All Is Continuity

To Whom This May Concern:

A few months back you sent a letter to my inbox at work wanting some information. Mainly, the church I attend and my pastor’s name. Apparently this was for a Certificate of Ministry that I am to receive for working at a Christian organization. You will notice despite your two or three additional requests that I provide you with the information you need, I did not respond. My inaction towards your request(s) should have been taken as my rejection towards receiving said Certificate.

You see, I am a custodian and there is therefore no ministry involved. Especially considering that I work, on average, five hours every night without talking to a single person. I would rather you privy me with why Christians and such organizations always over-spiritualize the normal work a person performs.

Please accept this letter as my final rejection towards receipt of the aforementioned Certificate. Should you still give me one, I’ll have you know I’m only going to toss it in the garbage.

Sincerely,
T.M.D.

P.S. If you really want to be spiritual, please subscribe to a recycling service. I mean, seriously, if we are to take care of the earth as God commanded, I shouldn’t be tossing paper [aka the Certificate of Ministry] in the garbage.

“August”

August. The world spinned on its way towards shorter days. Less sunlight. And the end of summer. So boys hurried their play. Hockey and 500 and kickball and baseball and basketball and sometimes, when their parents allowed them to stay out a bit longer than usual, Ghost In The Graveyard after dark.

Maybe it’d been the thrill of an unusual amount of wind. The way the pines in the backyard teetered at their tops, threatening, or at least seemingly, to snap in half like twigs and fall down down down, crushing the group of boys inching their way into the backyard. Or it could’ve been the knowledge that there used to be more pine trees and bushes at this residence. Which meant there used to be more hiding places. A paradise for neighborhood kids playing games at night. Like Ghost In The Graveyard. But most of all it was how each boy almost knew the future, that in a few more terrified footsteps, the red head would head off to join the Army; his younger neighbor moving south as his father would be taking a new job; or that the new kid who’d moved into the house at the end of the street earlier in the summer, who’d ridden his bike up and down the street waiting to be invited in on the fun while the rest of the neighborhood kids played kickball in the front yard, would lose touch with everyone in three years simply because people grow up, and sometimes, grow apart; and then there was that kid who lived on the street behind them, a single child who once hopped the fence with his roller blades on, a feat which took him longer to do than if he’d simply taken the skates off, thrown them over and then hopped the fence.

Perhaps this author has misunderstood. It could have been that each boy knew that in a few minutes’ time, they’d hear parents calling for them to go home. Either way, at that very moment, just as they’d all passed the back of the garage and were tiptoeing further and further into unlit territory, one of them saw the arborvitae move…

“Three Day Weekend”
His hat is inside-out again. Why does he wear it like that? The kid’s a punk. I’ll just stare him down. Wonder if he’ll look away first. Why does he wear his hat like that? Two more weeks and I’ll get him back. A snowball to the back of his head? Or should I stuff it down his shirt? He’s not looking away…keep staring back at him. Why does he wear his hat like that?

“The Neighborhood”
I was sitting on the front stoop of my house when a kid from down the street came running up, yelling excitedly at the top of his lungs. “GUYSGUYS! LOOK WHAT I FOUND! GUYS!” he yelled out as he tripped on his untied shoelaces, almost falling extremely ungracefully into my yard.

They leisurely dropped their gloves, baseball, bat, and walked nonchalantly over to him.
“Guys, check this out,” he said as we all circled around him. He opened up his palms.
“What is it?” Theodore said.
“Where’d ya find it?” Aaron asked, half-assed.
“It was in the garbage at the cranky ol’ man’s–” He was interrupted by another kid, “You went through someone’s garbage!” We all looked up, in sudden realization, and then we looked around at each other in disbelief. One of us smacked the kid and then the rest of us hit him upside the head or poked him, laughing.

Aaron walked over to middle of the yard, picked up the baseball where he’d dropped it and turned back around, his mouth open as if he’d wanted to say something but couldn’t make any words come out. We just stared, close to wondering what he was going to do. Aaron shook his head disapprovingly at the kid, who still held his palms open, and then tauntingly yelled out, “okay, who am I gonna strike out next?”

