsburg, Brooklyn was one. It personified the purest form of coffee house. Hardwood floors, dark, with dark little cubby holes and booths, a hand-written menu, gourmet triple-decker PBJ's on black bread, ridiculously nuclear punk metal thrash playing, a bulliten board covered floor to ceiling in papers and eleventy-billion staples, eight wifi nodes popping up on your laptop, dogs on leashes, chicks in their sundresses, smoking, shitty old bikes, bums, $8,000 Mac laptops, and the ubiquitous smell of two or three superb coffees in the air. I was there for five weeks, but never talked to anyone. I think I remember conversations, but they were only ones I imagined while I was there, or overheard, and projected myself into their shoes. New York is hard on you if you go there alone. Seattle's better, and I think better things are coming from Seattle than from Brooklyn. If you go downtown to that swilly Pike market, where the moj-merchant fish tossers sell their over-priced salmon, if you go way in the back where lay people aren't supposed to go, you'll find a tiny old chowder bar called Ivar's. Take the red, duct-taped booth on the wall, the only one with the funny crank out window, and crank it out. You'll have good chowder, decent free wifi, and an amazingly secret panoramic view of Puget Sound.

Phylogeny Recapitulates Ontogeny

2005-03-20T21:26:00.000-08:00

My little brother was about a two-by-squirt when he cut out a paper heart and gave it to our babysitter. She kissed him on the cheek and he went back and cut out thirty-two more.

I envy him for learning so young how you can't recreate a first experience, no matter what your construction paper cutting skills are, or how good a writer you think you are.

Never believe your own press, especially small-town accolades, like what someone tells you in a small town. There are people out there,"serial encouragers," who say you're good, but forget to say everything, so you end up cutting out hearts, forever, in a cutting-out-hearts nervous hospital on the planet Mars, incarcerated in dillusion. Never once did they say how hard it was, or that you would have to improve each piece from the last, because the fickle reader was like a heroin addict, always trying to achieve their first high, or first paper heart, always wanting to see something different, something better, some other organ, like the spleen. So, the cutter-outer wears a path from his art table, between the dirty clothes, down the hall, to her door, where the first heart is taped for all to see, hoping he has the next great piece of art that she will hang, and reward him with another kiss, juicier and sloppier than the first.

Art

2005-03-02T10:01:00.000-08:00

"Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."

In "Three Uses of the Knife," David Mamet makes some points that rhyme with the above Picasso statement. People need some form of story or art to tie up life's loose ends. They have a bellyfull of incomplete dramas each day, and the small hour-long ones on TV help sow things up. Or they find comfort in the misfortune of TV characters. In writing for sitcoms, they say leave all characters the same. If someone wins the lottery, he must lose it. If someone is about to move, her plans must fall through. And these things by their own folly.

We nurse off these stories daily, microwaved versions of the wholesome prepared meals people ate 100 years ago, when they read long, thick novels which took weeks to resolve. The dust wasn't cleaned up everyday, but a gradual progression toward a higher place in life brought a different satisfaction.

Mamet describes true drama as not giving the child the lollipop he cries for, i.e., not resolving. True drama leaves things untidy and makes you think and ponder yourself, your life, your journey. Fine. True drama depicts life, and the tragedy works life out from the bad end. But both ends need working, and a higher place is just as true.

If so, then art is a form counseling, and therefore a calling. If you, by art or writing, can bring a source of resolution to somebody, then you have helped him. Art brings everything together, familiar elements and situations, incomplete dramas of the day, and ties them together nicely, giving some kind of satisfaction - even if it's false. But in that false satisfaction, someone is likely to see a solution, and tomorrow tie up today's loose ends.

"We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth." (Pablo Picasso)

All great art is about a girl.

2005-02-23T22:44:00.000-08:00

"You were too artistically subtle" she said. "She" being the latest one to nudge her cheeks over the edge and fall down, deep into my ones-that-got-away abyss. We'd probably be together today, raising cute little Steven's, had I been more pragmatically-forward and less artistically-subtle. And by pragmatically-forward, I think she meant, and these are not her words, artistically not-so-fat. You see, not only was she about nine years younger, but she was as height-weight proportional as you could get.

