I'm the man of a thousand faces
A little piece of me in every part I take
I hold the tape for a thousand races
A different point of view in every speech I make

Who are you? Who am I? Do we meet in the middle of this grand nation of the mind that we've created with equality and simplicity for nothing? Will there ever be an outcome, an ending, or even a beginning? Am I alive? Are you? Who are you?

Are you the sum of your parts? Is everything you've ever said, done, felt, experienced, eaten, touched, loved, a part of you? Have you forgotten any of them? Is your own history being forgotten or re-written?

Cut me a piece of my divided soul
Cry me a river, call it rock and roll
Give me an attitude and watch me make it lie
Pass me a microphone-I need to testify

I am you and yet I am also me. I am not given to understanding paradox or willful blindness, yet so many of me are. I am one and yet so many. I grow by a multitued each day, and diminish daily as well.

It's a mistake to think that I am shallow and meaningless, though I sometimes think that of myself. I am not a plague, though I've acted like one in the past. It's a mistake to think that there is no future for me, though some think the end is near. It is a mistake to think that I am full of hate, though hate abounds.

I'm the man of a thousand ages
You see my face in the stones of the Parthenon
You hear my song in the babble of Babylon
I'm the man of a thousand riches
Be my guest at the feast of Satyricon
You spend the money that my logo's printed on

I am every person you've ever seen. I am every person you've ever despised, loved, loathed or adored. I am the person in the cardboard box, and in the yacht. I am the person in front of the camera and in the solitary cabin. I am the person who is hungry and starving. I am yellow, black and white. I am the stereotype and the individual.

I am you.

Lyrics: Marillion - This Strange Engine - Man of a Thousand Faces
picture by A. Scott White

The adventure of flat Elizabeth II came to a rest finally at our home, Saturday afternoon. All the way from jolly olde England (the south of England, to be specific, from a little cottage in what seems to be a little Dorset village). All that way, she came, plastered to the outside of a plain brown parcel with a simple customs declaration of "pressie, scrummie, books."

Pressie?
Scrummie?

Oh my. Dare we open a parcel with such a declaration? A little British slang research was in order. With a little help from the internet, we found the following definitions:

prezzie - Noun. A present, a gift. Also "pressie." {Informal}
scrummy - Adj. Delicious, pleasant, occasionally sexually appealing. Derived from the informal scrumptious.

This made me wonder how this declaration got past the customs agents here in the United States! I had to laugh. What if "pressie" and "scrummie" were actually defined as the following:

pressie - thermonuclear bomb
scrummie - die Christian scum!

Still, these two slang terms sounded too happy and fun to be so evil.

Anyway, we opened the box, which you can see visual documentation of if you click on the picture. Some of the goods inside were awesome! I loved the flags! I even liked the marmite, but I was the only one in the family who did. I liked the marmite biscuits also. Nobody else did. The sweets were welcomed though. The first thing we opened was the Curly Wurly because we remembered seeing the Vicar of Dibly drown her emotional pain in piles and piles of Curly Wurly's, so we had to see what all the fuss was about. It was pretty good! The kids loved many of the other candies, which we are still handing out slowly and with great ceremony because we all want to give it a try. I also loved the Lamb and Mint crisps (that's 'chips' in American English, you understand..). One of the funniest things was a menu from an "American style" restaurant, where one could get a bowl of Chili for 8 pounds 50. Man! I hope it's good!

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you to regular reader and commenter marmitetoasty! How can we ever repay you? How about sending you a parcel full of American bits and bobs? How would that be? Maybe we'll send you the proper makings for S'mores plus some other stuff as well?

Hello everyone. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening (depending upon what time zone you are in, and when you read this post). I'm sorry toadman isn't here today to post anything, but I'm quite happy to announce that I am...quite happy, in fact.

Who am I? Oh, I suppose you'd like to know. Truth is, I don't really know what I am. I'm usually described in mysterious terminology. I have relatives who think they're 'super' and others who are just plain full of themselves. But, the truth is, I'm the largest of them all, and hold a little bit of all of them. Some people even think that we have a collective, but I'm still too selfish to connect with others of my kind, and since it's physically impossible, I quit trying after LSD stopped being popular.

