sparrow
We lost the baby. The last time I lost one, I wrote a check, changed my phone number, and moved to Boston for school. Misplaced might be a better word. Willfully misplaced. Sort of like ‘losing your phone’ so you don’t have to be bothered with it. I watched Erin’s stillness, her breathing at 12 cycles per minute, the same rhythm ocean surf waves against the shore. Three sleepless nights, and finally a veneer of peace. I wanted to contact the baby soul depository and barter a trade. I was usually good at that sort of thing.
I walked to the nurses station and borrowed the area directory. No listings under ’soul’ except fish feeders and palm readers. I called a palm reader named Regina’s Revelations, but got an automated recording. I flipped through to ‘punishment.’ An ad for requestlegalhelp.com. Then ‘justice.’ A listing for the Boston Association for Justice and Peace. I called. They were closed. I walked back to Erin’s room and the sea of cards, quietly reading from the already-opened stack. I wanted to tear into new envelopes and find one that said ‘gangrene,’ or ‘ovaries,’ or ‘feet.’ They were all positive, which was a lie. I looked up at the half of Erin above the sheet-line, the part that was human. I followed the curves of the blankets that covered the mess of tubes and army of sensors that spilled from her lower intestine and replaced her legs, like a mechanical jellyfish. The large blue box beside her fluttered two small blips, Erin stirred and settled, her torso alive for a brief moment. Everything below her waist had been black, her uterus was gone, her stomach blown apart and hanging in tatters beneath her skin. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner would be through her arm, not her throat, for the rest of her life. I hope her life is short. I hope mine is too.
Another bouquet with a note about hope and prayer, but Erin likes flowers, so I carefully lifted it and moved across the room. It would look good on the empty ledge beneath the window. The city was busy today, but the sky was quiet. The trees tried to blend the silence into the city, but it didn’t work. I need a tree, perhaps it will blend silence into me. Two commercial airliners traced scars across the sky, I wondered if I could call them and they could pick me up. Or perhaps I could take the hospital’s chopper, it had been sitting on the helipad for the last three days. People would say, ‘Why did he take it? It should be used for saving lives!’ They wouldn’t know that it would be saving mine. A small bird smashed into the window and I dropped the vase, petals and stems exploding on the glossy white floor. Erin yelped and tried to sit up, arms flailing against the blankets, almost like she was swimming. But I just watched the sparrow fall, pinwheeling with shattered wings twenty stories to the ground, its broken body disappearing amidst a sea of moving people.
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my scene. interp. midrash. explanation. perception. yoke. way.
parsing reality, arranging the universe.
i need to know what i’m talking about.
psychology, sociology, anthropology, technology, media, film, music, economics, geology, astronomy, physics, culture.
never diva, never poser, never pretentious.
not out to win a popularity contest,
with nothing to prove,
knowing who i am and why.
what i have read. what i have studied.
what i’ve learned and what i still need to learn.
my Mix starts with five elements. they are a beginning, not an end.
ONE ► I’M WRONG
there are many things i don’t know or understand.
i will encounter new things.
i will have to let go of some of the things i thought were true
in order to grab hold of these new things.
humility. perpetual imperfection.
never leaving the wide-eyed wonder of discovery.
TWO ► HUMANITY
i consider myself a pastor. and a disciple.
i have a worldview.
and a rabbi.
religions always begin, even today, when spirituality is hijacked as a control.
and it’s not surprising that many religions
have grasped different aspects of the human story.
i trust that our world is good, and headed somewhere better,
that the story of humanity is a dance that hums with the heartbeat of the universe,
embracing original Eden wherever it can be found.
i believe that i have a role in the story.
and so do you.
THREE ► HEALING
i believe that the world needs healing.
individually.
systemically.
completely.
sometimes we need soft words,
words that remind us that there is no need to compete or compare,
no need to be thinner, faster, smarter,
words that create a space to breathe.
we need to be asked difficult questions,
and we need people who expect us to find the answers.
we need to be pushed,
and reminded that we don’t exist just to be loved, but to spread the love.
the dialectic tension between pastor and prophet.
sometimes we bring the thunder.
sometimes we bring the rain.
