It’s been a baseball weekend. Which helps explain the lack of updates of late. I had today off, which was not officially an Opening Day holiday, but it should have been. Might as well have been. Cesar Chavez is important too, but this is baseball.

I managed to attend not one, but two games that didn’t count this weekend. Well, if you count Thursday as part of the weekend. Both games were at AT&T Park (the most recent appellation for the SF Giants’ ballpark), both were 7-2 road team victories, and only one was the most glorious game I may have ever attended.

You see the ball in the picture up top of this post? Coming screaming off Raul Ibanez’ bat? It ended up in my hands. And then on my knee, and then on the floor in front of me, and then in my hands again. A foul ball. Stamped Official Major League Baseball. From an exhibition game, yes, but off the bat of a Seattle Mariner. And not just a Spring Training guy trying to make the team, but off our three-hole hitter in the starting lineup. My first ever foul ball.

The convergence of events that led to this Thursday catch (”catch” – it wasn’t exactly clean, but I also didn’t have a glove) were pretty remarkable. Em & I were at the game with Gris, Gris’ Dad, Gris’ Dad’s wife, Gris’ half-brother, and some friends of Gris’ Dad. We all sort of showed up in that order, with Emily being last. But it turned out that through some sort of will-call mis-timing, the friends had bought tickets down at the lower level of the park (we were in our standard nosebleed seats). So we decided to sneak down, since approximately 471 people and at least twice that number of seagulls were in attendance. We went down in about the fifth inning.

Off-handedly upon arrival, I remarked “Hey, we could get a ball here.” It seemed pretty optimistic at best, given that we were three rows under and overhanging deck, and we were lined up with shallow left field on the third base side. Not exactly behind the dugout. After discussing these odds with Gris, I admitted that it would have to be some sort of line drive.

Indeed.

Within two innings, Raul Ibanez stepped to the plate in the midst of a major Mariner rally. After collecting two strikes, he stayed alive with a swing that sent a liner sailing vaguely towards us. It kept hooking in our general direction (we stood up immediately, as fans hoping for foul balls tend to if anything’s looking to land within a half-mile of one’s seat), but it looked sure to catch the overhang. I was pretty resigned to it bouncing off the overhang above me when I realized that the pain in my hand was from a collision with the ball. I had not moved my feet at all. I had been perfectly aligned with the trajectory of the ball, in the precise seat we’d snuck down to.

It was all over in seconds. There was basically no time between being sure that it would hit the overhang and coming up with the ball off the ground in front of me after it had ricocheted from my hand to my knee to the floor. And it was so automatic that I was surprised when people were high-fiving me and congratulating me and asking to see the ball. I almost said “what ball?” while holding it aloft. I was in such autopilot that it took me maybe ten minutes to really come down to Earth and realize I’d finally caught a foul ball after so many years of yearning for just that at baseball games.

The subsequent weekend has gone down in a similar burst of speedy autopilot. It’s been mostly good, especially on the front of making major progress on a vital project that I’m doing for another website (details to follow, hopefully in a matter of weeks or perhaps even days). Played some of the best tennis we’ve played yet. And yes, there was baseball. Joined Gris to watch a depressing 7-2 drubbing of the Giants by the A’s. Then was at home for Opening Day for the Mariners, playing for keeps finally, taking down the Rangers 5-2.

It’s hard to say just how much time and energy baseball are going to take up of the next few months. While still working a day job, I’ve promised myself that I’m going to lay off myself a little. Not be quite as harsh about time for recreation and demanding more writing from myself. The way I feel I’ve lived the last five years of my life has been a lot like constantly yelling at oneself for not being able to perfectly juggle while trying to waltz on a conveyor belt. Really, honestly, waltzing on a conveyor belt should take most of one’s focal time and energy if one’s to do it at all well. And juggling while doing so, while maintaining perfect balance and waltz form, is just about impossible. And even if one can manage to get in a few tosses, it really pales in comparison to how well one can juggle when one is neither on a conveyor belt nor attempting to waltz. Seriously. You just wouldn’t believe how poor that juggling is compared to any authentic objectively good juggling.

I don’t know if that makes sense to you or not, but realizing that this is a good metaphor for my life, I’m going to try (note: TRY) to take it easy on myself about the imperfect juggling. And maybe even take a dance or two off from attempting juggling along the way. Because really stellar juggling is to come. When I’m on solid, danceless ground.

