logicboxer

12:03 am: Who are the Patriots Now?

spittle flied freely,

yet hitting me

as if guided

by my antagonist’s

providence

 

a hallowed rustle

a fussing-

a profuse liturgy,

or elegy as it were,

for a death was imminent

and carried forward

like a chaotic infantry

scattered forth

by a twisted general

 

God could not bend;

our creator

was black and white,

 

how then came our world

to vibrancy?

 

the argued self

the epic moral

a genomic entity

pulling our strings

the pinnacle right

of country, family and God

 

each turn of belligerence

punctuated with airborne

mouth foam

 

anticipating my objections

and crushing them

 

though I never spoke

 

he rolled on

with small glimmer

in runny eyes

prophesizing a theology

that had proven bankrupt

 

still he was frozen

in a shattered prism

casting just red

jagged and absent

 

not colored

by imperfect truth

 

just sheltered

in its comforting

erroneous nature

 

it’s clear descriptive

slander

 

and righteous devotion

to pointless blames

 

yet by and by

he came to conclude

that all he baptized

 

presumably by spit

 

were saved

 

oh what a show

Hamlets final soliloquy

was just as endemic

to social bedlam

 

and just as sweeping

America has cleaned house

who are the patriots now?

Tags: poetry, politics

10:49 pm: away

I left it like a box,

Empty light reflecting

Echoing hulk

Which had had life

My life

I’d turn down the heat

Of someone else’s dime

I checked the locks

Though they weren’t mine

I brought up the trash can

Safe in the garage

Waved to a neighbor

Who never looked up

Painted a hall of

Tiny finger smudges

Danced in my mind

Step after step

And wondered quietly

Why things end.

Here I’d reposed

Laid many burdens

Fathered dreams

Shut away apprehensions

For so short a time

It was my entirety

Where am I gone to

Let it be so dear

Tags: home, poetry

11:04 pm: Random

I have been remiss in writing, but so much has happened during these few years since my last post. I live in DC at the moment, but soon will be living in the Bay area of California again. It’s so nice to be going back to Cali… Yet, I have to say that I have really been enjoying VA and DC. It snows here, and the trees are so beautiful.

 

I am divorced, which even still at this moment sounds so strange to me. The divorce was the right thing to do, though my marriage was a wonderful time of growth and caring. All my life I have been lucky; I’ve known great people of quality and natural moral depth. My wife was no exception, she continues to be someone whom I admire and deeply care about.

 

Currently I am engaged to an extraordinary lady with two incredible boys. We have all been living together as a family for the last 16 months or so. It’s an inescapable reality with an almost constant feeling of being upside down. Busy doesn’t really cover how my life is now. I don’t have little time to myself, but yet I am always feeling like I’ve gotten so much done. When I do have a chance to sit down and read or write a bit, I find myself numb with exertion. But a sort of light footed joy fills me as I watch one of the boys’ ride his bike or the other puts the last two pieces together and says the unexpected.

 

I am heartened to see the changes in the world relating to the resent presidential election of Obama. You can’t live in DC and not have an appreciation for how large the scope of this pick will be. As I sat in the kitchen of my townhouse in VA and the results were called, I looked across to the balcony of my African American neighbors and saw them jumping up and down together embracing each other laughing and crying in joy. Their exclamations I couldn’t hear, but their jubilance was evident. Mother and son- were jumping up and down, Father holding his daughter in long arms rocking her back and forth, his face raised in a silent thankfulness to an unknown mover. I was glad for America, the country that’s come so far in so short a time.

 

As I walked the next day in DC, I could see the squirrels running about stacking nuts. They are all very regal, almost overly sophisticated, as if they go about their business with lesser habit and more cause. It’s the attitude of power, which flows through every artery within this center of our nation’s politics. Being a service engineer, I have terrific access into all the underbelly of these bodies. I work routinely in the basements and alcoves of these establishments, and also within the small jam-packed offices of the House side of congress. My favorite one is the Virgin Islands office; they’re always fun, and the congresswoman is one of the few reps that will stop and chat with me as I go about repairing their machine.

 

I’ve just picked up the latest sigur ros album and I’m not disappointed. So much has happened and there is so much impact that sometimes I find – that only a whole mood of generality can be used to express my attitude about a subject. In that respect, music has never let me down. I can put an album on as I drive to work and just get lost for a minute.

 

Anyway, the latest question that I’ve been wrestling with is: At what point is there so much information, that we of limited brain capacity can use it rationally? What is too much? When do we educate ourselves out of original thought? When do we pick a concept apart so deeply that it becomes nothing but broken fragments in an absurd collage? Hopeful I’ll get to some of that before the next two years.