Four.

Four guys.

Four guys who climbed up the brick wall and onto the roof of the Tabernacle. On a lazy Friday afternoon. During that lull between the last class of the day and dinner hour. A time made perfect for taking naps. As the more obedient students might do. They would shut their eyes and dream.

Yes. I’m sure of it, they would dream.

About what? Anything, perhaps. Except for sex. A religious curse word. Sex. Boys and girls were rigidly observed. Boys were not to cross the yellow line surrounding the girls’ dorm. Boys will be boys as the saying goes.

I crossed the line once.

And nothing happened.

So I crossed it again. Still nothing happened. Must’ve been the deans’ day off.

But the four of us. We climbed up onto the roof of the tabernacle and spent the better part of an hour lying face up towards the Spring’s azure sky. The four of us had other things to do than dream with our eyes closed. We held dreams within open eyes. About the quickly coming Summer. About our future in the years to come after we’d completed our time at Bible School.

Too soon we found ourselves climbing back down the brick wall. Off the roof. Too soon we were immersed in hot plates and cold drinks and the voices of three hundred of our fellow students who had packed the dining hall. It all appeared as a dream. Like the darkness of night had slowly enveloped us, beginning with purples and reds in the sky, and then the sun disappearing and we would all guess as to where it might have gone, but we could never be more than speculative. We only knew it returned the next day. We all lived as in a dream. Like a fog slowly rolling into town holding everything helpless in its power and only able to allow it to come and pass when it will.

Too soon we found ourselves packing our things. The end had come. Studies finished. Some had moved on with their lives a year before everyone else. One or two of those had come back to watch their friends receive diplomas. We’d all moved on in our own way, whether we’d left early or stayed the duration. But now it was all so final. Boxes filled with personal belongings and cars packed full, some preparing for long cross-country trips back home. Lights shut off and dorm rooms locked in preparation for a new crop of Freshmen to come bursting through school doors.

Too soon we all moved on.

We only now realize we’d left part of ourselves behind.

There are ghosts up there on the roof of the Tabernacle. I am told they dream with their eyes open.

I never liked the previous, and original, title of this blog.

Such is what happens when pressed to come up with something brilliant in mere moments. I’m sure you have guessed by now that brilliance is not one of my attributes.

Anyway, I finally got around to changing the title. Which is actually itself a title from a piece I wrote close to three years ago. A little less cliché in my humble opinion.

That is all.

The way in which she looked. Yes. I remember the way in which she looked. She could look right at you and you might think she was staring. But at the same time distance filled her eyes as if something far off behind you posed enough interest at which to look. Yes, now it makes sense. I think this to be the reason why most people became annoyed by her seemingly inattentive attention during conversation.

However to myself, and a handful of others I can only imagine, for I never met anyone else in my circle of acquaintances who thought the same as I, her manner of sight was most intriguing. It was as if you were looking at a photograph just out of the realm of clarity. Perhaps the subject had moved just slightly before the photograph was taken. Or the photographer had a sudden itch to relieve, and wishing to snap the picture as quickly as possible, thus lost concentration on the immediate task before him.

These many years later, I’ve never met anyone else who possessed the sight that young woman held. Oh, there were certainly rumors and suppositions of all sorts of colorful tales, assuming what had become of her. All I know is that she rather amazingly vanished. Right before my very eyes. And the eyes of all the other guests at the party. A clichéd hush fell over all of us. We all held our eyes open wide. First in pure disbelief, as if something impossible had happened, but in the manner of a dream. Then in realization that this wasn’t a dream which led to eyes filling with confusion. Myself more in absolute astonishment and wonder. How could any object, alive or inanimate, simply vanish? Some suggested a trap door, but certainly the police and private investigators would have found something of the sort.

