another example of not keeping my mouth shut

I suspect that the above title could be used by me were I to describe most of the occasions when I leave the bubble of home and dare to mix with members of society at large.

This weekend, as usual, I attended the Sunday morning Bible study which Penny and I have been attending for the last couple of years.  The teacher/facilitator of the study is someone with whom I share a friendship, as well as a kinship in our mutual experience of diabetes.

The class is composed of people who come from a wide variety of Christian traditions, Catholic and Protestant, Wesleyan and Calvinist.  Notwithstanding our mutual friendship and the fact that we shared a similar distant background exposure to the Reformed tradition in Christianity, my friend and I we do not always see eye-to-eye in the interpretation and application of the Biblical text.  So, it is not to be unexpected that his insistence in teaching the Reformed tradition as "the only tradition" has also been the cause of some restless stirrings among other members of the class as we have proceeded through the Biblical text which he has been assigned to lead the class during his turn on the rotation.

Every now and then, he arrives at what he considers an appropriate break point, and he will ask for questions or comments.  Occasionally, he is surprised when, upon his reaching such a point, no one asks a question or offers a comment.  At such times, he is not above a teasing remark addressed to any one of a few of the class members from whom he expects some point of difference.  I am one of those few.  

Often, simply his turning in my direction and mentioning my name causes an undercurrent of laughter.  Yet, I beg you to remember my having said previously that  I do not think I am all that funny.  Still, my personal opinion does not seem to amount to much good in reducing the laughter when it occurs. 

This Sunday, however, after one such break where he specifically asked me if I had any comments, I replied by shaking my head in the negative.  He shifted his focus then from the primary text which he was presenting to include Biblical text that talked about "the world" deriding Christians for their holding to the faith.  He got particularly loquacious in presenting the fact that this still occurs in American society.  He began to cite the names of people along with a few comments about these people as examples of such criticism for their stand for their faith.  Had he been brief, I am sure even now that I could have kept my mouth shut.  

He mentioned Sarah Palin as one of his examples.  Had he just left it at mentioning her name, even then I think I could have kept my mouth shut.  When he reached the point in his presentation wherein he said, "... and we all have seen Sarah Palin get trashed by the media when she invokes her Christian faith, and ..."

Whatever followed in that instant was not heard by me, as my mouth starting moving, and as my ears heard a voice coming from inside my head saying, "Sara Palin gets trashed by the media because she is a nut, not because of her claim to being a Christian."  

The outburst of laughter gave me some relief to my own chagrin at the momentary look I got from my friend as his exhortation was interrupted.  And, to his credit, it did not stop him from quickly moving on.

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Comments may be made by clicking on the word Comments in the box below.  Feel free to comment, to offer suggestions, or even to throw stones.  But, in doing so, please note, my request for a certain deference to decency in language and civility in tone.

Memorial Day

"Mr. President, in our effort to accommodate many Americans by making the last Monday in May, Memorial Day, we have lost sight of the significance of this day to our nation. Instead of using Memorial Day as a time to honor and reflect on the sacrifices made by Americans in combat, many Americans use the day as a celebration of the beginning of summer. My bill would restore Memorial Day to May 30 and authorize our flag to fly at half mast on that day. In addition, this legislation would authorize the President to issue a proclamation designating Memorial Day and Veterans Day as days for prayer and ceremonies honoring American veterans. This legislation would help restore the recognition our veterans deserve for the sacrifices they have made on behalf of our nation." (1999 Congressional Record, page S621) 

                                                                             -- Senator Inouye, Hawaii

My first memories of Memorial Day are from a time when I was so much younger, when for many years my parents and I would visit a so very small plot of ground on a hill overlooking the Conemaugh River Valley.  My mother always brought along flowers to be planted.  My father wielded a spade, turning over the ground before a marble block, until a rectangle of turned sod was formed.  Carefully, the flowers were planted.

