18. What is the most joyful moment you have experienced?

Pop-tarts for breakfast all week. We wade through a freezing cold stream that empties into even colder Lake Superior.

I stole/borrowed my parent's car and drove for five days to get us here.

I remove the leeches from our feet with salt. Everything is perfect.

8. What is the most gracious act of kindness you have witnessed?

[Cut-up]

I knew an 8 year old whose hobby was fundraising for charities. He was a preacher.

"Kiss and a hug!" he always demanded when I went out the door.

I found out later he headed an anti-evolution group in Pennsylvania. He died two years ago from pancreatic cancer.

What is the greatest risk you have ever taken?

Driving south on I-75 in Michigan and for no explainable reason passed my exit and kept going. Slept in a restaurant parking lot in Missouri that night. Ran out of money and gas outside Vegas. Sold my coat at a convenience store. Ended up on the coast. Worst time. Best time.

What's In My Journal

What's In My Journal

Odd things, like a button drawer. Mean
Thing, fishhooks, barbs in your hand.
But marbles too. A genius for being agreeable.
Junkyard crucifixes, voluptuous
discards. Space for knickknacks, and for
Alaska. Evidence to hang me, or to beatify.
Clues that lead nowhere, that never connected
anyway. Deliberate obfuscation, the kind
that takes genius. Chasms in character.
Loud omissions. Mornings that yawn above
a new grave. Pages you know exist
but you can't find them. Someone's terribly
inevitable life story, maybe mine.

William Stafford

3. Where is your favorite place in the world, and why?

The four of us met at the small gray dive every Wednesday night. We always stayed until last call, and since we knew the bartender we sometimes stayed after the doors were locked, talking and drinking into the morning.

It's since been torn down. I've lost track of everyone over the years.

14. What was the single most terrifying moment of your life?

The clock on the wall is the same type as the one in my history class
that always seems extra slow. This one is in my doctor's waiting room.
I'm going to find out my test results in a few minutes.

I can't take my eyes off the clock.

20. Open Question: Submit your own question and answer.

20. What is your guilty pleasure?

I'm going straight home this time. I won't stop there tonight.

The first cheeseburger goes down quickly. I try to savor the second,
alternating bites with ketchup drenched fries. I sit a few more
minutes, sucking down the last of my corn syrupy drink.

Next time I'm going to drive past, I promise.

15. If you have experienced a moment of sudden faith or loss of faith, what prompted it?

I attended a Christian fundamentalist middle school from 1979 to 1981. Right after John Lennon was killed he was the subject of our weekly sermon. He was in hell, we were told, because he wanted us to "Imagine there's no heaven."

My path to atheism began that day.

9. What is the worst betrayal you have ever experienced?

I still don't know when she decided to leave. Was it before or after she came and sat beside my hospital bed? When they finally let me go home all her stuff was gone.

12. What is your earliest, most vivid memory?

I am three years old. It is a misty, cloudy day on a lonely beach. My Dad and I are climbing a rock that is a mountain to me. At the top he points upward to a wisp of fog. He lifts me and I reach to touch a cloud.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close behind me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lonely worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air;
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Theodore Roethke

Saw this one twice this week

TaoToday.com - The Daily Tao

Sixteen

Empty yourself of everything.
Let the mind become still.
The ten thousand things rise and fall while the Self watches their return.
They grow and flourish and then return to the source.
Returning to the source is stillness, which is the way of nature.
The way of nature is unchanging.
Knowing constancy is insight.
Not knowing constancy leads to disaster.
Knowing constancy, the mind is open.
With an open mind, you will be openhearted.
Being openhearted, you will act royally.
Being royal, you will attain the divine.
Being divine, you will be at one with the Tao.
Being at one with the Tao is eternal.
And though the body dies, the Tao will never pass away.

Read this Tao at http://www.schrades.com/tao/TaoText.cfm?TaoID=16

Eight

The highest good is like water.
Water give life to the ten thousand things and does not strive.
It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.

In dwelling, be close to the land.
In meditation, go deep in the heart.
In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.
In speech, be true.
In ruling, be just.
In daily life, be competent.
In action, be aware of the time and the season.

No fight: No blame.

Like a spigot that I open on my head.

The mountain of clothes and dishes is some sisyphean plot to bury me.

The air is swirling with the escaped moments, dreams, thoughts, pieces of who I used to be. I am that person still/again? I am something new. I am a teacher. I pass on knowledge (or at least relay it from other people.) More of a collector and disseminator. Disseminating to my seminal works. Ha!

The layers of dust are thickening. There is a film on the walls, on my skin. It is reaching into my ear. Water doesn't remove it, though I try nearly every day. I need the wind to wash it off. Is it ready to burst forth? I feel that small stirring of force. Will it sustain? Is it the magic? Time will tell.

Time for spring cleaning. Open the windows and let the outside air in. Let the fleas breath the awesome spirit of... something. The breath of the world removing all filth. A cosmic enema.

Who knows what tomorrow may bring.

"No more moving!"

Impossible. I have to be moving. If I'm not, then I'm sick or dead. I want to stop moving though. I want to let the waters calm so the mud settles and I can see the bottom sand. The ripples underneath the waves. There is a motor in me that won't quit. It sends steam up my throat to fire my brain engine. The pressure behind my eyes forces them to dart about, looking for relief.

My body is failing. The joints are coming unhinged. The outer layers are peeling off. Things are erupting out. The container is coming apart, unable to hold all of me together anymore.

Calm. Calm. I pray for calm. Maybe not pray. To pray would be to open myself up to the outside. That's something I really can't do. The world is not ready. The ooze inside is not a pretty site.

I see the collections of my life surrounding me and wonder if I'm connected to these things, or will they just blow away with the next breeze. What will be left when all the outer layers have been stripped away. What will be at the core? Is there one? (I'm devolved into the question game again.)

I ask the universe (or myself) to guide me.

Dripping

What happens every day? Rosy and sunshine, although groggy, in the morning. There is always a point in the day when it all runs down into the ditch. Sometimes it's a gradual slope, and sometimes it's a cliff. But it's always there.

Poet, writer, scientist, teacher, mathematician, filmmaker, programmer, political activist.......... or none of these.

A new Moleskine notebook was purchased today. Hurray! This is it! This is the thing, the item that will change everything. My life, my marriage, my kids. The key to everything. Hallelujah!

What did I forget today? What will I lose from my mind tomorrow? It's all dripping out, unnoticeable until the head is half empty. How much time is left?

Maybe I should document the little details of my life with photos. A slice of place and time that someone will see someday and wonder what it means. Maybe the future will be populated with diviners of such skill that they can extrapolate a whole lifetime from how papers were placed on my desk.

Eyes

His eyes look through me. Damaged. Remnents of video screen reflections from an hour ago still visible. This is the face I'll see 20 years from now in my dreams when I'm wondering what went wrong.