Adeodatus in Wonderland

This must be what it feels like to face the inevitable with unfounded hope. Like a child who lays awake at night, knowing that mom is going to stumble into the apartment drunk, but still thinks and prays that tonight will be different. Or a patient who has been told that radiation has a slight chance of destroying the cancer, but in reality the beast has spread too far.

J. & I went fishing last week up Clear Creek. He very nearly caught his first All By Himself trout on his flyrod. It’s not an easy thing, to put all the pieces together. He got the cast down, and his hopper fly found a perfect drift down the side of a run. But stripping in all that slack line slipped his mind every time, so that quick, slashing rise never turned into a hooked trout. I managed to snap the top section of my Winston while he built a stone dam in a side current. But the rod's under warranty, so I merely grumbled. No need for hope at this point. Hope does not concern itself with what is seen or promised or under warranty.

Two days later it showed up on my left calf, a familiar rash with oozing blisters and a consuming itch. The only poison oak I'd ever heard of in Colorado was in Castlewood Canyon, and I knew that a vicious sort of poison ivy grows down by Mesa Verde. But the wicked plant in the mountains? This ought not be. But it was. (In all probability, it grew along a tea-colored tributary trickle we tried fishing along the road below Blackhawk, not Clear Creek proper. That makes more sense - wickedness from that gambling town must flow downhill).

Usually I feel it first around my lips. Ever since that first encounter in fourth grade, when we had to scurry through the woods to get to the fishing hole on the James River, a tingling itch around my lips has been the harbinger of a whole-body outbreak. That didn't happen this time. Thus, I hoped. "Maybe this time it will just stay around the point of initial contact. Maybe since I can't feel anything on my lips, I will be spared the slow outbreak..." I still entertain that hope, even as it has spread up both legs, across my rear, and up the left side of my belly. A few red rashes have even made it up to my face. But the lips are still fine. I still hope.

You might think that these are the fingers of someone who has been hard at work doing manual labor. Would you look at the grime around those nails?! Nope! We just dyed some stuff with black RIT dye, and now my fingers give false testimony. This got me thinking, though: you know how some lazy ladies get tatoo'd eyeliner? Well, for those of us who sit at desks and use our heads for a living, we could get grime tatoo's on our fingers! No more would we have to remember to pop the hood and rub some engine gunk on our fingers before hanging out in a blue collar bar or helping a union neighbor with his deck. Permanent Workin' Man (TM)! The future of manual labor is now! 

Busy morning! Got up at 3:53 to finish grading these theology papers. The birds started chirping around 4:40, and the noises of industry and economy weren't far behind.

I'm now on my second small mug of Greek coffee. Mind you -- this is the same beverage as Turkish Coffee,Arabic Coffee, and even Baltic Coffee. I've never known an identical product to be grabbed so lustily by such a diverse group, ethnically, religously and geographically. To be fair, the Arabs put spices in their powered Joe (mainly cardamom), which makes that a distinct brew (better, really). But it's all cheap coffee pulverized to a fine powdered and boiled up with a little sugar. It all leaves the same sludge in the bottom of the little cup, and it all wakes you right up. (How can I be sure that this wee mug of coffee is Greek, then? Provenance, my friend! I bought it in Athens, and I recognize all the funny letters on the bag as similar to those in my UBS4)

You would think that this coffee would provide a unifying force behind the greater Mediterranean region. How can the Balkans be so fractured when every morning they perform the same ritual and sit down to sip the same sludge? Turks and Kurds, Palestinians and Jordanians, Croatians and Greeks -- why can't they all just get along? You see this sort of unity plainly here in the United States. For example, take the Tire Store. It doesn't matter what kind of car you drove, your race or religion; we all drink the same bad, weak coffee from polystyrene cups as we wait. A community surrounded by 4x4 magazines and Monuments of Vulcanized Rubber, blowing steam off our communal brew. You might not see us weeping together, or hoisting a bridegroom onto our shoulders in shared joy, but you also don't see us taking people with particular nose-shapes out back to be executed. Indeed, coffee has that sort of soothing effect on us here (in curious contradiction to its chemical properties).

