through so much dust

worn smooth

2010-05-05T13:02:00.002-05:00

the acid free pages of my little black book
are
filling
up
once
more

not with names or numbers or places
but
with
hope
life
freedom

worn black cover with puppy dog ears
fits
my
hand
and
pocket

The best part....

2010-03-01T10:21:00.002-06:00

about working in a public space such as, oh, a Panera Bread restaurant.... is the lady sitting at the table behind me screaming into her cell phone at her husband about feeding the dog Cheerios because he might not be able to choke them down.

Relevance Fail

Spaces

2010-02-25T09:13:00.002-06:00

hard earned openings
in the back of my
head allow
the breeze to blow through
and cool the smoking
tendrils of thought
and the torched remnants
of my once known future

Dreams for the Ages

2009-07-09T14:31:00.004-05:00

I used to dream that I was a spy. It wasn't uncommon for me to wake up in the middle of the night, soaked with sweat, fresh out of a scene from a Bourne movie (or some custom version of a similar ilk in which I was the star). In hindsight, I can pinpoint quite a few reasons why my dreams ran this course for several years. Sadly though, it seems that my days as a sleep drunken dreamer spy have gone. My oft dozing subliminal self hasn't been able to channel the always running adventurer in quite awhile.

My dreams of late are fairly focused, pinpointed on fears and a recurring scene that involves a voodoo statue and a lot of yelling on my part. They also involve the occasional bar room, with a long table and me stuck up against the wall, unable to move. If you really want to know I'll tell you, but it's kinda weird and more than a little disconcerting, so let's leave it between you and me ok?

Remember that race I was going to run last Saturday? It was awesome. Seriously a ton of fun, running through the woods, up and down steep ravines, across a waist deep river (not once, but three times) and through rocky creek beds. I'm gonna go ahead and give back the poison ivy that currently abides on both legs and my right arm. I'm also going to give back the 3 hornet stings that laid me up for 3 days. (Yes, I'm allergic, and yes I kept running and finished the last 3 miles after I got stung. . . . don't worry, my mom already yelled at me for it.) I came in 11th overall and should have been 8th, but got lost on the trail at one point and ran about 1/2 mile out of my way to get back with the pack. Finishers 8,9 and 10 were in my sights at the end and if I hadn't gotten lost I would've been in front of them no problem. I know that the title of this post was about dreams, but this kinda was one, so lay off.

Surreal moments abound. My nerve endings are finding life after a long period of numbness and it feels good to feel again. Though I'm not medicated, I find myself living again for the first time in awhile in a Garden State sort of way. The sterile, unfeeling, and very safe place where I put my heart now seems bland, un-invigorating and cold. I want some color. I'm wearing green today, but in that bar room dream, I'm wearing gray.

Down the Road I Go . . .

2009-07-03T17:32:00.004-05:00

So it's been about 9 1/2 months since anything of substance landed here, and at the time I guess no one had a clue.

I suppose it's safe to say that finally, at this point, and after everything else, I can show my face here again. Vulnerability is a bit hard to come by these days, but with the continued help of some old friends (and a few new ones) I'm making my way. Those who know me well know where I am and where I am not ... and now the rest of you are wondering. I'm still locked up tight, but the walls of this vault are starting to look more like a cardboard box, and I know that it's only a matter of time before I'm free to be me again . . . free to be the B that I haven't been for many years. Resurgence is in the air and I believe that the best is yet to come.

I have run through 4 pairs of shoes
I have climbed a mountain
I have sworn . . . . at basically everyone (yes, probably even you at some point)
I have cried
I have screamed
I have painted
I have played
I have seen the very best and worst of myself
I have learned to stand up for myself

This is an annotated list.

And now I am ready for what is next. Tomorrow morning I'm running this guy. I'm a little excited about exposing the remaining demons, and then running their asses into the ground (or mud as the case may be). It's supposed to rain, and I think that will make it even better.

F*$% you Jobu, I'll do it myself.

Is there room in me for grace? And for patience? I don't discount the value, but I'm feeling a little selfish right now, and I guess I'm tired of being graceful, and patient. I seem to be a little short on tolerance, but then, I've always been willing to stand back and watch people implode with a kind smile on my face. Am I gracious because I don't speak up? Or am I a coward who can't dictate enough substance to alter what is going on around me? Or do I just find myself in the wrong place at the wrong time?

