Where's My Bubble City and Flying Car?

In first grade I had Mrs. Bosso. She was tall, grandmotherly, with dark hair and long red fingernails. She was kind and patient. I was fidgety and talkative and couldn't sit still, so she was the perfect teacher for first grade. I had a crush on Wendy who sat behind me, a cute, spunky girl with red hair and freckles. She was my first girlfriend. Once at recess we had a fight during a game of tag. "I'm going to run away and join the army," I announced. She pointed defiantly in the general direction of the Army. "Go!" she said. Wendy was captivating. Clearly she knew how to handle me.

The Christmas party neared and we had to draw names for gifts. I had chicken pox that week so Miss Bosso saved my slip, and early in the morning my first day back she handed it to me with a knowing smile. I was still learning to read. I opened it and looked up to Mrs. Bosso. "Who is it?" I asked hopefully. She leaned down to me with her kind face and whispered into my ear. "Wendy." she said. It was the sweetest sound my young ears had ever heard. Kindly Miss Bosso had rigged the Christmas gift exchange for a fidgety boy with chicken pox. I bought Wendy a tea set from Woolworth's, and Miss Bosso a Whitman Sampler.

By third grade I was less fidgety and had become a good student. We had Miss Brewer, strict and stern. I remember third grade science books. Near the back was a depiction of the future, complete with flying cars and gleaming cities under glass bubbles. "By the year 2010," the book intoned, "life on earth will be much different." It certainly is. TVs are much bigger and everyone has color. But where is my flying car and bubble city?

Truth is, we're lagging on the future. Too much energy went into the Cold War and the Space Race and the pursuit of the American Dream, which is more cars and more stuff. But I did read in yahoo news that a company called Terrafugia has developed the first flying car. Pretty cool. It costs $194,000 and so far 70 people have put down a deposit.

Now all we need is a bubble city and a cure for oil. The future will have to hurry, to outrace the mess we've made of the present.

Into the Mystic

I have always been fascinated by the mind-body-spirit connection and how powerful it is. Belief, expectation, optimism, fear and doubt have such power over us. I have always marveled how we can change things by choosing how we think about them, by choosing where we focus our energies.

It's curious to me to how we squander this power. We can remain stuck and miserable and feel powerless, when the decisions to make dramatic changes in our lives, outcomes and circumstances are easily within our grasp. Instead we repeat the same patterns and expect things to change.

In our jobs, our relationships and our lifestyle, we have the power but we give it away. We succumb to depression and despair and self-pity. We don't take the first step. A hunger or a hurt gnaws at our consciousness, but we rarely stop to examine why, or frame a proper response.

The hope that lies within us is stronger than any misery. It has more power. It has more resolve. We have to find the strength to let the hope win, and celebrate our abundance and our joy. Misery loves company, but more than that, it loves more misery. Misery wants to turn everything to misery. We're walking along a beautiful trail and misery is the annoying wad of spiderwebs across our face, dead and lifeless, a trap for bugs. Misery doesn't have to win.

When I start to reflect and emerge from my web of misery, I begin to see what I really want and the great value of what I have, and misery loses its grip. I'm an old man and I want the remainder of my life to be happy and well-spent. I want to embrace. I want to dance.

My Debt to a Sorrowful God

It hurts me to see someone I love living with so much anger. I can only feel I haven't done enough to fulfill her life or affirm her. I can't help but wonder if she'd be happier or more secure or more content with someone else. I can't help but think the anger arises from unmet need.

When we are suffering in our souls we become a magnet for criticism and contentiousness. Conflict and trouble find us readily, drawn to us like charged particles. Awful scenes erupt. We pick at troubles like peeling skin from a sunburn. Although we know it would be better to rub salve on them we can't resist fussing with the itch of discontent. We are prickly and irritable, can't get comfortable in our own skin. Cruel and smug adversaries invariably find us, and attack like vultures or parasites.

It's painful to watch someone you love suffer from wounds of the heart and soul, wounds you caused or deepened, wounds that haven't healed and seemingly won't. Words, reason, and discussion are no match for a deep pain of the spirit, a neglect felt in a gnawing and unreachable place.

More than anything you want your beloved to be free to play and live with confidence and assurance. More than anything you want their welcoming smile, their acceptance and devotion to your mutual adventure. When they are lost in discontentment, you feel the ache of their absence like a wound of your own. I miss her most when she's just out of reach, lost in a rage I have no words to comfort or soothe. I try, but she has too much bitter energy to vent, too much sorrow welling out of the injured child within her. Her brokenness is my burden. Her spiritual hunger is my debt to a sorrowful God.

The Art of the Perfect Day

Today was a perfect day, and in the words of the immortal Curly the Cowboy (City Slickers), "day ain't over yet." Bonus points if you can remember the scene.

Perfect days aren't an accident. We invite them into our lives, and we nurture them with an attitude of readiness and appreciation, a deep and fundamental understanding of what's important, pleasing, and joyous in life.

We welcome perfect days by projecting an attitude of welcome out into the world, by practicing a deep love of the blessings of our lives, beginning with the unsurpassable blessing of sharing precious hours with those we love and enjoy the most.

Family is more important than anything. If you're awake and have half a heart, your family should knock your socks off. Today we went golfing with Amber, Ashley and Geoffrey and it was the best day ever.

We laughed. We hit golf balls. We razzed each other and cheered each other on. We jumped up and down and performed elaborate I-just-won-the-U.S.-Open celebrations and fist pumps over every good shot. There is nothing better than being around the people who love you for who you are, have no false expectations or pretensions, and are devoted to you as you are to them. Everyone was relaxed and at home and having a good time. No one felt left out or judged or left behind. We had time together and a little money, having the time of our lives on a little par three golf course with scrubby fairways and poorly mowed greens. The two-handicappers at the Reserve in their hundred dollar golf slacks couldn't possibly have had a better time.

I made four pars. We stopped for sausage dogs, marionberry donuts and shortcake at Fir Point Farms. It was warm and sunny with a slight breeze. We saw cute toddlers and some beautiful flower baskets. We ran into some old friends, Stan and Gail Anderson, at Firpoint Farms. I got to touch my wife's butt. It was a perfect day.

Tonight we'll go out for live music and cocktails. There will be dancing, and possibly more butt touching. I shot a 33 even not putting well. I couldn't be more delighted to be alive.

These Are Days of Miracles and Wonders

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good,treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.

2 Timothy 3:1-5, ESV

A quick scan of yahoo news in the morning is all the convincing needed. An earthquake in a California border town moved the entire town two and a half feet. In February a tremor in Chile, one of the largest in recorded history, slightly changed the earth's axis and moved the town ten feet. Scientists have fitted a cat with bionic legs. Another team has restored vision to a man's damaged eye using his stem cells.

Marine biologists studying sperm whales in the South Pacific have discovered the earth's largest mammals have concentrations of toxic metals in their blood and tissues, chromium,cadmium, mercury, lead, aluminum among others, that are sixteen times the level considered dangerous. Biologist Roger Payne believes these man-made contaminants threaten the whales with extinction, and could lead to the collapse of the entire food chain in the world's oceans. Much of the earth's human population depends on the seas for vital protein.

A Portland masseuse told the Oregonian former Vice President Al Gore sexually groped her in a hotel room at a luxury hotel in October 2006. He had been in town that night to give a speech at the Rose Garden on global warming, and requested a massage. The details are sordid. She recalls them with convincing detail. I'm dismayed but not surprised. Portland police never prosecuted because of a lack of sufficient evidence. The Gores announced they were separating a few weeks ago. At the time they insisted there was no affair or scandal. The timing of this story seems curious, and sad. Human failings have no limits, no boundaries, no borders. A man can seem mild-mannered and principled and well-behaved, and disgrace himself in the most common way. My life couldn't stand that kind of scrutiny. Could yours?

There's no pattern to any of this and no cohesive meaning. If I have a thesis at all in what caught my eye today it's simply to say the world around us is chaotic and uncertain and often unrewarding to view. Meaning and hope have to be personal. Your love, your worth, your belief and your admiration have to be invested in those close to you, those you truly love and know. Public figures are brought down every day in base and demeaning ways. Disasters come. Dire predictions follow. What gives meaning to life, and sustaining grace, is the child you hold in your arms and the one you love. The reliable miracle we have is each other. The wonder is we make through the chaos. And we couldn't possibly, without remembering always and holding on for dear life. We have to trust and love and rely on each other, because the world is an unmanageable mess, and the people running it aren't much better.

Take Time For a Nothing Day

Once or twice in a while, we ought to take time for a nothing day. Call in well at work. Sleep in. Leave the dishes in the sink. Take a nap instead of going to the gym. Write a one-paragraph blog post and let the dog play in the back yard. Have cereal for supper.

It's a slippery slope though. Once or twice in a while, this is recreation and rejuvenation and a tonic for your soul. Once or twice in a week, this becomes a way of life, and I become the fat, slovenly unmotivated monster, a living embodiment of the green guy in the mucous commercial.