FOUR ► KEEP IT CLASSY
not birthright or classism, defined by one’s actions.
a way to interact with the world in mutual respect, and gravity of soul.
a peace that is wider than circumstances, and deeper than emotions.
family argument?
keep it classy.
breaking up?
be classy.
public humiliation? false accusation?
divorce?
keep it classy. honorable.
living love.
if you have a heartbeat, a pulse, a brainwave, it’s the right time to love.
at no time, in no place, with no person
is it ever appropriate to toggle off the love button.
with others,
and with yourself.
FIVE ► MIXED DRINKS
you have knowledge and wisdom that we need.
your experiences can teach us, shape us, and drive us forward.
the human family is unnecessarily dysfunctional at the moment.
and while there will always be a level of conflict, disagreement,
and needed resolution,
there is a difference between healthy tension + alternative perspectives,
and a nuclear wasteland of soul trashing.
we crave unity, and we don’t have it.
the diversity of humans is infinite,
and therefore styles, preferences, and opinions will always be infinite.
we are one body, but can we walk as one body?
because right now we’re not walking, we’re sort of having an epileptic seizure,
spasming while attempting self-mutilation,
trying to chop off the parts that we don’t like,
or that don’t look how we think they should.
we can fix that, we can make peace in our Self and coordinate our movements,
and thoughts,
and connections.
and when we finally get the walking thing down, then we can try running.
and maybe eventually leaping.
and twirling.
and discoing.
what if instead of fixating on all the ways that we are different,
we focused on all of the ways that we are the same?
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Hittin a screening of Where The Wild Things Are tonight at the Arclight in Hollywood.
Eggers and Spike Jonze will be there. Amped.
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something like a headrush
Competition usually helps. It focuses evolution, buffering unoriginality and imitation, allowing us to create at a level worthy of the world’s attention. Open, honest criticism forces us out of mediocrity and into a global, magnetic web of collaborative art and vision and invention.
But competition can also nuke your soul. Since arriving at Fuller, I’ve noticed a quiet selfishness growing the in cracks, lacing words and smiles with hints of ego. Not a Princeton level of cutthroat, but subtle and selfish, thousands of micro-comparisons every moment. Envy. Factoring “personal success” into “changing the world.”
Which, unfortunately, keeps it unchanged, and eventually becomes intellectual rape and pillage, night-sticking friends and family the back of the knees just to jump past them on the social success ladder.
Because we aren’t really a materialistic society, are we? We don’t really want “things” as much as we want the social rewards that those things offer. And eventually, we begin to realize that it isn’t a ladder at all. It’s a flow. A shifting swarm of collisions and interactions every moment. And that we’re all in this together. Your successes are my successes. And my successes are your successes. Almost like we’re one body. And that low self-esteem isn’t linked to failure, but rejection.
There is always a gap between how we want our lives to be and how they are.
“Life balance” is bollux, no one can be a rockstar at everything. Pouring into certain things causes other things to suffer. And it takes a while to stop wishing we were someone else.
It’s interesting that jealousy doesn’t explode at distant superstars. We envy our closest friends. The more like us they are, the deeper the resentment.
Until we understand that creativity is far too big to define as “better” or “worse.” ”Higher” or “lower.” And that success and failure are two sides of the same LP. What if we embraced both?
What if we fueled each other like a well-oiled machine, letting the “better” in others fill our own shallows? What if working with someone “farther on the journey” wasn’t a slam to identity, but seen as a gift? An opportunity to leap forward. The married friend. The published roommate. The celebrity sister. A new, radioactive fabric of innovation that creates it’s own feedback loop, building on itself through a churning torrent of creative collusion.
Identity and individuality are important, of course, but personal work could be better, farther, original. Competition redirected from undercutting and outshining, channeled into cooperative collaboration. Something that amps us. And explores us. Something like a headrush.
