Walking the belt with an abysmal Newt
| January 22, 2012 | Posted by Chin.Musik under UPS pre-loader |
Sometimes you walk into the wrong truck.
You stand at a conveyor belt, pondering what brown is actually doing for you. You hoist a package, read a number on a label that tells you which truck to load it in. Only, it’s 3 a.m. and you’re dazed. This is the antithesis of working smart, you think, a fact proven by your paycheck.
But sometimes you walk into the right truck.
You register for a literary criticism class, get married, start a blog, get divorced, and move to Florida. All of it seems a good idea at the time. When the smoke clears, you’re still a writer.
You wake up one day and realize that the words selfish and prick might apply to you. The old ways of thinking – that somehow you’ve been betrayed by God, family, country, and the hiring manager – just won’t do anymore. You want to serve a greater cause — a child, a job, a belief system – because let’s face it: if you don’t have something you’d die for, are you really living?
At 4 a.m. you sip Citrus Cooler Gatorade and stuff your maw with trail mix. Your packages are loaded and there’s nothing coming down the belt.
Sometimes there is no right or wrong truck.
What inspires people to write “Married but lonely” in the subject line? In essence, you’re saying you don’t know me, but my temporary condition, my inability to change my perspective, takes precedence over a commitment I made. My response: get a divorce, you piece of shit. Don’t be a cheat. Even if you’re not a Holy Roller, try growing a spine.
To be an adulterer is to be in the wrong truck. It’s like eating chocolate cake for breakfast – it tastes good at the time, but sooner or later all those empty calories go straight to your metaphorical ass.
Newt’s second wife claims he wanted an open marriage. But that’s not what concerns me about Gingrich. If he’d leave one wife with cancer, and a second with MS, would he also bail on America if we were, say, under attack?
At 8:45, a voice comes over the PA, says the belt is down, and repeats the start time for tomorrow. Sweat-stained and weary, you head to your truck. Only it’s not a truck, it’s a late model Ford with scratches on the hood. You’ve met someone new. You’re optimistic, and why shouldn’t you be? You’re endowed with the wisdom that comes from a lifetime of misloads.
God, work and Scarlett
| January 2, 2012 | absolute universal truth |
With a dirty windshield, I drive to work around two in the morning. I tell myself I’m not completely cut off from giving this faith business a chance. Still, I can’t help cringing at the sermon-ending refrain of God can do wonderful things if you let him into your world to the tinkling of piano keys on a.m. radio. But one night Charles Colson says something to the effect that ethics are rooted in an… more
Waiting for my leg to vibrate
| December 13, 2011 | spirituality |
I’m miles from words. In my absence from Chin Musik, I’ve migrated from the couch (a.k.a. “The Great Humbler”) to an air mattress in the garage. At Thanksgiving dinner, Paul said he thought it was his job to save me. We speak daily of spiritual matters. One day, he turned me on to Apostle Paul’s definition of love in First Corinthians, the one that begins “Love is patient, love is kind…” We agreed that it… more
Five days in Redington
| November 29, 2011 | libertarian |
On Wednesday, I drive to Redington Beach. Crossing 66th Street in Pinellas Park, I think about the factory where I used to work, incense and rat-infested potpourri. I meet my friend Scarlet at the condo, where the La-Z-Boy affords a southerly view of the beach. Beach-goers, simple or complicated people (in love or lonely) hang in suspended animation, drawn to the vast expanse of the sea, with no terminal point on the horizon. The sun turns the… more
Nora, there was no sin
| November 19, 2011 | Richard Shindell |
I want to dwell inside the minor key of Nora, and let the words split me open like a clam. I don’t know which parts, if any, are autobiographical. I spent four hours with the artist once: we discussed the volatility of Cuban-Americans, but I never got the lowdown on the song that’s as much a part of my musical constellation as Tempted and Richard Thompson’s Persuasion. I first heard it in 2001, or maybe… more
Lost and found and need and want
| November 11, 2011 | need vs. want |
When I was 21, long before I read Siddhartha, I told my mother that someday I’d give up all my possessions and walk the Earth in search of stories. Naturally, she looked at me like I was a two-headed freak. At 41, I know that any double-talking blind prophet I’m liable to meet would just as soon sell me cans of effervescent sugar water with astrological factoids scrawled along the bottom. You are imaginative and… more