There is room in me for grace, and for patience. Those spaces are not dictated by circumstance, but by people. As my community grows, and the circle of people who care for me increases, so does my capacity for love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness and self-control. As much as I hate to admit it, the strength of the Spirit is drawn from the presence of community, and not by some advanced level of perception, logic, or knowledge. I find myself low amongst them, with much to learn.

Am I back? Who knows? But at least I'm breathing, and today at least, I'm standing up straight and showing my face.

2009-01-26T03:18:00.002-06:00

My eyes are as blue
as they've ever been
to what end
I do not know

on the writing front

2008-09-18T20:33:00.004-05:00

I haven't talked about writing in this space in a long time. Come to think of it, I don't know if I've ever talked about writing in this space. I'm pretty sure all of those thoughts, musings, and updates were left in the wake of old blogs that have long since been retired.

The main reason for this is that I haven't been writing. At all. OK, so there's the occasional melodramatic poem, but nothing of substance in the least. And I'm learning something, and that is that I'm a much better, and happier, person when I AM writing.

So I've started a little project. I'm half sure that it will end up saved in a folder right beside all of the other half finished writing projects that I've started, but who knows, maybe this one is the magic bullet. I'm working on developing some ideas for short stories. At this point I'm viewing them more as exercises than as something that I may seek to publish.

I've always loved the poignant and very direct style of Flannery O'Conner. I've learned from past exercises, and a few undergrad writing classes at AU, that imitation is not only a sincere form of flattery, but it is a great way to hone your own style and to find your own strengths. I learned this lesson very well 2 summers ago when I spent a few months trying to imitate T.S. Eliot. I chose characters in the world around me and then wrote poems about them in the way that I thought Eliot would have written them about those same people and in those same circumstances. Not that I want to be Eliot, quite the opposite actually, but the exercise helped me learn more about my own perspectives and about my own strengths and passions as a poet.

So here I am developing stories about people in the same way that I think O'Conner would have written them. The hardest part for me at this point is the sheer blunt brutality of human nature that shows its face in her writing. She stares the darkest parts of who we are right in the eye and shows the reader just how close we all are to being the kind of people that we claim to abhor. Long term, this probably isn't a style that I'll stick with, but it is teaching me to pay very close attention to characters and too look deeper inside them than I have before.

These short stories also provide a decent place for me to practice writing dialogue. So much of what I've done has been in a non-fiction prose format, that dialogue doesn't come easy to me. I can write 10,000 words about what kind of conversation my characters just had, but I can't seem to write the damn conversation. The short story format doesn't have the intimidating factor of length to dissuade me, so I can keep pressing on with dialogue, knowing that I'll be able to wrap it up shortly.

Anyway, that's that.

of Mordecai, Boa Bob, and the Slam

2008-09-15T20:42:00.005-05:00

I recently learned that the concept of Slam Poetry was born about 8 blocks from my house. The Green Mill is a famous old club here in Chicago and it's perhaps best known as an old haunt of Al Capone. If, however, you're not into gangsters and you don't have anything to do on a Sunday night, then you'll find a remarkable subculture of poets gathering to read, to laugh and generally harass each other.

I'd been wanting to go for a while now, and last night I was finally able to get my rear end over there. A few thoughts:

1. If variety is the spice of life then the Open Mike Hour was the West Indies. Some were poignant, some were cliched, some were just bad. A few were remarkable. One was great.

2. First time readers at The Green Mill are virgins. First time readers anywhere are "virgin virgins."

3. Following the Open Mike there were 2 featured Poets (groups of poets as it were). The 2nd group was almost more sketch comedy than poetry, but one particular sketch about Segways was pee your pants funny.

4. My little itch to read, which used to itch like a little mosquito bite, is now a full blown case of poison oak.

5. I will become a better poet by going to these things on a regular basis. I'm learning the importance of hearing what I write, and not just looking at it on the page.

6. With every effort to bury any arrogance in place, I can tell you that I could hang.

_________________________________
With that said, I feel like I'm changing seasons.

Cryptic is fine and has its place, but so does openness. I've been hiding.

I was around 8 . . .

