Return

God, been awhile since I've been here - apologies.

I've been busy with a new online business venture that's been taking about 16 hours of each of my days. Hopefully it will go well, and I'll finally dig myself out of the financial hole I've been in for a year, two years, or four years, depending on your perspective.

Funny thing - I floundered around in the market all day, barely escaped with a dime in my pocket, then late in the day just put on a trade on little more than a whim, and it turned out to be a nice little winner. I have increasing confidence in my ability to stumble in the right direction.

My son has now lived almost as much of his life apart from me as with me - that's depressing. But then, I've lived well more than half my life without the company of my Heavenly Father. And the really depressing thing is that BOTH those situations are no one's fault but mine.

I wish I had the company of a submissive miss - it keeps me balanced, having to care for someone else, having to dispense mercy as well as my usual casual cruelty. I was nice to the guy at the oil change place today though - does that count?

Any event, I'll try to be more conscientious about scribbling here.

For now, just remember, there are three things that are important in life - Love, Forgiveness, and Perrier.

Confession 102

            I don’t know what other guys do with their submissive miss – mostly I don’t want to know.  Usually, if I happen to find out…I wish I hadn’t.  It’s invariably something Godforsaken like they make them lick the kitchen floor clean or something.

            Ewww!  (Jack shudders)

            Any event, one practice that I developed somewhere along the way, in a blind fit of inspiration (or was it drunkenness?), was a Saturday morning confession.  Works like this, for the unlearned among you – submissive miss brings her “required to keep” daily journal and, referring to it, well, does a weekly confession.  (You can’t watch them every bloody second of the day, and when you’re not, you can bet that, more often than not, they’re getting into mischief – It’s just what little girls do.  Anyway, by the end of the week, they’re usually lugging round a good hundred pounds or so of guilt about things that you’re not even aware of….yet.)  This little get-together also serves as a spiritual/emotional check-up of sorts, simply an opportunity for a young lady to openly share her thoughts, feelings, and concerns.

            I mean, for God’s sake, having taken her into your home, you’re responsible for her well-being.  So you have to responsibly attend to these sorts of things.

            (Or, I guess you could just be some revolting jerk who makes women lick kitchen floors clean.  But, I digress.)

            Okay, now, this being a “confession”, it is true that a submissive miss rarely escapes one without at least getting her bottom paddled a little bit.  Or, a lot of bit.  It’s as simple as the fact that there is likely something she’s going to unburden herself from that calls for some helpful, corrective discipline.  Now, a girl might get a mild spanking…or, well, she might end up being rather thoroughly thrashed.  (So far, I haven’t hung, nor shot, anyone.)

            Now, I told you all that just to tell you this short, but entertaining I think, anecdote.

            Helen, whom you may have met in these scribblings before, had a couple of interesting characteristics.  One, she was a fanatical journal writer – I think she wrote, on average, about 7,000 pages a day in her journal.  (All right, perhaps that’s a mild exaggeration.)  Regardless, let’s just say that she never arrived for Saturday confession without a wealth of material to share.  Secondly, Helen absorbed guilt from life much in the same way the rest of us take in oxygen – that is, unconsciously, automatically, and continually.  Therefore, she also never arrived for confession without imagining herself absolutely the most wretched sinner in all of Christendom.

            So, one bright Saturday morning, she arrives for our confessional session, journal in hand, head hung low…and she’s wearing a protective pillow strapped around her bottom – obviously in fearful apprehension of what sort of punishment she’s likely to receive.

            I couldn’t help myself – I burst out laughing, and said, “Oh God – this should be interesting to hear!”

            It was almost a funny enough stunt to get her out of a spanking entirely.

            Well, I said, “Almost”.

Mass for the Heathen

(Since I didn't have time to scribble anything "brand spanking new", here's another excerpt from my novel)

Sunday, September 24^th

“How can you expect to reach God without dying?”

- Al-Hallaj

The next Sunday, I went to Mass with Helen.

            Jesus, no, I don’t know why.  It just seemed like the thing to do at the time.

            I put on a tie, and a black linen sport coat that I’d bought at Banana Republic, but I still wore sneakers.  Helen wore this dark green chintz or taffeta thing that had a really pretty bow on the back, strategically located right on her shapely behind.  That was a clever fashion idea somebody had – making girls look like presents to be unwrapped.  Personally, I think more girls should have bows on their butt.  It’s not a real subtle fashion statement, but it’s a real cool one.