Tags: crunk

11:57 pm: Funny test
Here's me!

Cary Grant You scored 23% Tough, 9% Roguish, 23% Friendly, and 47% Charming!

You are the epitome of charm and style, the smooth operator who steals the show with your sophisticated wit and quiet confidence. You are able to catch any woman you want just by flashing that disarming smile. When you walk into a room, the women are instantly intrigued and even the men are impressed. When you find yourself in trouble, you are easily able to charm your way out of it, or convince others to help you. You're seen as dashing, suave and romantic. Your co-stars include Katharine Hepburn, Irene Dunne, and Joan Fontaine, stylish women who know a class act when they see it. Find out what kind of classic dame you'd make by taking the Classic Dames Test.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 36% on Tough You scored higher than 14% on Roguish You scored higher than 40% on Friendly You scored higher than 91% on Charming

Link: The Classic Leading Man Test written by gidgetgoes on Ok Cupid

12:33 pm: Staples has your answer
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket --safe, dark, motionless, airless-- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

CS Lewis

I read this today on the C.S. Lewis group; it really hits home. It is our responsibility in life to fail, to burn, to hurt, to yearn misunderstood and naked in our shortcomings.

Even as I see this, I find myself in a place where I am seeking more and more entertainment and finding no solace in its small moments of satisfaction. Is the spread of mass media and hedonistic entertainment that grips our country by its throat the answer of our time to Lewis's "Casket"? I wonder if this is also deeper in Lewis as a metaphor for the resistance of humanity to repent? Is the willingness to sin a protection from the pain of facing our creator and admitting our hurts, our pains, our failures? Even our rejection of his love?

In my life at some point I decided to let myself love, and even as I hurt others and in turn was hurt- I let myself love again. Now my life is so filled with the love of my wife that it spills over to others around us. But I recognize that what Lewis is saying here, even in this context, goes beyond the love for a husband and wife. It is speaking about love and it's focus in Heaven or in Hell. It's pretty plainly laid out as Jack always does, the choice and the consequence.

I must keep focused and not be distracted by the easy lure of superficial entertainment. It's not all bad, but its easy to make it the focus rather then the few minutes of down time it should be.

08:08 pm: tsixe tnod etisoppo
I have been thinking a lot lately of the concept of opposites. If you are an old Star Trek fan you may remember a few episodes where Kirk or Spock changed places with their parallel universe “evil opposites”? The point of these shows is that Kirk’s opposite comes into our universe, and just as good as Kirk is- this guy is bad. Therefore he's Kirks “opposite”.

So I was thinking about what my opposite would be like- and my wife’s and some of my friends and so on- until I came to the conclusion that it’s not possible for anything that exists to have a true opposite. The principle part of that phase is in “existence”. The primary attribute – the first and most important part of anything that exists – is its existence itself. Therefore its opposite principle would start with nonexistence. Richard exists/ Richard does not exist. If this is the case, which I am sure it is, it doesn’t exist- therefore there is no such thing as true opposites when speaking about things that truly exist.

So getting back to Kirk’s opposite- maybe there might actually be a universe where there is a Kirk that is a great actor, but that wouldn’t be an opposite – just a fresh change.

09:21 pm: Ding castings done!
Yesterday turned out to be a very strange day for me. I was working at the Magic Kingdom, and everything went ok until it was quitting time. As I walked out to the parking lot I noticed a scene with a family of what I very sadly have to stereotype as “Hillbilly’s” All obesely overweight (look who’s writing?) and teetering between shabby and homeless in attire, they were standing by the front gate smiling with a few too little teeth, and exchanging what seemed to be a very slow form of encouragement to each other.

The father, mother and son trio were speaking excitedly as if they sensed some unexplainable “good times” ahead. Then suddenly the mother bent towards her husband and surprising herself along with him planted what I would describe as an adventurous kiss soundly upon his lips.

Perhaps for a second she lingered there and using some old and powerful type of magic, endowed him with a lifting step so powerful that he was off at once with his son in tow heading for the Cast Member application area. With his arms swinging powerfully he swaggered more then walked reminding everyone around who may have been watching that in a distant past he was much greater then that shadow of moments before. His son even seemed proud of him as he moved with a determined stride towards the yellow buildings glass doors.