2008-09-12T20:38:00.004-05:00

. . .and my world centered around these. I miss being 8. I like how the commentator says "You can tackle almost any hill," just as it drives over the flat side of a ruler. Awesome.

Coordinates:

2008-09-11T21:18:00.005-05:00

I finished part one of The Seven Storey Mountain and am taking a little break to read some candy. Mainly to help me sleep better.

I was listening to a Podcast of This American Life called "By Proxy" on the bus tonight on the way home from work, and I realized that I am now, without question, officially a liberal. How this happened, I do not know. The weird part is that I remain politically apathetic. Is that even possible?

Radiohead is my happy place right now. (I know . . . Thom Yorke is all angsty and the opposite of happy, but I don't care.)

I miss having a boring old cell phone with no email. The Blackberry (i.e. being accessible 24/7) is going to be the death of all us quiet, contemplative types.

I want to start a crazy long and epic novel after I finish the Merton autobiography; something classic. Open to suggestions.

I will be doing some cold weather camping this fall and I can't wait.

Still trying to work up the cajones to do some open mike reading. I think I'm gonna go to the Green Mill on Sunday night though, just to get inspired.

It's about time for a new laptop (I'm typing this on a screen that I can barely read through shattered LCD shards because I stepped on this thing.) I want to be uber hip and make the move to the Mac . . . but I'm in a dysfunctionally satisfying, codependent relationship with my PC's. Help?

#910

2008-09-10T20:43:00.002-05:00

Defiance. The words sound the same
as every other verse. Solomon's writ
can't hold them hostage. Running free
pages turn and the sun is never new.

city of . . . . crowds?

2008-09-07T09:32:00.007-05:00

We have a standing joke about going to the Taste of Chicago every summer. It's the biggest nightmare you can imagine because there are just so.many.people. One year, J and I went with some friends and the crowd was so dense that we were all physically forced apart by the mass of people and it took us about 2 hours to be able to find each other again. Now when we're bored and we look at each other and say "I don't know? What do you want to do?" the answer is almost always, "Let's go to the Taste."

Having said that, I got on my bike yesterday and ventured down to the Red Bull Flugtag at North Avenue Beach. Apparently a few other people had the same idea. The fence in the picture below runs along Lakeshore Drive from North Avenue all the way up to Fullerton. That's 12 city blocks and over 1 mile. I took this picture at the Fullerton end of the fence and the bikes were that thick on the fence ALL THE WAY TO NORTH AVE.

It was pretty obvious that I wasn't going to get anywhere close enough to see anybody drive a homemade plane off of a pier into the water. This was as close as I got. Please note the sea of humanity eventually BECOMES the horizon.

What I'd like to know is just what are all of those people standing at the back of the crowd looking at? You couldn't see anything.

short

2008-09-06T08:17:00.005-05:00

Notes (of a rather random nature)

1. Red Bull Flugtag today at North Avenue Beach. I'll try to get some video to post.

2. Still absorbing Merton, still finding it to be the refreshment that my heart has been seeking for longer than I care to admit. If you can't find me I'll be in a monastery.

That is all.

eliot nay

2008-09-04T20:02:00.003-05:00

he speaks with grit
through yellowed teeth
and smoky, gutteral sloughs
the words. he knows
them all from somewhere deeper
than just his memory.
he syncopates. better than me
is his love of the words that
i always want to keep for my own.
i want to hear him read.

posing

2008-08-29T22:43:00.002-05:00

story unfolding
paradise lost
truth gained
free
free
free

pride
and a fall
spirit balance
leaving on two feet

#828

2008-08-28T21:31:00.002-05:00

Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 14
still air
quiet spirit
stale sweat
play me to peace
play me to peace

So it's August . . .

2008-08-25T21:13:00.004-05:00

. . . and the post from before this was in April. I've been a little out of touch.

A few things:

I want to start doing open mike poetry readings. This is new for me and I'm not sure where this desire came from.

I'm selling my soul to Thomas Merton right now. My spirit has been looking for some fodder for quite a while. I've tried going back to the old standbys, hoping to regain some previous whisper of presence, but on the best occasions have been left wanting. Most of the time I've just been left annoyed. But here, now, this crazy monk is breathing life into my soul and I feel like I can't inhale fast enough.