            I hadn’t set foot in any kind of church in about a year, and I couldn’t have been convicted of regular church attendance at any time during the past five or six years.  I felt kind of bad about it, if you want to know the truth.  I mean, no matter what your religious beliefs or unbeliefs, Jesus is a nice guy, so I just felt kind of crappy about not even dropping by his house to say “hello” once in awhile.

            Like a lot of kids, I’d pretty much stopped going to church as soon as my parents stopped dragging me there every week, which in my case was around age 16.  Church was boring, I didn’t like getting up for it after having been out all night Saturdays, and being a Christian just seemed terribly uncool.  Over the past few years, I’d gotten into the infinitely more cool-looking “eastern religions”.  (Technically though, I don’t know why Christianity is considered a “western religion”, since Jesus lived in the Middle East, for God’s sake, so wouldn’t that make Christianity an eastern religion, too?)  I’d read a lot of Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist stuff, and spent about two years altogether studying at a couple of Zen centers and at the Taoist place up in Manitou Springs.

            But here’s the thing.  While I really did get a lot out of Zen and Taoism and, to some extent, Sufism, what I found missing was the sort of “coziness” of Christianity.  There’s a lot of wisdom in the beautifully poetic writings of Lao-Tzu and Chuang-Tzu.  And Lin-chi is like the coolest Zen master ever.  But the Tao is presented mostly as some big, impersonal force, just sort of “the way of nature”.  It doesn’t love you.  Jesus loves you (or so I remembered singing in Sunday School when I was about 6 years old).  And, as far as I could tell, Christianity was unique in that.  It’s the only religion where God is a personal God, somebody who actually cares about you.  All the other versions of a deity that I’d encountered were either some mostly pissed-off guy that you had to constantly placate or appease, or, more often, just a completely impersonal something that didn’t really give a damn one way or the other about whether or not you made it through all right.

            But Jesus is, like, out there dying for you, for God’s sake.  He actually likes you kind of a lot.

            Did you know that “Don’t be afraid” appears in every single book of the Bible?  (Fun facts to know and tell your friends.)

            The thing, the last straw or whatever, that had gotten me to, however reluctantly, pick up the Bible again and start reading it (secretly, of course, on the sly) was…well, there were two straws actually.  The first one happened when I was out at the San Francisco Zen Center (this was back when they still let heterosexual males enter the city limits).  Pouring through some rare translations (even though there were hundreds of books out on Zen, I never saw this “in print” in a bookstore until about ten years later), I ran across one of the only two recorded talks by Hui-neng, the guy who’s considered the founder of Zen.  Anyway, I start reading it, and old Hui-neng says, “The meaning of Zen is repentance.” (emphasis mine)  I’m like, WHAT?!  “Repentance”?  Let’s see…let me count up real quickly the number of times I’ve ever heard the concept of “repentance” mentioned at any Zen Buddhist center.  Right, that’d be none.  Zero.

            Second straw was when I was reading the Tao Te Ching (the “Bible” of Taoism) up at Manitou Springs (and how I missed this the first time I read it, God only knows), and I stumbled across where it says –

“Why does everyone like the Tao so much when they first find it?  Isn’t it because you find what you seek, and know that your sins are forgiven?”

            Long story short, I’m thinking that if repentance and forgiveness of sins are “what it’s all about”, well, Jeez, the last time I checked, Christianity addressed those issues a lot more fully than anybody else.  So, God damn it, there I was, stuck feeling like I had to go read the flippin’ Bible, for God’s sake.  Sheesh, what a drag.

            Only it wasn’t really.  I actually kind of sort of enjoyed it a little bit.  For some reason(s), I wasn’t all put off by it or whatever.

            But although I had been sneaking peeks at the Bible for awhile when I met Helen, I still had a lot of built-in reluctance about actually going anywhere near God.  So I hadn’t quite gotten around to stopping by a church or anything.

            The Catholic Church that Helen and her parents attended was St. Mary’s Cathedral.  It’s flippin’ huge.  It was built like a hundred years ago (1898), but it still looked like it was in pretty good shape.  It’s got, like, bell towers, and arches, and stained glass windows and everything.  It was about halfway between my place and Helen’s, on Kiowa Street, which is just a block off of Bijou.  Anyway, it really is a cathedral, like Notre Dame, or St. Paul’s in London.  More like Notre Dame, I think, because it’s more sharply angled, whereas St. Paul’s is more rounded.  Anyway, it’s very big – I think it holds like about ten million people or something.  And very impressive, with all the marble statues and stained glass windows honoring the saints and all.  I confess that I didn’t recognize most of them.  I’ve always had a hard time telling Peter, Paul, and John apart.  Which is kind of surprising, since I’ve never had any trouble distinguishing between the Beatles, John, Paul, George, and Ringo.