The block had my sister's name on it.  But, of one thing I was certain, whatever it was that lay in that ground was not my sister.  In many ways, to me, my sister was life itself, and it was I who had to climb the stairs and wake my parents that morning that she was so sick, sick enough that even the child that I was knew that I had to get one of them to come down to help her.  I had come to grips with "dead," when my father's stepfather died.  But, Nancy?  

I knew that something lay down in the earth below those flowers.  Each year's maturity and exposure to the concepts of dead and dead bodies had, I am sure, an effect on what I believed might lay below the ground.  But, that whatever it was that had made that thing my sister, I was sure was not there.

By the time I was in high school my parents no longer made me go with them, if they still went at all.

But by then Memorial Day had begun to present different "religious" symbologies:  One of barbeques, baseball, and the Indianapolis 500; the other one, more somber, of women wearing red poppies, of parents reliving tales of World War II, and of young men dying for a cause which had once seemed so clear to a high school generation before ours and which would only be remembered as vague pictures on the news by a high school generation once removed after ours.

I served in the United States Army for 3 years in the early 1970s.  My own military service was "interesting" and the use of the quotation marks is intended to emphasize the distance that irony put between the world in which that service obligation operated and the way that the rest of society -- at least as I had been exposed to it and imagined it -- operated.  I am blessed that I worked directly for the Colonel who was the V Corps Adjutant General, if for no other reason that, to this day, he periodically sends me e-mails to keep me informed of what he is doing and to take the time to remind me that he still remembers me and appreciates the job I did for him while working for him.  The irony even in that is not lost in me, because ... 

"Colonel Zahm?"

"Yes."

"I have to take about an hour this afternoon."

"Is anything wrong?"

"No, sir.  It is just that one of the requirements for my out-processing {me waving my paperwork at the Colonel as I spoke} is that it has to be signed off by the Recruitment office, and I checked with them and they told me they could see me this afternoon.  In fact, I am not sure if Sergeant McElhose or Captain Sonstein laughed louder at the thought of seeing me."

"Let me see that paperwork."

He was the Colonel.  He was the Corps AG.  I worked for him, not he for me.  The Recruitment office staff also reported directly to him.  I handed him my paperwork.

"Where is the part that has to be signed off by the Recruitment ..."

"Right there, sir."

"... office?"

He signed off as to my having met the requirement to hear the reenlistment talk, and as he handed me the paperwork, he said, "I love the Army, Specialist Kelley, and I really like you, too.  You were not made for the Army, and the Army was not made for you."

I knew I never fit in the military as a career soldier, and as the last of the drafted soldiers with whom I had been serving were leaving all around me, I felt it to be even more a reality.

Yet, for all the truth that the Army and I were not meant for each other, there have been few men in my life that I respected more than the two colonels with whom I worked so closely during my time at V Corps, Colonels Zahm and Cockill.  Over the years, I have known others who made the military their careers and those who have given their children to military service that gave back bodies that were not their children.  

At this age, the joyous family celebrations on the holidays often nowadays without thought of the those who gave their lives does not bother me as it did from time to time between then and now.  I have come to accept that, like most heroes, those who served and even those who died, did so never intending that what they did be remembered as anything other than doing their job.  

But, this Memorial Day weekend, I will  ...

... in the midst of the rejoicing in another day given to me by the Good Lord, I will also take time for sober reflection, even in the midst of celebration.

I will take time to listen to the Memorial Day Concert, and in doing so I will reflect on those who have served this country and given their lives.

At 3:00 p.m., wherever I am on Memorial Day, I will stop for the National Moment of Remembrance.

In addition, on this Memorial Day, I will set aside part of my daily prayer time to think pray specifically for the people who served from Concord to Afghanistan, for those who will answer the military's call tomorrow and in time to come, and, in a moment of purely personal remembrance, for my, now two, sisters whose bodies rest beneath a carpet of green grass.  I feel it an honor to give my time in reflection on them.