Yes, that had to do with baseball – baseball is just baseball, somewhat on the side from juggling, conveyor belts, and waltzes. But it takes time, just like those things. And the fact that I still get tempted by things like Facebook offers to give one the opportunity to blog full-time about one’s favorite team (with probably no compensation and maybe not even readership) indicates where baseball ends up falling. I love baseball. It gets my heart palpitating. And a year where the Mariners are good and MLB.tv exists? It’s just scary how much fun this could be.

I can leave the baseball-blogging to people who know what they’re doing on that front. Or at least have more time for it and more of a following already. Why do something if one isn’t going to be either the best or unique? That’s just a good standard question to ask about any expenditure of time.

Except rooting for baseball teams. Because I’m not the best and I’m certainly not unique. But not doing that would be like not breathing.

Which is very different than not waltzing on a conveyor belt.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Authorities revealed Tuesday that a man carrying a loaded shotgun was arrested in January near the U.S. Capitol, and explosives left in his truck nearby went undetected for three weeks.
-CNN/AP, 26 March 2008

If we all comprehended all that goes into the decisions that impact our lives, we might never be able to sit still again. Let alone sleep. Two people are anticipating such a decision that I’m supposed to be making… it’s entirely out of their hands. It’s one of those many seeming coinflip decisions we make in life. Eventually I’ll find a way to make it a rationally reasoned decision, but I wouldn’t count on others to do the same in my shoes. This one’s for a job as I end a less than 2-month stint of not being a supervisor anymore. How many college admissions decisions, or college matriculation decisions, or moves, or debate judgments, or responses to date requests, came down to the same kind of coinflip? And who here would say they haven’t been deeply affected by one of those kinds of decisions?

I try to remember everything.
Try to remember so you don’t disappear.
-Counting Crows, “Sundays”

Maybe life’s not so hard to predict. We all have free will, but we all tend to make these ridiculously logical decisions. Maybe that’s the only reason that the coinflips feel so dangerous or scary. It’s where our free will really has to ride a gut feeling, or take a chance, or do something out of the comfort zone. Maybe where it lets itself be influenced by some larger benevolent wave. My Dad might call it “mind at large”. Others would go with destiny or fate. Everyone above would agree God’s gotta have something to do with it. Just about. But who has the faith that their contributed portion of the cacophony of wills is always allocated to benevolence? And wouldn’t resting on that faith somehow violate the bargain and undo the magic? Magic. Maybe that’s another word for it.

This is a list of what I should’ve been, but I’m not.
-Counting Crows, “Cowboys”

I used to make tapes, back in late high school and throughout college. I clung to a dying technological medium in large part because I liked the rhythms of 60- and 90-minute intervals, and especially loved having two opposing sides of something. No one was really ever able to record their own vinyl records, and CD’s don’t have sides. The tape was the perfect homemade medium. I made two tapes that come to mind this week… “Poetry in Stagnation” and “Chaos Theory”. The last of these had sides called “Butterfly Wings” and “Consequences” and was probably my most artistically made mix. The latest Counting Crows album, “Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings”, is clearly written with sides in mind. It’s a bit of a concept album with each half of that phrase parsed into its own side. The CD cover is a vinyl album, just in case we missed the point. Like all new albums (these days at least), it sounds godawful the first time one listens to it. The second time through, I’m not sure I’ve heard anything more relevant in my life. Nothing will ever measure up to “This Desert Life”, the album that started my traditions with Counting Crows releases, perhaps the only album that sounded perfect the first time through too. I’ve always felt a special kinship with Adam Duritz (really, what CC fan doesn’t?), but you can hear in this one that maybe it’s gone too far. Maybe he pushed his own opportunities too long and wonders how much of this ends up being his own doing. There comes a time when it’s time to stop blaming the cacophony of wills and start examining one’s own coinflips.

It’s okay, I’m angry,
but you’ll never understand…
And I can’t see why you want to talk to me
when your vision of America is crystalline and clean.
-Counting Crows, “When I Dream of Michelangelo”

Despite all the coinflips, the cacophony, the difficult decisions, there often come times when one can attune oneself to the universe (God, mind at large, fate, destiny, magic) sufficiently where such things no longer seem scary. One still has to play by the rules, to agonize and try. To make the best decision possible for the best reasons possible. As Brandzy would say, to do the right thing for the right reasons. But this attunement, this awareness, this getting in sync seems to take the edge off the decisions. It takes the really vicious teeth out, leaving them more smile and less bared fangs. Some mornings, maybe even a morning like this, it’s not enough for reassurance. Is that the Cheshire cat I’m seeing? What does finding your place look like?