            The ceiling’s about two hundred feet over your head.  The only thing I can figure is that the guy that designed the place pictured God as being really tall, and he didn’t want Him to have to worry about bumping His head all the time.  The only part that worried me was this big, stained glass dome thing in the ceiling.  I was afraid about all that glass raining down on me if, like, a seagull crashed into it.  Fortunately, you don’t actually get a lot of seagulls in Colorado Springs.  I was still a little nervous though.

            There were a couple of rather ornately carved, wooden confessional booths in the back.  I thought about the concept of going to confession, but I figured I’d probably wear out three or four priests, from old age if nothing else, before I got finished.

            Helen had asked if I wanted to sit with her parents.  I guess the look on my face gave away the fact that I’ve always secretly wanted to only date orphans.  Anyway, we didn’t have to sit with them, thank God.  As it turned out, we didn’t even see them.  It’s a pretty big church, like I said.  Helen said afterwards that they might have gone to an earlier Mass.  (There’s one earlier than 10 A.M.??)

            Among the statues, I did recognize Jesus (okay, he’s the only one hanging on a cross, so that’s kind of a “gimme”) and Mary, each of whom had their own alcove on either side of the altar, with an array of votive candles in front of them, along with a prayer rail that you can kneel at.  You know, like, to pray.  Jesus had the red glass candle holders, and Mary had the blue ones, that nicely matched her dress and her eyes.  There’s a “poor box” that you’re supposed to put some money in when you take a match to light one of the candles.  I don’t think you have to put any money in the box, but hey, if I can buy a little extra insurance on my prayers actually making it all the way to God’s ears, for, like, twenty-five cents, I’m kicking in the cash.  Plus, I figure they’ve got to pay for the matches and the candles.

            I wondered, as I looked at the dozens of candles that had been lit by people, what the subject of their prayers might have been.  I had a hard time picking out a candle to light.  I didn’t want to appear presumptuous by lighting one right in the middle of the top row.  But I didn’t want to go with the bottom row either.  I’m thinking God might be pretty worn out for the day by the time He works his way down to those prayers.  I finally settled on a candle that was a little to the left of center, in the second row.  High enough up to, hopefully, get noticed, but not so prominent as to make it look to God like I was expecting special treatment or anything.  I said a prayer for Helen, and for Bren, and for whatever poor kid out there nobody had thought to pray for that day.  I also told God I hoped He was having a good day.

            Helen had to guide me through the service.  There’s a lot of stand-sit-kneel involved, and it keeps you on your toes.  I kept expecting the guy up front, the priest or whatever, to suddenly go, “Ah-ha!  I didn’t say, ‘Simon says’!”, and kick a bunch of people out.  But he didn’t.  Everybody got to stay for the whole show, even if they got a few of the moves wrong.

            To my surprise, I felt okay being there.  Cozy, kind of, rather than uncomfortable.  There was just a good feeling about the place, you could really sense it.  Plus, it was a lot less creepy than what might have been considered my only other place of worship – Darci’s grave.

            Helen showed me where the little fount of holy water was, but you’re not supposed to dip yourself out a cup if you get thirsty or anything.  You just dip your finger in it, and then make the sign of the cross (up, down, left, right).  I guess the holy water also comes in handy if there’s a vampire attack during the service.

            During the sermon part, this little girl – about 5 or 6 years old – in the row in front of us crawled up on the pew and turned around backwards to look at me.  Then she started making faces at me.  I made a few back at her and we had fun until Helen swatted me and said, “Stop that!”  I tried to tell her the kid started it, but she made me behave anyway.

            One of the scripture readings was from the book of Jeremiah.  He was a prophet, back in the Old Testament.  Pretty cool guy actually.

“We have sinned against the Lord our God, both we and our ancestors.

  From the time of our youth until now, we have not obeyed the Lord our God.”

            What struck me about it was how similar it was to a quote I remembered from one of my favorite Zen guys, old Yuan-wu: “From the moment of your birth until now, you have been turning away from light to darkness.  Time to turn round, and go home.”  Anyway, it caught my attention, that’s all.

            The New Testament reading was from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians – the Jesus kids living in Ephesus, which was this pretty-big-deal city back in those days.  It was actually captured at one point by Croesus, the guy that expression, “rich as Croesus”, is about.  Anyway, part of it went, “Our fight is not against flesh and blood, but against demons and the powers of this world’s darkness…”.  I was pretty sure I had some idea of what old Paul was talking about.  I don’t guess Paul ever worked at a rape crisis center, but I think he was still roughly in the same business.