Today is my nothing day. I played three games of dime poker and had chocolate milk for breakfast. Now it's time for my nap. I love you, but today you are all on your own.

Some Men Dream Things That Never Were

Earlier in the week I had a vision. That's not unusual for me because I'm a dreamer by nature, though a casual dreamer. Over the course of my life like many people I've fallen into the habit of discounting my own dreams. I rarely listen to them. I don't hear the hope of inspiration in the dream, and I don't hear my true path calling to me. Inwardly I dismiss it as a flight of fancy. I enjoy the trip for a moment of time and let the wind take it out of my grasp like so many dandelion seeds floating on the breeze, not realizing what I had in my hands was my own destiny and my true voice.

It's so easy to let yourself be discouraged, to slip back resignedly into your old unexpectant life with no ambitions and no dreams, just the steady, slow discouraging drumbeat of watching the clock and gathering yourself to go to work. My boss called me into his office again last night. He accused me of not reporting to work last Tuesday. He's so eager to throw me under the bus he hallucinates false evidence and misreads time reports and falsely recalls warnings that were never issued. It's become an active vendetta, a campaign of misinformation and hate. Somehow I became a target, which is terribly odd to me, because I work hard at not becoming one, maintaining the golden mean of doing my job and doing nothing to attract attention or animosity. But something about me has gotten under his skin. The numbers don't justify his vengeance. I'm neither at the top of the pack or the bottom. Maybe I remind him of someone who stole his girlfriend in eighth grade; I have utterly no idea and don't want to know. Shift bid is executed in three weeks and I just want to survive until then.

See, I did it again. I started out talking about a dream and digressed into a mundane and painful digression. You see how easy it is to lose the thread of a dream and diffuse its energy? We do it every day.

Our dreams tell us something vital about who we are and where we want to go. Often the specifics are not important. It's the energy of the dream, the urgency, the way we see ourselves living and interacting and using our talents in the dream scenario. That's the vital thing. In our dreams we are vibrant and active people. We're doing things. We're energized and alive and competing for the prize. We're strong, active, decisive. And that is what we are meant to be.

So, I want to encourage you. Don't discount your dreams. Reflect on them for a moment or two, and try to discover what they are telling you about yourself and your true hopes.

In my dream, the one that came to me and won't quite leave me alone, I bought a restaurant and bar, the place where Marie and I met. It's called the Tillicum and it used to be a warm and welcoming place with good food and good music. Over the years with bad management and absentee ownership it's become a shell of itself. A couple of weeks ago Marie and I went there on a Friday night and it was nearly empty. The shrill Irish woman who ran the place into the ground ran us out with her rude behavior. Then just this Saturday our friend Jay sent us a text and told us the place was closed. The Tilly empty and disbanded on a Saturday night, the place where Portland legend Norman Sylvester used to sing the blues and encourage the crowd to "put your hands in the air like you just don't care."

I've run restaurants and have a gift for liking people and creating community. I've run promotions and special events. I created a women's golf benefit dinner attended by a hundred people and a children's clinic attended by 300. I created them out of thin air, off a scrap of paper and a couple of lists composed at my kitchen table. I know I could save the Tilly. I know I could learn what I don't know, assemble a staff, build fierce loyalties and synergies and joys of belonging and comfort and welcome. I know I could be an agent of social change, a principled businessman and give life and joy to that neighborhood restaurant and lounge, make it a special place again. I know I could do this. I know I could find out how. I could raise the money and dream a dream big enough to start the music again in a place that is now gathering dust, a place some clown will probably turn in to another strip mall or another strip club, neither of which Beaverton needs. There are far too many of those already.

So this morning I called the real estate agent who's listing the property. He quickly sized me off as "not a serious offer", assured the property was sold but the business was still listed, but it was the wrong square footage for a restaurant. "Nobody wants a restaurant with that square footage anymore. What are you going to do with it?"

I've always thought the Tillicum was the perfect size. There was room at the bar and a place to dance and a place to eat and two pool tables in back. People came and got along and had a good time. They had great music and great food.

Of course there are all kinds of practical reasons not to get involved in this. There's certainly no guarantee of success and there's a high probability of failure. The failure rate for restaurants and bars is extremely high, particularly for owners who don't know what they are doing. People are far too ready to put other people in that category. Just because I haven't done something before doesn't mean I can't do it. The fundamentals of success in any business aren't complicated; it's just a matter of executing them over and over. Cleanliness, service, courtesy, communication, problem solving, attention to detail: I understand those things. I've practiced them all my life.

The other problem is money. Financing this particular dream would be a challenge. It would take money, someone to believe in the project and the business plan, some willing to see the vision and take the risk. Just because that hasn't happened doesn't mean it can't.

I just got a call from work. I got my last choice for shift bid. I'm working for this same manager again. I had deliberately made his shifts my last six choices, but by the time I picked that was all that were left. It's telling that his shifts were all that were left. Apparently I'm not the only one trying to avoid him. The universe calls us to our destiny in a great variety of ways, even when we refuse to listen.

It could be that this particular dream is worth discarding, for a great many reasons, but one thing is clear: I want to do something more with my life. I want a bigger canvas, a larger hope, a way to earn a living that engages more of my energies and talents, where I have more say in where my life is taking me and what I produce and contribute to the world around me.

In three and a half hours, though, I'll put on the headset and have my senses assaulted afresh by insensitivity and discourtesy, horrible venting hostility over trivia and problems that could be solved without a trace of the animosity and brutal unkindness people chose to lead with. I would have be perfectly willing to help them in whatever way they'd ask if they'd simply ask, but somehow life has given them the message they'll get better results with sarcasm, profanity, and condescension. So I endure it because I have to pay the rent. I know I'm foolish to think I'd find less of it elsewhere, but the hope endures. At least if it was my place, I'd have the option of asking them to leave, if it came to that. It's comforting to think of a setting where I had that kind of autonomy and influence, though in most cases I'd handle it in another way. I just like the thought of having the option, knowing I currently work in an environment where I have very few of them.

Have You No Sense of Decency?

A quick scan of yahoo news is all the convincing anyone should ever need. There's a frenzy of excess out there. The entire world is as giddy and crazed as World Cup fans after a goal in the 85th minute.

A time share magnate in Orlando Florida has fallen on hard times. He's selling his $75 million dollar home. It's 90,000 square feet and has 23 bathrooms, 13 bedrooms and 3 pools. The garage holds twenty cars. But there's a catch: he ran out of money when the recession killed his business, and the house is unfinished. It has no carpet or interior walls. Still, it's a steal at $75 million. Maybe he'll take a little less. I think I'll have my guy call his guy.

The 17th richest woman in the world is French shampoo and cosmetics heiress Liliane Bettancourt. She was caught on tape recently plotting tax evasion, and has since declared her solemn intention to declare all her foreign assets, including the secret Swiss bank accounts. The State of Oregon garnished my wages last week because I owed them $192. The trouble was, they already deducted the same debt from my Federal tax refund. I could have used that money. $192 is six bags of groceries, or the start of the down payment on my new mansion in Florida, which has a bowling alley and a movie theater. I'm telling the guy he has to put in a putting green or it's no deal.

Disgraced financier Bernie Madoff is in the federal slammer now, but he's bragging to the other inmates that he managed to squirrel away nine billion dollars before the Feds sent him to the pokey. He gave it to three of his pals for safekeeping. One of the friends reportedly was the guy who ratted him out. If I were him I'd be worried that that one might just tell him, "What money, Bernie? I don't remember any three billion dollars. Are you sure you didn't leave it with Charles or Liliane?" Bernie is also worried his wife may be cheating on him. A new book came out that detailed his many extramarital affairs. Bernie is considered a celebrity in prison because of the scale of his crimes, and the prison inner circle provides him protection. But he's sought out the prison psychiatrist for help with his depression and anxiety.

A federal judge in New Orleans blocked a proposed moratorium on more deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, while the federal government has begun processing a $20 billion fund for compensation claims in the current Gulf oil disaster. Boy, that judge ought to take a few minutes a day to read yahoo news. It might be a good idea to slow down on more drilling until they find a way to drill without spilling so much. Like my mother used to say, I won't be around to clean up your messes forever.

General Stanley McChrystal is being summoned to the White House after he gave an interview to Rolling Stone highly critical of U.S. policy in the war in Afghanistan. He made derogatory remarks about President Obama and his staff. I guess he forgot that part in the Constitution about the Commander-in-Chief. It's a good thing the Rolling Stone doesn't interview me about my boss. But then again I don't think he reads the Rolling Stone. I'm not even sure he reads. I know he writes emails. I get a new one every day detailing the latest way I screwed up. Yesterday it was the all-important phone transfer policy. I forgot billing closed at nine. I didn't actually transfer the customer; I just dialed the extension before I remembered. But I got a memo anyway. I hate memos. They're not as bad as being summoned to the White House, but still. Maybe I should send a memo to the State of Oregon.