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For more on the Memorial Day Concert, see:   http://www.pbs.org/memorialdayconcert/
For more on the National Moment of Remembrance, see:  http://ngl.org/

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Comments may be made by clicking on the word Comments in the box below.  Feel free to comment, to offer suggestions, or even to throw stones.  But, in doing so, please note, my request for a certain deference to decency in language and civility in tone.

working toward an ability to share the "big kicks"

          "You see, I get so much fun out of thinking that I don’t want
          to destroy this pleasant machine that makes life such a big kick."
                                 — Richard P. Feynman,
                                 Surely, You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!  Adventures of a 
                                 Curious Character


I enjoy this quote.  I do not pretend that the meaning intended by Richard Feynman is the meaning I have given to it when I took to liking it as representative of an aspect of my world view.  But, I do enjoy it nonetheless.

I suspect -- but do not know due to my own sense of alienation from others (whether virtual or real) -- that every person has moments of feeling that as if one were a ghost unable to touch things in a tangible world or of being unseen (or worse, of being seen but seen as an alien) in a crowd.

One of the reasons for my attempting this blogging effort is that I often feel deeply deeply inadequate in my own inability to communicate.  I do get a great deal of joy in thinking -- and in meeting thoughts of others -- but way too often not so much in actually meeting others.

There are several reasons for this.  One of them is that I undoubtedly have a misplaced sense of personal value.  I have been told that it is misplaced because I find it odd that anyone would find what I have to say interesting, because little of what I have to say that does not sound heretical -- and even some of the heretical as well -- has not been said before by someone else.  I have also been told that it is misplaced because I do not think that I am all that funny, certainly not as funny as my words or mannerisms seem to evoke that reaction in others.  Many is the time that I have shared a personal observation aloud, to which others, upon hearing it, laugh.  I have one friend who, upon hearing my first words to him in greeting whether in person or over the telephone, immediately breaks out into laughter.  I have mentioned this in the past to my wife Penny.  The last time I did so, she just smiled that smile that carries with it the same message contained in what she offered aloud in her response to me:  "So {dragging out the "o" so that it sounded like sooooooo}, is it you, or is it everyone else?"

I once worked for a living making arguments on motions in a courtroom.  When a judge took a brief recess (pun appreciated but not intended) from a motion calendar, it was not uncommon for the attorneys who knew each other due to frequency of having run into each other on motion calendars to share recent courtroom adventures, to talk about some new case, to ask for advice or about how to approach a judge in arguing a matter, or what to expect from a judge.  On one occasion, a younger attorney asked a question fitting into the latter category, to which I gave what I thought was a quite serious answer, and the small group attending broke out in laughter.  As they calmed down, I said, "I wasn't trying to be funny.  I was quite serious."

Responding to my reaction, one of the attorneys in the group said, "Oh, you did not say anything that most of us were not thinking.  I do not think any of the rest of us would have said it, and certainly none of the rest of us would have used the same phrasing or the tone of voice you do when you offer your opinions."

Now, I will admit that I would like to think that I am completely oblivious to what tone of voice he was referring.  But, to my personal chagrin, I assumed then (and believe even now in retrospect) that he meant a sarcastic one.  I repeat, again that part of my assertion of being unsure, if for no other reason,  because I was not trying to be sarcastic.

A salve to which I look at times when the feeling of other from such moments occurs is the memory of a televised biography of Groucho Marx.  In it, the narrator stated that there was an occasion when Groucho had hosted a party for his frends at his home.  According to the narrator, after this party, Groucho told a family member (in a manner conveyed by the narrator that indicated Groucho was bothered) that many of, and possibly most of, the times, Groucho had made comments during the party that he had intended to be serious, people laughed at them as if they were comically funny.

Despite the awareness that this feeling has been experienced by another, as do most people I suspect, I can remember (almost with hyper-clarity) occasions in which it seemed that I was the target of the laughter, or worse, the target of some exchange in which I was among the intended audience but about that which was being said I had no clue. 

One such moment occurred when I just did not understand the punchline of a joke.   My mindset was completely unreceptive to entertaining the intended joke at the time.