No. I think the explanation to be much more simplistic than that and one I have previously stated. She simply disappeared. In plain sight; before our very eyes, so-to-speak. Yes. She simply vanished. As if she’d wished herself away in the middle of the night, to be elsewhere than another dreadful party, even if it was a one-in-a-lifetime party: a New Year’s Eve gala at the turn of the century. Even still, she must have liked to be elsewhere and so she decided to leave. I recall how it reminded me of the famed ghost of Shakespeare’s King Hamlet. Here in the moment, seen by perhaps only a few, then gone.

But she was certainly real. I remember. She handed me her champagne glass, full of course, as she disliked the drink. She then took the white glove off of her left hand and slipped off a ring and held it out towards me as I reached up to take it. It fell into my palm and when I looked up, she was gone.

I’ve kept the ring on my bedroom dresser all these years. Should she decide to come back, I might like to give it back to her.

Saturday.

Maybe it was the way the sunlight poured in through the window, the side that wasn’t covered by drab, blue curtain. Or maybe it was the empty room itself. Fashioned neatly, tied together by neatened sofa slipcovers. In any case, the room spoke. Its white walls, filled-in fireplace, and that wooden beam marching across the ceiling in century-old fashion. The room spoke as it never did during the week when it was busy holding inhabitants as they lived through their weekly lives.

But as usual, the room never spoke very long. A sentence or two, perhaps a notable observation. And then it would breathe. In. Out. In. Out. Long exhales inbetween. The exhales were of the contented sort today. Because the curtain on the window was pulled back. A rarity. The day sped by quickly, as Saturdays usually do. And today, the room spoke its peace, that the day went by perhaps too quickly, as some days do. But the curtain remained drawn and soon enough the sun went down.

Main Street’s lights came on and the traffic calmed to its nightly pace. Surprisingly, though, no sirens, no police cruisers or fire trucks or ambulances sped by. To this thought the street sighed contentedly as a car pulled into the driveway outside while the room drew itself to its quiet ways. The front door soon opened and not too long after, the curtain fell across the window.

Saturday will come again in a week. Maybe the curtain will be drawn open again.

Ohio tornado warnings. Forecasters doubting any real tornadoes visiting my town. Shame. I wish to see one and stare in awe. Yet all around gusting air suggests its own forecast. Spurting rain from nighttime skies. There was snow on the ground back on New Year’s Day. But the South visited, stealing the colorless white from us. Or maybe the South was soaked in heat and threw some north. Either way, today I jumped and ran, through puddles in the street not a mile from the house in which I reside. I could have sworn the humidity was palpable; nothing dried, the horizon didn’t want the water. So out here in Ohio we’re obliged to spread it around, as evenly or as sporadically as we may wish. And perhaps tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day after that, the horizon will call out and turn puddles to vapors which our human eyes cannot see. And I’ll wait till next time to jump and run again through puddles in the street.

Acquaintances return to what occupied them before December. Spread out over the country like a groundsman spreading fertilizer on summer lawns. This world shrinking the older I get, filled with all the more faces I can say I have befriended and met. Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth. But the unspoken word inbetween: love all. Every life a story, every day their pen. Each one possessing a place on a sphere encircling a sun, wound and held together by a hand called Providence. Admit it or not. Every life a story writing the way they wish.

Facing the year and knowing December will be on the doorstep in the typical blink of an eye. Sitting, I feel each season’s anticipated ups and downs. The deathly humidity of summer and the first chills of the following months. So many cares. So many concerns. Maybe as many laughs drawing new lines on faces another year older.

Lines on faces so old. Each line a tale told in the way its creator wished. A laugh here. A laugh there. One year upon another. When we are young we walk past old faces and see the lines. We think little of them. But each line is a reminisce waiting to be told. Entertain us. Our ears filled with larger-than-life tales of hazy memories. Entertain us. While we sit on an open porch, iced lemonade in hand, the chill of the cool drink easing the rays of a burning summer’s sun.

Or, maybe this age of relativism isn’t such a bad thing after all.