I Hate Tiger Woods, A Continuing Series

This meeting of the He-Man Tiger Woods Haters Club is now in session.

I hate Tiger Woods. I always have. I used to work in the golf business and it would nauseate me how 25-handicappers would come into the shop with idiot grins on their faces saying, "Didjya see what Tiger did today?" as if he were their long lost son. People bought into the marketing hype, thought they had this personal connection to this arrogant and spoiled golf savant who didn't care two cents about anyone or anything other than his pursuit of Jack Nicklaus, a much better person and a much better golfer. (Yeah that's what I said. Jack played with dignity and grace. And he set his records with 3-piece wound balls and a persimmon driver and forged irons with a sweet spot the size of a shirt button, against Hogan and Watson and Player and Palmer.) I hated the way the media fawned over Woods and gave him a pass on all his bad on-course behavior. In golf, a champion should act like one. It's what sets the sport apart from the others.

The off-course scandals just sealed the deal for me. The bizarre sleazeball behavior confirmed what I suspected all along. He's even a bad tipper, ungenerous, crude, self-absorbed. Tiger Woods was a thorough-going phony and a marketing creation. It's been fun to watch him squirm and fume and twist in the wind. Still he's always ready with an excuse. Tiger Woods has never lost a golf tournament. He's just made mental mistakes or there was something wrong with the greens.

It would tickle me if he never won another major. A whole new generation of young guns is coming along now, golfers who grew up imagining themselves lining a crucial putt to beat him on the eighteenth hole, guys from all over the world, McElroy and Ishikawa and Dustin Johnson, and some of his old whipping boys have closed the gap. Ernie Els and Phil Mickelson, two men with far better character, have rededicated themselves and racheted up their games. The intimidation factor is gone. The stare doesn't have the same chilling effect. Last season Y.E. Yang outdueled him at the PGA. Yesterday a Frenchmen ranked 361st in the world played alongside him and made par after par, unrattled. Woods shot four over on Sunday. A poised Graeme McDowell became the first European to win the U.S. Open in forty years.

Woods gave another rude two-sentence interview to the NBC after the match. The entire experience of losing his marketing empire, his wife and family and his carefully crafted and patently false public image has taught him nothing.

Next month is the Open Championship at Saint Andrews, and he will once again be lauded as the favorite. I'll be rooting against him, cheering every missed putt and profanity and thrown club.

The Names Have Been Changed to Protect the Infant

Alicia is twenty and was born with a withered hand. Her mother abused drugs when she was in the womb and her fingers never developed. Her left hand is a stub with tiny baby fingers that look like toes. Her mother continued to abuse drugs throughout Alicia's life. She was raised by her grandmother and her parents divorced when she was young. She grew up homely and neglected. Her father cleaned up and started a new family. She has two younger half-brothers, whom she adores. Phillip and Ethan are eight now. They live across town, in St. Johns.

When Alicia was in her teens she started to blossom and grew a figure. She was petite with long dark hair and brown eyes. Still self-conscious about the deformed hand she hid it in long sleeves or behind her hip. Young children can be cruel. The brutal teasing will ring in her ears and night thoughts forever.

But one sweet, kind boy noticed her. She was fourteen when they fell in love. He liked her quiet way and vulnerability, and his eyes lighted on her budding figure. She wasn't homely anymore. Someone liked her. He was a good-looking boy and he smelled nice. Not good in school. An outcast like her, a boy from the neighborhood, but he was a hard worker. He got a job at a smoothie shop and hustled. They promoted him to assistant manager. Then he got a new job, a better one, waiting tables in a nice Italian restaurant. The customers liked him. He was polite and quick and had good people skills. He smelled nice and had a knack for sensing what people needed, how they wanted to be spoken to. The street smarts and basic intelligence and natural charm made him a crackjack waiter. He found he could make $35,000-$40,000 a year, most of it under the table. David and Alicia moved in together. They were nineteen now and the world was perfect. He was the only boy she had ever slept with, the first time under blankets on his mother's living room floor.

Alicia hadn't had the best upbringing, with her mother in and out of prison and her grandmother just overwhelmed trying to hold down a job and keep her raised. Alicia had trouble reading and writing and dropped out of school. The peer pressure and contemptuous looks made that an easy decision. As much as she loved David, who'd lifted her out of loneliness and the hard life of waiting for her mom to make parole, a part of her thirsted for bling and excitement and something more. They bickered and sniped at each other. She chafed under his expectations. He nagged her because she didn't keep house like his mom.

Her friends were other girls like her, dropouts and disaffected, a little ghetto in their outlook. They all wanted bling and excitement and attention. They discovered as young women budding into women, young women without careers or families or education, they had one power in life and one asset: their sexuality. One of the friends started dancing in a club. The City of Portland has more strip clubs per capita than any city in the country, and when you add in the lotion studios and adult shops and glossy magazines offering the true girlfriend experience, it is a thriving cesspool of distorted desire and easy money. The lure of easy money, it has a very strong appeal.

Alicia tried out at a juice bar and started dancing four nights a week. She bought some lucite five-inch high heels and a stripper pole for her bedroom, to practice her moves. One night she took home $750 in cash. She spread the bills out on the living room floor in a pile and sorted them. Her only other job had been a couple of years ago at Twenty Below, for minimum wage. This was the most money she had ever had in her hands at one time. The next night she made five hundred.

Everything was cool, except everything changed. She got her hair frosted and bought herself new braces. She'd always been self-conscious about her teeth, her weak chin. It was exhilarating to have the admiring eyes on her. It was exhilarating to be able to shut down the creeps with one withering glance, knowing the bouncer and the bodyguard had her back. She was the queen in this new world, the star.

At home though the strain colored everything. David struggled to deal with her new independence, the thought of those other men looking at her, the thought of the temptations and distractions that came with that kind of money and that lifestyle. They both had dabbled in drugs throughout their disaffected lives, weed and a few pain pills, but the other girls liked to party, and party hard, and they had the money to do it and they didn't have to go to work until 8 p.m.

And then Alicia found out she was pregnant.

They hadn't planned it but part of her had always wanted to have a baby with David. Once before when she was sixteen they'd gotten an abortion, but this time it felt right. At least mostly right. They were fighting a lot now, over the dancing and money and housework and his video games and what time he or she got home. Maybe a baby would make things better.

She took a break from dancing and had the baby. It was a healthy pregnancy and they had a beautiful baby girl. She nursed and the baby thrived. David was a wonderful, attentive father. Her adored his daughter, would hold her and kiss her soft cheek and talk to her in a soothing whisper.

Alicia lost the baby weight quickly, thanks to nursing and working out on the pole at home. They moved into a nicer apartment and got the baby some new things. When Merrylin was four months she went back to work, this time at Starz Caberet, an exclusive gentlemen's club on the Westside of town, in the suburbs just off I-5.

Two months went by. More piles of cash. More late nights and unwashed plates on the living room floor. The diaper pail overflowed. David's mom came over to visit and he was frantic with embarrassment. He lit into Alicia when she left, another loud and bitter fight. The baby cried for 45 minutes when she left for work. Merrylin wanted to nurse and was inconsolable. She cried herself to sleep, exhausted and screaming. When she woke up it was a little better and she ate a jar of baby food, the squash, her favorite.

Nobody knows what happens now. It's easy to be sucked in to the "glamour," the attention, the lifestyle. The new found imbalance of power at home changes everything. Now every argument is full of unstated hurt, and the temptation is great to tune it out or just escape it for a while. Every night she gets invitations, come-ons, offers, pitches, flattery and promises, and another pile of money. Women in the sex industry grow old quickly. There are a thousand ways to fall off the track or into the abyss. It's possible to have a healthy post-modern relationship with that environment and that milleu, but Alicia hasn't had the best start in life. She doesn't have the best emotional and spiritual resources for the decisions she's making, for the situations she finds herself in.

Merrylin needs her. She wants to nurse. Alicia has a little family at home, falling apart in the saddest possible way.

News of the Weirder Still

The male ego is a gluttonous monster, hungry for attention and approval. Sometimes it takes on ridiculous proportions and outrageous ambitions. Men think they can change history or take on an Army. Sometimes they succeed. Thomas Edison and Henry Ford certainly changed the world. Mozart did. Einstein did. But for every genius there are a thousand deluded quacks and a hundred lucky bumblers. Columbus and Cortez thought they conquered a new world but it in the end it was Guns Germs and Steel. Men shoot for the North Pole or Paris or the moon and miss altogether. Sometimes they fly the wrong way.

There's a part of a man that needs big dreams, although often we're not equal to them. My dad used to sit at the kitchen table and sketch and draw figures for big projects, large-scale farming or cement barges, dredging round river rock, a mobile restaurant. For years he had three fifty-pound sacks of donut flour in his garage. Once he wanted to start a trucking school. When we became adults he would call us every so often, wanting us to enlist in his schemes. He was Don Quixote and he needed a Sancho Panza. His eyes saw windmills and stars. We begged off and rolled our eyes, but truth be told, we all have windmills and stars of our own. Part of us needs them, to escape the drudgery. Nobody wants to believe that this is all there is, that we were born to be a nobody in a nothing job with no visions worth sketching out at the kitchen table. Colonel Sanders' kids probably rolled their eyes at him, and he wound up conquering the world with fried chicken.