            The Gospel reading, well first of all, that one threw me off a bit.  You get to sit down for the first two readings, but apparently you’re supposed to stand up for that one.  Then, after the priest says something, while everyone’s saying something back, they do this thing where they make the sign of the cross on their foreheads, then on their lips, and, finally, over their heart.  By the time I figured it out, it was already over.  But Helen smiled at me and gave me a friendly squeeze with her hand to let me know it was okay that I was a complete liturgical moron.

            Anyway, the reading was from…well, one of the four Gospels.  I didn’t catch all of it – I was looking around to try to make sure I didn’t miss any more required hand signals.  But part of it was about some sheep.  “If a man has a hundred sheep, but one of the sheep gets lost, he will leave the other ninety-nine and go find the lost sheep.  I tell you the truth, he is happier about that one sheep when it is found, than about the ninety-nine that were never lost.”  I don’t know much about sheep, other than they seem to make pretty good sweater material, but I did know a little something about lost people, and I thought I kind of got was Jesus was getting at.

            The next part of a Catholic Mass is something I heartily approve of.  In most Protestant churches I’ve been to, the sermon lasts at least half an hour, and by the time it’s over everybody in the place has either looked at their watch twenty times, nodded off, or flat out expired from missing a dose of insulin or heart medication.  I know when I was a kid I never made it all the way through one without my mind wandering off to thinking about Batman, train rides, or the huge bazooms that my Sunday School teacher, Miss Davis, had.  (In retrospect, I think Miss Davis was just a nice 34-B, but they looked huge at a time when only one girl in my school had any noticeable breasts at all).  Well, in Catholic churches, the sermon part (which I learned is called a “homily”) only lasts about ten minutes.  I like that, basically because it’s much less of a strain on my attention span.  The priest wasn’t exactly a spell-binding orator – and sure enough, there was no crowd of people flocking up to the altar to repent or whatever at the end – but at least you didn’t nod off before he finished.

            After that though, things kind of swung the other way.  We had to kneel down for this series of prayers that went on for so long that I bet even God nodded off at some point.  About all I caught was about fifty mentions of the fact that Jesus’ mom was a virgin, and passing applause for six or seven saints whom I’d never heard of.  There was one point where the priest asked Jesus to “have mercy on us all” – that part sounded like a good idea, to me anyway.

            For communion, they serve real wine, not grape juice, which was what we got in the Methodist church my parents dragged me to when I was a kid.  Helen had explained to me beforehand that you’re not, technically, supposed to take communion if you’re not an official member of the Catholic Church and all – but it’s not like they’ve got bouncers stationed up there who are going to physically stop you.  And me, I’m not likely to be turning down a free glass of wine.

            It is a little creepy when they hand you the goblet, or chalice, or whatever it is, and say, “The blood of Christ”, but I took a swig anyway.  I probably shouldn’t tell you this, since you’ll know I’m a total nutcase, but I kind of half expected to get the taste of blood in my mouth.  But the flavor turned out to be neither more nor less than that of a reasonably good cabernet sauvignon.  Oh well, so much for mystical experience.  (P.S.  I don’t really understand the doctrine of transubstantiation, so kindly be kind enough not to ask me to explain it.  Thanks.)

            After all fifty million people have walked up to get communion and staggered back to their seats, they let you go pretty quick, after just a couple of short “Go in peace – have a great day” prayers.

            The only bad part was when we were walking out.  Helen insisted on dragging me through the receiving line and introducing me to the priest, Father Ed.  He seemed friendly enough, that wasn’t it – but after I’d survived the introduction and we were walking on past him, I swear to God, it looked like he was staring at me like, “You’d better not be touching that girl in a sinful way!”  But we were already almost out the door, so he didn’t have time to break me and get me to confess.

            All in all, it wasn’t that bad.  Really.

            I didn’t realize at the time that I’d apparently somehow consented to being dragged there regularly every week after that.  (“Wake up.  You’re going to Mass with me, aren’t you?” – “Oh.  I guess I am.”)

            When we got back to my apartment, I might have touched Helen in a sinful way, but I did try to be very reverential about it.

True Story

       Some people - some horribly misguided people - complain that all I do is joke around, that I never really reveal anything of myself.  That is so not true - It just happens to be the case that even the most deadly serious episodes of my life have all been generously sprinkled with a bit of humor.  Dark humor, twisted humor, perhaps, but humor nonetheless.  Case in point...