#416

2008-04-16T22:54:00.002-05:00

I think I'll just do push ups instead

#326

2008-03-26T19:35:00.000-05:00

quiet
alone
heartbeat
wind
sirens

empty
full
grace
anger
mystery

Saturday musings

2008-03-22T18:56:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I wish that the growth of mind/soul/spirit mirrored the growth of our physical bodies.

I remember being 14 and laying in bed at night and just wanting to cry because my legs hurt so badly. My mom used to tell me that they were growing pains. By the time I was 17 they had pretty much ended. I haven't gotten any taller since then and my body frame has pretty much stayed the same. I'm done growing. I'll never get any bigger, and physically, I am who I am.

With my mind/soul/spirit - not so much. I wish today that I could just reach a peak. I wish that my brain would just say "Ok, you have been defined. This is who you are. Deal with it." I swear sometimes I lay in bed and just want to cry and I'm half waiting and hoping for my mom to walk in with two ibuprofen and tell me that its just growing pains. This never ending process of learning and changing and stretching and growing is proving to be exhausting, and though I've survived it all, I don't very often feel like I'm any more aware of who I am than I was when I started. Sometimes I feel like I get glimpses, but those are quickly blurred by new pains in new places that require my attention.

songwriter's responsive reading

2008-03-20T21:36:00.003-05:00

roll me away
roll me down
roll me over
roll me down

i will walk on
i will not pause
i will not ever
try to stop

there is no rhyme
and the reason is gone
Young is old
and i just don't know

i cannot stop
or i will drown
i must keep moving
i must roll on

roll me away
roll me down
roll me over
roll me down

Prayers to an Unknown God

2008-03-18T09:28:00.002-05:00

I have always loved the Acts account that details how Paul the Apostle helps the Greeks identify their Unknown God. I wonder if you will remain hidden much longer or if some apostle is on the horizon that will help me see as well. There is something poetic about prayers to a God that I cannot define, and yet the irony of it all is more than a little disheartening.

My spirit tells me that you have been defined (at least as much as one with breath can comprehend). My spirit tells me to open the book and to absorb the community and that I will hear your voice in their midst. My spirit tells me to listen and to be Holy and that I will find you there, but I want you to be more tangible than that. I don't think you should be so much work to get to know.

Twisting

2008-03-12T20:17:00.002-05:00

single cyclone
without any rain
dry disillusioned
grasping for traction
in the dirt

spinning and spinning
at unfathomable speeds
but going nowhere
gaining no ground exhausted
right where i started

in G

2008-03-03T21:30:00.002-06:00

old blue books
with dirty awkward pages
telling stories that i
long to hope are true

are you there
are you listening
its quiet here
and i don't hear a thing

i don't want awkward pages
to read myself into
am i alive in the stories
that i'm living without you?

#225

2008-02-25T18:08:00.000-06:00

old verses of time
past days of long angst
pulling back
pushing forward
I'm not sure how

Of the Moments

2007-12-08T00:21:00.000-06:00

Sometimes I feel like these "of the moment" posts could all be exactly the same, because I'm kinda predictable and I know what I like and I like what I know. Every once in a while though, I surprise myself and just blow out with something new. Like the time my wife convinced me to try Thai food when we were in Ithaca. She's good for me that girl. She takes me places I never would have gone. Having said that:

Of the moments:

Music: I'm enjoying a Pandora station that I created called "Unkle Bob." I've also been waking myself up in the mornings with coffee and a certain song by Considering Lily.

Accomplishment: I recently won over another convert. My brother in law will be going to Madison with me in May to run. I'm running the Madison Marathon (formerly known as the Mad City Marathon) and he will be tackling his first 1/2 mary. I'm proud of my powers of persuasion because no more than 3 months ago he told me he had absolutely no desire to ever run more than 2 miles.

Books: I picked up this book called "Monster of God" about 2 years ago. It's an ethnography about the people groups who live around and amongst wild animals that are known to be man-eaters. I've been reading it very slowly ever since. I picked it up again last week and think I just might finish it this time. It's non-fiction, so I haven't had to start over every time. There is something really satisfying about having a book that you know you can fall back on. There are generally 4 or 5 books open around the house at any given time that I'm chewing my way through, but whenever the well runs dry and there just isn't anything around to read, I always come back to bite off a little more of this one. I will be sad to see it end.