In the news the other day was the story of a man who set out to assassinate Osama bin Laden single-handedly. Gary Brooks Faulkner is 52 and suffering from kidney failure. He saved up money from construction jobs, got on a plane in Denver to fly to Pakistan. He told friends and family he was going to climb a mountain. In Chitral, the mountainous Nortern region, Pakistani police detained him after he checked out of his hotel overnight without telling anyone. They found him carrying a pistol, a sword, a dagger, and night vision goggles. They found him in a forest, headed for the Afghan border.

He's crazed and deluded and single-minded, but so were the Wright brothers and Warren Buffet. Every man has his sound and fury. In the sixties the CIA tried to kill Castro with an exploding cigar. In the seventies Nixon had his enemies list. For years J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI kept secret tapes on many prominent Americans, film and football stars, politicians. He had to have the dirt. It kept him in control. In the mid-90's bin Laden himself launched a plot to kill Bill Clinton. They wired a bridge with explosives on his visit to the Phillipines. The Secret Service picked up radio chat and diverted the motorcade.

That plot failed but another succeeded. Strangers on plane managed to change the world forever. Crazed and deluded and single-minded, they crashed three planes into tall buildings, and the world has been in the grip of sound and fury ever since. Gary Faulkner tried to strike a blow for justice, but he did succeed in reminding us that these are the crazed last days. In the larger world, justice is impossible. Insanity and evil reign forever, until the coming king.

The Long Good-bye

I know they say if you love somebody
You should set them free
But it sure is hard to do
It sure is hard to do
I know they say if you don't come back again
Then it's meant to be (so they say)
Those words don't pull me through
Cause I'm still in love with you
I spend each day here waiting for a miracle
But it's just you and me goin' through the mill
climbin' up a hill

This is the long goodbye
Somebody tell me why
Two lovers in love can't make it
Just what kind of love keeps breaking a heart
No matter how hard I try
I always make you cry
Come on, baby, it's over let's face it
All that's happening here is a long goodbye

Sometimes I ask my heart did we really
Give our love a chance (just one more chance)
But I know without a doubt
We turned it inside out
And if we walked away
It would make more sense
But it tears me up inside
Just to think we could still try
How long must we keep running on a carousel
Goin' round and round and never getting anywhere
On a wing and prayer

This is the long goodbye
Somebody tell me why
Two lovers in love can't make it
Just what kind of love keeps breaking a heart
No matter how hard I try
I always make you cry
Come on, baby, it's over let's face it
All that's happening here is a long goodbye

Long goodbye
Long goodbye

Brooks and Dunn, "The Long Good-bye"


"The Long Good-bye" is a beautiful, sad, tender song, and it resonates, because most of us have felt the ache of the long good-bye at one time or another. It achieves an even deeper poignancy knowing the creators of the song are now enduring a long good-bye of their own. Brooks and Dunn are ending their collaboration this summer after twenty years of touring and writing and working together. Of course they'll have the consolation of a multi-million dollar farewell tour. Most of our farewell tours are far less rewarding.

The last stages of a long good-bye can be scary and disorienting and filled with hurt and sadness. It no longer matters why or who started it or who's right. It just hurts. The injuries won't go away and words fail. After a bitter fight you both retreat to other rooms and talk in strained careful voices. One person or the other makes other plans. You both start making mental lists, dividing things in your head, calculating options and deadlines. You imagine your life alone.

The issues don't matter anymore and we couldn't begin to take our own advice. The air is filled with tension and weariness and the fear of loss. Her sorrow and disappointment is so great there is nothing in the world he could say to begin to heal this or console her. You feel so defeated and diminished by the realities of the past that you could never believe your love is real or sustaining. Maybe she met another man, someone younger and better looking and a better lover. Maybe he retreated into his own world and started ignoring her feelings and needs. By now they don't care who is right or what they did wrong or why it happened. They just want to retreat and stop living hurt.

Of course bitterness is no answer and neither is packing up and leaving, even though sometimes it's more than necessary. In your new place, all the dynamics and deficits that brought you to ruin here will follow you. We can't escape ourselves. I can't escape the fear of conflict and defensiveness that make me inept in relationships, the compulsive urges to run and evade and retreat that trigger a fear of abandonment in the women I inevitably choose. We are condemned to repeat our patterns until we change them. Including the familiar desperation of the long good-bye. Life itself is a long good-bye, and if we're not careful our time will be gone without even saying a proper hello. If our days go ungreeted and our longings unmet, our last breaths will be taken alone. We have to be careful about our choices, because they write the script of our future.

News of the Weird, An Occasional Series

The vacuum cleaner attachment came loose under the furnace, and Jonathon Metz reached down to get it. His arm got stuck and he was trapped their for hours, screaming for help in the basement. Every five seconds the timer on the microwave would beep upstairs, reminding him his leftovers were ready. No one came. He tried to free his arm but it would cut and bleed, and as the hours passed it began to swell and grow infected. He tried working it loose with some spilled furnace oil but that didn't work.

The day became the next day and still no one came. Some of his tools were in reach. He thought of MacGyver, and sawed off his own arm with a hacksaw. It took him six hours to work up the nerve for the self-amputation, switching to a larger saw when the blade reached a bundle of nerves that was difficult to cut. A friend found him on Wednesday. Firefighters had to destroy the furnace to save him. The nearly-severed arm could not be saved.

Friends and family started a website to pay for his medical bills and soon he'll be fitted for a prosthetic arm. A local company donated a new furnace. He's getting married in November. Everyone is lauding his courage. At the time he thought if he could free himself he might get the arm in the freezer and save it for reattachment. That didn't work but he saved his life. Doctors said the spreading infection probably would have killed him.

It's a grisly story, and it's a reach to think of metaphors about the self-amputations we perform in life, the ways we get stuck in jobs or relationships or bad habits, the misery we endure, and the rash acts we perform to free ourselves. I wish the man in the story only well, and I'm sure his story is story is a tragic accident and nothing more. He reached down in annoyance like anyone would, trying to retrieve the spilled attachment, and something awful happened. It made me think of Ronny Cammareri in Moonstruck, who lost his hand in an accident at the bakery. In the story Loretta told him he was a wolf, that he cut off his own hand to escape the trap of a bad engagement. I'm sure Mr. Metz's story is nothing like that. Art imitates life, and life art, but neither does so perfectly.

In our lives, though, the infections of doubt and despair spread everyday. Unexamined and unchecked, they can lead to death, usually a slow and painful one, a trap that cannot be escaped. Circumstances can mount to a place even MacGyver could not unscript, not with a thousand paper clips or containers of household cleaning products.

The keys to our escape are less rash than a hacksaw. We have to find the detachment to look at our situation calmly. We have to have the courage to recognize when we need help, advice, love and support. We have to have the discipline to maintain sustaining practices in our lives, spiritual practices that strengthen and renew us, recreative practices that restore our mind, energy and hopes, giving us the clarity to make choices and take positive action. The critical thing is recognize the next step and take it. We are all stuck to a degree and freer than we imagine. Our real life dilemmas are far less drastic than hacking off an arm. The phone is always in reach. We have time enough to change or pray.

Having a Fool for a Client

Writing a blog is tricky. There's a lot of pressure to leave out both the good and the bad parts from those close to you. The dilemma made the movies in Julie and Julia . Occasionally I lapse into the third or even the second person to avoid controversy and recrimination, or speak about personal events through the filter of world news or another convenient prop. It's a tightrope. There's so much you can't come right out and say. and let's face it, my life's not interesting to begin with.

The worst is after a fight. I'm full of writing energy and I want to vent my side. but writing it out only escalates a bad situation. And glossing it over would be dishonest and waste a valuable opportunity to make discoveries about character and craft. Usually I resort to being vague or elliptical, satisfying no one. It's a fine line. Still it's been an incredible experience to create and then resurrect this project. I feel I've grown as a writer and a person, and I know now I will never stop writing. That is a victory in itself.

Joy

Real joy is transcendent and transforming. It isn't dependent on your circumstances. It is a strength of will and a triumph of perspective and reflection. It begins with the joy of being and breathing, and awakens its eyes to the preciousness of every moment, the supreme encompassing beauty with which God infuses every day.

My grandchildren have magnificent laughs. I love to hear them in maniacal cackle or belly-jiggling giggle or delighted chuckle. It is the sweetest music on earth. Make the effort to hear your child's laughter, and savor it like a handful of Starburst Fruit Chews with four pink ones. Get on the floor with them and discover the source of their half-mad abandoned delight at the absurdity of upside toys or their belly button. Look into their delighted little eyes and show them how perfect they are, how safe they are in your love.

Joy is a moment. Joy is a choice. Joy is an awareness of the richness of things, awaiting you. Live your truth and find your joy. Joy is the engine of destiny.