       Everybody who knew Marie, knew that Marie was a little weird.  I mean, hell, she had the scars on her wrists from where she'd tried to kill herself three times.  Still, she was exceptionally intelligent, funny, and pretty - all huge plusses in my book.  (I could overlook the scars easily enough since, hey, I was a bit suicidal myself from the age of 12 until about...well, now, I guess.)  But, overall, she wasn't - or didn't seem anyway - any more weird, troubled, whatever, than your average goth girl working at Starbucks nowadays.

       Any event, as it turned out, Marie was the first girl I "did it" with.  I'll throw in the funny part, even though it's not really germane to the moral of this story.  When we reached "the point of no return" - or rather,  a second or two just prior to that point - I idiotically asked her if she was "on the pill or something".  Of course, the words were no sooner out of my mouth than I thought, "What the hell did I bother to ask that for? - I mean, for God's sake, I'm not gonna stop now, no matter what the answer is, so how stupid was that question, Jack?!"

       Her distressingly vague reply, however, was, "It's all right."  Naturally, me being me, I couldn't resist overthinking that one to death.  Did "it's all right" mean, "Yes, I'm on the pill", or did it mean, "I don't care if I get pregnant"?

       Once again, what the hell's the bloody difference, since the answer wasn't going to affect my behavior in the slightest at that point anyway.

       Okay, jump ahead two months, to the point in time when I'm next home from school on vacation.  I bump into Donna, Marie's best friend, who informs me that Marie is, has been for the past month, in a residential psychiatric hospital.  (Jeez, I guess I don't have a date for the weekend.)

       Yeah, it makes kind of a funny story to tell people - "The first girl willing to sleep with me was clinically insane - haha".  But the truth, as I confessed to my one, true, very best friend, Susan, over the top of a vodka collins late one night in college, is that, "And yeah...I've pretty much always suspected since then that every girl who's slept with me only did so in a moment of insanity."

Blood on the Page

"See the storm set in your eyes,

 see the thorn twist in your side,

 and I wait, for you...

 Sleight of hand and twist of fate,

 On a bed of nails, she makes me wait,

 And I wait, without you..." - (U2, "With or Without You")

Every now and again, I lose my mind and write a poem.  I’m no poet, but sometimes I just can’t stop my fingers from typing out poetry, usually to some misbegotten slut whom I’ve romanticized into the Virgin Mary.  Parts of this I can only recognize as “not me”, so I imagine that what I did here was an off the cuff, major re-write of some more-than-half-forgotten sonnet that I read someplace twenty years ago.  (Im pretty darn sure it was me, and not Keats or Byron though, who penned the line about "my whore is a goddess who enslaves me in her surrender".)

We all have our weaknesses.  Mine are just more tawdry than some people’s.

(no title)

What gives life to my body and to my soul?

What animates my words?

What is the source of light shining in my eyes?

Hidden in my heart, my beloved dances,

And the sight of her dancing there,

is what breathes the breath of life within me.

I will bring you roses, for I have gathered many thorns

in a lifetime of searching for you,

And because now, every flower in the world has your fragrance.

Be with me now, after hiding so long,

And open the door to your heart for me.

I am intoxicated by your beauty,

I wish to see you with ten thousand eyes,

To abandon sobriety and become drunk on the look of you,

Until I am blinded in the vision of your beauty.

When I am inside you,

It is not my body, but my soul,

that screams in ecstasy.

My whore is a goddess,

who enslaves me in her surrender.

My beloved dances,

And her rhythm is the beating of my heart.

All the music of Heaven plays, that my beloved may dance

her dance upon the earth,

but she dances to the rhythm of my heart,

because her heart has lost itself in mine.

Lover, Beloved, and Love have found each other

Her kiss has awakened me from death, drenched in her desire,

The touch of my hand has released her from prison, filled up with my passion,

And Love itself has intertwined our hearts.

We live in the enchanted place,

And with every breath and thought and word and touch,

we make love in each moment.

Why I Hate Doms

1 - They're such unbelievable assholes.

       I saw this guy once who had his "slave" eating her food out of a dog food bowl.  (Naturally, me being me, I couldn't stop myself from observing, "Just a thought - If you want a dog, go buy a flippin dog."  That was probably time-I-almost-got-my-ass-kicked-number-227.)

2 - They're not really Doms.

       "Oh, is that too hard? - am I hurting you?  I'm sorry!"

       Sheesh.  (Jack---rolling eyes)

3 - They're so pretentious.

       They dress in all this leather stuff, and call themselves names like "Lord Dragondick".  Give me a break.  Again, me being me, if some guy is actually a big enough idiot to introduce himself to me like that, I usually can't resist laughing and saying something like, "Really?  Your mom named you that?"