Work: I'm really enjoying the fact that I work for good people again. My last corporate foray left me a little jaded, but this current situation looks like it could turn out very well.

Random Crap: My favorite thing to do right now is to get up in the morning and sit in the living room with all the lights off except the Christmas tree. I'm usually up before James and I like to plow through a few cups of coffee while I read the morning Office. Coffee, Celtic Prayers, and little white lights: there is something delightfully holy about those moments, and I treasure them.

Commuter Prayers

2007-11-15T17:30:00.001-06:00

I wish that I could stop drifting back and forth in this sea of truths
and just land somewhere. There has to be a beachead somewhere that
makes sense of it all. It's not that I'm opposed to mystery so much as
I'm annoyed by the notion that I might be chasing after shadows. How
disappointed will I be if I see that my life, ambition and loyalty
have been wasted on something that was only mist? There is SO much in
this world where the Creator doesn't appear to be present and I don't
understand that. Of course, I'm entirely open to the notion that I
just might be blind, or at least not looking in the right places. I
guess this doesn't really fall under the category of prayer so much as
musing... But there it is.

I will find His face in this world. I will not stop looking until I find it.

Pandora's Box is Full Tonight

2007-11-13T21:49:00.000-06:00

Pandora is rolling through the good stuff tonight. We just jumped from The Decemberists to the Boss. I'm not sure how they ended up on the same station, but I'm certainly not complaining.

I kind of want to write a "Dear Diary" post about my day, but I'm afraid that it would suck and that I'd get up tomorrow morning and read it and then spend the rest of the day in shock at how self absorbed and superficial I can be about the things that upset me. Suffice it to say that today was not a great day and spent a good portion of it with my head in my hands and now I'm sitting here on my couch, drinking tea, listening to good music, and wondering what all the fuss was about. I suppose that one of the privileges of age is the right to be dramatic about crap, but I don't think I'm that old yet. It's not like I'm ready to be the old lady at the grocery store who freaks out because her coupon is expired.

Another day winding down and another post with no point. My favorite kind. Maybe this whole exercise would be more cathartic if I quit looking for one.

Another Day Older

2007-11-11T21:10:00.000-06:00

I've spent most of this Sunday sitting on my butt watching football and came to the realization that I'm older than most of those guys playing. In NFL terms, I am a hard nosed, wiley, old veteran.

So that's cool I guess.

Blackberry Prayers

2007-10-25T10:16:00.001-05:00

I realize that I'm probably not in a position to make demands, but if
you really want me to pay attention then you are going to have to
speak a little louder.

The whisper just isn't cutting it anymore.

Of the Moment

2007-10-19T23:07:00.000-05:00

BOOK: Word Freak by Stefen Fastis. This is complete brain candy, but it's pretty funny in places and at the moment it is making me feel good about myself because compared to these OCD competitive Scrabble players, I have absolutely zero weird idiosyncrasies.

MUSIC: I'm really taken right now with the the song Jesus the Mexican Boy by Iron and Wine. It is one of the oddest, yet most authentic stories of grace that I have heard .

LONGING: A nice long walk, in the woods. I feel like I need to get out of the city for awhile. Actually, a good hard trail run would be even better than a walk. I feel like I just need to go.

HAPPY: With my job right now. I'm in a place where I'm able to excel professionally without selling them my soul.

HAPPY TO ANNOUNCE: That the khaki carpenters pants have won the title.

simple like it was

2007-10-18T22:19:00.000-05:00

I was 18 and walking down 3rd street at 2AM singing at the top of my lungs, with no one around to hear me. I sang like I knew what I was talking about. It was utterly simple.

Oh God you are my God,
and I will ever praise you.
I will seek in the morning
and follow you all of my days
and step by step you lead me
and I will follow you all of my days.

Later that year I learned that I, in fact, did not know what I was talking about. So I tore down the structure that I had built, and I started over.

The thing that I rebuilt took a long time to construct, but it just got too big.

So I'm in the middle of tearing it down again. This time, the teardown isn't simple. I have built such a complicated web of systems and theories and dogmas and . . . crap, that it may take a full scale wrecking crew to tear it down. It is coming down though. Simplicity is on the horizon. I can see it. Tonight I even heard it for a minute, in my own house. With the door closed and no one to hear, I almost felt like I knew what I was talking about.