Misery

Every life is accompanied by a portion of misery, and the misery is a rich source of wisdom and experience. The hope within us cries out from the misery and says, "Be attentive to your misery, return to your true path. Lift yourself up. Your strength lies in attending to your spiritual hunger." The evil within us sneers out of the misery and says, "Succumb to the misery. This is what you richly deserve. Feel guilty, feel victimized. Choose bitterness, disease and death. Ignore the spirit within you and shut out the music of hope."

Life is a long journey and there are many moments of crisis. Then too, they are many moments that go unnoticed, where a glimmer of hope refreshes us like a welcoming breeze, or we turn our face and increase the growing bitterness until we succumb altogether.

Babies

I utterly loved this movie. It was delightful enough in and of itself, but one of the things I appreciated about it is that it reminded me how powerful a movie can be.

The story is told simply. Director Thomas Balmes follows the lives of four real babies from four corners of the world, from birth to their first steps. There is very little dialogue, and the camera watches the babies quietly at floor level, and the results are delightful to watch.

There are three girls and a boy, from Mongolia, Africa, Tokoyo and San Francisco. It's mesmerizing to watch their first feedings, their surroundings, the beautiful, haunting landscapes, their first words, their first steps. All the little discoveries an infant makes are quietly recorded. The message is, babies thrive if they are loved, and the love we have for babies is universal in most circumstances. Hattie from San Francisco, with her well-to-do New Age parents, is no more or no less loved than the boy born on the steppes of Mongolia or the charming little girl from the grasslands of Africa. The babies are beautiful. Watching, you love each and every one of them, even for their tantrums and fusses and tumbles. It's inspiring how well babies adapt to their surroundings. The Mongolian boy is unbothered by the rooster on his bed, and make a play structure out of an overturned barrel in the middle of the cattle.

It was one of the most memorable and inspiring and joyous movies I have ever seen. Curiously, as much as I love movies we rarely see one in the theater, but I'm supremely glad we watched this one there, in the opulent and grand theater/palace at Bridgeport Regal Cinemas. The candy machine ripped me off a dollar, and I had to fill out a form to get it back. We found an all-night Subway for dinner.

Life of Pi

Life of Pi was a strange and wonderful book. I'm not sure I understood it all. Occasionally it is good to read a book that leaves you a little confused, that introduces ideas you are not quite ready for, that leaves you feeling a little shipwrecked yourself, on a sea of ideas, conflicted by the vastness of the landscape and the overwhelming challenge and predicament of making sense of the author's story and your own.

Vividly written and absorbing, Yann Martel tells the story of a sixteen-year-old Indian boy who is shipwrecked on a 26-foot lifeboat with an injured zebra, a hyena, an orang-utan and a 450-lb. Bengal tiger. It's fascinating how he subdues the tiger and survives the elements and his fierce battle with despair, powerful to read of the forces that overwhelmed and inspired him on his journey. A few times, rain or flying fish or a mysterious island come into the story at just the right time, and the reader has to decide whether to increase one's faith or give in, much like Pi himself. Deeply spiritual, Piscine follows the tenets of three of the world's major religions, deciding at fourteen become a practicing Hindu, Christian and Muslim, all at the same time. History has converged all the world's faith in India, adding to the rich confused stew that culture has become over time.

Pi is a passionate and loving narrator, who tells the author early in the story that this story will inspire him to believe in God. You have to admire a novel with such an ambitious aim, particularly in an age when so many stories are written merely to enrich the author and titillate the audience with the same repackaged twaddle that exists everywhere else in our culture, which has become a confused stew of its own, lost in a numbness of sensation and envy. We're the most filled but the least satisfied generation in history, on a crazed lifeboat of a planet with forces well beyond our control. Pi's story suggests our only salvation lies in subduing our appetites and our fears, in learning what is essential to navigate in waters that are both unfamiliar and awe-inspiring.

In the locker of the lifeboat Pi finds cans of water and packets of food, fishhooks and blankets, lengths of rope and lifejackets. He fashions a raft he tethers to the lifeboat, to keep a survivable distance between him and the Tiger while he works out their survival. He teaches himself how to fish and collect water distilled from the sea. He has a whistle he uses to train the Tiger. Did I mention his father had been a zookeeper. When the boat runs aground in a remote part of Baja Mexico Pi has to tell his story to some skeptical investigators, tow Japanese men, representatives of the shipping line. He hoards their cookies and torments them with alternative versions of his story, neither of which they truly believe.

I believed every word. I remember August Strindberg (Max von Sydow holding a lantern to Paul Gaugin's paintings in A Wolf at the Door, saying "I will dream of these paintings for a long time." A good story, or a compelling work of art, does that. It turns over in your mind many times. It becomes the soil of your imagination, rich and fertile for your hopes.

"A Brand New Day"

When all the dark clouds roll away
And the sun begins to shine
I see my freedom from across the way
And it comes right in on time

Well it shines so bright and it gives so much light
And it comes from the sky above
Makes me feel so free makes me feel like me
And lights my life with love

And it seems like and it feels like
And it seems like yes it feels like
A brand new day, yeah
A brand new day, oh

Van Morrison, "A Brand New Day"

It's Only Rock and Roll But I Like It

The college football world has been rocked lately by cataclysms of its own. Megabucks conference mergers have dominated the news, and recently the hated cheaters from USC were caught with their hand in the money slot of the ATM machine and slapped with a two-year ban on bowl games and the loss of ten scholarships over the next three years. An investigating committee found that Trojan stars like Heisman trophy winner Reggie Bush and basketball star O.J. Mayo were given a fortune in fabulous illegal benefits, up to and including homes, cash, and cars.

ESPN reports that the NCAA has clarified their initial ruling: USC’s juniors and seniors can transfer to other schools without sitting out a year.

http://sports.espn.go.com/los-angeles/ncf/news/story?id=5275644
Of course, as Rob Moseley of the Eugene Register-Guard has pointed out, the Trojans are appealing the penalties.

This news is a shame in one way because the Oregon schools were doing a good job of eroding USC’s dominance on the field over the last few years. The Ducks have played the Trojans heads-up for quite a while, starting with a Saturday night they smashed Carson Palmer in the mouth and sent him home in a sling.

There’s no doubt the sanctions will significantly impact the football ecosystem for several years. It will take years to clean up the sticky tarballs of lost revenue, forfeited scholarships and dwindling interest and attendance. Mike Garrett’s office will be spewing bad news at an alarming rate, and the likelihood is that before long it will no longer be Mike Garrett’s office.

But I whistled a little tune of relief when I read one line of the sad story of Masoli’s recent arrest and dismissal. At least the car he was driving was a 1999 Cadillac, and not some brand new Escalade from a mysterious source…

I’m not naive enough to think extra benefits don’t exist in Eugene and all over the world of college sports. I had a high school friend who was a reserve on Boise State’s basketball team thirty years ago and even then, as a minor player on a minor team, he got a free apartment and enough money for Big Macs and the gas to go home at Christmas. It happens everywhere, I’m certain, but not on the scale of palatial family homes and grocery sacks full of cash that came to light in La-La Land. I’m just relieved our overzealous boosters have kept things reasonably discreet. Joey Harrington famously drove a decrepit Toyota, for instance.

What happened to the Cardinal and Gold is a cautionary tale. Everybody does it. The famous saying is, “If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying.” The critical thing is to keep the cheating to a manageable level, to stay on the side of the NCAA’s blind eye and out of sight of their watchful eye. The Trojans got too big and too flashy. Someone was bound to notice. They should have played that stupid fight song in a minor key, and left the horse and the fancy car at home.

If the Ducks could filch a fast wide receiver and an extra defensive tackle out of Lane Kiffin’s misfortune, so much the better. But I'm not myopic enough to think that in five or ten years or so it won’t be our turn.

Love Is Like A Shark

It's survival of the fittest, the biologists say, while the physicist rhapsodizes about gravity, acceleration, mass and space-time. But the most powerful force in your personal universe is a simple truth: we become what we think about. Add this vital corollary: to change your circumstances, change the way you think about them.

You may consider yourself to be a victim of random negative thoughts. The truth is, as long as you think you are, you are. It's far more likely you're using those negative thoughts to keep yourself and others stuck and imprisoned in the self-created cell of bitterness. If your love has turned to bitterness, it's past time to make a choice, a wrenching choice, but a necessary one: redemption or moving on.

Living a lie is a fool's game. Harboring bitterness, having a secret regret that makes your daily life a hollow shell of activity and numbness, benefits no one. Are you staying together out of habit or expediency? Out of fear of the unknown? More of the same is all you'll get.

I knew a young woman who discovered an awful secret about her husband. He had a child he never told her about, a child he'd ignored and denied, and when the financial and emotional consequences of that secret came rolling in she knew she had enough. She was just numb. She'd endured so much, but this was just too much. It was time to ask him to leave. She met someone else and now has a happiness beyond anything she'd imagined.