Back to grading now that my spirit is quieted within me, and the spiritual unity I enjoy with these students is highlighted by the fact that (I assume. Who wouldn't? This is America!) I could sit down to a cup of any sort of coffee with them. Dripped. Percolated. Espresso. Pressed. Even this boilded stuff.

THIS is what I'm talking about! Coasters in Colorado are supposed to be mere formalities, simple accoutrements to provide us with more possible wedding presents. Forget NYC freezing solid -- this is the sort of climatic upheaval you should be worried about
 

I was hours away from getting grass onto my front yard. HOURS. All the wee patch of land needs is a bit of dirt moved from here to there, and a bit of grooming with a landscape rake. That's all. But the Almightly seems to think it more important that I repaired the relationship with my spouse, and pour his grace on a parched land in the meantime. Still, I am getting a little tired of having this small expanse of dirt hanging over my head.

Yesterday we met my folks at Fox Run Park, north of the Springs, for a Fathers' Day picnic. We enjoyed a tasty brunch under an octagonal pavilion while the world raged around us. A wind-blown downpour was accompanied by nearby lightening strikes, deafening thunder, and ten minutes of hail. Dad told me this morning that a tornado even touched down not too far away.

Today my plan was to sit out on the porch, smoke a cigar, and get cranking on some of these theology papers I have sitting before me. But it's cold and wet out there, so I will sit here at my desk, forego the smoke, and drink a few cups of tea. And try really hard not to be distracted by this computer here. Unlike this here distraction.

So.

Here I go.

I took a long walk in the rain this afternoon. It smelled so unlike Colorado, and so much like other parts of the nation where people have never had to think about installing micro-irrigation to their Xeriscaped yards.

I rescued a squirrel from drowning in a dumpster. At least, I gave it an avenue of egress. The pitiful creature sat in 1/4 inch of water staring up at the sky. A dying tree nearby gave up enough branches to build a squirrel friendly ladder. Whether the creature made use its salvation is unknown at this point.

But while I was waiting under a tree to see if it managed the strength to climb its stairway toward heaven, this thought struck me between the eyes like a baseball bat: I am 1/2 done with actively parenting my first son. He turned 9 several months ago, and I don't imagine the lad not going to college when he becomes an adult. What are the chances that I will drastically improve at being dad in the next 9 years? I'm hoping they are better than the track record would seem to indicate.

I was trying to find some jazz to listen to on Shoutcast, but ended up here listening to the interminable “The End” by the Doors. I am listening to it simply because it has been nearly two decades since the high-school me tried to buy the lie that the troubled poetic spirit of Morrison should be freed through my stereo. I have come to my senses, and please put me on record for this sentiment: Jim Morrison was nothing more than a fool, confusing his chemically jacked-up state with creativity. Let’s look at his profound masquerade on this song, shall we?

“Ride the snake, ride the snake
To the lake, the ancient lake, baby
The snake is long, seven miles
Ride the snake...he's old, and his skin is cold”

“He went into the room where his sister lived, and...then he
Paid a visit to his brother, and then he
He walked on down the hall, and
And he came to a door...and he looked inside
Father, yes son, I want to kill you
Mother...I want to...[talk to you about something]”

Then, the barely audible musings: “Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, (etc.)”

Wow. A true spokesperson for a generation. Poetic spirits like that do not come along everyday, at least not without some serious pharmaceutical intervention.

This brings up pet peeve #6: pathetic figures with a modicum talent capturing our cultural imagination as misunderstood icons. We so easily confuse angst, confusion, and moral ineptitude with profundity. The Rebel without a cause has come to trump any genuinely counter-cultural agents, those empowered by a moral center. The opium addict over the tireless abolitionist.

There is a whole genre of movies here, where failed moral agents take on the role of hero precisely via that failure. “Legends of the Fall,” “The English Patient”, even “Dr. Zhivago” (Wow! Even Ebert
agrees with me! Kinda). These all specifically hold up the Virtue of Adultery, and paint beautiful images of the poetic sorrow flowing from such Verboten Liebe. And at least these movies place the doomed lovers in stunning settings. Celluloid excrement like “The Good Girl” puts our heroic Nora in a dumpy retail store and cheap motel (At least with that movie you feel as dirty and foolish after viewing as the protagonist does after her whoring).