Why am I here today? Well, you see, I made a mistake this morning with the toadman. You see, I've been trying to get away from all that need gratification and pleasure principle with the toadman, what with him trying like crazy to fight the urge to eat himself to death, so I decided to try a different approach. I decided to bring up something painful, something irritable. While he was showering this morning, I very slyly inserted a memory into his waking thoughts from the past...a painful one....one that makes him cringe with anger every time he thinks of it. It was from when he was trying to get a job, back in 2002, and he interviewed at a college in Texas. He was acting on desperation, and emailed some people directly, inquiring about job opportunities. He was called for an 'interview.' It turned out to be more of an 'investigation.' They wanted to know how he got the email addresses. They wanted to know why he emailed so many people (about twenty), asking about job opportunities. They accused him of misrepresenting himself. All he could think of was his wife and then two year old son who he had to try and provide for, he was just trying to find anything in that dried up IT job market of '02. He was belittled, mocked, and he left angry and depressed.

Since then he's been luckier than ever. Found a good job, twice. Moved once to hell, then to one of the nicest area's of the world. He's gotten soft, fat...he's been feasting in his good fortune for too long. That's why I did it, I suppose. He'd been trying and trying to beat the pleasure principle of food, and it's instant gratification and 'feel good' rewards, so I gave him pain. I'm not sure if it'll work, he is weak willed, but we'll see. I'm not sure when he'll be back to himself though, he seems kinda strange today.

p.s. He'll get to what was in the 'parcel' when he's back and has pictures to show.

Last night, we enjoyed the temperate Inland Northwest summer evening with friends after spending that day lounging in their pool and staring at the big sky overhead. The sunset was blue, orange, purple, red and black. The sliver moon, only visible for a few hours, was specular even in it's smallness.

Summer is winding down up here, you can feel it in the cool mornings, and the occasional late night chill. The red glow of harvest time is near. Pumpkins are ripening, wheat is golden, tomatoes are over-ripe.

Last night, when we arrived home late, our two children asleep, we found a little brown parcel on our doorstep that had made a long journey. We'll open it this morning with our little ones, and find out what English bits and bobs we've been sent!

So if you ask me
Where do I go from here
My next destination
Even isn't really that clear

It's like a road, like a road painted across a lonely expanse of Kansas badlands. Straight, curvless, and utterly endless. I take my chair, a folding garden chair, you know the kind, the metal ones with the Fiberglas strapping that almost gives way under your weight...I take it to the middle of the road, place it on the white line, sit, and stare into the distance.

From where I'm sitting, my head now only three and a half feet off the ground (I slouch when I sit) I'm the tallest thing around for a hundred miles in every direction.

So if you ask me
How do I fell inside
I could honestly tell you
we've been taken on a very long ride

That doesn't make any sense. What does that have to do with anything..a road, an old rickety folding chair, and me sitting in the middle of nowhere. How far can I see? Miles and miles. I see something in the distance. A car. Because it's dusk, it has its lights on. I give it about ten minutes until it reaches my location and I have to move.

The air is golden, the sky red and deep purple, the clouds miles above me and thin, wisp around in their whiteness reflecting oranges, yellows and grey, and I am at peace.

If I had enough money
I'd buy a round for that boy over-there
A companion in my madness in the mirror
The one with the silvery hair
And if some kind soul
Could please pick up my tab

Lyrics: Marillion - Album: Clutching at Straws - Song: That Time of the Night (The Short Straw)

...and knocking them down

It's funny when people write about writer's block. So, in order to bring a little levity to this ultra serious and melancholy little corner of the interweb, I thought I'd do just that. It seems that I have completely run out of fresh ideas. The last idea (below) was just a strange experiment in describing what I was feeling while listening to Mozart's Requiem, and it didn't quite pan out the way I wanted it to.

This happens to me often. I have grand ideas and can almost envision what the words should say, or at least how they should make a person feel, and what images they should convey, but then they fall apart when I write them down, and I'm never quite happy with what I turn out. The same thing happens when I play the piano. I know what I want to hear, but my fingers just can't seem to keep up with what my brain sends them to do.

Practice, practice, practice, right? That's what my mom used to always say (right Mom?). Keep practicing, and it will come easier. That's why I keep this blog. To practice, practice, practice. I sometimes get things right. There's occasionally a moment on this little pixelated writing experiment that pleases not only me, but others as well. But I sometimes end up with something that needs to be tossed. Sometimes there are nervous silences and moments that should have never been. Everybody makes mistakes though, right?

Hello everyone! How are you today? (see? I'm even stealing ideas like that from other people now, that's a sure sign that I'm getting on my bike, they're lining up the ramps, and the shark tank is in place...get ready folks).