Train Prayers

2007-10-17T07:45:00.001-05:00

Creator King,

Let this day be simple, so that I might understand.

Thanksgiving is due, but I am slow to give it. I'm struggling to draw
lines between human and divine and where they intersect or if they
even do and I ask that you be patient with me.

Billy Madison meets Annie

2007-10-15T21:29:00.000-05:00

I've been reading this book of poetry by Annie Dillard. It's called Morning's Like This and it is a book of found poems. Found poems are ones that are created using lines and phrases and words that you find around you. Maybe on a billboard or from a newspaper headline. There are several variations of found poems, but Annie uses whole sentences. If, for example, a poem has seven lines, that means that she took seven sentences from seven different sources and put them together to create the poem. She, as the poet, just arranged the sentences, she didn't write a word of them. Here's a short example of Annie's work.

Color

There are many colors and they are all moving,
Moving. Color should flow over the face.

Brilliancy is going toward color, not white.
Color and warmth are coming into our lives.

Lest this turn into an excruciatingly boring post about poetry, I'll go ahead and make the tie into Billy Madison. I want found poems using Billy Madison quotes. For example:

Smiley

When I fell I just broke my leg,
and now you're all in big, big trouble.

Lady you're scaring us!
I've been physically abused in the ear,
do you have any more gum?

That one kinda sucks . . . so whatcha got?

Newly obsessed with

2007-10-14T14:43:00.001-05:00

-Dashboard Confessional has been popping up a lot on my Pandora
rotation lately. I need.

-The lasagna that the wife princess and I made last night. We are the
next Iron Chef.

-Annie Dillard. Ok so this isn't new. I've been re reading "Pilgrim at
Tinker Creek" this past week on the train, and it's just fresh and
different and better everytime I read it.

-I am a walking rebuttal for all of the media goons who are all over
the Chicago Marathon organizers. It was hot, it's a marathon and
people weren't prepared. Tragic, yes. One person's fault that it was 90
degress in the middle of October? Hardly.

-In other news: I threw away my favorite pair of jeans today. The holes
had reached a point where the breeze was blowing in places where there
just shouldn't be a breeze. There are several pairs of jeans and one
pair of kahki carpenter's pants currently competing for the newly
opened role of "favorite pair of pants."

The movie in my mind

2007-10-13T21:34:00.000-05:00

Call it vanity if you want. I choose to think of it as an over active imagination.

I didn't grow up in a place where people used public transportation. Heck, I didn't grow up in a place where there was public transportation. I remember when my grandmother, who had spent her adult life in New York City and Tampa, Fl, moved to our small town in Indiana. She couldn't drive because her eyesight was bad and she wanted to know the number of a cab company so she could go to the store. I was 12 or 13 and I remember looking at her like she had 3 heads. "A cab?" I thought. "A cab? We don't have cabs here." In my mind taxis and buses and subways and commuter trains were only for the movies, which all took place in big cities.

Now. I ride a train every day to work. I get on at 7:22 in the morning and get off at 7:48. I then walk 4 minutes to my building, get in the elevator and go up to the fourth floor. I sit down at my desk and turn on my computer and go get a cup of coffee. By the time I get back to my desk my watch says 7:58 and I am 2 minutes early and I start to work. I'm living the opening scene of a movie.

I think about it all the time. I imagine that someone is watching me pace through the day through a viewfinder and that I had better lend them my MP3 player so that they know what the soundtrack to my day should sound like. Right now it sounds like the autumn mix that James made last year. Specifically, Night's Sorrow by Becoming the Archetype.

Sometimes, when I get a window seat on the train I lean back with the soundtrack to my movie playing in my ears and can see my reflection in the window and I can see the city out on the other side of the window and I wonder what that screen shot would look like. I wonder what the camera would see with my face, the reflection of my face in the window, and the city beyond the window all in the same shot. Which would be the focus? Me? or the city outside slowly slipping by.