If you take the classic American anti-hero like Huck or Holden, at least there is a moral high ground of sorts. Huck bucks all social convention for the conviction of Jim’s human worth. Holden demands existential honesty, even if he dismisses it himself at every turn. But these movies and the likes of Morrison rework such characterization, flipping virtue on its head. The moral-high ground is actually the lowest possible path, the muck of the swamp now peddled as Courage! Creativity! Inner power to dismiss every ethical norm not on any merit or logic, but simply because it is a norm! It’s actually courageous to bed another man’s wife! The height of creativity is found in the haphazard synapse-firings of an acid-soaked brain, not long hours of skill and mastery of a craft.

Is there a place for profound angst in our aesthetic endevours? Absolutely. Look at Ecclesiastes or Notes from Underground. There you will find no misplaced honor or adoration for the confused and destructive.

We ventured back out under the angry skies shortly after the hailstones stopped. Some dings on both vehicles (funny that the only sheltered vehicle was the Westfalia, with its thick fiberglass roof), lots of tree debris, and a smashed sunroof on the fort's roof. (Some things prove much, much bigger in their component parts than their whole - soda from a can which ruptured on my kichen floor, blood pouring from the smallest of cuts, and shards of glass from a small, non-tempered window. I scoured the ground for about an hour, but I'm sure there are still tiny slivers waiting to find a bare ankle or toe.)

But that smell! Beyond the normal delicious, new smell following a good rain, the world was also perfumed with the fragrance of thousands of bruised and broken plants. The spruces were especially odorous since the rocketing stones tore off the freshest growth. Smelled like Christmas.

I'm pretty sure the old shake-shingled garage roof will need some serious attention, too. Not a terrible list of casualties compared to others, and now we have personal experience of the terror the ancient world felt when thunderstorms rumbled over their hills.

Here's the mess in our backyard 

Apacolyptic hailstones at our house today 

It strikes me as almost surreal how this culture casts its problems – always into the stoic bronze of “shortages”. We are in a drought! Our reservoirs have not been full in years. At least two in the mountains are bone dry. Most out on the plains dead zone before August (where the water level drops below the outtake) Isn’t it obvious, then, that we have come into a severe water shortage? No hosing off of sidewalks or washing of cars on Mondays. That goes without saying.

But what do you do with huge expanses of non-native grasses that demand huge amounts of water (and potable, treated water at that)? I’m not thinking of parks, or even golf courses. (No. I take that back. I really AM thinking of golf courses), but those huge swathes of bluegrass used as space filler around office buildings or between sidewalks and noise abatement walls. No one plays on it, picnics on it, taps around a croquette ball on its steep slopes, but the architects could think of no better flora to put on that dirt than this bizarre, industrially uniform grass. And every new home popping up must be ringed with the same, a uniform aesthetic demanded by homeowners’ covenants (which also forbid using solar energy to remove moisture from washed clothing. Again – surreal).

And showers – this luxury of a long, leisurely, uninterrupted oblation has become an unquestioned daily ritual. In most parts of the world, you would not find 50 gallons of water perpetually kept hot by fossil fuels. Most use rooftop solar heaters, or you heat water when you need it. Neither would you find every citizen expected to wash every square inch of his body every day along with every piece of clothing, regardless of vocation. My old boss used to hang up his unsullied dress shirts (worn over an undershirt) when he got home from his job at a bank. His wife would have none of that. Wash those filthy garments! Sweatstained from hours of toil at that 10-key under the brutal rays of the sun…coming through that skylight and bouncing off the rhododendron.

I like to think – and it may be illegitimate or trumped by other perspectives – that this all flows from a theology of creation and place and provision. It could be good enough, perhaps, to rest my convictions on a platform of wisdom in stewardship, but then someone could suggest another dam 300 miles away, with all the requisite tunnels, channels and pumps. We would then have the water we need to maintain all this. Better, I think, for us to fathom our place in creation – our specific place on this planet amongst its diverse and fascinating systems. Strange that many evangelicals who make intelligent design a key dogma pay no attention to that design when planning their own landscaping.