And so I find myself adding another notch to my little brothers belt, and getting another lashing on my logical acumen. As many movies as John Hughes or Robert Iscove ("From Justin to Kelly") or anyone else makes, reality lashes you on the upper thigh like a clumsy father if you try to believe anything but this: Art, talent, personality, humor, and skill do not render if you're fat. They bring girls in, friendly girls, pining for affection and attention, humor and praise; who admire your life and pay homage to you. But in the end, my little brother, metro-sexual extreme, you're right. They're just docking at my wide, safe harbor for a self-image refueling. If I go to close the deal, they disappear fast and artistically-subtle as the tide.

"Even Christian women, Steve?" Especially Christian women. They strut the halls like ambient manequins, with rings on all but one finger, harboring this vision: A Christian, Colin Firthian, Jane Austen character, rich, virgin, and ready to quote Sonnets during sex. He knows how to fence, rub feet, garner affection, and can read minds. If Mama told her princess she was a package, you'd best be three times that, if you want a date. It's like this, there should have been a Proverbs 32, a rider to 31 - that being, Proverbs 31 women don't exist, and if they do, they're married, or you can't have one.

Some cool links

2005-02-16T15:36:00.000-08:00

This will make you laugh until you burst.
Here's a funny commercial.

Reasons I'd make it in London

2005-02-16T15:25:00.000-08:00

The first reason I'd make it in London is because I can do a smashing Alan Ford. I'll need the giant black-framed glasses in order to be more believable, but otherwise, I got him in the bag. The secret is to grit your teeth alot, and just give 'em Cockney hell.

Then, I know the cool places to live. Notting Hill is the big movie industry mecca, and where movie stars hang out, and I know that "the Tube" is like the Subway, which I've ridden before. I'm large boned right now, but I'll be skinny very soon, because the food in London tastes like ass.

The additional reason I'll be awesome in London is because I'm stupid-assed buff and funky fresh. I can play guitar and I'm reading "Man From St. Petersburg" so I can know more about London, and I've read some Hemingway. Basically, London has no idea what's about to hit them, because I'm coming. I also saw "Snatch" about eleventy-fillioin times.

In conclusion, London is a hip town, but I'm hipper, and buffer, and will be launching my writing career from London very soon, as soon as I get some scratch together and blow this joint.

Alan Ford, a.k.a., Bricktop

Sanctuary

2005-02-06T22:09:00.000-08:00

At Stillwater Cove barely seven years old,
I'd take Glad bags, which I'd cut and unfold,
And cover my newly dug hole where I planned
To create a little living world in the sand.

Wherefore, as Noah, did I add...
Creepers, critters two of each,
(Okay, maybe not so, but how often do
you find two of anything on the beach?)
Mollusks, crabs and lively bugs hermitting,
Mostly edible, incredible, outer shelled,
sidewinding crustaceans, some permitting,
Okay, some not, some today aimed elsewhere
Than my silly design to stick them where
They can't gain or feed, or birth, or be birthed
But just the same to fill the girth
Of my little living world in the sand.

Then water I'd add, and rocks to ensure
No escape, and kelp and seaweed to keep
It real; what’s real? Could I, on this beach, procure
An ocean like the great Designer's deep?
And aren't all things gone soon, we take in hand,
without help, like my little living world in the sand?

Now, grown, I care and form much prose,
And still things build to nature ensnare,
My cracks, faults where frayed character shows,
The pools losing water that I can’t repair,
And she who lures and sums me into squalor’s spray,
Is like ten thousand waves pummeling my way,
Washing smooth with a swill of green sea,
These living to their lives, their young, and me
home, to later life, built by hand
My little living world in the sand.

Wishes, dreams, false myths and secrets
I wish't they'd cured in lunar wash clean,
A million fewer would be my regrets.
For millions of better chances I'd seen,
And chanced the few from in between
Thought and faith, where, reaching high,
Ten leagues up, where air breathers vie,
I'd no longer be a submarine.

My creatures crept back into the ocean,
I turned them loose, at my own notion.
They swore back at me, which I understand
'Cause I kept them imprisoned in the sand.