Would you eat a Honduran melon without fear of salmonella contamination?
-CNN’s QuickVote poll for 26 March 2008

Walking out the door to go to Chipotle, checking the mail on the way, and getting a certificate for free tacos therein. The unending awareness that terrorism would be unstoppable and is thus, by its absence, demonstrated to be nonexistent. A friend’s ability to achieve what one has always wanted, while one is doing what said friend is most interested in for his own achievement. Full moons and eclipses. Butterflies flapping their wings. Earthquakes. Timing timing timing.

Life makes its own excitement.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

I am not a Christian.

A fervent believer in God and the extant importance of higher order and morality, I have not been a Christian (or a devotee of any organized religion) since late 1992 or early 1993, when I had a religious crisis in the midst of a Catholic mass while attending Catholic school on the north coast of Oregon. I believe I’ve discussed this on this webpage (this or Introspection) before, but the catalytic event was the internalization of the cross being a symbol of execution, the corresponding revelation that had Jesus been shot, the silhouette of a firearm would hang in the front of and atop the rooftop of every church in Christendom. Suddenly my many misgivings with Christian theology seemed entirely manifest in this grave miscalculation in emphasis and focus. The rest was history, and I rapidly became unable to deal with churches or Christianity for a good long while.

But I’ve always loved Good Friday, one of the few remaining redeeming* observances of the Christian calendar. I’ve often thought of constructing a calendar of my own patchwork faith, and Good Friday and Yom Kippur would be highlighted holidays… perhaps the only two to survive from widely regarded modern religions.

You can see in those two particular days a pretty distinctive theme… there is something to be said for religion’s ability to evoke passionate* sadness and soul-searching in the lives of its individuals. Organized religions, by the very virtue of their attempts to be popularly appealing, tend to shy away from this kind of reverent introspection and focus on suffering at all times. But single moments, a single day carved out of the bulwark, are reserved for the solemn observance of life’s sorrows and a corresponding rededication to doing what one can to limit them.

Much of Christian theology tries to backtrack from this seemingly original intent of Good Friday… even the name “Good” Friday indicates a problematic attempt to wash over the sadness of Jesus’ death with the “long view” and heavy foreshadowing of the Easter to come. Maybe it’s a little like the stock market and its infinite faith in endless rebounding resurrection of value and confidence. Not to make light of Jesus’ plight, but then again, I have qualms with the resurrection story and certainly don’t believe that Jesus was more than an extremely compassionate leader who offered hope before being killed tragically. Which is no small accomplishment – few individuals live such lives and they are frankly the most valuable and important people in our planet’s history. But they are not uniquely divinely chosen… they are instead exemplars of what any of us could accomplish with the right dedication: what we should all be attempting. My strong belief is that Jesus, like Gandhi (the other prime person in this hallowed company), personally rejected any attempts to deify him. Tragically, the world may never know.

The tragedy is removed from the “good” interpretation of this annual Friday. The reinterpretation imposed by those who were in the business of making a religion was that everything was foreordained and that it was a deliberate, calculated sacrifice. There tends to be little examination of what this would actually imply holistically and theologically in Christianity, and the focus is usually shifted instead to an examination of Jesus’ incredible fortitude in willingly initiating such a sacrifice. Granted, this focal point is extremely compelling and one of my favorite aspects of Good Friday. But it overlooks the larger implication about what sort of God would be doing this.

It’s really hard to imagine what sort of point God would be trying to tease out of a foreordained intentional sacrifice like this. Obviously martyrdom is a pretty good way of inspiring people and gathering followers to a person and their beliefs. But much of the strength of martyrdom is that it cuts short a life intended to be lived in full. Most martyrs (Gandhi being a notable exception) are young and have their brightest accomplishments ahead of them. The tragedy and outrage of their being taken is that their incredible leadership and good work is stolen. And thus those who remain to mourn are charged with taking up the work that was done. Even older martyrs, like Gandhi, usually have some intrinsic value to offer whatever process they were leading in the first place. It is hard to imagine, for example, that he could not have had a hand in smoothing tensions which ensued between India in Pakistan subsequent to his passing.