This need not imply a fatalistic succumbing to climatic conditions. We need not watch our cattle wither to skin and bones to be toppled by a dry breeze onto the cracked earth when hay can be loaded on a locomotive and shipped from wetter climes. Green ball fields and parks along the Front Range are not anathemas. (Imagine Bishop Sheridan denying communion to congregants who played softball on a lush, green deeply irrigated field…) Micro-irrigation can make waterless acres of dust into productive agricultural land, and human beings can enjoy living and working in places where extreme weather would make it highly uncomfortable without significant technological intervention. Hurrah for human intellect! A hearty slap on the back for men and women enjoying grace to manage the resources of this planet, including storing resources and allocating them wisely to meet genuine human needs.

So let’s not kid ourselves. There is no water shortage. No global food shortages or lack of anything that human beings need to survive and thrive. We just have a tendency to bite our lips hard and make that square peg fit.

First. To whomever first invented the hammock, thank you. If you had a hand in creating the modern hammock, that tightly slung fabric bed suspended between two metal posts with its built-in pillow and tasseled fringe – I’m not talking to you. I mean the enterprising human being who first looked at a blanket lying on the floor, then looked at two trees, and changed the course of history. This hammock is as much a part of our summer as grilling, sleeping below an open window with only a sheet as cover, or showering in the backyard. Here we nap, read the Sunday paper and bedtime books, and stare up to the hot blue sky, kept at bay by a canopy of apricot leaves. Thanks to this multimedia machine (now playing Leo Kotke, “Bigger Situation” from One Guitar, No Vocals), we have even watched a few movies after the summer sun sets. The hammock hangs only about six inches from the ground, so you can set your drink down if you don’t care to rest it on your belly. Ahh, yes. There are many wonderful things you can enjoy in a hammock such as this.

Yesterday was my nephew’s second birthday. My sister-in-law had planned just some cake and ice cream, but we upped the ante by making a full-fledged picnic out of it: burgers, potato salad, and condiments galore. This meant making use of the communal picnic area in Michele’s apartment complex, which in turn meant cooking over charcoal.

Stacy ran into King Soopers for the fuel and a few foods. It wasn’t until I was schlepping all the foods over to the grills that I noticed she’d picked up petroleum-soaked instant light briquettes. “I meant, just charcoal,” I complained. “How was I supposed to know there is more than one kind?” she asked. “This is America. Can you think of any product that doesn’t come with choices?” Well, no, she averred. We asked around at the picnic, too. No one could think of any single product at a supermarket (outside of produce or meats) that doesn’t provide a consumer with choice. [A good thing! You think you can produce a better tasting or working product? By all means, make it and try to sell it. First, though, walk through Big Lots and notice how cheaply all those hot sauces and organic cereals sell when the market turns up its nose]

I drove a mile to return that industrial product for a bag of real mesquite wood charcoal. Real, Mexican wood. I lit it up using a chimney starter I picked up years ago for just this sort of occasion, and knocked the coals through the grate. With only a fork and some newspaper we managed to cook two packages of kosher franks and a dozen burgers over that most low-tech of heats. If I felt bound at all to be consistent with my aesthetic, I would embrace charcoal cooking for all my grilling. It takes more skill, by degrees, to create a tasty meal using wood. The planning, airflow adjustments, cleaning, etc. all demand attention and thought when using charcoal. Propane is utterly convenient, even mindless.

Though, maybe I’m not really inconsistent here, just failing to recognize how complex and nuanced my aesthetic really is. Perhaps there is a critical mass where complexity and skill can rightly be trumped by convenience. For example: concentrated chicken stock or tapered, knotless leaders. And let’s not kid ourselves, it takes no tiny amount of skill to cook a chicken impaled with a can of beer, whether the energy to do the job comes from gnarled mesquite logs or a shiny steel canister of liquid fuel. I am tempted, though, to keep my eye out now for a little kettle grill. Just a little one in case we happen upon some thick ribeyes that in all their marbled glory beg for organic, smoky heat.