Thick, course tufts of beach grass
Cut my feet as to save it I tried.
Hot sands taxed them too
While under siege of tide
My contrivance stood not fast
But was, by justice (or tidal force
of nature, which in due course
balances all foolish contstruction)
It was brought to swift destruction.

But it was fun...

Shopping under rocks for what, I don't know.
For barnacles? Maybe, for things I would eat?
No, for hermits and mussels and starfish that glow
With cadmium on near flourescent feet.
How violent, indeed, these monsters would be,
Were I only ten centimeters tall.
Seven hostages, baffled, scatter to the sea
From the rock I turned over, I watched them crawl,
Wondering off across the land,
There's already a living world in the sand.

Copywright 2004 Steve Sheppard

Sleigh Ride

2005-02-06T21:49:00.000-08:00

Sleigh Ride

In cold, smokey air we walk toward
The old mare, gaping her bridle, bored,
With a slack haunch and hooves raking
White lines in the road and making
Her giant equine tussocks tap
Their vibes deep in rhythms which map
A winding root to my heart’s aching.

The driver clucks, and cracks his whip,
Urging the giant who rights our strake,
And jerks us fro like a small thing in her wake;
She blows white puffs, bobs and sways
Her bell plumed neck which peals our sleigh’s
Moonlit traipse down the tree-lined maze.

What mulls in me I should, too, loudly drum;
These bits of rime in the rents of my face,
Speak tears, not joy nor sorrow, but from
Seeing lights, in pulchritude, pulsate apace,
In currents, glistening, they glisten like her eyes,
Like the doomed gymnopspermous seed dies,
And fades, fading into barely a trace.

But then, my love, her precious arm hides
Barely kind, snugly in mine, now warm.
And quickened, my heart awkwardly coincides
With the powerful mare which my mind formed,
For, there was neither horse nor puffs nor bells,
Just the brewing vigor of Love inside.

Master Chief

2005-01-24T16:20:00.000-08:00

The Full Armor of God

One of my favorite video games is Halo 2. That's because I get to be someone quite the opposite of myself. In normal life, I'm overweight and slackerish, but the instant I turn on Halo 2, I'm Master Chief, and I'm in control of all my troops. We fight battles strewn along a campaign, and everywhere you go there's a new challenge and new weapons appear on the ground, magically, that you may need. It's fun, but you can develop headaches and eyestrains from playing for longer than three hours.

Master Chief has amazing armor, weapons, and abilities. He can use his enemy's weapons just by picking them up. He can pick up a camouflage pack and become invisible, then sneak up and blast aliens and steal their rocket launchers. Then he can jump ten feet up, or forty feet down, and run for hours without getting tired, and be shot several times without being injured. Even if he fails several times to kill the bad guy, his teammates say, "come on, Master Chief, waste `em!" Master Chief is invincible.

I am not Master Chief.

That's because the other day I got a rejection from a major ministry to work for them. Master Chief would have just crumpled up that letter and bombed the place. Actually, he wouldn't have been rejected. His application would reflect years of intergalactic battle experience and a counseling degree, which mine didn't. I was miserable. Then my friend's dog died and I cried. Mind you, it was my friend's dog. I get stressed out easy, I can't get up when I fall snowboarding, and I say dumb things.

I am not Master Chief, not even close.

Master Chief's body armor covers him from head to toe so that he can survive attack. So, I got to thinking, what armor do I have? Obviously, there's that scripture about "The Armor of God" and we've heard countless sermons on it. But what does it mean to wear spiritual armor? I don't think I know. Do I have to recite Ephesians 6:11 every morning in order to have it on? Some people think that. Or, maybe it's on as long as I have faith in Christ, and when I don't, it's like I'm taking it off. Master Chief is a picture of how we could be, spiritually, in the world. A book I read, recently, made a good point. It said we spend too much time battling the world on cultural and scientific grounds, i.e., worldly grounds. The world attacks Christians on traditional or religious grounds, and, instead of using the resources God gave us, we pick up their weapons and fight on cultural or moral grounds. It's like we're trying be justified by our culture and not our faith. In other words, it's like we're riding around in armored tanks in the morning, but by noon, the enemy throws a rock and we're out of that tank throwing it back, and often getting stoned to death.