I know another couple with multiple problems that keep them alternating between rage and painful contrition. They are both hurt and feel betrayed. They take a step toward reconciliation and two steps back into separate lives and separate hopes, between the yearning for security and the hope for true healing and the awful compulsion to just protect their own interests and hide their true hearts from each other. Each casts a covetous eye toward independence, or back to the carefree days when they had an adventure of their own. Behind all the hurt and regret they still love each other, but there are so many mines in the minefield that too often a kind word or a tender gesture gets lost in a spasm of fear, and they both retreat in hurt and haste. What a broken place they are both in, wanting to be loved, longing for embraces and the freedom to play together, but so scarred by their separate and shared pasts that the sustaining moments of affection are few and far between. They are starving and filling up on empty calories of broken emotion. They feel a constant salt sting of disappointment. Their love endures, but barely.

I feel for that man and woman and all those I know who feel alone. Trust and belonging are the two biggest treasures in the world. We scarcely know how fragile they are when we burst out looking for them, coming together for our first hopeful dance. The exhilaration eventually fades. Then begins the hard work of sustaining and feeding hope, and living in faith and faithfulness. Love is a like a shark. But it doesn't have to die. We can change things by changing the way we look at them.

To To An Athlete Who Could Not Get Out of His Own Way

He came from a good supportive family and he had rare athletic gifts. But Jeremiah Masoli was one of those guys who could not stop screwing up.

This morning the Eugene Register-Guard reported that suspended Oregon Duck quarterback Jeremiah Masoli was cited Monday night for possession of marijuana and driving while suspended. Oregon coach Chip Kelly will no doubt announce later today that he is no longer on the team and his scholarship has been revoked.

On the field, Masoli met problems head on. The Rose Bowl and the PAC-10 championship were on the line last December, fourth and three versus Oregon State, the Ducks nursing a slim lead late in the game, and Masoli ran through Beaver defensive back Lance Mitchell for a first down to seal the win. Lowered his head and knocked the defender to the ground, just like he'd done to a UCLA safety in 2008 and then again to an Oklahoma State player in the Holiday Bowl. He was a youtube highlight of toughness and determination, a Heisman trophy candidate, the leader of a team poised to contend for a national championship.

This is a less tolerant age. In the twenty-four hour news cycle, in the era of blogs and instant laptop updates, an athlete's misdeeds immediately go to the headlines. Years ago in a sleepy college town the week after finals, a football star getting drunk or fresh with a girl would have been quieted up by someone influential, and the star would play next year and leave school for the pros with a pocketful of money and assurance of a job for life when he finished with the NFL. It's not like that now, and shouldn't be. Things come to light. Law enforcement types are scrupulously aware that this arrest should be treated like any other, and a thousand sources, eager for fresh news and fresh scandal and an opportunity to provide the vital links, dutifully report the story, within minutes, even seconds, of the judge's gavel or the clanging of the cell. There's no evasion or mumbling of excuses that will make it go away. Jeremiah has lost his scholarship, and squandered his opportunity to play quarterback at the University of Oregon. I hope he finds his way in life. He's off to a bad start.

In interviews he seemed like such a quiet and modest kid, and I admired the Samoan warrior intensity he brought to the field. By now however he's a victim of his own terminal bad judgment. Already on suspension he had to know he was on his last second chance. How could someone so fierce and focused on the field be so aimless and stupid off it? It's disappointing but not surprising. The sports landscape is littered with athletes with similar stories, all the talent in the world, million dollar bodies but ten-cent heads.

I love redemption stories. They are the chief reason I like sports. I like seeing what people do after the ultimate failure or embarrassment. I like seeing what happens next with them, how they respond, how they rise up. Masoli had an opportunity to serve his suspension and come back in 2011 and achieve an incredible story. That road will be way harder now. He'll have to go somewhere else, start over, face the mountains of doubts and inevitable scrutiny, and he'll have to prove the real Masoli is the dominating competitor and not the stupid kid who can't make sensible decisions or stay out of trouble. He won't be able to do any of that at the University of Oregon. As of today he no longer has the uniform, or the support of the fans, coaches, and teammates, and it's a shame he doesn't realize what a loss that is.

I'm invested in the story because I'm a screw up too. I can't count the number of times I turned the wrong way or took a foolish chance, or got a ticket or got in trouble because I was in the wrong place doing something I had no business doing. My life has been a trail of broken relationships and broken promises and wasted potential. I'd like to see this kid do better. He has more time left than I do.

(update: by twelve noon today, the Oregon athletic department announce that Jeremiah Masoli has been dismissed from the team for a failure to adhere to the obligations outlined by head coach Chip Kelly.)

Across From the White Country Church Where We Gave Our Vows

Perched on a hill on a winding country road outside Beaverton and Portland, there is a small white country church with a steeple. No congregation meets at Brook Hill Church anymore. A woman owns it and rents it out for weddings. It's a lovely setting for a small ceremony. Marie and I were married there in the spring of 2006.

Across the street is Skyline Grade School, where 7-year-old Kyron Horman went missing on Friday. Police and school officials held a news conference from the church today, accommodating the gathered media from a podium set on the very spot where Marie and I stood on our wedding day.

They've combed the fields near the school and questioned every student, teacher and visitor. They've talked to the mother and stepmother, with no sign of the boy. They've grilled area sex offenders and brought in profilers and search dogs. Three full days have passed. The nights were cold and rainy. There's little hope left Kyron will be found alive.

Friday morning the second grader was excited about his school science fair project, "The Red-Eyed Tree Frog." He'd probably spent hours on the drawings and photographs. His stepmother took a photo of him, beaming in front of the poster. He's wearing a blue tee shirt that says "CSI." He looks a lot like my nephew Mitchie did when he was that age, although Mitch now has a deeper voice than mine and is a sophomore in high school.

Our lives are too full of grim ironies anymore. We do our best to pray, to believe, to focus on what we can do, to count our blessings and accept that evil and death and awfulness have such a hold on the world. Small boys aren't safe at school. The world trembles and shakes, spews lava and oil and hate and dismemberment. Every day I meditate and do affirmations and walk dutifully to work to do my job, while the larger world shakes at its foundations and trembles under the weight of evil and mayhem and meaninglessness. I look at the photo of that beaming little boy and I feel helpless, hopeless, dumbfounded that something so awful could happen. We fear the ugly, twisted worst, and try to believe that he just ran off or got distracted or will miraculously show up with a sheepish smile and muddy shoes. The truth is probably much worse. The truth may be never known.

The agony and anger his parents must feel is beyond description. The despair that grips that school community, the fear and suspicion and confusion his classmates feel have to be at the limit of what children can bear. How do you explain this to an assembly of six, seven, eight, nine and ten-year-olds? How do you tell them to be safe without irreparably scarring them with paranoia, fearing abduction lurks behind every smile and courtesy and encouraging word?

It's as though the Nazis won. The modern world is filled with such evil and hate and intolerance and cruelty the thousand-year Reich is all around us.

A lovely child is missing, and his classmates and teachers and family are hostages in a grim media teleplay. By now it's happened so often we now know the drill. The grieving serious law enforcement spokesman. The TV news reporter getting her big break. The gathered cameras and satellite trucks. Leads, clues, suspects; searchers combing the underbrush. Reports of when he was last seen, the door he walked toward, clouds of suspicion following the people with the deepest grief. In seven days or so the search is called off or a body is found or a monster is hauled in for arraignment. The smiling boy before the poster of red-eyed tree frogs, his innocent face haunts us. We can't escape the chilling notion this could have been Makenzie or Bryce or Kourtney or Ethan, or the boy next door or the girl down the street. We can't escape the horrific unvoiceable question that lingers in our minds, "What kind of a God will allow this to happen?" We can't say that out loud, because the question might destroy us altogether, and we don't have the wisdom to form a satisfying answer.

I'm told that God doesn't allow evil. Evil exists because humankind was born with the capacity to choose, and evil is a part of our nature. Greed and lust and destruction are a part of the sad fate of the world, and in this last Lost Age, they reign with glee.

How then should we live? How do we answer the evil in the world, and the evil within us? We hold our children close, I suppose, and do our best to make sure they understand which doors to open and which voices to trust, knowing nothing can truly prepare them for the unspeakable cleverness that awaits them when we let go of their hands.

Groundhog Day or Independence Day

Without music, life would be a mistake.
--Friedrich Nietzsche

I pay rent on a run-down place
There ain't no view
But there's lots of space in my heart
The heart that you own
"The Heart That You Own," Dwight Yoakum

You're standing in line at the video store that's about to go out of business, and there are only two movies left. Whichever title you choose will play every morning for the rest of your life, life imitating art as it always does. Groundhog Day or Independence Day, you've got to choose. Or the snot-nosed ear-plug- pierced clerk will choose for you. He is a staunch devotee of nihilism, as witnessed by the ear-plugged ear, and you can't have any confidence that his choice will do a damn thing for your welfare. In fact his cocksure smug fuck-the-world smile assures that just the opposite is true. So choose. Do you want "I got you babe" ringing in your ears for the rest of your life, or do you want Randy Quaid going out in an alien blaze of glory?

