Grandfather Clock

Slow, deliberate, still, quiet, but beginning, just beginning, ever so slowly to take shape, form, motion. A swing, something dangling, my arm, rocking back and forth like the pendulum of a very old grandfather clock sitting in the back of an old man’s living room cluttered with years and years of china and old porcelain and plates and lanterns of brass and silver all very smoothly polished which have not known daylight for a very long time. The grandfather clock ticks sedate and alone, its quiet ticks almost loud because absolutely nothing else in the room is moving or alive to generate sound. When the clock rings, and you happen to find yourself waiting in that room, it jerks you stiff, it startles you so that if you happen to be drinking tea out of one of the fine china tea-cups, the tea spills and burns your fingers. Inside your head you swear, but outside you are a gentleman… a gentleman never swears, never sweats, never gets wet, never forgets for a second that the gentleman is a gentleman no matter what, so the pain only causes an almost indiscernible grimace for a second, the briefest of seconds. You sit tick-tock tick-tock and wait tick-tock waiting for the clock tick-tock to chime tick-tock so you don’t tick-tock burn your fingers tick-tock from spilled tea, because gentlemen don’t spill their tea, they don’t erupt in violent bouts of anger, and don’t let flow a stream of expletives that makes young ladies uncomfortable and old ladies glance at you with eyes full of scorn. Scorn, the fire wielded by the woman of high standing (don’t piss on her shoes for not only won’t she ever forget it but she will remember it in public ways, damn her merry white soul. And the woman, she doesn’t scream, no, for she delights only in your screams. She hopes for your whimpering, but you are already gone, your soul has slipped up away through the opening in the top of your skull that used to be so big. It rises through the ceiling, up through the dark upstairs closet where the old woman’s underwear lays starched, ironed, and folded on shelves arranged by days of the week, and then up through the roof and into the sky like a child’s lost helium balloon during a summer’s day parade, up and over the clouds, the tops of which rise like wizard’s towers and ships sails into the stratosphere, and there your soul plays, flying, soaring and speeding in and around the towers and sails like a butterfly from flower to flower) and now the grandfather clock strikes the hour and you fall back through it all to find yourself spilling more tea, cool now though, and your only concern is that the spilt tea does not leave white spots on the finish of the hand carved oak coffee table covered with ancient jade amulets carved by long dead Mayans for the dead before them. So you wipe it up with your sleeve because a gentleman spills no tea, and doesn’t get wet. The clock still ticks so you set down your tea on a woven yucca leaf coaster and rise, but as you rise you feel the days and weeks and years of your life fall out of your shirt pockets, and you fall to the ground, in pieces, in shards, that splinter and fly into aforgotten place under the couch where a strange Central American spider died, and its dry hollow husk rattles in the breeze. Thousands of miles away a coffee leave falls from a bush, a coffee nut is picked and split with a long dirty fingernail, and the raw sweet aroma of its juice fills the nostrils of a man who knows nothing except the odor of coffee and how to swing a panga. His bare feet pad away down the hard packed African earth, and when he goes home he lifts his son up high to the stars and calls out his name and his name is yours. A dog is lapping at your face, and you find yourself on the hardwood floor. The dog looks at you longingly, expecting something, its thick tail beating the leg of the coffee table, and it reminds you of a deep drum you heard once it the middle of the night in a forest in land many years ago in a distant country. You try to concentrate try to focus on the dog. It’s waiting for you, wanting hell knows what. You stand up brushing the dog’s red hair from your black coat sleeve. It jumps up stretching its front paws on your leg. You stare into it’s fat watery brown eyes remind you of mud, and rain and wet soggy shoes that smelled like mold. For weeks you’d worn soggy clothes, because even when it didn’t rain the clothes you hung out to dry never did, and you slept to the sound of a small brook that flowed around your room. It was the time of year when walking into the village you’d see old men limping or using a stick as a crutch, because their feet or legs were swollen and covered with a dark green fungus. Walking as if they’d accepted the fungus as a continual part of their existence. They never walked towards hospitals, they never looked down, only ahead, as if they would get to where they were going, leg or not, and maybe they were only going somewhere to get out of the rain to sit by a smoky fire of green branches. I walked out of the room. The dog didn’t move. It just watched me leave. I had had enough of waiting. The ticking of the clock still filled the room. The old man was dead after all, and I’d come back to see if I could remember anything from the times long ago when I used to go there to listen to his stories. All the stories I’ve forgotten, and the only thing that came back was the odor his pipe tobacco slowly coiling up from his ivory pipe.