This is how the enemy is clever. He doesn't attack the word of God itself, or God, but he goes after things that cannot necessarily stand, hoping we put stock in them. He attacks traditions, methods, paradigms. Not prayer, but the way we pray. Not the act of praising God, but how some of us do it. Not the Ten Commandments, or Christ's two commandments, but how we rewrite them for ourselves, and become sphincter police against each other. Satan attacks temporary things.

Mandy Moore's movie "Saved" is a good example. The makers of that movie hauled up many Christian paradigms on the slab, but why were Christians so mad? At what point was Jesus personally attacked? What scripture was directly challenged? They only made fun of what we've become on our own, and I think Jesus would have been hanging out with the wheelchair guy and the Goth chick. In terms of "hot or cold," these were more true people, and the kind He would have recruited to spread the gospel.

Instead of following Christ's example, many visible Christians fight the world on its terms or fight each other. They turn a cheek, only because they are cocking back their arm for a big whollup. But Paul's Armor of God is defensive armor, and the only offensive weapon is the sword, which isn't a sword, but is actually the word of God. God's word; the thing Jesus quoted to Satan in order to survive his temptations; the thing that cuts into the soul when swung in either direction. Paul taught about the Armor of God so we'd be prepared to stand against the devil's schemes.

When culture began to question God on scientific grounds, the Church reacted in kind. We developed the science of Creation, among others, to fight world on it's own terms. It's like Master Chief picking up his enemy's weapon and fighting him, except I'm not Master Chief. We might as well call it the science of Gospel, or Gospel science, which can't be proven. In fact, that's the argument atheists cite, that faith issues are not provable. We're fighting for nothing when we try to prove God exists. Don't get me wrong. I love reading Gospel science, but I do it believing the Bible is true, and evidence only strengthens my belief. Gospel science is great, but it can never replace loving relationships.

Developing a loving relationship instead of fighting on moral or scientific grounds will always win a soul.

What is the Sword of the Spirit? It's the Word of God, or the Bible. It's not just quoting scripture. I saw this couple on Jerry Springer one night. I can hardly watch that show. It's at the bottom of my list when there's nothing but test patterns on. So, this lady was complaining that her husband was too religious. Everything he said was a scripture. "Do you love me?" she said.

"Husbands ought to love their wives as Christ loved the church," he replied.

"Why can't I get a job?" she said.

"Wives should submit to their husbands."

"Why don't you just talk to me, instead of quoting the Bible?"

"And the words of God are flawless, like silver refined in a furnace of clay…"

He had an answer for everything, right out of the Bible. But he wasn't making sense, and was driving his wife away, instead of bringing her closer to God. Who knows if he was even a Christian – I think he needed counseling more than her.

The Word of God is the words of God, a.k.a., scripture, but it's also Love, because God is love, the word was God, etc. So, the sword can be made out of love, and the only offensive weapon we have, according to Paul, is love. It's also the Fifth Element, but that's another movie.

When we fight with non-Christians on Christian moral grounds, we lose because we expect non-Christians to obey God. It misses the point. It's like that O'Reilly Factor book for Kids. Shouldn't we raise them right and let them make up their own minds on politics? Just a suggestion. If you manicure the branches of people's beliefs, they'll only grow back. Love cuts to the root in every direction it's swung.

Sometimes, fighting scientific and logic battles with the world is like throwing down our spiritual armor. It becomes constrictive and uncomfortable to wear into battle.

Taking off the Full Armor of God

The first thing to go is The Shield of Faith. Why wear it if we believe our battle is against human-made arguments? The shield is for spiritual attack only, and we have to fend for ourselves against other ideas. The shield is quaint, and holding it makes us look out-of-touch with modern society. We no longer believe God prepares soil for us to plant in, so we take it upon ourselves to defend tradition. Besides, it's clear that the shield is for fiery darts. Has anyone seen a fiery dart lately? If you do, let me know, and I'll pick up my shield. I don't see in the spirit realm. All I see is some bozo fighting for bad legislation that disagrees with me, and some tongue-pierced Goth chick trying to come into my church. I can handle that in the flesh, no need for that Shield of Faith. These may be some reasons for putting down the Shield of Faith.