Were it a literal choice, it would be easy. The insurance man sidestepped and going knee-deep in the slush gets funnier every single time I see it. Self-absorbed heel learning to be a charming guy and getting the girl is all I ever need in a movie. Will Smith in a snappy flyboy suit averting the collapse of the world just doesn't have the same staying power. Seen it once, you've seen all there is, and big smash blockbusters just don't wear that well. This year's CGI masterpiece makes the graphic sensurround of ten years ago look lame and tired. Did you think the aliens were going to win? Of course you didn't.

In our real lives though we stand at the counter every day, and the clerk is just as indifferent. So often we choose Groundhog Day without a thought and remain discontent with our choice. We don't even watch the movie. It sits on top of the dresser and gathers dust, the unconsidered script of an unexamined life. Years pass by with snowballs unthrown. Technology changes and devices grow unfamiliar; this tape we bought doesn't fit in the new machine.

The thing is, we're buying this movie. It looked like the best one left when we got to Hollywood or Blockbuster in the hour before they succumbed to market forces. We can watch it, rewrite it, act in it, or let it gather dust. The smug shitass clerk is standing there and he has your credit card in his hand. What's it going to be?

Living free is gaining on me
Can't keep ahead of my dreams
My relief turned out a thief
Smooth as rocks in the stream

This old town is a sad affair
You'd be glad you're not there
It ties your hands, it spikes your drink
I'd say more, but I can't think
Tom Petty, "This Old Town"

Kate and Leopold We're Not

Things move fast here at the blog. Too fast, I'm afraid, for a coherent message. The only conclusion an attentive, objective observer could make is that we're all crazy. An objective observer would probably be right. But I'm not objective, so I'll just keep posting the madness and let everyone else sort it out.

We were going along fine and I was feeling all kinds of tender, devoted thoughts. Sunday morning came as a shock to the system, the worst kind.

I woke up earlier than everyone else. Marie was snoring as I often do and there was little chance of getting back to sleep, so I woke up and made some oatmeal. I cut an apple into it and added some brown sugar and cinnamon, breakfast disguised as an entire apple pie. My belly is contentedly full though my mind is nearly empty.

Saturday morning we cleaned house and in the afternoon we had our burger and golf outing and everything was lovely and harmonious. We came home around six and Marie made grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, then we met the kids for the parade. Everything was still fine. We rode home on the jam-packed Max train with Bryce in my arms and Marie's hand on my waist. At home she fell asleep in my arms watching "Kate and Leopold". I kissed her forehead and held her close. "I love you so much," I whispered.

So the morning came and I couldn't sleep so I made the breakfast and fiddled with the blog a little and checked out Rob Moseley's Oregon Duck blog in the Register-Guard for updates, which are usually a little scare in the early days of June. Turns out the PAC-10 is making overtures to six members of the current Big-12, including Texas and Oklahoma, a deal that could mean twenty million in revenue to every team in the newly created superconference. I played in two little poker tournaments, one with a ten-cent buy-in and the other with over 6,000 entrants putting up a dollar each. I used to play a little bigger but I've since found I can get just as frustrated, elated or challenged playing small. After the first hand it's just chips and cards, although the small-limit players will show you some creative devastations: the other day I lost with ace-ace, all-in before the flop for ten thousand chips versus jack-three offsuit. I raised seven times the blind behind a limper and and he RERAISED me. Flop came king-jack-three. Rivered another jack. Now that was impressive. It reminded me of that old Mel Brooks quote, "tragedy is when it happens to me. Comedy is when it happens to you."

Marie and I didn't have a good day today. She got on me about playing cards on Sunday morning and before we were done everything came out of the anxiety closet, from both of us. I'm not sure she would jump off the Brooklyn Bridge to find me through time but she might push me off another one before we're done. Clearly, Kate and Leopold we are not. But then I'm no Hugh Jackman. I don't have the charm or grace of his characters, and I don't have his perfect proportions or full head of hair. Unless we find a time portal of our own, we'll have to make the best of the present and the assets we have in reality.

Here in the Real World

What with all my expectations long abandoned
And a future I no longer saw my hand in
How I found you is beyond my understanding
My stunning mystery companion

Jackson Browne, "My Stunning Mystery Companion"

The best news is that the genuinely good news is right here at home. We have another new grandbaby, Elizabeth Applegate, born June 2nd at Yakima Memorial Hospital, eight pounds, nineteen and three-quarter inches, pink and healthy and utterly beautiful.

Marie and I were talking today about the many blessings in our life and the rock solid source of our abiding happiness. We are content with simple things and small blessings. We're delighted by the twenty dollar black vinyl couch we bought at a garage sale. It's long and well-built and comfortable, cozy in our little living room. We carted it home last fall on the trunk of the Vista Cruiser, tied down with ropes, crawling along on the side streets. We passed two cops parked on a cul-de-sac on the way home and they just laughed. Last week in Crescent City we found a sturdy ochre bookcase for the bedroom for a dollar. It just fit in the back seat for the trip home, and the color perfectly compliments the colors in the painting next to the bedroom window, a priceless original crafted by Marie's daughter Amber when she was in high school. I deliberately left the dime-sized yellow $1 sticker from the sale on the top shelf, a bit of whimsy, a reminder of the joy of bargains and finds. Yeah, it was a dollar. So what? Also on the top shelf is a picture of us together, at Marie's company Christmas party a few years ago. She looks juicy in a green velvet dress. I'm holding her close, incredibly proud to do so.

Tonight we're meeting Marie's daugher Ashley and her two sparkling little girls, Mackenzie and Bryce, at The Starlight Parade downtown. This afternoon were having barbequed burgers and coleslaw at a community benefit for SOLV at New Seasons Grocery and then we're playing golf, nine holes at Frontier out in Canby, just a little out of the way pitch-and-putt carved out of a farmer's field a few miles out of town. We'll probably stop at Fir Point Farms for pie and ice cream on the way home. Marie looks adorable in her new outfit, cute capri pants and a tank top she bought at Wal Mart on the Memorial Weekend visit to her mom's. The Real Housewives of New York City in their thousand dollar designer duds couldn't look more glamorous or desirable than she does swinging her pink and lavender golf clubs at the eight-dollar-a-round pitch-and-putt. They simply couldn't.

And they couldn't be having a better time than we are today. It's a joyous, simple day, seventy-two degrees and sunny, a top-down day cruising in the Vista Cruiser. You couldn't have better time at the most exclusive resort in the world.

The Bad News Is That the Good News Wasn't Good Enough

There's a glut of news and information in our lives. You can't escape it. News spews into our lives like the Gulf Oil Gusher. At my work they post company newsletters and informational updates in the bathroom stalls. It's invasive. They call it "News in the Loo". We get pointers on how to build rapport and process work orders. It's a six-ounce dixie cup of the company kool-aid to drink while using the toilet, complete with "The Lame Joke of the Day," submitted by some good company soldier: "What time is it when you go to the dentist?" Answer: "Tooth-hurty." The latest exciting news is that we're in a quality competition paired with the Houston region. The toilet paper is thin and rough. I need a new job.

The Labor Department reported Friday that the U.S. economy added 431,000 new jobs in May, but 411,000 of those were temporary jobs created by the census bureau. The stock market took this as bad news and the Dow Jones tumbled 180 points by 10 a.m. Unemployment is down to 9.7 per cent, but analysts say that's because many people have given up looking for work. One man's statistic is another man's despair.

The human misery and anxiety behind the numbers is wrenching, beyond counting. Imagine the shrimp factory worker in Louisiana, or the waitress at a coffee shop in Pensacola. How do they feel about their portfolios today? There's always a reason cited why markets go down, but I suspect it can't be that simple. So often it's about expectations, a forecast or report or earnings result that was good but not good enough. Markets act like disappointed spouses.

Sullen news bits dominate the morning like gray skies. The son of a Dutch judge was arrested in Chile for breaking a young woman's neck. Five years ago to the day he was the last person to see Natalee Holloway alive. Israel has vowed to stop another aid ship. Maytag has recalled 1.7 million dishwashers. Electrical failures in the heating elements cause them to overheat and cause fires.

An umpire from Beaverton blew a call at first base and cost Detroit pitcher Armando Galarraga a perfect game. It was the top of the ninth with two outs. Only 21 times in 140 years of big league baseball has a pitcher done this, 27 straight outs with no hits, no runs, no errors, no men reaching base. A perfect game. Immortality. Jason Donald bounced a grounder to the first baseman, Galarraga hustling over to cover the bag. Slow motion replays showed the runner out by half a step. The ump called him safe, and perfection was destroyed.

