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something a little cooler

I’ve heard it said that there are three things which, in life, you should never want to see being made: 1) sausage, 2) hot dogs, and 3) laws.

I verified this yesterday by actually watching the House wrestle with this health care legislation.  Only, I watched on C-SPAN.  Minus all the commentary you get from the cable news outlets things become very procedural.  After watching the way these “adults” act, I can only imagine Mr. Robert rolling over in his grave.  Most people know that I’m one of those odd-duck, oil-and-water, socially-liberal, emerging church religious persons, so it won’t come as much of a surprise that I’m happy with the way the vote went yesterday.  And since I don’t want to mire us down here with politics, let’s move onto something a little cooler…

Lately I’ve been pretty enamored with a couple albums, my second favorite of which is a freshman effort called Gorilla Manor by Californians The Local Natives.  There is a brilliant track on the record called “Airplanes.”  Not only is it musically chill-inducing but the lyrics are poignant and relevant to what’s been going on lately for me.  The singer sings the song (I love that that’s a grammatically correct sentence intro) to his grandfather, who has passed away, and it’s basically a statement of loss and anticipation towards one day meeting again “in the sky.”  You lose the studio version’s strings in this live performance, but what you gain in rawness is more than an even trade in for passion and power.

Man, the tiny imperfections present in live-performed harmonies are always super endearing to me…  Anyway I predict at least some part of this song will be on a commercial by year’s end.  Seems to be a safe bet based on what’s gone down with standout tracks from word-of-mouth “indie” records of late (I’m looking at you Grizzly Bear).

And that’s all the writing I’ve a mind for this afternoon.  Sharaun’s got another one of  her pregnancy migraines and is laid-up in the bedroom so I’m on Keaton-entertainment duty.  Today we planted garlic, pruned the grapes down to the strongest vines, and trimmed the old growth off Pat’s hops to make room for all the new green that’s starting to show. We also spent some time hand-watering the planters because Keaton loves doing it (the drip system is cool, but nothing beats hand-watering with your girl).

Goodnight.

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fix some sprinklers before going into work

Last night Sharaun and I laid in bed until 2am, talking.

Been a while since we’ve done that, actually.  But sometimes the best time for just talking is when there’s not much else that’s doable (six months pregnant… remember?).  When the mind is tired and everything else has already been thought about or talking about or watched or read or listened to.  Being up so late and being tired and knowing I should be asleep but wanting to continue our conversation reminded me of way back when we were dating.  Sharaun would sneak the phone into her room and we’d literally talk all night.  Wasn’t all night last night or anything, but for an old man like me who has to wake up at 6:30am to fix some sprinklers before going into work… it’s close.

The weather has been so fantastic here lately.  Warm, sunny.  Things are green and budding.  The grapes Keaton and I planted are already putting out nice thick growth and we’ll be training the strongest of them to wires this weekend.  The fruit trees are all flowers and buds, aside from the orange tree which, despite showing strong growth and having a good healthy look, just doesn’t seem to want to flower.  The blueberry starts we planted only a month ago are full of leaves and the raspberry a friend gifted me from his lot seems to be taking to its new home.  Driving home from work today with the windows down I decided that I’m going to try and start biking to work again come Monday.  I’m done saying I’m going to make it an everyday thing, I never have and obviously won’t… but I’ll do it again when I can.

I think it’s time to go to bed now.  It’s dark and I seem to be done writing.  Usually those are signs.  In the end I’ll just noodle around online until Sharaun makes her move and end up following her.  She mostly leads on the “time for bed” thing.  And I’m still not writing right.

Goodnight.

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elevated

Back from Florida and things are still non-stop.

I do, however, feel the writing bug coming back.  Now just to find time.  Recently work has stepped it up a notch.  Not like those times when I write things like, “Man work was killer this week,” or “Work is kicking my butt this week,” but rather a real sustained uptick in activity.  If I wanted to I think I could make a DHS-like “threat chart” for work, something like a “bandwidth-demand” chart that’d be similarly color-coded for how much of my mental time (not necessarily just at-work hours) work commands.  Right now I’d say things have moved from “guarded” to “elevated.”  Only problem is that the time in between each threat level, moving upwards, becomes increasingly smaller.  So before I know it I’ll be dealing with “high” and then “severe.”  Not surprisingly, like the Department of Homeland Security we’ll never actually get to “low,” and the longest-lasting phase, the one you tend to get “stuck” on, is “high.”

But, since it’s already half-past midnight on Wednesday and I’m tired and need sleep, instead of trying to flex my quill and write a masterpiece I’m instead going to post a video. I took the following a couple weeks ago when Sharaun was in Florida and Keaton and I were alone for an extended weekend.  I had just gotten into the 1981 Human League record Dare (after hearing that’s what Lester Bangs was listening to when he committed suicide) and had been wearing the grooves out of the thing (virtually, of course) all weekend.  Keaton began to pick up on the lyrics and started to really dig the first track.  She even developed her own dance to the song, which is what I taped here.  Her choice of 80s glasses was all solo, I didn’t foist them on her as a prop.  Check out the moves:

Someone call Soul Train.