When we drop the Shield of Faith, our flesh is semi-exposed. We're telling God that we can handle the battle in our flesh, and the enemy recognizes and aims for it.

When we go to battle on worldly grounds, we drop the Sword of the Spirit. Instead of battling the enemy with the living Word, or with Love, we fight on the enemy's grounds, invoking their words. We use logical arguments to parry, historical facts and records to thrust, and if we pick up the sword, it's to quote hard scriptures in a proof-texting fashion. Proof-texting is using a scripture to prove a point, whether or not it does so. We don't thrust love into our enemy, or cut his soul of with the Bible's amazing, magical, mysterious power. The Word can actually cause the enemy to flee, or repent, or back down, which Jesus proved for us.

When we drop the sword and the shield, we look down at our feet and see that our shoes don't look like battle boots. They don't look like what Master Chief is wearing, but more like mukluks, or fuzzy slippers, or sandals. They were designed to be light and swift. They are the Gospel of Peace. We're not seeking peace, but a battle, because we think peace will mean compromise. If we make peace with homosexuals, atheists, and sinners, we will have to let go of our tradition and wade over to their side of the pool. Peace is not what we seek, but a battle, to defend our morals. If our shoes were supposed to be combat boots, Paul would have said "with your feet shod with the combat boots of Peace!" The disciples wore sandals, with their toes exposed to the elements, and they treaded lightly around the earth. I've seen too many visible TV Christians denouncing each other. That couldn't have been done wearing the shoes of Peace. When we reach down to change our shoes, we find the breastplate to be too confining, so we take that off. That's a big mistake. We are only righteous through the blood of Christ, and if we plead any other source of righteousness we must cast off that breastplate and wear something else.

One time I was with my girlfriend and we went into some gimmick store and I saw a rubber torso of a beach beauty. It was flesh colored and very, I guess, sexual. "So, that's what you'd look like in a bikini," I said, holding it up to her and not thinking. Whoops.

"I can't wear that, I'm wearing the Breastplate of Righteousness!" she rightly said. Now I'm sure there's a creature, and I'll have to ask my scientist friends about this, that eats pond scum. Well, I wasn't that creature, but I was it's crap, for the rest of the day. She was wearing the breastplate of righteousness, and there's no room for sexy rubber torsos or anything else in its place.

When we put on the breastplate of science, or cultural relevance, or politics, to protect our midsection, we may win a few arguments, but we can no longer wear the Breastplate of Righteousness. We are at the mercy of other ideas, at that point, and they'd better defend us.

Basically, we're pretty well exposed to attack. The only hope we have is some kind of camouflage, like Master Chief wears. Some people hide in Christian stealth. It's when you go about the world gaining people's trust by not leading on that you're a Christian. If your cover is blown, you can't trick anyone into church. Christian stealth is popular in rock bands lately. It's actually pretty cool when bands who don't flaunt their faith make it into the Helm's Deep of the secular music industry. But some never reveal their faith at all. They think secrecy amounts to some kind of currency, some kind of respect in the world. The problem is, what they see is someone walking around wearing a helmet and underwear, because that is all that's left of your spiritual armor. Actually, some versions say to gird your loins with truth, some say buckle. Picture some sort of elaborate underwear with a huge belt on it. There's probably an example of this at that gimmick store.

I practice Christian stealth. I go into a new place to work, or a school, and people begin to wonder what it is about me. I build up currency or credit and people just wait to hear my political views, or conclusions, or judgments so they'll know what category to put me in. They've never heard a Christian talk like me, so they don't know where to put me. Instead of saying, "do you want to go to church with me?" I make the stealth account increase and lead on. Then they think I'm gay. No guy can be nice and straight; besides, I'm going around in a helmet and underwear. Sometimes we have to decide if we're being stealthy or just hiding our faith.

"This generation of Christians is responsible for this generation of souls."

– Keith Green, to the people of the `Seventies.