Introitus
As you sit in it, you feel the stillness of the place, only broken by the soft resonance of the quiet music that's just begun. You wait. The music rises, the men's chorale, it's low rich tones in Latin filling the stone architecture with warmth. You close your eyes, fighting back the tears. The beauty is overwhelming. You feel you may be lost in your rapture.

Kyrie
Then the music reaches a point that makes it almost impossible for you to hold yourself down to the seat any longer. You want to weep. To lay on the cold stone floor, arms wide, and stare at the ceiling so far above. It is the beauty that you love. The Latin is lost on you, but the sound is overpowering your senses as tears trail down your face and you close your eyes. As the full chorus mounts up, you have the sensation that you are rising on the swell of the music itself, floating in mid-air, arms still wide in order to let the music fill your heart even faster.

Dies Irae
Now you fly. You've passed beyond the bonds of reality and are flying with the gods, fighting amongst the angels with your sword against foes who are no longer invisible to your amplified sight. Light flashes, the battle is victorious.

Confutatis
The field of battle is astrewn with the littered remains of your brethren, kingly angels and vicious and hideous devils. You throw down your sword and weep in the midst of it all, seeking for meaning, for hope.

Lacrimosa
You drift away, on the wings of despair and hopelessness. Climbing up to the top of a mountain, you see the land below, all that you've fought for, simplness, peace, freedom. You see it all burning and dying away. You see the bits of your life drifting apart until you can't find yourself anymore.

Domine
You find yourself in a great hall once again, striving will against will with an unseen presence. It tosses malice and hatred at you, and you fight it as best you can, though you are alone. Then, without warning, it ends, and your consciousness drifts away.

Sanctus
Your consciousness returns, stands once again on the mountaintop, and can see that the land has changed. The clouds lift you and you fly down unseen and see that there is life once again. You see that from your deeds, from your very death, life can come into being.

Agnus Dei
But now you feel your consciousness slipping away for the last time. You are resigned, but you want one last taste of beauty, of love. To feel the wind on your face once more before you lie down for the last time. Your job well done, your life well lived, you want to feel peace.

Communio
Black robes gather around you, and over you, as you lay silent, peaceful. The cathedral opens up in your unconscious mind into a glade of trees, and you rise above them, into the air. You are shown the mysteries of the universe, the whole of history is given to you, the knowledge of the future is presented to your eyes that have finally been opened wider than they've ever been, and can see more than they ever could. The thin veil of your former life becomes as a dream as this new eternal reality fills your mind with grandeur, peace, and love.

This week we started watching The Return of the King extended version. We've finished the first two extended versions already, and I have to say that if you are a Tolkien fan in the least, these extended versions are absolutely worth their weight in gold (not that I even know what anything is worth in gold bullion, but it's an idiom, so I used it anyway).

There's so much more. The story and pace isn't as relentless as the theatrical releases (at least I thought they felt rushed. You can't rush Tolkien, really, you just can't.). The extended and added scenes add so much more depth and so much more explanation for the interested layperson as to be invaluable for the person unwilling to dive into the books. They add so many more lines of dialog and events from the books that it will please people like me, who know these books and this story as well as, and in some cases better, than they know the Bible and it's stories. The alterations from the text is more acceptable, it seems, in these versions, because we are given so much more directly from the source. We are even given things that come from extraneous writings like the multiple appendices that Tolkien wrote for the books, showing us that Jackson and his team did their research well. The landscapes and the buildings, extensively described by Tolkien, are as close as possible to those descriptions in the movie. It makes my heart leap for quiet joy when I hear a line spoken by Sir Ian McKellan that I can actually look up and find in the book. Sam's monologue (played very well by Sean Austin, occasional resident of North Idaho, I'm told) at the end of The Two Towers, wondering if they would be remembered in the stories of the future, directly from Tolkien's words, brings me to the brink of tears.

Anyway, I am a massive Tolkien geek, and pretty ok with that. I try not to flaunt it, wear funny costumes (very often), or speak in Tolkien code, but deep inside me beats the heart of a Ranger of the north, but I don't think I'll be blessed with long life as Aragorn was (played very well by Viggo Mortensen, occasional resident of Sandpoint, ID., I'm told.).

From our blanket in the back yard, we could see into the shrouded mysteries of infinity. We could see into the distant past and watch things happen that had already happened a million years before, to others like us. We loved each other and the infinite reaches of heaven above us were our backdrop, our curtain, and we let the future find us. From where we were, we were in touch with creation, almost able to see it's inception, it's fertilization.