The Gift

It's not that anybody who doesn't accept Christ is going to hell as much as it is that without Christ we are incapable of reaching Heaven. God doesn't want people to go to hell, Satan does. It is Satan who is to blame if anyone goes to hell. He has preyed upon the weaknesses of mankind. It is Satan who deceived Eve and Adam and given us this heritage of death and wickedness. God does not will that any should be lost. It's not that Christianity is superior to other religions. It is just based on the belief that mankind is unable to ever re-pay the debt of our sins. There isn't anything that we can do to escape our nature, that is human nature, the nature that kills, that hates, that covets, that is narcissistic, that wants to exalt itself, that wants it's way when it wants it and wants everything for itself now. That nature that seeks after outward appearances and is steeped with hypocrisy. Many are hypocrites even after they have recognized their need for Christ. Christianity like other religions recognizes that righteousness and Heaven are to be attained, and if you do not attain them you must continue to suffer, it recognizes that ultimately you must choose truth or peace or love or transcendence. It is only Christianity that recognizes the futility of that effort. God doesn't desire that any man fail to attain Heaven, but death begets death. A life for a life for a life for a life... Jesus is the personification of the desire God has that none should perish. Jesus is God's way of achieving what God desires (that none perish - the way of assuring that we can receive what we cannot attain through our own efforts - victory over death!) That is why it is important to recognize the sinlessness of Christ. Christ lived a life that was not offensive to God, a life uncorrupted by the wickedness he lived amongst. Christ the only man who attained righteousness, the only one who could stand before the Law in abeyance, the only life that Satan hadn't won. Yet Christ was killed. He went willingly. He took upon Himself the sin of the whole world, the sin of the whole space-time continuum. He essentially said He took upon Himself the consequences of all sin, the judgment against all men, all who failed, all of who have fallen short, who have missed the mark of Heaven. He became sin who had no sin in Him. He bore all of Satan's hatred of men, all of Satan's hatred of God, all of Satan's hatred of the love of God for men, all of Satan's jealousy, all his rage, all of Satan's legal right to inflict punishment, and it cost Christ everything, even His life. He did this for us, but He is greater than death, and death could not hold him. He gave his life as a gift to us, and offers us this life for eternity. In order that this life to be ours however we must accept the gift. When we accept this gift His life displaces ours. If we but accept, then He lives in us, and we begin to submit our life to His. Christ's victory is ours, a gift given with the greatest of all love.

Roger and Me (actually it was Dave and Me)

How about a bus tour of Flint? Drive past the hollowed out remains of the American Dream. Buick city is rusting out from the inside. The story is long and complex, but there are people there that remember, that love Flint. I am not fooling. There are people that love Flint. People that have dedicated themselves to saving it, or keeping it alive, or reawakening the rusted leviathan. Flint will turn from brown to green. It will be a place where people will be happy to live. While I was there, after seeing that it has as much to do with race as it does with turning bad policy into good, I turned on a movie in my hotel room, an HBO movie that looked to be a spin-off of Hotel Rwanda. Rwanda has suffered something almost incomprehensible to me, except that the movie was close enough to reality to hit me. I knew the Papyrus swamps, the iron gates, the hills, the sky. I knew the churches, and people that could have been the people but were not. I watched individuals try to get a handle on what happened there, to face the reality, to overcome the horror, the lose, the shame. They try--  try to reconcile, and that's it. That's the hope, that out of Horror we all learn something deeper. Hatred will not win. Many may have to suffer much in the face of hatred. Hatred is senseless. It is a cancer that not only eats at the hearts of men, but at the very heart of civilization. In the clutches of hatred civilization becomes degradation. The only thing that can overcome hatred is love, a pained and self-sacrificing love, a greater concern for others than concern of self. There is no neutral party in the face of Hatred. To save the life of another may cost your own. The madness will not cease just because you flee from it. Did anyone think to save the life of another by putting their life in between? Why is it that in Rwanda the people that came to help fled with their pets, while they abandoned their neighbors? Surely they were frightened. Surely they knew they couldn't stay. Where were the heroes? The heroes were those who gave their lives for their families, for their neighbors. The heroes were the Africans; the heroes were the oppressed who knew the only thing they had left to give was their lives. The heroes were those who grew sick of the killing, and tried to stop it. The heroes were the ones that cried "Never again!" and as long as they live vow to see that it never does. The heroes were those that opposed the notion that it was wiser not to get involved.