Wait a minute! Why wear underwear? We guys call it "going commando.'" It's where you go underwear-free into the world. Truth is like underwear in that it holds everything together. In football, you want the Buckle of Truth fastened. To be false would mean to have no underwear on, or nothing holding anything together, and that could be devastating in a pile-up. But fighting the enemy on his grounds is like answering statements that are false to begin with. You almost have to assume false things, like that you have to prove God exists. "Can God make a rock so big He can't lift it?" That's my favorite. It's a clever statement that really only says, "In the limited realm of human reason, it's easy to rule out God." But He created reason, not to mention humans. To fight on these grounds with these ideas, you have to remove your underwear.

Now that you have nothing on but a helmet…

In kindergarten I remember presenting Mrs. Arnold with a difficult problem. We were in a disaster drill, which is where the bell rings constantly, instead of three times, and you're supposed to get on the floor and hide your head under your desk. I asked Mrs. Arnold why we protect our heads only. "What if giant pieces of debris falls and crushes our bodies? What difference would it make to protect our heads?" I said.

"Well. Better your head," she said.

She was doing her job, and so was everyone else in the class, and I should have been killed by some debris instead of standing there, questioning her. But I had a point. I liked to challenge traditions even at six years old. I liked to go commando and throw out those obvious things for people to ponder.

Why protect your head with a helmet if the rest of your body is under attack? Paul indicates that the helmet represents salvation and he pairs it with the Sword of the Spirit, which is the last item in his list. Maybe the helmet protects our minds, or the hope of salvation. Maybe the entire battle is in our minds, and if we take the helmet off, we're really screwed. One thing is certain. If I were naked, I would want a helmet with a really good facemask.

At the end of that passage, Paul says to pray always. He says pray for all the saints. How is prayer fighting? What do we do, put on all this armor and hide in a closet somewhere? Can you see Master Chief doing that? NO WAY MAN!

Paul says to put on your armor and intercede.

Intercession

Everything we do earns currency, either for now or in heaven. There's this "Joan of Arc" movie where Joan of Arc rides around with a sword and full armor, and no helmet. This was so we could see Milla Jovovich's beautiful face, I guess. Actually, Joan of Arc didn't wear a facemask because she wanted her face to be seen, so all those Master Chiefs of her day could see that they were fighting a small woman. Some faiths would say, in my scenario, that the helmet was the first thing to go. When you go to war on the world's terms, you take the helmet off so your face can be shown. There's so much social currency available to the Christian today. People attend meetings to be seen, or show up at the new, postmodern house church to show their endorsement, or hang out there and therefore, are very spiritual. A helmet would conceal the face and no one would know you are there and no currency could be credited to you. Intercession is an example.

One time we had this band come to church. They were of the postmodern ilk which, for some reason, has come to be equated with youth, long, emo'd hair and thin glasses and raggedy pants, although I've met tons of postmoderns who don't fit that description. Their band was great, but they had this couple on stage with them who weren't playing any instruments or singing in microphones; they just sat there, Indian style, with their eyes closed. In fact, they looked like they were meditating in the Eastern sense. Pastor was so impressed that, before giving his mandatory three-point sermon, he asked the couple what their purpose was. They said, "we are intercessors, we're just here to pray for the message to get through." Pastor knew this, but asked so that we could hear.

I always wondered about that. What is intercessory prayer? Don't you ever wonder what it means, especially when people come on TV and say their thoughts and prayers are with the troops, even though they have neither? I asked my ultra-spiritual, Christian Spirituality professor, Dr. Crabtree, who I adored, and who had us march around class seven times in Jericho fashion. "I feel led to intercessory prayer, but just can't get the whole praying by myself in a closet thing down," I said. She didn't realize how ridiculous I sounded because she didn't laugh out loud, or march around me seven times so that I would fall like Jericho.

"That's exactly what intercession is all about, Steve." She said, "If you are called to be an intercessor, you are called to pray for people every day, and you will usually be alone. It's about having the discipline to carry that out when you're not seen." She always had a way of driving the importance of words home with emotion. To her, I was a potential warrior for the Kingdom who was on a wrong path, and this was her opportunity to set me straight.