I think in the morning, when I'm on the way to work that that scene would be the best for the intro to the movie. All of the movie watchers would be seeing me for the first time and they would hear the same soundtrack in the theater that I have plugged into my ears on the train and I hope that they would feel the same thing that I do on the train, on the way to work, passing my days as a person who breathes on this planet. Since the movie is just starting they don't really know anything about me yet, unless they read a preview, so they might be trying to figure me out. What's my name? Where am I from? Where do I work? Am I married? Do I have any friends? Am I gay? And then I get to work and go through all of that routine and the soundtrack fades and the dialog begins.

At the end of the movie I'll still be on the train, but this time I'll be headed home. Sitting back in my seat, buds in my ears, the soundtrack for the trip home should be Iron and Wine, maybe singing Jesus the Mexican Boy, because I really like that song. This trip is different than the ride to work, because now the movie watchers have had the whole length of the film to get to know me, and they've heard me talk and they've met my friends and they know that I am in fact, not gay. I'd like to think that maybe they are a little sad that I'm headed home because they really enjoyed the movie and getting to know me, but now it's almost over. The soundtrack can keep playing while I get off the train and walk the two blocks to my 2 flat. The autumn wind off Lake Michigan will make me hunker down inside my jacket when I cross Ravenswood St., and then I'll turn the corner onto my little city street, unlock the door and go inside. And that will be it.

Call it vanity if you want. I choose to think of it as an over active imagination.

To Explain the Title . . .and thus the point

2007-10-12T22:10:00.000-05:00

The man that I'm loosely named after was a teacher. He could have just as easily been a stage performer. Doc is one of the most charismatic people that I have ever known, and even in the lessons I took with him long after old age had stolen his prime, I could see it. I could see the passion that made my Dad walk out of his lectures feeling like maybe there was some genuine hope and maybe, just maybe, we weren't all crazy after all.

Doc lectured in circles. He didn't think in a linear fashion and so he didn't teach in one either. This was never more evident then when he turned to the blackboard. Even after whiteboards and Power Point made their way into lecture halls, Doc still dragged a blackboard with him everywhere. I don't know why. He would begin a lecture by drawing a giant circle on the black board and then in rapid fire succession he would fill that circle with words, notes, phrases and then in a way that you had to see to believe he would tie them all together and before you could get it all down, he had erased the circle and it's contents and drawn another empty circle to fill. The old man could go on like this for hours. If the class period was up and he hadn't yet made his point he would look at the clock and say "Well I guess you can go, it's no big deal . . . it's only man's place in the scope of Creation that is at stake." And everyone would smile, and almost no one ever left. He could talk for hours because people were willing to listen.

By the end of a class period, the board was a mess. More gray than black, the thick layer of dust left a perpetual haze over the palette that he had cleaned so many times. No matter how hard you tired to erase the board, you could never get it clean. Sure, it would come clean enough so that you could read what he had written with his fresh stick of chalk, but the remnants of lectures past were always up there, refusing to go away, lending their own quiet voice to whatever the topic of the moment was that had the present honor of being clearly scripted.

And that is how I'm seeing life right now.

I'm cleaning a lot of things off my palette. I really wanted to stay away from the cliche of the clean slate, but there it is. Jeff says I'm purgating and I'm not really sure what that means, but I think it may have something to do with getting rid of stuff. That makes sense, because I've been realizing a lot lately that I have been carrying some beliefs around, and holding on to them really tightly, that I don't think are true. It's been hard to admit that things which have been an inherent part of who I am for so long aren't what I thought they were, but it feels kinda good to let them go.

Of course, we're talking about blackboards here; and not brand new ones. We're talking about a blackboard that is staring 34 dead in the eyes and has had plenty of circles, ideas, dreams, and lectures written upon it. A lot of them have already been erased. A few are still up there that will be erased soon. For every one though, that has been erased, a thin film of chalk has been left. By now, my blackboard is pretty hazy. It is my past refusing to completely disappear, always lending its own voice, reminding me of where I came from and what I used to be. And that makes me happy. I'm standing back and reading the pages of my life like a dirty chalkboard and eventually, maybe one day, the layers of the past will be so thick that the presently honored script doesn't seem so important.

I think I'm going to keep purgating. It feels good to lighten the load. It helps me see better, hear better, and in some weird way, be better. In reality, I'm not getting rid of anything, I'm just re-arranging chalk dust.