The Stuffing

October '08 is the new 1 A.D., it all starts there, shining like a national guitar. Most everyday in between lasted approximately one year, give or take an evening, but as far as memory is concerned most years lasted for an instant, at best. Time isn't after us, time isn't holding us, and I do believe that. Some scientists are working very hard to figure out why we experience time in a linear fashion but I think it's because we're lazy. I'm in space, not time. It always feels like I wake up somewhere else, never been fully convinced I'm awake. Who said it, was it Thoreau? "Live the life you've imagined! Go confidently in the direction of your dreams!" I believe that magnet, I mean, I read it on a magnet. When you do it, it all feels like a dream, maybe lucid, maybe not, probably not, there's a lot of control we don't have. The only thing that makes time seem relevant is true love.

Swing Low Travelin' Buffalo Show

The banjo sounds like thoughts popping, sounds like Kentucky hills in love, it's an instrument that plucks better than any other, an alcoholic version of the harp that hiccups itself right off the front porch.

When I listen to old bluegrass, Americana, and Dustbowl songs, I have to remind myself that they're quite modern. Woody Guthrie singing about taking you for a ride in his car is no more out of date than Mike Skinner complaining about lack of cell phone reception. A car! But we liked technology better then, times must have been tougher, because we seem to hate it now. Russ & Becky Jeffers sang about the new wagon, Woody about the car, but in simple amazement. These things were praised. Yet I've never heard a song about the wonders of a computer keyboard, or about my new GPS. What happened?

Joshua Bell is violin prodigy that I've never listened to, only recently read about. He took part in an experiment to see if people recognized genius when it wasn't grandiosely presented. They had him busk in a NY subway station, just stand and play his violin for spare change, and they did it to see if people would stop. Out of more than 1,000 right around 6 people actually listened. The vast majority didn't even look in his direction. The really interesting part, though, is that every single child that walked by wanted to listen, only to be dragged off by parents. This was a world class violinist playing some of the most difficult pieces in the world on a $3.5 million violin. What happened?

Technology was wondrous until we became impatient for its arrival. It seems that one of the biggest uses of modern information technology is to lament what its done to us.

Frank's Wild Years

Tom Waits once said that God is a fisherman, he sits out in his boat with a net, collecting people as they die and float to the surface. He also might have mentioned something about his height.

Whenever I look at pictures from the Hubble, upwards from my back yard, or the composition of sediment, and also whenever I see how small a blue whale is in comparison to the ocean, I feel pretty certain that I'm part of a science project, just a cell looking for the edge of the petri dish. We can write movies like The Truman Show but keep it in the fiction section and I'm just not so sure that's the case, although I'm quite sure that no one is watching. It's possible we got left on a shelf, you know.

I like to feel small and forgotten, or maybe I like to be reminded that I am. I have a great aunt who is in her 80's, lost a son in Vietnam, both breasts to cancer, and watched her husband almost die on Thanksgiving day. Whenever she was asked to reflect she said, "It all feels like a dream." No matter how bad it seems or was, it goes that fast, you all of a sudden wake up on the day you die to find out you never have to wake up again. This isn't a bad thing, most seem grateful.

So if you're young, go ahead and swim to the surface a time or two, look God in the eye, and tell him the fish ain't bitin'.

Swim, fish, swim.

Old Time Religion

You say that you're a warrior for Christ
Then for Christ's sake, put down your sword
Don't you worry about saving me
Don't save for what you can't afford