I read about Billy Graham's ministry, and how little old ladies gathered months before the crusades in a basement and prayed for their city. That's intercessory prayer. They are praying directly to God, and no one knows it. They are doing things in secret, and God, seeing in secret, rewards them. The couple in that band (bless their hearts) wasn't praying in secret. If they wanted to be true intercessors, why didn't they pick a room down the hall, empty and dark, and pray there? I'm just saying, what would have been the difference? That would have been like putting a helmet on, with a face shield. They wouldn't have been seen. We were more impressed by the visible act of prayer on stage than we were by the music, or the message. There wasn't anything interesting about that, but the interesting thing was the intercessors. Intercessors aren't supposed to be interesting, or seen, should they?

Master Chief is interesting, though. He has lots of cool equipment and abilities, and we can become him for long hours and destroy Halo, and incur eye and brain damage, and are victorious.

But I am not Master Chief.

I'm not Master Chief, and I make a crappy intercessor. If I ever pray for someone it's usually short, and then I call to say they were on my heart. I guess I'm more of an edifier than an intercessor, both of which are important, but I think intercessors will be rewarded more handsomely. I edify someone and expect some reward for it, or I need to see my reward in his or her joy, like following a homeless person to see what he or she did with my dollar. But intercessors see no personal thanks for their effort. Intercession is anonymous work, and most of the time you will never see the fruits, much less receive thanks from those you pray for. Intercession is something we do with our helmets on. It's invisible battle, in an invisible war.

So why did Paul use battle terms in the first place? Didn't he know we would see that and find ways to fight? He probably knew we would anyway and wrote to get our attention. He wrote to remind us that we are in a different kind of battle, and need invisible armor to stand against invisible schemes. We can't see them, and certainly the people in the world can't, but God can. That's why He made the armor and gave it to us freely. We have the choice to wear it or take it off and fight on our own. We have two offensive weapons, prayer and love. Truth, righteousness, peace and faith are defensive parts of the armor. Without these, we go through the battlefield naked.

Master Chief has visible armor, fights with his enemy's weapons, takes their spacecraft, dies and comes back to life, and always wins. And he's a muscle-bound hard body.

But, alas, I'm not Master Chief.

Copywright 2004

Dust Trap Manna

2005-01-24T16:15:00.000-08:00

I was fashionably miserable sitting outside Café Palermo and could barely see the luke green, miserable sky for the undulating mist of garbage. My jaded tongue told me I was drinking burnt milk, though I'd paid for a triple latte.

A man walked by, gaited to a Paleolithic cadence and carrying a broken floor lamp with the shade freely swinging, like a dead duck’s head. He looked at me, then the sidewalk, like I was trespassing on his front lawn. Then he fell and worshipped the ground like it was the face of God, always half-watching my hand. He'd come out of character for some change. His name was New York Moses, and I’d heard of him.

He was an institution in the City, always giving portions of his gain to friends of his ilk. He wore a long bathrobe and bore his staff, reciting the Ten Commandments as they applied to passersby, and often for that coveted jingle of pocket change. It was a good racket. Somewhere in Central Park was his home, Union Square his Gulf, and Bedford his Paris. But he rarely came to Little Italy or Chinatown.

I got up and followed him.

New York Moses took me through the crowded streets and to the courthouse, where a nation of birds darted, like missiles, through giant columns. A collusion of pretzel and hotdog smells waved in and out of the air mixed with a swill of ten grades of industrial strength urine.

Moses breathed two lungs full. “Aaaahhh. Piss and ambition,” he said and waved his staff, instantly parting the crowd in two. “Damn the torpedoes!" We walked on.

A woman came out of the crowd, not affected by the parting, and walked right between us. Her clothes, hair, makeup, eye shadow hues, were a taste of the Midwest. She strode through like a stray prop amid inert, nomadic slouchers and men defeated by gravity.

“Anyway. This blows, I’m outta here,” I said, grossly averse to spending opportunities on my diversion any longer.

“Patience!” said Moses, losing his own. “We’re halfway there.”

We were going somewhere? I lifted my collar and glanced around, like James Dean. We’d traveled twenty blocks so far, and if he seemed to have a destination and counted me his companion, I decided to stay the course. We steered into a pub and lathered our faces with yeasty black stuff. It was McSoreley's, a pub that only allowed women in the last decade. They have two kinds of beer, light and dark, and saltines in a bowl for food. You could starve in a place like that, or get drunk fast.