So Jesus as a deliberate martyr achieves much of this (and indeed, the legacy is Christianity, which is a pretty extensive story of people attempting to take up Jesus’ work, with extremely mixed results and intents), but in a very calculating and even devious way. If we are presented with this as being the plan from the beginning, then God comes across, at best, as a conniving strategist. Willing (indeed designing) to sacrifice his own lone offspring to a tortuous end that cuts short his potential for good work in order to create some sort of visceral parable for people to agonize over. Imagine, if you will, a report coming out that agents behind the Civil Rights movement actually planned Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination with MLK’s personal knowledge and consent. Or that Gandhi, or maybe John Lennon, were covertly set up by their own supporters so their message might resonate more loudly with the people. Would this strengthen or hinder your reverence for such individuals? For their cause?

I don’t believe that Jesus was uniquely chosen by God, but I do believe he was a person who chose to develop his relationship with God at a quite advanced level. He notably spoke as being the “son of man”… I’m not familiar enough with the interpretations and translations and history and have little interest in devoting my energy to Biblical scholarship, but everything I’ve deduced seems to make it clear to me that his message was that we are all the children of both God and humans, that we all are capable of this relationship, that we all can strive for the highest moral achievement. And his preaching and teaching seems to embody much of what such achievement would look like.

And so I mourn this man’s death… not because some coldly mathematical deity drew up this chess move, but because his death was untimely and tragic (and went on to create so many misunderstandings).

The story of the day of death itself is tortured, troubling, and likely clouded over the years by political motives which corrupted original accounts. Some say he answered no questions, refusing to acknowledge the authority of those attempting to judge him. Others say that he insisted upon being the son of God (though again, my interpretation of this holds that he would say this of anyone). The depiction of the Jewish masses in their treatment of Jesus is almost certainly a reflection of Christian founders’ aims in competing with Judaism on the religious playing field, though there is something to be said for concepts of desertion and betrayal from one’s own people. After all, Gandhi was shot by a Hindu, a man sharing his faith. The complicity or outright force of the Roman Empire is also minimized in most accounts from what we can imagine Empire really doing to a dangerous threat to their authority and control. (And again, motives come into play when considering the eventual Roman conversion to Christianity.)

Still, there are compelling images of the account that offer those little introspective tidbits of somber reflection. The many insults and mockeries, from his own people and/or government. The irrationality of a mob, the inefficacy of retributive justice. Forgive them, for they know not what they do. The beseeching of God in times of crisis, recognizing that God is not an interventionist at any time. A support, a powerful baseline reserve of spiritual energy, but never an interventionist. Perhaps the most powerful (and accurate) statement of a compelling image of God and God’s role in human existence that Christianity ever achieves is embodied in the fact that God does not directly intervene to save Jesus. Sadly, the only way that doctrine can interpret this is the grandmaster strategist angle. But the truth embodied there is really about the fundamental predicate of free will and the resulting conclusion that God never intervenes directly in human affairs, no matter how dire.

That’s a harder lesson to swallow. Maybe you’d rather believe in a God that connives and manipulates but is at least intervening somehow. You’d be in good (“Good”?) – or at least larger – company. But in my opinion, you’d be making a mistake. Better to recognize the incredible respect God bestows in all of us in granting us the power to do literally anything, no matter how good or bad, harmful or helpful, tragic or calculated.

A good Friday to you.

*-indicates pun intended

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Wait near the end of September.
Wait for some stars to show.
Try so hard not to remember
what all empty playgrounds know:
that sympathy is cruel.
Reluctant jester or
simpering fool.
But six feet off the highway,
our bare legs stung with wheat,
we’ll dig a hole and bury
all we could not defeat,
and say that we’ll stay for one more year.

Bend to tie a shoelace,
or bend against your fear,
and say that you’ll stay for one more year.
-The Weakerthans, “Fallow”

~

It’s getting cold in California
I guess I’ll be leaving soon
Daylight fading
Come and waste another year
All the the anger and the eloquence
are bleeding into fear
Moonlight creeping
around the corners of our lawn
When we see the early signs
that daylight’s fading
We leave just before it’s gone

She said “everybody loves you,”
she says, “everybody cares”
But all the things
I keep inside myself
they vanish in the air
-Counting Crows, “Daylight Fading”

My friend Stina tells me that 28 is way different than 27. That you can never go back again. That no one younger nor older than 27 could really understand a 27-year-old. She was only joking a little.

A co-worker of mine says that 28- and 29-year-olds go through a lot of significant changes. That one sees a lot of life changes of significance and note cropping up right around that age. He referenced some astrology, some experience, some theory. He wasn’t joking at all.