I was in second grade.  My family had just relocated from a very small hollow in the middle of the Pennsylvania Appalachian mountains to what then was a rapidly growing suburb of Pittsburgh.  The move occurred in February, past the middle of the second grade school year.  At the end of the first week in my new second grade class, I was introduced to the fact that the class held a weekly spelling bee.  I do not know if I remember this event as well as I do because, in the recess that had preceded it, I had been laughed at for my lack of ability in shooting marbles or if I remember the recess because of the spelling bee.  But I do remember both.

The bee started with one-half of the class along one wall and the other half along the wall facing them, with one simple rule:  Misspell a word and you must return to your seat.

As the spelling bee progressed, a slight buzz started to occur among those who were seated as the sides were whittled down, with those remaining correctly spelling more and more words before a misspelling occurred.  I only came to understand much later that such a buzz is normal in such groups (and not just among second grade children).  Within established groups, the members form expectations of other members, in the case of the class spelling bee, the expectations centered on which person or persons would left standing at the end of the spelling bee.  As it was my first week, there was some surprise on their part that I, the newcomer, was still standing among that few.  In retrospect, I understand.

However, as time passed then, the number of students left standing had thinned to the point where I was left standing alone on my side and there were still a few left facing me.  The bee went on.  One of them was given a word to spell.  I was given a word to spell.  I was not sure where the words came from.  I knew I had been given a spelling book when I had joined the class, and I assumed it was from that book that a list of words to be learned that week had been assigned.  But I was new, and if I been apprised of the details, they it had been lost on me in my coming to grips with the mid-year transition to a second grade class having at least double the number of students of my former class.

As I stood there, the pattern repeated:  Word to me, spell, word to one of them, spell, word back at me.  I felt the number of words increase for each one of us before one of us had to take our seat.  My whole attitude at the time became one of survival -- a survival which was a mixture of survival of whatever personal pride a second grader presumes to have, of survival in trying to attain to rank or standing within the herd, and survival of simple acceptance by them of me -- who was now more than simply the new kid, but in some ways by my seeming to have inserted myself into one of their defined select groups, the interloper.

In the end, I was left standing {pfwhew}.  Yet, I did not feel like the victor.  A few more words were tossed my way as I stood there alone.  I like to think now that this was done as a matter of completing some existing list of words, or maybe even the words from lists yet to be assigned to the class or, alternatively that this was done as a matter of curiosity about the newcomer (after all a perfect score tells one nothing about the limits of the person achieving it).  But, at the time, all I could think about was survival.  This was my first bee of this sort, no matter that it was routine to the others and the teacher.  I spelled the next couple of words {when does this end}.   Then, then I heard the teacher say, "Spell blind pig."

I did not hear the tone of intended joke.  Yet, I was about to discover that there was indeed in the instruction a joke -- a joke, it would turn out to be, shared by the teacher and the the entire class.

I resolutely responded, "b - l - i - n - d -- p - i - g," and the class erupted in laughter {why is the whole class laughing?}  The teacher, too {what is going on . . . did I wet my pants }, erupted in laughter.  Then, the teacher said, "Wrong."  {What?!!}

Then she said, "Class, . . . "

And they all covered their eyes with their hands as I stood there becoming even more confused {why is my face so hot . . . should I cover my eyes . . . why am I pouring sweat all over my body}  In that moment, I had no comprehension whatsoever of the nuance of the homonym that followed, hearing, as I did, only the words as my mind comprehended the sounds being relayed to it by my ears from the mouths of the teacher and the class speaking in unison.

". . .  a blind pig has no "i"s."

I headed for my seat, feeling humiliated, all the more because I had no comprehension whatsoever as to what had just occurred why they were laughing {Penny's voice again, this time intruding in my mind as I write: , "with you, Ray"}  at me  {I complete stubbornly despite her laughter mentally poking at me}.

Upon my being seated, the teacher went on with her classroom instruction.  That it took several hours for me to come to realize and appreciate the play on words (of "'i's" to "eyes") only added to my sense of self-mortification for not having understood it immediately.