Flint juxtaposed with Rwanda. I couldn't eat. Was it horror I felt or shame? I wept for Rwanda. Every time I think of Rwanda I weep. Flint will survive. Flint will come back to life. If Rwanda can, Flint can. Do not speak of race. Speak of me and you. I am white you are black. I am 41 you are 20 or 47 or 101. We are different, but both have one life to devote to living. We both have but one life to give or not. We choose to hate or to love, to deride or to encourage, to contend or resolve. We shape our world by what we believe. We can believe what we want, but we bear the consequences of our actions. Understanding is better than believing. Reality is. What we believe does not shape reality. How we respond to reality is shaped by what we believe. What does Hatred solve? Death begets death. We must sometimes give up so much to forgive, but what is the alternative?

When I got home tonight I learned that my father's hunting buddy shot himself in the head. Life is hard but what is the alternative? It is hard to be courageous. I can't accuse anyone of being weak. Each of us makes mistakes, but we must forgive and move on. What is the alternative? We are different but we are the same. We are both alive. Do not waste the only thing you really have.

I found myself on the Internet today

I tried to find myself on the Internet today. Was it odd. I was a musician, a poet, and a dead porn star. I read my poems and I could have written them, and the music I made was heavily influenced by Tangerine Dream. "Optical Race" by Tangerine was the first CD I ever bought. I began to wonder about the pornography thing. I began to wonder if there aren't alternate realities out there, that maybe I was living as multiple people or had a split personality and didn't know it. I wondered how much I really knew about myself, whether I am unique as I thought I was. I have a weird name -I mean how many of me should there have been?

Often I search for people I lost contact with over the Internet. There was a woman I worked with in Africa. A woman who I thought I loved very much - I did love her, but we only had one wonderful night together. We didn't make love. She painted a portrait of my face, and we laughed about the lives we had in America. We talked about Purple and Orange and sunsets, and ate M&M's. She was a Christian when I wasn't and she castigated me about despising the book of Corinthians. She pointed out the amazing love that was spoken of in 1 Corinthians 13. She was right, and what I once loved and grew to hate I love again. Long after that night I bought her books on color. She was fascinated with Colors, and since I taught Physics she asked me if I could teach her all I knew about color. She was an artist and I loved her laugh, I loved her spirit, and I loved the richness of her life. I was a Physics teacher, and a writer, and loved to sketch. None of these held water for me. I am only a vain and selfish man. It was ever about me, and I am so so sick of dwelling on me. I never found her on the Internet.

I have forgotten her voice, her laugh, her eyes, her face. I don't even trust the memories of her. They are probably all wrong, and I'm sure after a space of ten years I have changed things. I never had a picture of her. And I will never see her again I suppose. I keep imagining us meeting, in some unexpected place, but I don't even know where she got off to. She pushed her way into my life, and then flew away. The clouds of Tanzania were wonderful. The white towering cumulous clouds that sat in that blue, blue sky. Cerulean Blue. Azure. She is always the warm sunny afternoon. She was like a dream, and maybe a thousand years from now we will meet in Heaven. She grew angry with me because I was messed up. I've come to realize that I want to draw all my self worth through the acceptance of those I love. I followed her around like a wounded dog. I burdened her with the strength I drew from her. The day at the port, she was cruel behind her sunglasses. That was the day we said goodbye, and though we saw each other after that I never let her in. We had come too close too fast. It was too intense, like a match flaring up full of the fury and energy of fire, and then dying. We argued over stupid things. Words have always got me in trouble. Maybe I am too scary. She said to me once "just tell me, don't write anymore words." The last letter I received from her was a patchwork of crossed out sentences. I don't even have that.

The years have flown away like so many dead leaves in a fall breeze, and I am left with my words and myself.