Mystery

Although there are three (living) boy brothers in my family (Phil, Sam and I), Sam is so much younger, he's almost an only child. When I was growing up, I was the youngest, not the middle, and Phil and I were the dynamic duo. Phil was stubborn, opinionated, honest, possessed a fiery temper, enjoyed the outdoors, and wasn't overly competitive in nature.

I was competitive, shy to the point of silence, determined, watchful, not incredibly stubborn, dishonest, a rule-follower, and not incredibly opinionated, and I also enjoyed the outdoors. What a pair we made. My parents always said that when something went wrong, Phil would look the guilty party, and be innocent, and I would appear innocent, but would actually be the guilty party. Cookies gone? Phil denies it and turns red, and I deny it and poker-face my dishonesty through. Not my greatest of attributes: I was a good liar.

What has changed, really?

I've always loved mysteries. When I was young, I watched Perry Mason, Matlock, Diagnosis Murder (when it wasn't too scary), Magnum PI, Murder She Wrote, and a couple other mystery shows with my mother. Growing older, my favorite show is now Psych (though I rarely watch television) and Sherlock (BBC production, though the movies are great fun as well), and even occasionally Monk. Phil and I used to watch Scooby Doo religiously, and I even enjoyed watching the few other famous mystery shows (Hercule Poirot, which it turns out is written by Agatha Christie, as well as Colombo). 

I lovelove mystery.

Now I'm reading Agatha Christie for the first time and I've realized that though I love mystery, I've almost never really read it. Sure, I read some of the Nancy Drew, some of the Hardy Boys, all of the Boxcar Children and a couple of the other famous children's mystery series, but I never continued that love into my teen years. I wish I had. Agatha Christie is fantastic, truly engrossing. 

One of the reasons that I enjoy reading many different genres of literature is that I believe there is something of merit in each author, in every story and creative process: art, history, poetry, music, physics, fantasy, science, fiction, non-fiction and so on. I want to study them all so that I can reproduce them all, but is that even possible? I'm going to run out of time in my life, I think, before I even get close to accomplishing all I'd wish to accomplish. If only I had Sam's brains with my motivation and more time (or if I didn't have to worry about making money ever again - wouldn't that be something? Someone be my patron)

Unfortunately, my work isn't spectacular enough to merit patronage at this juncture, or publishing. Eventually, perhaps, though I've long since realized it isn't the perfection of the work that sells, but the drive of the story (see Hunger Games or Twilight). But who knows what will happen; life's a mystery, God works in mysterious ways, and the future is its own enigmatic destination.

A little Smaug in the soul to keep things warm

Beyond the smokestacks and stacked streets
past paper producing factories
are urbania's outstretched talons reaching,
smog clouds grasping, slashing,
I suggest you move along
into the villages whose chimneys
are the children of billowing cities
and houses are headstones of simplicity,
yonder, as thin-leaf maples bleed into pines
and hops and grapevines leap over fine lines
like freeze-frame fish soaring
(into air they can't breathe,
but must bear, to eat, do you wonder
if it is not always so?) -
deeper than the rabbit hole
the sun has fallen,
with rays longer than the heart's harp strings
beyond and past and moving on, yonder
you must soldier on
into long deserted memories
where the beast nests deep his home
a dragon of self-deceit toasts a drink
salud, to health - but whose?
the answer smolders in its eyes


(Guys, I think I'm addicted to Agatha Christie. What happened?)
I was going to write, but I just want to find out what happens in this mystery!

Maybe I'm Batman

I'm living a caped masquerade sometimes. With AS, I watched several of the batman movies, and Batman is an interesting character. Aside from his brawling, his main two heroic powers aren't super, or mystical, but fall under the categories of capitalism and fear. Batman's greatest strengths lie in his utility of darkness to instill horror in Gotham's criminal scene (by the way, who would live in Gotham? It's a nightmare), and his expansive monetary powers from his alternate identity allow him access to advanced weaponry and machinery.
But Batman, like almost every masked crusader (bar Ironman), guards his alternate identity very carefully. Sometimes I think I'm like a masked villain (joker, green goblin, vader) with an alternate, hidden identity, or like I've got two masked identities, and no Bruce Wayne at all. In half my identity, I pretend goodness, I masquerade blessings. The other identity exists only to express the first is a lie, and understand that the true nature of my soul isn't generous, patient, kind, or loving, but selfish, ugly, cruel, unjust, judgmental, ill, and broken. This mask is nearly my true face, I think, while the other is the face I crave. I'm no less Janus than a Batman villain.
Perhaps, in my optimistic moments, I believe that significant investment in my benevolent half might effect a transformative change, eliminating my unholy villainy. But I don't, can't, trust these inklings, as I'm more a realist than an optimist, always. And every time I share kind words, lend a listening ear, encourage the fragile-hearted, or when I bless others with giving of myself or gifts, I inwardly cringe at my illusion of being, this deceptive lie I'm living - do they know? Is this me?
But masks are strange things. Wear one long enough and you'll find you cannot remove it so easily, or, perhaps, where the mask ends and face begins isn't so simply seen. Can so many deceptions make a truth? No, but perhaps an elaborate deception can conceive a reality, or plant a seed. Sometimes, even in rocky soil, a seed may sprout.