4 - So many of them are fat.

       Okay, maybe I just don't like fat people.

5 - They're clueless.

       I don't mean to be a snob (I just am), but the sad fact is that most self-styled "Doms" don't have a flippin' clue regarding what Dominance/submission is all about.  I really much prefer girls who haven't previously been in D/s relationships, because if they have, they usually come with a bunch of insane baggage that needs to be unlearned - i.e., all the idiotic crap that was instilled in them by Doms they'd been with.

       All right, end of rant - Hey, thanks for listening!  Have a splendiferous day.

Ash Wednesday

       I could always tell by the way she approached me whenever Helen wanted to ask me something, but - for some silly reason - was a little afraid to do so.

       I was reading on the sofa when she knelt on the floor beside me, head bowed, took my hand and rubbed it nervously between both of her own.  "Can I ask you something?"

       "I think you just did."

       Helen, who was more indulgent of my weak humor than most, smiled and simply replied, "Something else."

       "Ohhh.  Sure, go ahead."  I never really understood her apprehensiveness about asking me certain things, as it never upset me in any way for her to simply pose a question.

       After lifting her face to smile at me, she turned it back down, and increased the rate of her hand massage.  "I was wondering...Could you...Would you mind taking me to church tomorrow?"  Explanitorially, she added, "It's Ash Wednesday."

       I gave her a kind of puzzled, furrowed brow look, but answered.  "Absolutely.  That's not a problem."

       She beamed another smile up at me, then kissed the hand she had in custody, and said, "Thank you."

       Because I'm a relentless snoop, I asked her, "Is this coming from anyplace in particular, or...?"

       The rate of hand rubbing picked up again, and the beaming smile became a blinking-on-and-off one.  Still, straightly enough, she replied, "I've just been feeling like going to church lately, and I thought Ash Wednesday might be a good time."  She bit her lower lip.

       "Okay.  So what's the problem?  What are you looking so nervous about?"

       She looked away, in a variety of directions, before mustering a reply.  "I'm...Well, what if...What if I started going to church, and it became something..."  She searched for a word, but failed to find it.  Happens to me, too.

       Fortunately, I've got reasonably good intuition, and can work fairly well off a limited number of clues.  I smiled softly at her and suggested, "What?  You're afraid you might turn from your wicked ways...and that might affect our relationship?"

       She merely nodded in reply.  Helen was never one for long, detailed answers.

       My smile broadened a bit, and I told her, "Jeez, Helen, I don't think I'm likely to begrudge God taking you away from me, if it comes to that."

       Helen frowned, then piped up, "Can I ask you something else?"

       "Well, you're nearing the daily question limit, but, all right."

       "Do you believe in God?"

       "Absolutely.  But I don't really know Him."  I let that hang in the air a second or two, then grinned and added, "Maybe I'm afraid if I really got to know Him...He might take you away from me."

       She launched herself up off the floor, into my arms, and hugged me tightly to her.  She whispered in my ear, "You're so good to me."

       My reply was, "Actually, sweetheart, I think the truth is that it's God who's too good to all of us.  Me, I'm just occasionally mildly thoughtful.  But, thanks for the kind words all the same."

       It made Helen happy to attend Ash Wednesday Mass the next day.  And that made me happy.  I didn't mind the service either, come to think of it.

       And, as things turned out, I doubt rather seriously that it was God who ended up taking her away from me.

Pieces of April

       This is the only story I ever told that left my therapist - who, frighteningly enough, was a redhead herself - feeling more satisfied than disgruntled at the end of a session.  It's true what they say, you know.  Redheads are bad luck.

"I've got pieces of April,

  I keep 'em in a memory bouquet..." - Three Dog Night

            When I was in fifth grade, my best friend was this girl named April.  We’d been in the same classes since third grade, but somehow we didn’t really start hanging out together a lot until fifth grade.  April was super smart.  And I guess I was almost smart enough to keep up with her, so she liked talking with me, just because everything she said didn’t sail ten feet over my head.  I couldn’t really keep up with her though.  She talked about God all the time – asked questions that I never heard anyone else ask till I was taking philosophy and religion classes in college.  She was 10 years old, and she was trying to figure out God, for Christ’s sake.

            She had red hair and lots of freckles, and wore these really big glasses.  Not thick, just really big around her eyes.  I remember she had a very throaty laugh – very Demi Moore.

             Anyway, what happened was…she got cancer.  Brain cancer.  I don’t remember how I found out, all I really remember is that she just stopped coming to school sometime in February.  Well, after a few weeks, I finally got my mom to find out where April lived, and take me to visit her.