At that moment I saw a different picture of a younger boy chasing a rider in the distance fading light calling out “Shane” with all the longing of his tender years. But alas it was not to be; the guards stopped them about 5 paces into their victorious march and asked the couple where they were off to. The hero, so involved in his push towards a noble destiny, couldn’t find the words to express what all this meant to him – so he simple raised his arm and motioned to the casting center. The guard, though thrown for a moment by this ancient form of communication, still shook his head and said the only thing that could bring down this tower of a man before him.

“I’m sorry sir,” he said with a (kind enough) half smile. “But the casting center is closed for the day, you’ll have to try tomorrow.”

As instantly as the magic had filled him mere seconds before- it fled from him as blood from a terrible wound. He lost a foot of stature and the skin around his face sagged so drastically that I was afraid for a moment that he might be melting. Without a word he tottered back towards his wife.

His son hesitated, to his credit, and glanced strongly at the building as if hoping to see some representative in a black pants suit run out of those glass doors, arms spread before her, screaming that these two were perfect and please let them through so she could get them suited up at once, to work as it were, for The Mouse. But he soon followed his father, as many a son does, and walked to the relative comfort of the defeated camp.

I looked away as watching this part might be too personal for my eyes and joined a queue of people signing out for the day. After I was done I looked back and found that they were gone.

Now I say my day was strange, I am not discounting that others in this story might describe it as something else, but I just can’t help but wonder if I witnessed an event that having nothing to do with myself still seemed so raw and profound it was as if I had watched a mythical Greek warrior slip as he battled Medusa and before my eyes hardened into a marble statue, perfectly describing his body for eternity yet depriving him of life.

It is perhaps an even smaller thing as you read it here then those who were present all around and missed it waiting for their badges to be collected or talking on their cell phones but I can’t help record it in my journal as I am given yet another example of life’s interconnected nature and our lack as a species to recognize greatness in even our “weakest” links.

I can point out one hundred reasons why they should have known they would be failing at their attempt for employment on this particular day- not the least being they were too foolish to call and get the hours of operation before they came out to try. Yet, the pulse of the situation wakes me; it points to hidden answers for myself in their transformations and the raw nature of their fate. For this was no small job to them, this was some kind of a last minute hope in which they had spent precious magic and conjured shadows of faded greatness.

As I sit here and write I am reminded that Shane never returned. Perhaps it is a better story for them then I have foreseen; I am gifted at erroneous conclusions. But I know after watching this that I will guard a bit more closely that strength that we all own in our heart, endowed perhaps by the image of God as we were formed.

10:25 am: The Clock Ticks
I spent Sunday looking through old pictures with my Father. My Stepmother was a photographer in her free time so there are boxes and boxes of photos to go through. It's not often I visit the past in such clear color. It was very hard on my Father. It was hard on me too. I am happy my wife was able to come with me, I needed her support. I guess I could say most of my thinking hasn't been all that clear; I am kind of lost over shadows of my past and how much my Stepmother meant to me. I have been struck harder with the feeling that I am not funny any more. I am tired of laughing while trying to push pain away. My jokes feel forced and even twisted in a way that I am just not proud of. I guess I am still going through those changes I expressed in an earlier log.

10:45 pm: Sunset
Early this morning my stepmother passed on. I didn’t make it for that last visit.

Today has been a stream of unending faces of people that I know and some that I don’t. The only thing that has been constant is the reflection of their love for my Stepmother and also the marks that are distinctly hers that she left on each of them. No one will forget her laugh that could carry for a block, or the way that she would look at you when she was about to say something you didn’t want to hear.

She was a grounded person not prone to silly wishing, yet she found room in her heart for God and the mysteries of love over 33 years with my Father. She worked for the City School District for many years and in the end they loved her so much they had set up a portable bed for her so when she got sick she could still come into work, but rest when she needed too.

It always seemed to me like my Father was the “nice one” between the two of them, always helping everyone out and working hard so that his friends and family had someone to lean on in times of trouble. But on reflection I’ve realized that She was in the center of all this good will. She made it possible for my Father to be the kind of man he wanted so badly to be, and also she brought out the best in her friends. At the district they had all put their jobs on the line to assist her. Her last night was one of suffering as told by my Father. In the end as my Father paced the carpet wanting so bad for her suffering to end, she started having garbled correspondence in between moans of pain. As he listened he could only make out that after a while of this garbled mutterings she would pause and say “I understand”. Finally at one point my Father came to her bedside and asked her “who are you talking to?” And only stopping her muttering for a moment she said “to Jesus”. After a few hour more of this she stopped moaning. As my Father went to check on her he found that she had passed.