This stuff – what is going on now (whatever it is) – is no joke.

I’m studying poverty at my workplace. More and more, the question of poverty seems to be coming down to a much larger issue of freedom. You could call it control… you could call it “empowerment” (whatever that means)… you could call it confidence. What it really means is freedom. The ability to not be trapped, to not have tunnel vision. To not, as a rider on the subway some two weeks ago was, be “dreaming of zero” financially. To not spend twenty minutes telling a friend how great it would be to just get back to zero and have nothing hanging over your head.

To have nothing hanging over your head. Nothing.

For some of you (most? all?) this probably seems ridiculous. That’s not a definition of escaping poverty so much as escaping life, right? Life is an endless chain of things hanging over your head… we’re all living in a timeless flow of weights and measures. One obligation is just a way of getting to the next and so forth. Or maybe you only see it this way when you stop to think about it… the rest of the time, it’s just living. Meal to meal, chore to chore, time in the seat to time in the seat. You gotta eat, you gotta excrete, and you gotta find a way to pay for that and everything in between.

For the poor and homeless in San Francisco, there’s really no other way to look at it. There aren’t alternatives when one doesn’t have the means. And that’s really the issue – getting people like that back to freedom. Some level or capacity of being able to get rid of the tunneling obligations that crowd our life into long narrow stretches of darkness.

The rest of us, who aren’t poor and homeless, frankly have no excuse. These chains and walls are of our own creation. This tunnel was built up, layer by layer, by our own spiteful hands. The only ones that can tear it down again.

I am reminded of a day senior year in high school, perhaps exactly ten years ago today (who knows?), when I ran screaming through the halls that everyone has the key and they just don’t know how to use it. It’s there, waiting, and we just never grab hold and stick it in the door. But we all have it. Breathless and wild-eyed, I related this revelation to a series of friends. I probably hadn’t slept in a couple days and was clearly in one of my more manic stages. They rolled their eyes, they chuckled about me, at me. “Tell me about this key,” said one as I recall.

It is not dissimilar. Ten years ago. Good God. And for what? What have I done?

It wasn’t the same revelation then, not exactly. It was more about the fact (then) that life leaves us clues all along the way. That we can decipher the messages in our day-to-day existence and string them together like so much code to construct a blueprint of all the answers we ever wanted. Confirmation. Direction. Hope. It’s a key embedded in little pieces of every moment and we just have to wake up and pay attention to watch it fly together in our hand. And then have the guts to stick it in the door.

I had been warned, I realized, at that specific moment. And I had thrust aside chunks of key while trying to throw myself bodily into the locked door. These ideas and others assembled to form many theories of my theology, one of the first times I might’ve coined to myself that awareness is never enough – it must always be wonder.

So it’s a different key, a different brand of freedom that I’m looking at here and now. It’s rooted in the same realities (how many realities are there, anyway?), but carries a distinct tenor and pitch. Take a machete to the things hanging over one’s head. Get away from time in the seat. Shed, shed, shed. This is careening, screaming from the bulwark of my mental fortress.

But what’s in a year? What harm could a year do? Just one more year, needling away, begging for fulfillment.

Is there ever “just another year”? How much time in the seat has been procured with such a false promise? Tomorrow never comes, so do we ever reach the conclusion of that ‘nother annum? Conclusions are always reached eventually, but rarely on our terms and almost universally too soon. There’s no more “just another year” ’round that time either.

Since all this is about time in the seat, it’s worth noting that life is a lot like a college class. In the end, one doesn’t remember most of what was learned. The details blend together and fade, even if one attended every session and studied religiously. What remains, at best, are the core concepts, some key ideas. The big headlines of what one accomplished. And moments. Some really great (or awful) moments of speaking in class, or listening, or laughing. Having something click.

Life is much the same way. We mostly have time in the seat, the drudgery of countless brushings of teeth and eating of food and opening the mailbox. Thousands of hours of work. Thousands of hours of commuting. Thousands of hours of video games or TV or playing ball.

In the end, whatever’s left to remember comes down to the highlights, the accomplishments, the really worthwhile stuff that was done. Thresholds, good and bad. And moments. Little crystallized moments. It’s a lot like what you might remember from childhood now, only more heavily edited.

So doesn’t it make sense to prioritize those highlights over the rest of the drudge?