I am sure that few from that Renton school class remember me let alone this incident so close to the surface of my mind today.  {foolish class . . . ignorant teacher . . . a pig with eyes can still be blind . . . **pfft**}

That last mental thought was shared here in self-mockery of my own retention of this incident  -- and I even now have a vivid mental image of Penny smiling at me, and I can almost hear her saying just barely more than a dim whisper and with a hint of laughter in her voice, "Let it go, Ray.  Let it go." 

So, why am I writing this.

In last few days, I was involved in a series of written exchanges as to which I am working hard to honor Penny's instruction.

I do so enjoy thinking, and I do so like hearing the thoughts of others.  But, I hate making gaffes in the process of communicating my thoughts and in leaving people with the wrong impression or, worse, hurting the feelings of another.  It troubles me to think that what I intend as humorous  -- let alone what I mean to be a serious question or a serious comment or even a discussion evolving out of a question or comment originated with me -- might have caused someone to feel as if I have demeaned them or that I was intentionally speaking above their heads, especially when the person or opinion is in my estimation valuable to me.  I consider it valuable even when I am being told that I am being too hoity-toity and need to bring the conversation back down to the more intelligible "that dog won't hunt" standard of communicating.

I have the further problem of tending to engage in self-disparagement when I conclude upon re-examining words that I have used  that I have imposed upon another's courtesy or sensibilities simply because I sometimes -- usually when I find myself communicating with someone with whom I let down my normal guards -- tend to become overly excited in the expression of something which occurred to me.  Such things that I wish could be undone stick with me, undoubtedly more than they should.

It is my hope that I can through this exercise of writing a blog attain some level of casual written communication at which I feel comfortable even when the subject is about things which are quite important in my estimation.  I know that some of my own distress comes simply from my later over-analyzing my own attempted communication as well as over-analyzing things expressed to me.  I have to overcome a long-ago decision to isolate myself from most casual communication with others except on the most shallow level of conversation or on that level which I consider minimal to accomplish a communication necessarily imposed on me to make.  I know that the whys for my doing this come from things which shaped my world view more than 40 or 50 years ago, and I know that many of them are not normal. 

Yes, it might be easier to take the drugs available to me by prescription.  But, in my estimation from experience, their truncation of dissatisfaction too often came at the price of having my moments of joy equally lopped off.   Nowadays, I no longer am required to interact with people in the agora as a necessity of employment, and I enjoy too much riding the lightning of where my thoughts take me -- so much so that I am willing to forgo the chemical alternative even if the price is some alienation, even from my friends.  What I hope is to develop new habits to replace my current predispositions which tend to misunderstanding.  One such habit is to slow down in writing, to rethink what I write before I share my thoughts so that I can avoid unnecessary alienation, especially of my friends.

Maybe someday I will be able to capture into appropriate words what I do intend so that I can adequately share that about which I enjoy thinking.  I hope that at least one or two of my friends will stick around to be there should I accomplish it.
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Comments may be made by clicking on the word Comments in the box below.  Feel free to comment, to offer suggestions, or even to throw stones.  But, in doing so, please note, my request for a certain deference to decency in language and civility in tone.

searching for a Voice

Staring in the dark for what I seek to find --

        a dark that seems quite different from
                                                                       the end . . .
        the end of where, the end of when,
        the end of all that once was our world; 

        not dark which filled the naught of
                                                                       all untime . . .  
        untime no now, untime no then,
        untime before space-time itself unfurled --

staring in the dark of seeking to unwind
a pathway
                        to my fingers
                                                     from my mind --

Wond'ring all the while, whether there's a choice --

        a choice of Muse that guides the Fates
                                                                       to cleave 
        a life felt lost, a life by others tossed,
        its life's strands weaved on someone else's loom;
 
        or a choice that's mine:  Of silence
                                                                       or to leave
        some trace behind no matter what the cost, 
        to strike a chord that cuts away the gloom --

Wond'ring all the while, whether you'll rejoice
on reading --
                            or will have tired from --
                                                                     my voice.


