It’s just me, no BFD
| April 25, 2012 | Posted by Chin.Musik under Faith |
Last week, I sat under a tree with Spanish moss draped between its limbs like gauze. I was outside a coffee shop, munching an apple bran muffin when a sparrow, hunting for crumbs, hopped under my table. Curious to see how bold she was, I sat perfectly still. She cocked her head, and scooted between my feet. I wondered: did her survival instinct outweigh her fear of my sized-12 shoe? I’m no ornithologist – I know just a little about trust. Was it something like faith that made her think I wouldn’t stomp the life out of her?
Lately, I’ve been thinking apostasy. More specifically, I’ve been asking myself if a Godless heathen can be guilty of abandoning prior-held principles if said convictions were an amorphous cluster of misguided beliefs masquerading as enlightened altruistic ideals in the first place. I’ve been reflecting on where I stand on issues for some time now, by degrees probably, since before Scarlet said pick a side.
If I’ve had religion in my life, it was somewhere between nine innings of baseball and lending too much credence to personal experience. You know, what Plato said about an unexamined life. For the most part, it’s only ever been about me. I’ve scrutinized my back pages all in the name of a narrative that can only ever be, given the limitations of memory and the irreversible nature of time, at best, speculative.
Take an object and move it from point A to point B. See how the shadows dance in the light and settle into a new direction and form?
Yet, there’s nothing new under the sun.
You want to change a fundamental aspect of your personality? Shrinks, doctors and gurus of all stripes and polka-dots say it’s pretty near impossible. You gotta be: a.) a Harry Houdini of the mind or, b.) willing to lose the meaty bits of the idealized SELF.
The difference is when my wallet jettisons from the visor in my car – where I’ve stashed a pair of Scarlet’s turquoise panties (lest you think I’m a long-gone choirboy) – I’m not just chalking it up to random forces of the universe. I’m thinking about, say, the Apostle Paul, a.k.a. Saul of Tarsus, former scourge of Christians, breaking it down for King Agrippa. Or, about what the little birdie taught me.
The magic fairy endless dichotomy
| April 7, 2012 | Faith |
Most nights, I crash around 11 and wake between 3 and 3:30. Eyes pink and itchy. Nose running profusely. As the coffee drips, I dress myself in the same wretched sweats, socks, and boots I wear 5 times a week. In my fog – or is it fugue? – state, I stuff an apple, some trail-mix and a seltzer in a backpack, crate Lucy, and am out the door by 4. In 2007, a Harvard… more
I keep coming back to personal responsibility
| March 10, 2012 | personal responsibility |
Lucy is chewing a stick on the Berber carpet. A straw-sized stick she snatched up from the parking lot of my apartment complex. A woman walking her Yorkie asked about Lucy’s breed. I told her I suspected my precious little mutt was half Jack Russell, maybe. The lady guessed Havanese. I said you mean like from Cuba? Cuba keeps coming up. A bespectacled contestant on Jeopardy last night went there as an undergrad. I’m at… more
Life coach cookies
| February 19, 2012 | self-help |
As a part-time pre-loader for a major shipping company, I can pretty much eat what I want these days. Someday soon, I intend to drive to the grocery store, balance myself on the stern of a shopping cart, shield my eyes from the bright incandescent lights, point to the cookie aisle in a manner befitting a jubilant ship’s captain, and shout, CHIPS AHOY! I’ll do it with such fervor and alacrity as to transcend socially… more
Walking the belt with an abysmal Newt
| January 22, 2012 | 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… more
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 | Posted by Chin.Musik under 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 trustworthy.
You are very touchy, and get emotional a lot more often than others.
My world has become a fuzzy navel upon which I gaze fixedly, with the visual acuity of a sniper. I’m waiting for something to come into my line of sight.
Call it a temporary conflagration of the gray matter.
Listen, at the end of the day, I have the luxury of mental discord. I can grovel for a night’s sleep, or dose myself with Benadryl, drag my binky out beneath the stars, point and utter “Big dippa” until I nod off. I could call myself a mule and pull this metaphor over fallow ground. If I didn’t get tired just writing it, that is.
I tell myself I don’t need validation from a lover. That need is a two-faced Janus, who looks simultaneously to the future and the past.
(In actuality, it’s a fine symbol for a writer who strives to find the balance between scene, summary and exposition.)
The point is I want the privacy to lick my wounds in the dark, a place to hide from the dissonance of the ticker tape trailing across the screen.
I tell myself this is not need.
We could boil this down to food, shelter, clothing. But what if the LOST and FOUND box contained needful things disguised as trifles? A mitten. Horn-rimmed bi-focals. A locket. A skeleton key. Someone’s Primatene mist. A steal-toed boot. Could you wade through the symbolism to tell the need from want?
A friend told me to take a look at reality. Whose reality, I said. Anyone’s, she said. The homeless guy’s down on Dale Mabry? I asked. She said my reality is off-kilter in Tampa. “You’re not wrong in Brooklyn,” she conceded.
I need to take another crack at the blissful ignorance of the blue pill, and leave the red one and its painful truth of reality behind.
So, I guess what I’m saying is that I need to dispatch my better angels to draw the line between needs and wants. While they’re at it, they can strike a truce between an exhaustible inquiry-based religion and one that takes into account the inherent values of necessary dogma.
Segal’s law states: “A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.”
This is the one where I obfuscate needs and wants.