Goodnight.

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was the week

Man what a weekend. If the minor west-to-east jetlag wasn’t enough, I think we both experienced enough emotional drainage to fill the void.

Mimi’s service was on Saturday, but staying at the house we were busy from the moment we arrived. I was a pallbearer; a first for me but a meaningful one – a fitting final service to a woman I truly loved. The funeral itself was good, leastways as far as funerals go, and although sad at points was overall a triumphant sendoff. I like to think Mimi was watching and approved.

Sharaun got up and spoke. She recounted a story of Mimi taking a then young Tyler (Sharaun’s brother, the baby of the family) fishing on the jetty. Tyler was too squeamish to bait the hooks himself and so Mimi was a trooper and stuck the worms and crickets for him all day. As they were leaving, Tyler looked up at her and said gratefully, “Mimi, you’re the best hooker.” And all God’s children give a heart belly laugh. Good job Sharaun.

Back at the house there were wheelbarrows of food. Some women from the church came during the service and setup a spread. The family came back from the cemetary and reminisced, read the will, and over-induldged. It was nice in that there was no abrupt “end” to the thing, rather a nice drawn-out day not unlike a lazy Thanksgivig or Christmas with family.

And out of nowhere some friends offered to “lighten our spirits” by offering us free admission to Disney World today. So, although I have work to do and feel a tinge of guilt doing so, we’re on the road as I write this to get an early start on a long day of fun. We’re surprising Keaton with it. She’s a lucky girl because we also have free tickets for our planned August visit. A bonus trip.

And that friends, was the week. I’m still having a hard time writing consistently but I’m trying to shake the slump.

See ya.

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i’m-a still go

Sometimes I think about the state of “religion” in today’s America and wonder, “What will ‘church’ be like when my kids are older?”

Our kids are going to define the church of their age in much the way we’ve “defined” the church of ours.  Oh sure you might say to me, “Dave, the church is unchanging.”  But you’d be wrong.  For “the church,” or more properly “religion” in the non-standard way I’m referring to it here, change is one of the few constants.

Emphasis, interpretation, and focus change with the inevitable march of culture.  That major domestic cultural shifts can effect dogma is a well established precedent: prohibition, suffrage, the civil rights movement, birth control, the “war on terror.”  Ripples from these worldview-changing events have made their way into even hallowedest transepts; confronting, convicting, and ultimately fracturing the belief-sets of many Christians in their time.

If you think about it for a moment, I’m pretty confident you already know the issue that’s going to confront, convict, and ultimately fracture the church in the coming decades.

Within the next ten to fifteen years the issue of gay rights will split mainstream Christian churches.

As social acceptance of homosexuality slowly becomes the majority opinion, churches and denominations will have to stand to the left or right of the divide.  As secular opposition wanes and believing children of today become the believing adults of tomorrow, the modern day Ptolemaic camp will suffer history repeated, dwindling and failing once again in the face of enlightened Copernican thought.  In the 1950s it may have been tough to find a kid in highschool who’d say homosexuals should have equal rights; amongst today’s youth you’ll find large conservative pockets, although I’d bet already ebbing in both number and conviction; and in twenty years naught but the holdouts will ally with their archaic fore-bearers.

I used to think that this would be an impossibly hard transition for Christian majority thought.  However, lately I’ve come to think it more likely that the church will simply “wake up” one day to find their opinions have changed.  With the passage of time, even once hard-fought conviction will erode in the face of overwhelming opposition.  Perhaps glacially, but undoubtedly steadily.  Like slavery, divorce, interracial marriage, and other scripturally-defended dogma before it, the church will eventually change its collective mind.  Not as a whole, not as an absolute, but for the most part this will happen.  I’m not sure when or entirely to what degree, but I no longer doubt the overall endgame.

I’m-a still go.

Goodnight.

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writer’s block

What a gorgeous Sunday. Didn’t expect this sunshine.

I forsook the assembly this morning.  Left God hanging for the first time in a long time.  Last night got a little tight with friends.  At some point switched to onions instead of olives.  I’d never had a martini with onions before.  The taste simply will not leave my mouth this morning, even after multiple cups of coffee.  Tastes like shame and a fleeting false sensation of youth.

Keaton and I spent most of Saturday afternoon working on the garden together.  I built a set of stairs up the hill and laid some pavers to form a walkway between the gardenbox and the grape row.  Access to the grapes for pruning will be key so I needed something.  Afterward we refreshed the mix in the box and picked and planted the spring crop.

Oh man I have some serious writer’s block.  I haven’t been able to come up with anything good in weeks.

Tonight is apparently no exception.