            She’d had an operation by then, and her head was all shaved, all her pretty, red hair was gone.  And she was very pale – I’d never seen anyone’s skin that color.  It was almost a grey color.  A pallor.  She was happy to see me – she told me she’d been excited ever since her mom told her that I wanted to come over.  She talked my ears off for like an hour or something.

            I can’t remember a word she said.  Because the whole time I was sitting there, I was scared to death.  It was just the look of her.  I didn’t want to have to see her like that.  I couldn’t wait to get out of there.  I was just sitting there waiting for my mom to come in and say it was time to go.

             Boy, it’s really incredible how big a jerk you can be even when you’re only 10 years old.  I never went to visit April again – even though when I left that day I’d told her, yeah, sure, I’ll come back.  And I knew I was lying when I said it.  I knew I was never going to set foot in that Goddamned room ever again.  I just wanted to get the hell out of there.

            Finally, a few months later – it was summer, school was already out – I did ask my mom if she’d take me to see April again.  She told me April had already died.  She'd died, more precisely, of a brain hemorrhage.  In fact, that's how I learned, at the ripe old age of 10, the definition of the word "hemorrhage".  It has ever since been one of my least favorite, or most disliked, words in the English language.

            Well, of course, then I realized what an asshole, jerk, scumbag, asshole, son of a bitch I was.  I thought about April sitting there in her bed, in her room, wondering why I never came to see her again.  And the bad part – the really awful part – was thinking that maybe she thought I didn’t care, that I didn’t like her that much.  Jesus, I hope she didn’t think that.  Because that wasn’t it.  I was just scared.  I was scared, God damn it.  I’d never had anybody die on me before.  But I did care – I did.  I loved her.  As much as you can do that when you’re 10 years old.  I thought about how good I’d always felt being with her, just listening to her.  I loved her.  Even though I didn’t realize it till afterwards…till after she was Goddamned dead.  I loved her, but I left her alone…to die.

            I told myself, after that, that I wouldn’t be afraid anymore.  Or, well, maybe not that I wouldn’t be afraid, but that I wouldn’t ever let the fear keep me away from being with somebody.

            I don’t know why I told you that.  But anyway, if you ever start thinking about me like I’m some kind of hero or something – don’t – I’m not.  I’m just a stupid kid, who owes about a million apologies to a couple of dead girls.

            And that, boys and girls, is (in a roundabout, twisting way, no doubt) how I, one night many years later, came to be hanging off the edge of a roof, with one arm wrapped around Linda, and the other wrapped around an attic air-exhaust vent pipe.

            But that, of course, is another story, for another time...

Twilight into Dawn

“Father God, I ask You to lead me when I’m blinded by ways I have not known.  Along unfamiliar paths, please guide me.  Turn the darkness into light before me, Lord, and make the rough places smooth.  I know you will not forsake me.”  (more or less from Isaiah chapter 42, verse16)

            I was going to write some more about Helen today, as she rather lingered on my mind from yesterday, but then a couple of things happened – A friend (and I’m probably not only using the term loosely, but downright recklessly) had some unexpected misfortune come her way, and also, I ran across the above verse that, oddly enough, echoed a couple of things I’d written to her.  So, what the hey? – I’ll echo them again here a bit.

“…blinded by ways I have not known”.  You know, that’s pretty much always true.  I’ve always found it interesting that the Zen kids in ancient China and the early Christians both came to be known as “followers of the Way”.  And, the leaders of both groups spoke of this notion of unfamiliar paths and walking in darkness, toward light (“We see now as if through a glass darkly” – St. Paul).  The Way is indeed, an unknown path to us.  It is the path that leads away from self, and therefore most of us (me, for one) are horribly unfamiliar with it.  It is a path of faith – a path that one does not walk with a precise, crystal-clear vision of its end (if it even has an end).  As Paul puts it, we can just barely manage a dim, blurred vision of what lies ahead – but we walk with an assurance that what lies ahead is more than worth the effort required for the journey.  (“I can’t quite see what they’re serving, but, God, it smells delicious from here!  Could be chocolate cake!”)

One of the few Zen koans that I ever solved to my teacher’s satisfaction was the one, “You are atop a 100-foot pole.  How will you advance?”

(My initial response was, “Uh, I’m kind of scared of heights – Can I just climb down the pole?”  No go on that one.)

So what was the answer I finally came up with after only, oh, ten thousand hours or so of sitting in meditation, mostly thinking, “My knees are feckin’ killing me”?

It was this:  “Take the next step.”