falling back in time when wine
was once a green and grasping vine
clambering over lines and rolling fields
those sweet sugar grapes
whose tart and solemn question
is only this:
how long will the stomping go on
the crushing weight and
hurt and pain laboriously
birthing the bitter whine
of sacrificial angst
until this grounding down
bursts forth the first
pass over in crimson
the first taste of heaven

Clouds - Hello Oregon

tell me true the topology of clouds
not the south, but the upper drifts the sun sees
and kneads across the heavens with winds
glacial-slow, an eventual avalanche forming valleys
cliffs and caves - a geography most will miss
staring so steadily at the ground
what phantom-hand nimbus molds these,
sculpting light into shapes
the dreams of mountains, rivers, oceans
flooding the heavens, where the wispy cirrus
are a curious circus of foam floating up high -
a shadow world whose transience races
from the ocean to the mountains
splashing against their sides with a percussive sigh
where the clouds cry with gold-eye sun shining by,
a friend on one side embraces only tears,
the other paints the rainbow
...


It's been a week since my last entry, and I've missed writing.  I visited my great friends A and S, and it was impractical (and silly) to blog every night - though I did bring my journal - and so I just enjoyed my time with them as much as possible without bringing the baggage of writing regimen into my visit. I had a lovely stay, and I love and miss them very much, though it's good to be back. Wearing shorts and a t-shirt and getting on a plane and flying up into the blue sky and back down through the glum grey and the musical rain that races in little white chips across the airplane windows, and seeing my friends again (JS - yous guys the best), and enjoying a meal and Sherlock - yes, I miss my friends in California and a piece of my love is with them always, but this is home, and the northwest is where my heart would have me.

wip: overflowing cup

A cup overflowing spills no less
than a broken, joyful tears
are still tears,
though they may be for hoping
the forest chimes sing, and I
missed their merry melody
for though I've no dogs to walk
nor farm,
no well-worn path past beaten down
beneath well-shod feet, nor birds
whose graceful swan-song flies
in vees out of a perfect pond -
village carillon are caroling the yuletide
winter themes I missed,
for I've no friends in sleds
or horse-drawn carriage,
I'm fever-red imagining the weather where
the city rests
honking its klaxon horn
now I've turned back home,
this is not my dream: hopeless faces
walking long-dead places,
is it the season or the eyes
that bring death to the skies?
I pray it's not me
town, city, and countryside
all pass by, with nothing
to see the sea calls to me, but it is pages that bleed
between my hands, out of my side
a sacrifice to silence I'll suffer myself
while the clattering carriages canter
beside, outside this life





sometimes you write and really don't like it, and hit the publish button anyway.... (because it's bedtime)

Palindrome Tragedy

How long, was it
long enough?
when the fevered sunset muses
on two great tragedies:
a palindromic life,
and the death of a salesman -
each astonishingly thin and trite
when you're blind

a false wind rifles shells
through the lonely-limbed trees,
where night swallows land in song -
birds or dusk both neither

this night is every other
and all the stars rest
heavily on this night, distinctly
as uniquely as the next and first -
it's a flower, a violet with its violent
petals, vibrant with love,
and not a racecar,
or a dozen dimes, spinning
one just like the other,
they fall like leaves,
i wanted

a billion stars binary blinking
and i'm thinking behind stormy clouds
a decision - maybe every decision - is conceived



I'm feeling a lot better already. I'm able to count my symptoms on one hand, which is a vast improvement. In fact, I'm mainly left with a stubborn cough and a runny nose (light), and I've gotten a (read: one) REM cycle on each of my last two nights. I think my body needed to start sleeping again, and I'm thankful for all the prayers that were answered in those two nights of rest.
I had actually begun to fear the night, considering it a time of unrest and tired, emptiness. I couldn't do anything but sleep, and I couldn't sleep. Joseph Heller could have written a ridiculous satire about such a conundrum. Now, I'm still slightly wary about turning off my lights and crawling beneath the covers. I feel as though I'm expecting some trick, and the fever and additional symptoms will suddenly shout, "aha!" flip over my mattress and hop on top of me while I struggle to breathe smashed beneath the springs, feverish and beaten. No one should have to be afraid of going to sleep.

New Year

Happy New Year.
This flu is stopping me in my tracks, making it increasingly difficult to do anything. But it can't stop me forever - I won't let it - and I'm already struggling to stamp the fire of this infection out and leave it with the ashes of the year past and the wind of memories. Right now, however, I feel like tiny someone's are setting off New Year's fireworks in my lungs, and they occasionally allow the fires to spread through the rest of my body. It's a cold coal miracle... the ember glows as the frozen nose of Rudolph, searing my everything with ice.

As I drove to Oregon today, I thought of an interesting piece to write on apologetics that I don't want to forget, though I cannot write it now. In fact, I'm long overdue for some sleep, even if I'm a bit too feverish for any actual sleeping yet. Hopefully tonight I can get some sleep, because I know I'll need it. Until such time as I receive it, though, I'll pray for:
AS: travel
B: father sick
M: Engaged! Whatt!
JS: sick, getting sicker?
P: sick, work after hiatus
P: new job!
S: ugly wisdom teeth removal
S: getting ill
T: sick
?: Distant friends

Hopefully, I'll be better prepared to write and think tomorrow.