All Is Continuity

I am always amazed at how quickly we can change the scenery around us.

Saturday morning I flew out of Ohio and by lunchtime, I was in New York. Nine hours later, my brother flew up to New York. A day later and it seems as though my life in Ohio is about a million miles west of here and a million years behind me. Modern conveniences, such as the ability to hop on a plane and fly anywhere in the world in a matter of hours always makes me blink.

Am I dreaming all of this up?

The ability to change scenery, so-to-speak, really drives home the point that we should make the most of where we stand at the moment. Because the present, and the future, drive us to change ever more quickly. Though I might add that many of us will eventually settle down with mortgages and spouses and kids, the quintessential American Dream.

Usually when visiting somewhere or someone(s), I like to allow at least one day to pass as slowly as it used to when I was in grade school. It gives me a place in which to observe the passing permanence of the current time and place in which I’m situated. And it allows the chance to reflect back once the hourglass runs short and life must go on.

After all, life is only but ever-forward progression; time marches on.

Married in mid-afternoon.
The irony - none could
Feel any love in the room.

The stained glass begged
The sun shine through
Into the little chapel
	Into the little chapel
		Sitting on a hill
	 	Somewhere in the Midwest.

There in the little chapel
On a hill in the Midwest
The sun shone through;
	Warmer than any
	Feeling in the room.

The bride and the groom
Said their vows
In quiet whispers;
None could hear
And just the same all
Wondered if God couldn't
hear, too.

The bride and the groom
Said their vows
In quiet whispers,
	And in the stained glass windows,
	The sun shone through.

But none could feel
Any love in the room.

	So long ago in
	The mid-afternoon
	In a little chapel
	Sitting on a hill.

© 20 December 2007
t.m.d.

Or, this life that passes us by so quickly.

A few highlights from this already tired year…

January. I share a house with two other guys now that the third guy just recently married. I’ve always been the first one back in town after the Christmas holiday. I spent the first few days with no one else in the house. There were some pictures I’d taken in 2006 that I developed, framed, and hung up in my room. I bought new book shelves and reorganized my books and room. The second week into the year I took a trip with my cousin and her friend to visit their friend in Pittsburgh for the weekend. We saw a few local bands and took a few quick car rides around the city before heading back to our own respective lives.

February. The school I work at closed for three days within a one week period due to a snow storm. In my opinion, it was no storm, especially considering where I grew up. This was around Valentine’s Day. No school meant I didn’t have to work so I drove about 20 minutes south and captured this picture at dusk:

April. Part of my extended and immediate family gathered in Asheville, North Carolina for Easter. My cousin and I traveled together and drove through a snow storm to get there, though I didn’t think it was all that bad. We were hoping for mild weather but were met by 30-degree temperatures.

May. While taking a left-hand turn onto the street leading up to the school I work at, I had to quickly maneuver out of the way of an oncoming car [which seemed to come out of nowhere], and thus was faced with the problem of trying to jump a curb on my bicycle while clipping along at a pretty good pace. Needless to say the idea went better in my head than it did in action. The front tire of my bike hit the curb and I was thrown forward with my right side hitting and sliding along the sidewalk mere feet in front of a few neighborhood kids. The driver flippantly asked if I was okay and then sped off while I was left with the back side of my entire right arm scraped and bloodied. At least I got a few days off from work…and my bike came out without a scratch.

June. Spring quarter finished at school the first week and then towards the end of the month I took a trip home to Rochester, New York. My brother came up from Virginia Beach.

August. Took a trip up to South Bend, Indiana to visit my cousin. The first year in the last three that she wasn’t moving to a new apartment.

September. Took another trip up to South Bend the first weekend to visit my cousin and her brother. That first Monday we went up to the Michigan sand dunes. We were hoping to get into the park to see the sun rise but found out once we got there the park didn’t open till after 8a.m. So after we got in, we climbed up one of the dunes and hung out for a while. Buried one cousin in the sand. We then went down to the beach and took an hour nap.

October. Went up to Rochester, New York to see my sister’s marching band perform. She’s a drum major this year. Came back with in-season New York apples [the best!] and made a pie which I shared with my relatives out here in Ohio.

November. Finished Fall quarter at school and went home for Thanksgiving. My cousin brought her boyfriend who was well-received. We took in a Rochester Amerks hockey game. And they won. Hoo-ah!

December. I’ll be flying up to Rochester this coming Saturday. Can’t wait. My housemates are leaving town on Wednesday.

Ending the year as it began. Like two bookends. Quaint.

I like this time of year.

Most mean the holiday season. The anticipation of Christmas and gifts and family and travel and the hope of a new beginning with the coming of a new year. But for me, I thoroughly enjoy this time of year not because of the things I just listed. Instead it is because there is a certain amount of tranquility in the air. Like the calm before a storm hits. Soon the wind will pick up and the trees will sway and precipitation will commence…but not yet. No there is still another week or two before the whirlwind of the closing of another holiday season comes to an end. There are still a few weeks left before the rug is pulled out from underneath us and we find ourselves in the middle of January wondering where the warmth of December’s anticipation went.