I feel I need to get several things out of the way.  By way of emphasis, I repeat from my first text in this blogging endeavor:   I consider [this blog] an experiment in which I get to use myself as the test subject.  The primary object in my doing this is personal.  The subjects will be those of personal interest to me.  The exercise of writing, even when I do not want to write, is to aspire to a personal goal.

I suppose that everyone who writes in a public venue is cognizant of the fact that others may read what has been written.  Most, including me, have enough vested interest in the effort so as to have some desire as to the response evoked in the reader.  One thing of which I am sure, while there are certain people of general repute whose comments I would consider an honor, the reaction of my wife or of my friends is paramount to me.

I recognize that the anonymity of the internet has changed the standard of what is acceptable expression of one's ideas, but it is my blog.  I have tried to set it up so that comments are permitted, but it is my blog.  So, say I am old, say I am out of touch, lay whatever condemnation you feel you must upon me, but I will protect certain aspects of this blog, such as limiting obscenity and maintaining some level of decency in the discussions, because . . . it is my blog.

In the personal experimentation that occurs within the blog is a self-examination of my habitual approach to writing.  All of that portion of my life in which I have been engaged in the exercise of writing -- before this, usually at the behest of someone else -- I have been for the most part a stream of consciousness writer.  The first draft has usually been the final draft (with the exception of modern access to running whatever spell-checking software was imbedded within recent word processing programs when spell-checking came at no additional charge to the purchase of such programs).

On occasion I like to tell people these habits became ingrained before I entered junior high school.  My hand-eye coordination never managed to attain to legible my use of pencil (regardless of hardness) or pen (regardless of tip) after cursive writing was forced upon even those of us with impaired meat hooks for hands.  As a result, I began in fifth grade to use, what was even then, in the early 1960s, an old, manual Royal typewriter that one of my parents had put away in the basement.  I had no access to "Liquid Paper," "Wite-Out," or correction papers.  Error correction was a choice between restarting the page or erasing and trying to type over that which I had erased.  It was difficult enough for me with my lack of dexterity and with that typewriter to roll up the paper to a point where an eraser could be applied to the paper and then to roll it back down to exact realignment.  My attempts at erasing without leaving a hole in the paper were of a skill level comparable only to that of my cursive writing.  I considered it a success when I achieved a sufficient reduction in the erasure smudge -- even though the paper had been thinned to the point where only one or two more passes of the eraser would have made a hole bloom -- that the newly typed letters were somewhat legible.

In no small part because my cursive handwriting has not gotten any better since then, I believe that the teachers were better off for my having used a typewriter -- despite the unevenness of letter quality due to my childish two-fingered pounding on an old, manual, inked-ribbon typewriter, the several smudged up places on each page, and my first-draft-final approach to writing -- than had I turned in handwritten pages -- illegible in cursive or painfully scrawled in printed block letters, with several places on each page smudged from fingers dragging across inked page or from pencil erasures, and what I am sure would have been my first-draft-final approach had I been forced to endure the "curse" from which -- and despite all denials that have been foisted upon me, I still believe -- the term cursive when it is applied as a modifier to writing is derived.

Even when engaged in stream of consciousness writing, different voices often appear in the text.  I have more than once been told by recipients of personal letters from me that they heard my spoken voice in their heads as they read the text.  When the recipient is due a more formal correspondence, there is, of course, the obligation to a certain precision attendant to the nature of the correspondence, but my own mental process often involves adopting an entirely different voice representing a different character which I am playing on life's stage.

It never occurred to me how easily I had slipped into this habit of role playing until it was commented upon by a newly-hired attorney who was getting some training by watching me in court (way, way back when I only had a couple of years of experience myself).  After the court appearance, in a meeting with me and another staff attorney, this new staff attorney asked whether it was essential to the job "to develop a split personality?"  Almost simultaneously the other staff attorney and I asked what the new hire meant by the question.

She said that she had never seen anyone change personalities so radically as I had between the time we entered the elevator up to the courtroom and the time we left the elevator after having come down from the courtroom floor.  She then went on to describe her impression of what had occurred.