My thorax shivered with beer and I remembered Dad’s camper—when we took that Grapes-of-Wrathian slog across God’s country. It was the summer of ’80 or ’81, with a puppy, two siblings, and some stale Cheezeballs. For a month down the humid Southern highways, in near passing-out heat; the smells of Gaines Burgers, puke and number’s one and two burned in our heads—and the heat was so unbearable. So unbearable that we’d fight for the window whenever Stepmom drained the ashtray of air conditioner dew and flung it out, misting our faces with a tint of smokey spearmint gum. Briefly sated, we’d fall back on hot mounds of clothes and sleeping bags to a kind of half-sleep.

“Aaaahhh!” Moses vented, blowing foam through his tattered tussocks. He slammed the stein on the bar like he’d done a day’s work and we left, walking up 5th Avenue toward 14th Street, then Union Square. The sun peeped and beamed down on the chewing gum spotted sidewalk. We came to a fat woman trenching between slabs of sidewalk with her fingernail. The fifty feet she’d cleared looked like a circuit board, or a maze for mites. It took years to bore. I handed her my bag of pretzels from McSoreley’s. Moses reached out, parried my arm with his staff, and, clenching my wrist, shook the bag loose into a trashcan.

“What’s the matter with you?” he said, “Never let your right hand see what your left is doing. Otherwise, ten people’ll try and steal it from her.” He smiled back at the trenching lady as she retrieved her prize.

These outbursts fortified my diversion that day. Moses fascinated me. Rarely were my classmates so interesting, or fun, or so attached to what they believed. They bolted out the door, like they all had pressing affairs, but never did. Moses hung around. He allayed a certain disquiet in my soul, and gleaning the streets with him brought a metrical peace and liberty, like I woke up and the dullness was gone. He had no words or ruminations for it. He just supplicated the earth like a bovine, rising daily to his low deployment with fatigue in his eyes and a wobbly staff. He’s an infomercial of dearth and compliance to circumstance, listing his head down below the sneering world.

But this he had over me. He'd pass easier into the hereafter with what little material he'd attached to himself. Much will wrest off of me when I pass, but he’ll slip fluidly into Abraham’s bosom. My crustaceous skin is a heap of barnacles, and now that I think of it, I wish he’d wave that floor lamp and part the dead out before too much of me is transferred to it’s mass. Sometimes I think I'm in a Hefty bag, and God holds the drawstrings, and they're stretching thin.

Moses and I walked down the windy helices to the Brooklyn L and boarded. Next stop, Bedford. Paris. “Buy me a tea at the Verb,” he said, and like a Bohemian playwright, added, “and I’ll bid thee adieu.”

I’d out-followed my welcome. Fair enough. We went into the dark, cavernous café, where, again, his undulations parted a sea of tackle box-faced rabble. A half-eaten, triple-decker PBJ on a glass plate made an inviting table for the Moses.

“Dust trap manna,” he said, handing me his staff. I brought his tea and set it down with five bucks, then turned to the door. Moses grabbed my arm, and I spun around like the kid in the Mean Joe commercial.

“We all snuggle up to quality of life like a heat lamp, thinking it’ll never dim,” he said. “And when it does, everything’s the pits. No Aaron or Hur to hold you up, two-by-two, however you go, it’s like this—we all have an avarice.”

“Do you have a commandment?” I said.

"Oh, yeah." Moses pondered. My sudden question made him cocksure, like a sage. “The one with the parents,” he said. He held out both hands, open. “It’s like all ten in one.”

I bore my confusion loudly, but lost out to the sandwich. Moses crossed his legs, dangled a blackened sandal and sipped his tea with a smile.

The L was packed. I squeezed back for a jumpseat, but they were all gone. The train descended below the river and I thought about the man. Compared to the price I paid to urge out a smile from some people, his was the better value. I go to Union Square more often, now. My right hand, as if with a mind of it’s own, leaves perfectly uneaten food in the trash. It's been acting strange lately.

Copywright 2003, Steve Sheppard