The beautiful thing was, umpire Jim Joyce admitted it. He apologized to the pitcher and faced the press. The next day Galaragga was given the ceremonial duty of submitting the lineup card at home plate before the game, with Joyce scheduled to work it. The two men shook hands, and Joyce, a 55 year-old veteran umpire with many years of distinguished work in the major leagues, wiped away a tear. Chevrolet presented the young pitcher with a spanking new red Corvette. Baseball is just baseball, but it was refreshing to see an egregious mistake handled by everyone with such dignity and grace. It was a reminder that human errors don't have to be followed by denials, counter charges, plea bargains, lame excuses and shifting the blame. In a way it was the best news of the day.

You just have to believe that you're that guy

Ever have the dream where you're swimming or playing basketball or football, and no one can stop you? Like most of our dreams, this one is trying to tell us something important.

There is a winner within all of us. Experience and complacency has taught us to drown out its music with the noise of distraction and negativity. There is a song of hope that sings out of our heart, but we can only hear it in stillness and the practice of faith and vision.

A lean, alert, pulsing warrior wants to emerge out of our sloth and discouragement. An achiever, a true believer, an adventurer, an truly alive person who embraces life and possibility. We are meant to touch other people and do hard, good things. Often we settle for far less and remain defeated and small.

We quiet our dreams and lose their clarity. Living without the focus and vitality of our dreamer selves, life becomes a forced march through the sludge and muck of routine, obligation, and habit. A deadly spiritual atherosclerosis sets in, living on fried fats and deadened imagination, brought on chiefly by the failure to read, think, dream, play and love.

Look around! Notice for a moment the beautiful unifying order God gave the world. Watch a happy baby play on the floor with a few toys. Watch them discover the joy of twisting a knob or ringing a bell, turning a lever or kissing their toes. Watch how delighted and playful we are as infants, and realize we were meant to be that way.

Experience teaches us danger and regret, and slowly we teach ourselves that is all there is. We drown out the music of our souls, and deaden ourselves to beauty and hope. Over time we misplace the ability to run or laugh or even cry meaningfully. As babies we cry so creatively. We convey deep sadness, outrage, discomfort, or the desire to be held. Indignation pours out of our souls and creates an urgency for change. As adults we never expect change. We forget to believe it can happen. We forget how much power we have to create it. Babies cry and discover and dream with great joy. Most adults hardly do any of these at all.

A lot has been written about the great physicist Albert Einstein and what made his marvelous brain different from other men. Certainly he was born with a great capacity to think and learn, but one of the keys to fostering it was the child-like curiosity and simplicity he encouraged in himself. When he was five his father bought him a compass, and that inspired his fascination with science, the inner creativity of thought that spurred him all his life.

Of course there was only one Einstein. But we are all meant to remain creative, curious, hopeful beings. It's our nature to contemplate and wonder and dream. We have to stop letting the noise of the soulless brutal adult world drown it out.

Marriage is Harder Than We Thought

Yesterday the various websites that cover such things breathlessly announced that Al and Tipper Gore have separated after forty years of marriage.

They met in high school and married young. Despite wealth and education and privilege, despite surviving depression and their child's near-fatal accident, they couldn't make it. They said as the years passed they drifted apart. The former Vice President traveled the world to raise awareness about global warming, when all the time things were cooling inexorably at home.

It reminds us all what a challenge it is to keep the warmth alive. We have to be mindful and make those small gestures that inspire hope in the hearts of our partners. In the end sex positions and six-pack abs aren't remotely important: the essential things are kindness and consideration, being there, being present, and touching one another with sacred tenderness and steady devotion. Remember today what a miracle your spouse is. Remember how amazed and grateful you were when she found you.

There's a beautiful, tender song by Alan Jackson that captures better than I ever could the longing and regret and hope infused in a relationship that has encountered hard times:

i wish i could back up and start all over
cause now i'd know better the best way to love her
the words i would tell her the time i would give her
i wish i could back up and start all over

time takes you places you never knew you'd be goin'
it softens the edges of memories you're towin'
it changes the reasons
you wanted to hold her
i wish i could back up and start all over

i wish icould back up and start all over
i'd make the first time feel like forever
not to be younger may be just to be smarter
i wish i could back up and start all over
time takes you places you never knew you'd be goin'
it softens the edges of memories you're towin'
it changes the reasons
you wanted to hold her
i wish i could back up and start all over
i wish i could back up and start all over
days i would take back nights i'd wanna make longer
moments i'd never just throw over my shoulder
i wish i could back up and start all over

but it's never too late to wanna do better
love's never easy,changes just like the weather
some dayd it's raining some are sunny and blue
there's never perfect but there's faithful and true
time takes you places you never knew you'd be goin'
it softens the edges of memories you're towin'
it changes the reasons
you wanted to hold her
i wish i could back up and start all over
i wish i could back up and start all over

I feel sad for the Gores, having to live out a private agony in such a public way, having to withstand the sordid speculation and the hounding questions. It is hard enough to sort through the feelings and reasons behind such an awful, difficult decison without twenty microphones in your face and fifty cameras stealing the sorrow in your eyes. Left alone they might still work it out, remember the reason that brought them together, the faith and strength that brought them through so many difficulties and milestones. In the public eye it would be ten times worse, being hounded and scrutinized and questioned. A simple lunch together would be nearly impossible. I wonder if they phoned each other today. They announced it to friends in an email. Eveyone says it wasn't a matter of infidelity or scandal. I'm relieved to hear that; there's been so much of that in the news.

Ironic too that the Clintons are still together, while the Gores, a symbol of constancy during the scandal-marred Clinton presidency, are broken. The Clinton marriage strikes me as more of an arrangement, a power-brokered deal to leverage their standing in the public eye. They're not believable as a couple, though I'm hardly in a position to know.

Both are likely to slip out of the spotlight in the coming years. The rest of the decade will belong to conservatism, perhaps extreme conservatism. There is a reaction and an intense anger stirring in the country that will change things beyond recognition. The economy, immigration, environmental catastrophe, heath care, and the failure of government to meaningfully and effectively address any of these large concerns have created a sinkhole that will collapse everything around it: the future, at least the immediate future, belongs to the Palins and the Pauls, the Becks and O'Reillys, the flag wavers and blame assigners and shrill critics.

While the end of the Gores' marriage is a sad footnote to the news, the divorce of reason and compassion is sadder still. There is a horde of locusts set to invade the Western grasslands this summer. The honeybees are dying and the Israelites have stirred the hornets in the Middle East. If you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction, you haven't been paying attention to the inconvenient truth.

To An Athlete Dying Old

When I was a little boy I wanted to be football player, as my grandson does now. A lot of little boys do. There's something about the rough and tumble of it that appeals to little boys. Add in the bright lights and the roar of the crowd, and it's a heady mixture for their imaginations. There is something too about a spiral in the crisp afternoon sky, the smack of it against your hands, cradling it to your chest. There's a magic in sending the football into the air and catching it from your father. For a moment you can fly like birds. For a moment everything is perfect. Your father is proud of you. Your heart soars with the football.

Many small boys dream of football and the glory that goes with it. The quarterback warms up confidently on the sidelines, his chinstrap unbuckled, his motion easy and sure, spirals zipping to the receiver opposite him, another receiver caddying for him at his side. His hands are so important to the success of the team that someone is assigned to catch footballs for him. This makes quite an impression. The camera focuses tightly on his strong jaw and gleaming white teeth. The light in his eyes seems to convey a perpetual wink of confidence. "Dad, were you a quarterback?" the son might ask. His father replies, "No son, I wasn't. But you can be if you work hard enough." The Quarterback.

I read the other day that Joe Willie Namath had turned 67. 67! A number assigned to fat offensive guards and muddy-jerseyed slovenly nose tackles. Broadway Joe, the hero of Super Bowl III, with the guarantee and one finger wagging in slow motion in the night lights of the most incredible, unlikely victory in Super Bowl history, Broadway Joe, who was famous for having said, "I can't wait until tomorrow, because I get better looking every day" and "I like my girls blond and my Johnny Walker Red."

In the end he grew old and became a parody of himself. His swagger became a stagger and his pickup lines grew pathetic. He made a slobbery pass at a sideline reporter on national tv. His nineteen year old daughter got arrested for underage drinking and possession with intent to sell. A series of unflattering articles were written, the where-are-they-now type, in Esquire and elsewhere. The writer from Esquire said Joe made a pass at her, and at a teenaged girl and her mother in the restaurant. That may be true or not, but it sadly fits. A carefully written book exposed the underside of his decline. He lives in Jupiter, Florida now, plays golf, acts occasionally, makes nostalgia tours and personal appearances. He's an icon at Alabama, where he led the Tide to a national championship. Bear Bryant called him the best athlete he ever coached. In high school he starred in three sports and dated the prettiest girls. Before his knees were wrecked he could dunk a basketball with either hand. Now it hurts to get out of a chair.

He still tries to muster the old charm in photographs, but now his nose is swollen and his suits are out of date. He's in the Hall of Fame. Now Tom Brady dates the super models, and soon it will be someone else. His memories are tarnished by misbehavior and regret. The quarterback every boy wanted to be is now the old man nobody wants to be, forgotten and alone and defeated.