I’m not one to believe hocus pocus bogus drama, but I will say one thing about my stepmother, which any one who ever knew her on any level would validate. She could not tolerate BS. She wasn’t someone who would say you look nice if you didn’t. In fact the funnier you looked the harder she might laugh. As her laugh was contagious most of the time, it wouldn’t be long before you might join her in the joke and then go change.

And so she changed my Father. She changed me and anyone she touched. In this life we are lucky to have any time of Joy and Sorrow, and when there is such a person in your life that brings both with such fervor they cannot go unremembered.

Go with God Querida and know that you take a large part of all of us with you.

02:44 pm: Va Voom
This last weekend my wife and I went with Dagger and his wife to see “Doubt” at the Pasadena Playhouse. What a great show! Its funny how many things happen in life and the different ways we all deal with them. The play took place in the background of a Catholic Church School. The lead character was an older Nun and also Principle of the school. She was very jaded in her conclusions when looking out for the welfare of her children. She had a new Nun teaching some of her classes and tried to impart much of that grit into her. There were three stories playing out in the different characters, and one of the most emotional for me was that of the younger Nun who’s faith had been all about youthful innocence and hope. During the performance we watched her lose that strong certainty and it was very moving.

I myself cannot remember a time during childhood when I ever really felt safe. Therefore I never had the chance for that sort of certainty. To see it so illustrated only to watch it then slip away was very moving.

Not that I didn’t have moments of happiness; I think on the whole I was a very happy child. But if truth be told my childhood was full of very harsh beatings. My first stepfather was a drug dealer, as I guess then was my Mother also, and as he beat her, his anger would fall on me as well.

Well that was a downer.

I don’t really dwell on that in my life at all now, it seems to me to be almost just a footnote of a larger and more colorful childhood. I long ago forgave my stepfather for all his anger and I do believe that as he got older he regretted it terribly. He is my sister’s father so I see him once in a long while, and though he has never said he was sorry to me, I have caught him looking at me with tears in his eyes before and known that he is still haunted.

So watching this Nun (so young and so happy to be doing the Lord’s work with children), suddenly being wracked with doubt caused not a little stirring in my heart. Thank God I had just finished “The Chronicles of Narnia” again; it allowed me to remember that at the end of tests there is always a stronger faith possible.

I get to go have dinner at Red’s tonight and be with the Baby; I am so excited. They just sent out the funniest video of Z laughing as his Dad played with him. When I stop and think about how lucky I am to have the friends I do, I almost loose my breath. Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” But this bit of wisdom predisposes itself to a fact a social interaction. You must have others to reference. The closer these connections the closer you come to truer answers about yourself.

I had some numskull at the Parts Drop the other day tells me that God was the only friend he needed. (It’s a long story how that one came about but I may have mentioned that for some reason people just talk to me sometimes for no reason and tell me the most personal things ((most of which I never wanted to know)). It drives me almost crazy because all at once I want to yell at him about not getting the “ what ever you do to the least of my Brothers, that you do unto me” part, but at the same time I want to befriend him and show him that what ever has happened to him in the past shouldn’t keep him from opening himself up again. You see the statement not only says – don’t be a mean guy to other people, it also says you must be close to others to be close to God. You must have faith in yourself and also faith in others to have any true faith at all.

There I go again, talking about religion. Let me switch up to politics now.

I hate (and I do mean hate) to admit it but the Bush line in the Middle East seems to be working. Great strides in democracy are happening in place thought before to be impervious to Western ways. The jury is still out on the morality of the whole thing but the end results cannot be hidden.

Wow I guess it’s been a while since I wrote my thoughts down, I am not having the best times in my head right now. My Stepmother is going fast and I hope I will see her Saturday. I am so confused about what my thoughts are regarding what’s happening to her and my Father. There is a song out that uses a phrase often spoken in my Catholic upbringing that always gave me chills (and still does) when I hear it. As Jesus was suffering on the cross he lifted his head towards Heaven and said “Father, why have you forsaken me?” In anger and grief we all have asked that question, even if we just regard fate as the mover. Even as I played a board game with my friend Snuggles the other day I saw him more then once pick up the dice and examine them for flaws. Because none of us can except that things just happen. All of us at one time have damned the luck. For me I can’t help turning to God, like I would to anyone I loved who has let me suffer and ask why? It’s irrational, from every point but still I can’t help myself. My Father is a great man; he has done so much for his church and his friends and family that I can’t bear to watch him loss her. I know she is going to a better place, but still I have these feelings of selfishness.

Well I did have a lot to say today, maybe I should try breaking it up a bit and add to this record more often.