I especially enjoy the colder weather. Overcast skies perhaps, but no snow on the ground. For me, this is the last time to look around and see the pale, drab, near post-Autumn colors that I rather enjoying living in day-to-day. For those who live in warmer climates, you may not understand. The changing of the seasons means a change of personal perspective. I become much more introspective after the New Year and spend this time wrapping myself in preparation. It is a time to toss ideas of poetry around in my head and get myself ready to write during the cold, snowy winter months ahead.

I rather enjoy this current calm, one of the few fleeting favorite times of year for me.

Twinkling lights
hanging on storefront
windows built
upon industrially
manufactured
cement. Smell
the aroma of a
half dozen
restaurants
nearby catering
to the needs of
broken families
and other empty
lives: People
hoping busboys
dropping dishes
and waitresses
asking if the
food is okay will
fill the spaces of loud
nothings within their
minds.

Who can see
the twinkling lights
in the heavens? The
Western world
lost sight of them
when Edison
plugged in his
light bulb and the
Wrights flew their
plane and Sputnik
sputtered and a
nation lost in humanism
uses the heavens
as a means to deify Darwin.

Late December
reeks of impersonal
relationships:
Catholics shouting
praise to Jesus
instead of whispering
prayers to Mary; the
whole of Christianity
finds contentment
within a blanket
of fragile tranquility
and unity. But
snow still falls and
December still burns
cold and on the morrow
Luther and Calvin will
continue their devilish
spurning of an
(in)fallible Pope
from their graves.

Post modernity
in late December
reeks of impersonal
relationships like the
homeless man begging
for anything charitable
down in New York
City’s subway labyrinth.

© 12 December 2006
t.m.d.

My pastor said something this past Sunday that struck me as, well, wrong. Something to the effect of if you don’t sing then you have no joy and went on to cite Ephesians 5:19 as some sort of proof text. Other than certain tenets of the church’s Calvinist roots, I’ve never heard him make such a blunder.

I think he was defending why we sing so many Christmas carols during the time of praise before the sermon. He related singing Christmas carols to having joy. Joy that this is the season we celebrate Christ’s birth and His provision for humanities’ salvation. That and I think perhaps he was trying to use some sort of light guilt tactic to get people to see the Christmas musical that night. I don’t know why religion continues to use guilt as a means of control or persuasion over people. It doesn’t work anymore, at least not in my generation and those younger. Really, think about it, how can guilt work when most have some sort of perverted sense of morality anyway?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m certainly not mad about pastor’s faux-pas. I’ve been hearing from pastors and my father for years that I should…or need…to sing. They’ve often looked at me very seriously as if there’s something wrong, like my soul will be damned to Hell if I don’t sing because they think I need to; I see their faces as plain as day, even sixteen or more years later.

Fundamentalism. Makes me glad to be alive.

I’ve been to perhaps half a dozen weddings in my entire life.

I’m not sure if that’s normal. I’d like to think so. But from what I hear, some people I know and their friends attend a great deal of weddings. Maybe it’s just because their social circle is bigger than mine. At any rate, a house-mate of mine got married this past Saturday. He’s off gallivanting with his new bride on a cruise. Personally, I don’t think there could be any worse of a place to have a honeymoon than on a boat.

…don’t rock the boat baby…

So now the house I live in is down to three guys, myself included.

Sunday rolled in with clouds, rain, and then a London fog. I rather like foggy days. Too bad this time around it was dark by the time the fog arrived.  I especially like road trips through fog. Don’t ask me why. I can’t exactly explain. But if I could explain, I might say how fog makes the known unknown. With a cloudy haze in the way, familiarity flirts with mystery. It causes me to imagine that my world has shrunk and I am the only one alive. I think that would be the five-year-old in me coming out. I always promised myself as a child that I’d never grow up.

Perhaps having never completely grown up explains why weddings still seem so insufferable.

Winter weather is a funny thing here in the mid-west.

Four inches of snow closes area school districts. The threat of bad weather brings all weather forecasters to double, triple and even quadruple their warnings of hard times ahead: Stay inside; If you must venture outdoors…; It’s going to get down to the ‘teens tonight! My favorite mid-Western tradition? The way salt trucks head out like an army hedging off Armageddon - or “global warming” for all you Neo-New Agers - dropping their loads twelve to twenty-four hours ahead of any perceived threat of bad weather. They certainly know how to salt, or over-salt in my opinion, but they act like they’re living in the stone age when it comes to plowing streets. Yes, salt is a good thing. But please, plow the streets!

My brother, who moved South a number of years back from the Northeast where we both grew up, tells me that everything is closed for even a dusting of snow. He and I grew up in a time in New York State when our school district remained open even when there was a foot of snow on the ground and more was still falling. I can count the number of times school was canceled due to inclement weather on less than two hands during my grade school years. And I think that’s a good thing mostly because if I had to suffer with a lack of days off from school, I think every kid should suffer the same.

But apart from my New York attitude of four inches is barely enough to cover the grass so why are schools and businesses closed?, I have to admit I kinda like the more laid-back attitude of the mid-West. Or at the least the part of the mid-West where I am currently living: Have a day off. It’s snowing.