That majesty became one with us as we loved, in our small human way, as we had hoped it would. We are made of star stuff, it has been said. Life came to us from creation, from God, through the vessel of the void, over eons of empty time, to this point, and we start creation again, in our small human way. A wayward and young soul, looking for a home, found us that night.

Labels: baby

It always makes me nervous when I see one in a strange setting. Like the one we saw in Wal-Mart on North Division in Spokane, last Saturday. It makes me nervous and a little scared, but probably not for the reasons you might think.

I'm not frightened that under all that cloth there's a belt of incendiary devices. No. That's not it at all. I'm always frightened for them. I'm always frightened that some red-neck dolt is going to say something stupid, or worse yet, think something evil, about someone they don't even know. I imagine scenarios where some grizzled old person starts shouting insanity at them, telling them to go home. I also imagine some crazed and uneducated feminist telling them to unmask themselves and find freedom from their repression.

I'm always like this. I'm always afraid for people that others don't understand. Not for the people who don't understand them, not even for myself, but for the people who aren't understood.

Have you ever felt it? That swell of joy, that warmth of inner tranquility and contentment?

Have you?

Have you ever looked at the sky and the landscape and the world around you and laughed because you suddenly can't believe the beauty you're presented with and you feel compelled to stand up and applaud because obviously someone like Peter Jackson has dropped a world-sized blue screen all around you just to make you see something that couldn't possibly exist?

Unadulterated. Pure. Unmingled. Undiluted. Real. The kind of happiness that makes you throw your head back and just laugh without any care as to how it looks.

That's how fun this weekend was. I'd do it over and over again.

Click the picture for more of the same.

You weren't wearing your regular skin that night, but I could still tell it was you. I wondered how many others in the crowd could see that it was you also. Surely some of those old eyes recognized you.

That night, with the Glen Miller playing over the air in the park, you were wearing your thirty something rugged good looks, loose running shorts, dirty white t-shirt, sandy blond hair and chiseled chin with razor stubble. Good choice. You sat at your park table, alone, with your yellow legal pad, and your pen, and wrote and wrote. You would occasionally look up, take a drag on your filter-less Lucky, a swig of your Fosters, and scan the crowd with a gentle sweep of your eye. You'd seen these people before, I could tell.

The last time you'd seen these people was when you had almost won, the second time in your history that you'd almost defeated your enemy. With resentment in your face for the fact that you were cast out a second time, you bent your arm back to your yellow legal pad, flipped a page full of scrawl, and continued to write on a clean sheet, smoke curling around your face and up through your hanging hair.

You still have a chance, your latest work is doing well to destroy. Keep it up, don't lose faith, you may yet win in the end, despite what the other story says. Perhaps one day you can replace that story, with your own story. But for now, I think you should stop writing, Paradise can wait. Sit back, and enjoy the music, just this once.

This post is for the person I interacted with on 3rd avenue in Downtown Spokane this morning.

I'm very sorry that I drifted to the right side of my lane this morning, interrupting your very important and stressful life. I'm very sorry that you felt this minor traffic infraction was worthy of a three second blast of your horn, completed by flipping me the bird as you passed me by. I notice that you are a woman, perhaps you are happy that you have once again destroyed the stereotype of the bad woman driver by pointing out that I, as a man, made the mistake, not you. I sincerely hope (though you didn't seem to at the time) you enjoyed the kiss that I blew you as you drove past, and put it to good use.

Have a nice day.

I see a human factory of flesh and blood. We are all a part. I turn inward, looking past the chemicals, past the neurons and electrical pulses, to something else...a hole, a tiny space there in my head, that part of me that is never visible.

The trees speak to us, the rivers, the very air. But we filter it, control it, dam it. We'd rather anesthetize them and keep them from running rampant, wild, uncontrolled. Yet we are fascinated by 'wild' things. When they're not us, we take pictures of them, when they are, we lock them away or call them drop outs.

The human factory of flesh and blood is calling, time for all of us to make our way to our stations, to help stamp out the future. Wheeling along paths of deadly metal, toward meaningless places. I traverse the void alone, filling it with what I deem important, what I see as meaningful.

..by His Bobness yesterday.

It was a good time, looking for the elusive, yet massively tasty Huckleberry of the Inland Northwest.