Postscript: When the cake came out – a big ol’ full sheet cake dusted with cocoa and festooned with construction Hotwheels, N. managed to slip and plant his hand right in the middle. Not to be outdone, Nephew Scotty scooped up a handful of rocks and threw them in. It did return an aura of authenticity to the construction scene which the handprint dimmed. I have all this on low-quality digital video if you want to see it.

In a scant 33 minutes my dad will arrive. Immediately thereupon we will commence construction of an aerodynamic,gravity powered vehicle, the likes of which this block has never seen. The instructions promise an easy go of it, but we'll soon find out whether it takes an engineering degree or not. (Dad comes with a physics degree, which may not count. But! He did grow up on a farm, where you learned to make or fix everything with a short piece of baling wire -- those were dark days before duct tape). I'll be sure to get some pictures of the car's construction & the mad dash toward Race Day (June 27, on some hill down in the Springs)

I took a shower yesterday afternoon in the backyard, and used all of a gallon of precious water. We have a semi-private backyard, screened off this time of year by lilacs, spruce branches, and sundry bushes, so neighbors in the course of their comings and goings were safe from the sight of a pale, skinny nude man. I strung up a tarp to ensure their psychological well-being, hung the camp shower from an apricot tree, and lathered up with Dr. Bronner’s.

I share this with you not just to increase my google hits (Nude! Shower! Apricot!), but because it brings out what to most probably seems a quirk or eccentricity: I am very nearly convinced that our daily needs rarely exceed what we need to go camping. Fishing writer John Gierach stirred me to thinking along those lines in his essay Camp Coffee. I read it on a spring morning in the back of a friend’s Old Snowmass mobile home:

For years that pot reposed with the rest of my camping gear and was brought out, along with sleeping bags, waders, fly rods, shotguns, etc., for what amounted to special occasions. Now it sits proudly on the stove in the kitchen as a symbol of freedom and simplicity. Why would anyone need more that one coffeepot?

Stacy and I lived in our 1985 VW Camper for two summers (like this one but not nearly as cool -- note custom bumper PLUS its a Synchro) and I added another month to the total by myself a few years later. We got along with two pots, one frying pan, and very limited wardrobes. When we moved into a cabin for the winter (small, but anything is spacious after living in a Westfalia), we took our stuff out of storage and wondered why we had more than two t-shirts apiece, and so many dang coffee mugs.

Now I have three travel mugs, two favorite small mugs and two large ones. There must be a sociological law akin to the ideal gas law : we fill up the space we live in, given the resources and the lack of social controls. Who bats an eye at a closet full of shirts or a garage crammed full of unused recreational artifacts? None of my friends would think it that strange that I have three snow shovels and seven sleds in the rafters of our garage, especially given that most of those were found or given to us or got on the cheap from the thrift store. We allow each other such consumption as a social right.

But the One Coffee Pot -- there is power in this simplicity, much like the dynamic power realized in exercising self-control and extending genuine forgiveness. Everything tells you to supersize the meal, to nurse and enjoy a grudge. To stand up against so much of our visible culture is no small thing. You want an extreme sport? It’s easy to jump off cliffs or perform a double backflip on a dirt bike; try passing every retail store in a metro area without spending an unnecessary dime. Or equally as hard: passing up the deals available on the internet.

My point is this: unquestioned consumption and luxury are not good for human beings. You really like your daily hot showers? Fine, but recognize all the costs. Count them in terms of resources, infrastructures, long-term availability, etc. Is it fun to flip through your private 100 title DVD collection, and watch whatever catches your fancy (or to bring it to this home – your 300+ volume personal library hidden away in your study)? You bet! But recognize those costs as well. Pragmatic, visible concerns aside, there is the spiritual snare of collecting treasures that rust and cry out against you.

But I get ahead of myself (which has happened at least six times writing this, resulting in the lengthy time between posts. Sorry ‘bout that). Right now I must steward my yard some more.


Post-script: that's the web for you. Even with such lucid writing and clearly spelled out words, I'm still #3 on a google search for Nude Apricot Backyard. That is wrong in so many, many ways.