Somewhat contradictorily, however, I believe that we will all experience a full life-in-review session shortly after death. A spiritual adviser (an angel, if you prefer) will grab a metaphorical seat next to us on a metaphorical couch and enjoin us to a years-long viewing of our life on a metaphorical television. Our Town meets TiVo. It’ll be about as grueling to experience as Our Town, but not optional or selective. And as engrossing as TiVo, in the end. But with no fast-forward, only rewind and pause.

If we all lived with that in mind, how much time would we spend on the rote and the routine? How many “just another year”s would we sign on for? I bet there’d be a lot more spontaneity, a bit more self-awareness, a whole bunch more thought and examination. Just imagine, pretend you believe my theory for a moment. “I’m going to have to watch every single moment of this again, in real time.” Not just analyze and consider and discuss, but freaking watch. I will see this all again. No matter how sick I am of this workplace/school/seat/neighborhood, I will have, exactly, this much time here again, even if I leave this second forever.

What would you change if you knew this to be the case?

It’s one of those Pascalian/Platonic things that I think it might be worth believing even if it’s complete bunk. Internalize it, believe it, live it. I could say “search your feelings; you know it to be true”… but it might not wash for you. Try living one day with that awareness.

Maybe you’ll find it oppressive. Maybe it’ll be another thing hanging over your head. But maybe… maybe not. Maybe it’s just the kick in the pants you need.

I write this all, expound on it, because I need a kick in the pants. I need a kick in the pants. I need to figure all this out. Oh yes, I have my reasons, but so does everybody. At the end of the day, one can believe their own reasons, but really for no more than “just another year”. Really. No more. And maybe not even that. Because, well, see above.

I spent a lot of my life convinced I was going to be a high-school teacher. Talk about your time in the seat. But I was sure that this was where I could do some good, be inspiring, devote my life to change and all. Of course I always really wanted to be a writer, but writers seem to need day jobs, at least for a little while. Day job considerations have never much competed with writing in any real sense – when one knows one’s calling, the rest is just getting by. Fulfilling obligations. You know the drill.

So the priorities for a day job always looked to be (A) not doing harm, (B) doing good, (C) not being suicidally bored. Hooray. What’s not to like about high-school teacher?

It hit me my senior year in college (something about senior years, eh?) that this would be a disaster. I was disillusioned with school, completely dissatisfied with academic experiences. I had spent the bulk of college doing the absolute minimum to keep my scholarship, trying to float by while I debated, spent time with people, and waited for the rest of my life to catch up with me. Grades had been a game for years and the whole institution was looking like a poorly-designed game by the end of it. I couldn’t wait to get out and get into a world that seemed more real.

And it hit me all at once, just like some narrative revelation: the ultimate futility of what I was hoping to accomplish as a high-school teacher. The best thing, the best thing I could ever offer to a student would be the following:
1. Inspire them and raise them out of a difficult background.
2. Convince them to take studying very seriously and embrace academics.
3. Help them get into a good college, where
4. They could have the same revelations about academics that I just did.

Thanks, teach.

Oh sure, there might be some real and tangible benefits along the way and I’m not here meaning to condemn the work of high-school teachers. But the soul-crushing philosophical circularity of that reality, much less of calling that circularity some kind of inspiration or joy, was overwhelming. It was hard to breathe. Out went the gameplan for high-school teacher. The rest, as they say, is history.

Almost six years of history. Trying to become seven… “just another year”. You could call it the JAY theory. Get out your blue crayons and your ornithology books, kids. Or at least your Toronto uniforms.

It’s looking like a blue JAY.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

As I was coming out of the subway today, a pair of pigeons were going in. They weren’t quite to the faregate yet, but I doubt any BART security would kick up much of a fuss over two small birds.

They were wandering, pecking and peeking around in that cautious, almost shy way that pigeons amble when they’re not surrounded by hundreds of other competitive pigeons. No doubt it’s a crumb of food or something that looks like food that first leads them down this path. Probably not left deliberately, but one never knows. Down the first staircase, around the corner, the next staircase, and then the long white-floored expanse of empty fluorescent glow.

It has to be two pigeons – it seems somehow unlikely that just one would make the venture underground. I’ve probably seen it before, but it was frantic, somehow incongruous and unsettling. The solo pigeon is well aware that there is something amiss in unfamiliar settings. The pigeon pair can reassure each other, make certain, give a gentle cooing signal that everything’s going to be all right. We don’t realize just how much animals communicate with each other, how everyone has a way of talking.