We scrambled and clawed our way up a steep hill, working very hard for a berry. I thought, maybe too hard, until I turned around and sat down on the steep incline, and looked out back across the valley between us, and the summit of Mt. Spokane....I just sat for a while, and took it in. My youngest son sat next to me and took in berry after berry off the little bush we'd sat by, my oldest son stumbled around eating berry after berry, my wife clawed her way through the bramble filling a bag full of purple goodness. This is tough work I said aloud, to nobody, but look at that.

Bob was off mowing through the underbrush somewhere above us like a massive Norse bulldozer, occasionally stopping and filling his own bag, doing his quiet bob thing.

Later, we abandoned the view, and went to a more dappled sort of area that we were surprised still had berries as well.

All in all, it was a good time. The boys got filthy dirty with dust (pictures to come) and full of berries, and a good time was had by all.

Some people like blogs because they are "personal journals." So, because of this, I'm writing what I would consider a journal-like post of amazingly boring proportions.

Anyway, here goes.

Last night, we went to Audubon park, near our home here in Spokane, and sat in the cool shade of a hundred mighty pine trees that nearly touched the sky, and listened to music from an era when right was right, and wrong was wrong, when evil was easy to see, when women were women, and men were sometimes women but nobody ever asked, so nobody told. We listened to music from the the Rosy the Riveter years in our nations history...a time of night watches and "lights out!" and "Uncle Sam wants YOU!"

It was fun. All that Glen Miller and other-composers-who's-names-I-can't-wretch-out-of-my-rusty-brain's music wafted over us like nostalgia on the wind. Or maybe it was cigarette smoke and the smell of alcohol...oh well, they're both kinda the same anyway.

There was the old lady who sat about ten yards from our little red blanketed encampment, and laughed as the boys ran around and tackled each other, there was the old shaky guy who sat his chair right behind us about ten feet and shook his head and scowled at the boys. I couldn't tell if the shaking of his head was actual disapproval, or some sort of tremor, so I spared him my glaring eye. Later, I decided that it was disapproval, since he took his chair and shuffled away to some other location that didn't have a long haired dad swinging his children around by their arms between him and the musicians.

We always sit toward the back...way back. We try to avoid the tightness of the geriatric crowd that's toward the front, and the others just a bit further out who've brought their kitchen table, full set of dinner ware, and three bottles of Beaujolais. We also try to avoid the thirty-something single yuppies and their oh-so-more-important-than-you talk. I've found that thirty something married couples with children, like ourselves, don't even exist in their world as they sit and drink their fruity white wine from giant glass goblets and eat herb roasted chicken out of expensive L.L. Bean embroidered wicker picnic baskets.

We sit with the stragglers, the outcasts, the people who've brought dogs and frisbees and footballs to throw. We sit where our kids have room to run around in circles and don't have to worry about stepping on someones plate of yankee mayonnaise filled potato salad (mustard potato salad is the only REAL potato salad!). We sit alone with the people who came alone, the ones who look with longing at the cul-de-sac yuppies and dream of a life where people notice them.

When the big band plays the Armed Forces Medley, the one where everyone who's served in the armed forces stands up when their anthem is played, I stand on my knees, head between my two boys heads, and talk to them about war, about battles, about the armed forces, and point out the old grey headed men who struggle to their feet when each of the anthems is played. I tell my boys that it's very likely that some of those men were in "battles." That's how my boys understand it...war, that is. It's a battle of good guys against bad guys. Just pick your side and play. It takes on a whole new meaning when this song is played, and I point out that battle and war are real, that many of the men who went, didn't come back. I think the older boy understands this now, the younger one just wants to throw the ball. We stand at the end, we clap for the veterans, then we dance like there's no tomorrow during the next song, because indeed, nobody knows what tomorrow may bring.

Sometimes there's nothing more I can say about anything. Nothing more I can say about war, about conflict, about why people hate and kill. Sometimes there's nothing more I can do about the state of the world, after all the studies have been done, all the thinking, all the reading, all of it about why people do, say and act the way they do...sometimes sitting back and just looking on in disbelief is all that's left.

I can't say anything that will change the conflict in the middle east. I can't do anything that will sway the tide of war in Iraq. Like grasping at clouds, as a much better writer put it this morning*, there's nothing solid to hold on to, nothing to pull on, nothing to push away.

So we do what we can do, to enjoy life anyway. The simple pleasure of a cup of coffee, the smell of the earth, the sound of child's voice or the touch of a lover's hand. These are the things that we can hold on to, these things are worth fighting for, nothing else. That there is some good in this world, that's what Samwise said. We find the good, hold on to it, and enjoy it.

*This post inspired by Scott's post I Take Up Arms