Starbucks daymare, or, pornography in 160 characters or less
| November 7, 2011 | A blog about power |
Yesterday (or was it the day before?) I had a Starbucks daymare. It was a grotesque hoard of coffee drinkers. I imagined a woman’s face was made of wax and that she had Teddy Bear button eyes. Only she masticated instead of chewed, and walked in a half-squat, as if coiled to leap through the plate glass window. There was a girl in cupcake pajamas. There was a man in a Wolverine’s cap with wisps… more
God-flavored milkshakes of lessons never learned
| November 2, 2011 | obituary for my cat |
I’m afraid this one is complete third-person drivel. White dude plays with house money, stands at cross-walk, leers at orange-sequined hand of traffic signal. Thinks it looks like piss-stained Michael Jackson glove. STOP. I’m a never was with has-been aspirations. GO. 12, 11, 10… to scurry across. His five-day gruff demarks a life en medias res. A big mirthful Buddha perched where rubber soul kisses the south end of the longest sidewalk in the universe.… more
Notes from the couch
| October 28, 2011 | life in transition |
A modest place is all that’s required: a room with an optional view for this here laptop, my guitar, my books, and Lucy. But for now life is a stained and dilapidated couch. Twelve years of dirt and liquid trapped in fabric fibers. I’m no color expert, but I think there’s a point where the line between olive and drab gray becomes indistinguishable. On good days, I center myself and square up the day in… more
And in the beginning, we lost our fucking minds…
| October 21, 2011 | Posted by Chin.Musik under religion |
Not every nigga drinks the Golden Nectar Kool-Aid. And I can think of no better way to agitate, detract and edify than to kick it old school, and I mean go waay back, yo. See, because if you think the only creation myth begins “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the earth,” then you’re misinformed.
Lo, the rumblings!
Lest the faithful diss my heresy outright, let me provide some historical context. Creation myths are symbolic narratives of how the world began. They often describe the ordering of the cosmos from a state of chaos or amorphousness, and usually tell the story of how man came to inhabit the Earth. They vary from culture to culture – Chinese, Japanese, Native American, so on and so forth – and always employ elements of the supernatural in an attempt to explain the inexplicable. Whereas Genesis is all about a masculine God (Yahweh) making this, that, and the third, 
many origin myths revolve around a feminine source. (The Iroquois myth, for example, begins: “In the beginning there was no earth to live on, but up above, in the Great Blue, there was a woman who dreamed dreams…”) Symbolically, it just makes sense to me that a woman started all this. After all, the Earth is kinda like a giant womb, and only women have the ability to birth little niggas.
I have no interest in going teat-for-tat on the relative merits of Genesis versus other origin myths. When all is said and done, I’ll still wonder about Adam’s state of mind before he tasted the apple. Being that all God required of him was to “go forth and multiply,” the only conclusion I can draw is that his brains must’ve been concealed in his scrotum. I’ll still be flummoxed by Eve’s role in the whole business, too. I mean, let’s face it: wasn’t she a gullible whore for listening to that serpent? She hastened man’s undoing!
What concerns me more here is why it should be that one origin myth has more credence and/or veracity than the next.
I’m well aware that the tenets of any doctrine are authoritative and are not to be disputed, questioned, poked, prodded, massaged, tinkered with, sullied, shat upon, or diverged from by believers. But here’s where things get a little dicey: there are approximately 2 billion Christians in the world, and 1.1 billion atheists (a figure that includes agnostic and other non-religious groups). Regardless of which fairy tale you subscribe to vis-à-vis creation myths, that’s a whole lot of dogmatic and dichotomous thinking.
That’s a shitload of people telling each-other they’re a bunch of dumb-asses.
Given the sheer number of yeas and nays, one could argue that both sides of the argument are, in fact, delusional. In which case, delusion, by default, becomes the over-arching mode of religion.
It is our delusions that distract us from our suffering, give us hope, and ultimately cause us to despair. Amen.