So they explore and wander. Pecking at the flat black specks of color in the long white hallways. Cocking their heads to pry their gaze into a passing human’s eye. Maybe, after a time, pausing to decorate the floor or starting away in fright at a lurching playful child.

This situation can’t end that well, though I didn’t stick around to observe conclusions. Eventually the pigeons will test their ability to fly, find themselves strangely hampered by the lid on the air. Thus limited, there may be a small amount of discomfort and even panic as they try to discern where they can take to their wings. Eventually the humans will tire of the scat and flapping, seeking to chase their source back to where they belong. But if you’ve ever watched someone trying to herd pigeons, they are almost perversely averse to such corralling. Even if someone has their best interests at heart. They will take just enough flight to get behind you. Duck around the sides. Go briefly in the right direction only to amble back to their initial interest point.

Gradually more disoriented, unable to reconcile their new location with any prior place, they will tire and weaken. Feeling threatened, they will continue to peck at any who approach too closely. No food, more scat, high stress. Eventually, exhaustion. And then either de facto escape or retirement.

Some pigeons carry messages. Tied to their leg. In their beak perhaps. Steadily seeking out humans. Waiting patiently for them to read. And perhaps reply.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Did you feel that?

Monday was sort of cruising along and everything was going pretty swimmingly. Then morning became afternoon and soon, the day hit a wall like so many bugs catching up to a speeding automobile windshield. Wham. And that’s the ballgame.

I’ve been mulling a post about a unique and uniquely productive Sunday, in which Em and I ventured into the city of my work (San Francisco) and took in the “church” “Celebration” at the place of my work (Glide) and then a play by Em’s favorite playwright (Athol Fugard) with the music of a mutually respected artist (Tracy Chapman). It was good. The celebrating and play-watching were not perfect and there were disconnects, but it was a solid Sunday with the brimming of hope and promise and a little bit more energy, focus, togetherness.

Wham.

I write a lot about feelings and moods and the emotional reality that underlies what appears to be going on. I think a lot of people roll their eyes at this stuff. For those people, I guess I also write about hard facts, like politics or baseball or what I did on my summer vacation. But rarely, oh rarely, is it what’s really going on. Most of the time, what’s really going on is what people can’t know or nail down as fact. It’s the inkling in the back of one’s mind, the ebb and flow of ability to focus and relate, to feel and be felt. The undercurrent that’s always at the edge of consciousness, beckoning to a deeper sense of understanding. But oh, it’s real. More real than the clutter we fill our lives with or the time we spend in various seats (school, work, obligation).

All one has to seek is confirmation. Just articulate what you’re feeling, yield to the emotional authenticity and the reality of it all, and you’ll understand that you’re not alone. You’re not the only one thinking and feeling. You may be more ready to let people know (or less), more willing to embrace (or less), but it’s there for everyone. To deny it is like denying the sun just because there are cloudy days and night.

And I’m telling you, folks, the wheels fell off about 2 PM Pacific. Clunk. Clunk.

I heard Cecil Williams preach on Sunday, apparently a rare treat these days in his advancing years. I joked with Emily afterwards that he was telling me to quit my job (at his organization), embracing a message of truth and freedom that seemed to be beckoning me pell-mell to yield entirely to creative urges, to take the leap of faith to full-time writing at the expense of the comforts and hindrances of a day job. It was all in there. Sure, it was also about substance abuse and living on the street and shedding materialism, but it was about my story too. Whether it’s popcorn or people who threaten us, our time is fixed here and no one gets to stay later than they get to. Not even you.

I used to run a debate case about knowing the date of one’s death, if given the omniscient and presupposed choice. It was opp-choice and it was perhaps my favorite case to just plain old debate. Every round was different, every pick was thoughtful, almost every round advanced my understanding of what it was to live on the planet. And like many cases people run, it seemed entirely one-sided to me personally. I could make the right arguments for every side, but I think anyone who wouldn’t choose, right now, at this second, to find out the precise date of their death, is completely crazy.

Get busy living or get busy dying. And one helps determine the other and how it’s best spent.

Of course, the old argument goes that one should prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Don’t squander everything for today, but live as though you could die tomorrow and feel okay about it. Maybe not good, but certainly okay.

I’m a long way from that, as (I’d guess) are you. And the more we have afternoons like this one, the more it feels it matters.

This is the only life you’ll be living here. Take a good long look.