In my not-so-humble opinion, life would be boring as hell – or rather, a boring hell – if we knew in advance exactly where every path would lead, and exactly how our lives would turn out.  Kind of like watching a ball game when you already know the final score.  Me, I’m with Helen Keller, who quotable-quotedly said, “Life is either a daring adventure…or nothing at all.”

We are all at sea (hopefully not aboard the “Titanic”), but if we are following the Way, then our journey is a grand adventure, even if we do not yet know precisely what “the new world” that awaits us looks like.  Sure, it’s got grizzly bears – but it also has cute, little prairie dogs.  There’s wind and storms, but amazingly enough, the sun always pops back out.  (Not to mention the beaches are nice.)

We travel hopefully, because we know the Path leads, ultimately, home to Eden.  One of the great Zen masters noted, “From the moment of your birth until now, you have been turning away from light to darkness.  Time to turn round, and go home.”

We’ll get there.  Trust me – I might bullshit you every now and then, but I wouldn’t lie to you about something this important.  So, have faith, and continue on – it works.

Happy Friday, boys and girls.

(Okay, well, you kids have fun – I gotta go slit my wrists now because my future looks so bleak and desolate.  But don’t worry – I’ll be back.  Women – the bane of my life.  Sheesh.)

"Let Her Cry, for She's a Lady"

“Ain’t nobody rock it like this,

 Ain’t nobody out there swift like this…

 …And any minute I’ll be rollin’ through,

 So get ready, get ready…” – Fergie

             (Okay, that song doesn’t really go with this entry, but I’m just totally digging listening to it as I type.  Let me have some fun, okay?  The lyric that actually goes with this scribble is, "Let her cry, for she's a lady...Let her dream, for she's a child..." - the song is "Wildflower", by Skylark)

             Helen was sweeping.

             That’s what Helen did, when she wasn’t occupied with something else.  Some people exercise compulsively, some people watch television, people do all sorts of different things…Helen swept with her broom.  Swept floors, or a deck, or the space outside the front door, even though all trace of dirt and dust had long since been swept away.  She swept, in a neverending attempt to eradicate dirt that only she could see.  She must have effusively thanked me ten thousand times for buying her that damned broom.

             And I let her sweep.  I didn’t bother her about it, didn’t idiotically point out that whatever surface she was bustling away at was already perfectly clean, didn’t suggest for no good reason that she do something else.  And that was likely one of the most intelligent things I ever did in regard to Helen, and one of the main reasons that she felt so comfortable in my home.

             But on that particular day, at that particular point in the space-time continuum, I did interrupt her sweeping.  God only knows how many hours she’d been at by then.  All I can tell you is that it was fairly late in the evening, and I could clearly recall having seen Helen sweeping, off and on, throughout the day, since when I'd first stumbled into the kitchen for coffee that morning.

             I simply said to her, as I passed through the kitchen for some ice, “Come in the living room a minute.”

             She obediently and without hesitation set her broom aside, and followed me into the living room.  I sat down precisely in the corner of the large, sectional sofa, and had her sit in my lap.  She leaned her head against my shoulder without speaking.  Helen always was a quiet one.

             Honestly, I didn’t have any particular plan of action in mind when I’d told her to come with me.  But I was reasonably confident of a bit of inspiration coming my way.  And, thank God, it did.  I stroked her hair with my hand for a bit, and then, after a minute or two, softly kissed the side of her forehead, and said simply, “Good girl.”

             Silent tears appeared, swelled, then slowly spilled out of her eyes, and trailed their way down her cheeks.  One of the things you need to learn in this life is that a girl crying isn’t always a terrible thing.  Sometimes it’s something you ought to just allow, and not try to “fix”.  After a moment or so, she casually stuck her thumb in her mouth.  That was another of Helen’s habits – sucking her thumb.  Helen had suffered much in her life, and had developed her own coping mechanisms.

             (I am, by nature or habit, a relentlessly sarcastic, needling bastard, but I take no small point of pride in the fact that I never once ridiculed Helen about her thumb-sucking habit.)

             We sat there like that for quite some time.  I had the good sense (for once) to not say anything else, but just to hold her there and let her cry inaudibly and suck her thumb.  I have often wished that you could heal a girl’s wounds simply by holding her in your arms – the world would be an infinitely easier place to live in if that were true.  Nonetheless, it is true that, sometimes, for a moment in time anyway, that really is more or less all it takes to take her pain away, to at least temporarily banish it. 

            Eventually Helen simply nodded off there in my lap (which kind of necessitated my sitting there awhile longer, which, okay, I wasn’t exactly crazy about, but, oh well).  Every now and then – grace of God - I get this stuff right.