Back in November, my pastor relayed to the congregation he would be covering family topics during February of ‘08. Back in church today after being out of town for two weeks, I found out those topics have been planned for this month. Come to find out January is this church’s family month. Or something along those lines. Praise God pastor let those of us who aren’t “married, almost married, engaged, soon-to-be engaged, etc” know we can still get something out of the month’s emphasis on family.

…Compartmentalizing isn’t realizing
Because it’s not affecting change in the real world.
So get on with your life and get over mine
There’s only one world but there’s many different tastes…

Perhaps I’m slow. Or maybe I’ve just been single long enough to conclude that the importance Church places on various things, i.e. family, sex, are relative in importance at best from person to person. Hell, maybe I’m jaded to a degree. Whatever the case may be, I find life to be a tad depressing if I am to believe I should live every day with the desire to marry and have kids at some point in my life. I find life to be irritating when friends and family jab comments aloud about marriage with increasing intensity the older I get.

So enjoy, don’t employ your state.
Common goals, communicate to contemplate
The way things are and why
Don’t pawn the status quo problems off on the other guy…

In November 2006, my pastor started a series on the book of Revelation. We’ve not gotten half-way through yet. I guess it’s not of much importance to finish the study on the book in the foreseeable future, if ever. Too bad, I’ve enjoyed the series thus far, even if sometimes it takes two months between sermons on the book.

Church at large is really nothing more than a microcosm of the general state of the human existence. A stew of various groups, interests, desires, opinions and behaviors. If anything, shouldn’t the focus be more on the general practice of communal gathering rather than speaking to one group for a month and another group another month and so on.

You’re a celebrity in your own world.
Catch phrases only catching cob webs
Spiritualized capital gain and wealth
Isn’t the means to the end, isn’t the end itself…

Personal importance to me is living life that isn’t categorically reduced to narrow, clichéd and over-spiritualized discipline or religiously-based objectivity. At the risk of being cliché, life has too much to offer, and that includes both the positive and the negative. As much as possible, I’d like to avoid that which seeks to glue me to one occupation or purpose, or ties me down when I’d rather be elsewhere.

Manifest individuality.
Manifest a sense of reality.
Because it’s non-exclusive
Don’t be so elusively blind
Things are never what they seem
You don’t know what you’ll find…

A coworker told me last week he’s Cupid. I told him I’d make sure to stay away from him. One of my housemates was talking on the phone earlier tonight with a girl he met in Pennsylvania not too long ago and a Cialis commercial came on the television. I muted the volume and exclaimed I did so to keep the girl from thinking what no one had in mind. My housemate cracked a smile. Presidential hopeful Bill Richardson continues to alarm me as being the one candidate who talks the most but never says anything. I wonder if anyone really knows why he is bidding to become President and, more importantly, how he has managed to stay in the race this long. My housemate who recently married and moved out called us to ask if we’ve seen his missing dvd’s. We all agreed tonight that he lost them. If that’s the case it is only due to his scatter-brained personality. I should be fast asleep right now. But I’m awake writing this post; a virtuous person knows correspondence, such as email, is best left for completion during normal daytime hours. Many people are so tangled up in personal opinion and religious dogma that they do not realize they utter fallacies during debates; This is especially true when they resort to name-calling and attacking the others’ character to “win” the upper hand. I recently heard a person I know admit, not with what they said but in what they didn’t say, that they lack friends, and possibly even love, due to their pride; I think life’s journey is too short to be picky about whom we befriend. After all, what would the fruitcake of life be without a few nuts mixed in. I miss playing my guitar as often as I used to. I just wish I wasn’t so busy with being half-responsible so that I could play more often. I still don’t understand why, in general, history majors are assumed to know every little detail of history asked by friends and acquaintances. Some people have no trouble going from one love interest to another without ever committing to anyone, but others who want to commit have trouble finding even one interested person, and I find that puzzling. Winter in my small corner of Ohio never seems to settle into habit. I have too many places where I’d like to spend a small fortune and not enough money to go around; I have a gift card to spend but don’t want to actually drive to the store to spend it. I habitually stay up this late partly because of how much I enjoy how deathly silent the world is.