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deep dish breakfast
Recent families serving petrol and toothpaste,
years of dating, midnight laughter, tears and case-by-case trust,
childhood friendships turned creative collusion,
are still not enough to discover the end of a human.
Even marriage. Trust essential because our heads and hearts need expression, an always separation requiring explanation and interpretation, usually clarification. ”Misunderstandings,” “misconceptions,” “mistakes.”
It’s hard enough to manage face-to-face on quiet porch steps, nearly impossible with electronics and the buzz of mushrooming responsibility. Divorce because “I don’t know her anymore,” when really “I never knew her.”
Judge and dismiss. Roll “biggest fears,” “repressed desires,” and “current attempts to change” into irrelevant cover-speech and clever tangents.
Another way to move. Under the static or above it. Rare and soundless,
with a poet’s nod,
discovering what another person finds beautiful,
or the unbearable ache,
we never acknowledge.
Another time/place/life if only he/she/we had/hadn’t/would’ve
stopped
started
and continued.
Add layers of glass until “nothing new” becomes a starfield,
and cereal boxes become a muted city skyline.
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verismo
the mathematician was choked by a family of musicians
an earthquake
to her soul
lyric memorizers, the lot of them
magic paranoia
rationalizing anything convenient
like proper breakfast blends
or rubbish bins
or root things
tenderly unwinding DNA
beating them to clefs
snipping strokes
punching notes
without rest
she never married or proved a thing
the Stradivarius beside her casket
improved breakfast
as her niece scribbled proofs
on wrinkled yellow music
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sorted
I’m not a fan of shops that can begin with an “a”. Like, there’s “a” Starbucks or there’s “a” Cheesecake Factory. I prefer shops that begin with an “I found this brilliant little place on Arroyo that has a pretty good vibe, I spend most of my evenings there. Animal cracker?”
Settled and sorted in Pasadena. Roomies are fit, all three singer/songwriters, very cool. Matching red guitars all around. Rock shows a-plenty. The Flaming Lips and Emiliana Torrini, Nickel Creek and the Watkins Family Hour at Largo, nonames in the DIY neighborhood on Sunset Blvd.
We follow the list of culturally approved upcomings at goldenvoice.com. Catch subversives when we can.
Meeting, moving, mishchiefing. Yard saling, Craig and his list. Exploring and discovering like Calvin + Hobbes on a lazy Sunday.
To theWELL and Manhattan community, dance party?
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an unusually usual morning
silence chatters in the bay
guarded by the mountain and the white spray of the sea
there, electric lights scream, and claw into the night
staining walls in stripes
charring eyelids and nighttime clouds
here, the stars drizzle a haze of milky light
Fish Hoek is a quiet galaxy too
the moon shrugging at the reflection of heaven and earth
alone in one
a starfield in the other
skittering on the sleeping waves like snow
the pages of my book whisper
warm Roibose matching the roar of the sea
woodfire embers blaze in the east
matched by the ashes glowing in our white brick hearth
I stand
A soaring gull changes direction
I step inside and change direction
wrapped in silent chatter
shifting so slowly I never notice
but shifting nonetheless
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the grit of a worn french press
The baboons perch, fuzzy gargoyles lining the monastery archways that rise above our Kommetjie home. They coordinate break-ins using their young, who understand how to slip between security bars and open doors for the rest of the troupe. They wait near grocery store doorways to snatch bags from customers’ hands, and swing from rooftop to rooftop, their young clinging to their backs.
Masi itself is both beautiful and tragic. I see resourcefulness and laughter. I see a boy jumping on a mattress atop a rubbish heap, barefoot and dirty, a huge white smile splitting his sable face.
We are busy constructing training sessions for our new employees, troubleshooting equipment, and launching our production line to fill a quickly growing t-shirt demand.
This morning we watched our wetsuit-clad neighborhood surge into the ocean as they attempted to un-beach 20 whales. Whale skin is warm.
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