When we got to the courtroom, the only persons present other than the court reporter was the respondent to the motion brought on behalf of our client and the attorney for that respondent.  She noted that, before the hearing began, the respondent's attorney and I were chatting so amicably she assumed we must have been personal friends.  She was startled, however, at how vehemently I presented my argument for our client, especially our request that the attorney be required (as the law permitted in this matter) to disgorge all of his fees back to his client.  (It is my recollection even now that this fight over his fees was the part of the hearing which got the most contentious between us.)  But, what shocked her the most was, despite my argument personally directed at the disgorgement of fees by the attorney based on the attorney's own failures in the matter, he and I were chatting as if the whole hearing had not happened as we rode down in the elevator after the hearing.

Prior to this, I had, at most, only incidentally thought of as acting the various ways I approached the different phases of my life.  Since then, I find myself inclined to wonder often, which of any one or of any combination of the different aspects of the personality I play is me.  

As Shakespeare penned:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts . . .
     -- "As You Like It," Act 2

And each part we play has its own voice.

I have certainty as to some of the people who will read this blog.  I have some idea as to the subjects about which I wish to write, and I want to get through a certain part of my list of those subjects.  Still, I recognize that my desires may change with time and my own mental evolution about this endeavor.

I have no idea yet as to the voice which will develop during this effort.

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The world appears not to have begun the violent end predicted by Mr. Camping.  Or so I suppose as I sit here in the dark of my room, with only the darkness of the night outside my window, my desktop lit by a small desk lamp, and two computer screens and the light of my fish tank adding to an ambiance that could be restful, eerie, or humorous depending on the music playing in your head as you envision this.

Penny and the dogs went to bed hours ago and the only sound is from the fish tank motors (ignoring for the moment the ever-present sense of sound which is a tinnitus resulting from the medications that keep this body alive, from old age, or from both).  In this moment and from this thought what is called to mind surfaces from 40 years ago -- times when I used to come up from the sluice way under the roll bars in the Braddock steel rolling mill during a break:  Upon seeing no one else on the floor, it occasionally crossed my mind that the final trump could have sounded, and I would never have heard it between the rolling noise and the rush of the water, and I alone remained . . .

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Comments may be made by clicking on the word Comments in the box below.  Feel free to comment, to offer suggestions, or even to throw stones.  But, in doing so, please note, my requests for a certain deference to decency in language and civility in tone.

Blogging as a modifier, as in the "blogging" irony

The world is ending -- a "The end is now" the world is ending.
    Some preacher that I never knew proclaims the Word has said it's so.
    And Bin Laden so filled recent news, that this week's just seemed way too slow.
Despite that Reason it's offending, the newsman says our end is pending




{Sooooo . . .


Let us for the moment pretend that the news that the world is ending this weekend  and not just some distant and far flung future is true (if you do not already believe it thus).  Could not this have occurred a week earlier, if for no other reason but to have saved me from the effort of learning how to set up a blog site?}

Dawn of a New Day

         Dawn of a New Day

I thank God for having truly freed me
to live again -- not from that which lasts:
The enduring, the glimpse of rare beauty,
the moment that transcends so many pasts --
but of that which all futures from life takes:
Desire's hope reduced to death-wish aches.

To paraphrase a line sung by Eric Burdon:  This really blew my mind, the fact that me, an overfed, long-haired leaping gnome should be have the word "blog" attached to my name. 

I consider it an experiment in which I get to use myself as the test subject.  I wrote the above poem as a preface to an entry I made in a journal I once kept.   I had just experienced an idiosyncratic epiphany . . . {can I say that without being accused of some level of redundancy?} . . . at a time late in my life in which the theoretical concept that my life had value became something about which I had the experience of feeling that it was not just a propositional statement but had real meaning. 

Like most people, I have experienced new beginnings in my life several times.  Whether this is a beginning or simply a shot in the dark only time will tell.  

Thanks for dropping by.  My name is Ray . . .