Plugging Back In

Our children each learned to jump in a pool here.

Each time, the strategy was simple: Jump into my arms and I'll catch you; then pull away and watch them jump for the rest of the week.

A new place compelling you to be somebody you're usually not and do things you might not otherwise do.

A few years go by ... diving was a first here, too.

This is the condo we've come to for the past 8 years.

Myrtle Beach, S.C.

For those who like to represent that they vacation here "ironically," they often refer to it as The Dirty Myrtle.

A neon parody.

***

Here a year ago, I was preoccupied, the momentum of deciding to move from where we'd lived for 13 years was consuming. This was a respite, a place where there really was nothing I could do.

Upon return, the momentum built, pushing out of our state of inertia.

We moved to the city. It was invigorating - but unsettling.

The house - Great Depression era - is intimidating.

The small size and lack of places to put things in old houses forced us to make decisions about what we could take with us.

It has been liberating.

There are things we have done without: Even floors, a dishwasher, ample electrical outlets.

It feels like you're living in another time, an alternate reality. Almost like going on vacation.

We often think back on our former home. We long for the conveniences but don't miss the listlessness.

The reflection has faded as the months pass.

We have a home. And it is what we know, even if it isn't as sure.

***
Last year, we rented the condo next door, because I had thought that I needed a change in my life and waited too long to book the one we usually stay in.

Life changed plenty.

I got this one in plenty of time.

It's been two years since we've been inside this one.

We weren't prepared for it.

We had divorced ourselves from our previous life. You can drive through your old neighborhood, but it's just another car in your driveway.

But the life you lived is sealed ... at least as far as houses go.

When we entered today ...

Look! Remember this carpet? Look! There's still a VCR player.

A dishwasher. Electrical outlets. The floors are level.

We have returned to modernity!

But more importantly, this place houses our memories.

Our past life.

A life we get to live if we make sure we make a reservation.

If only for a week. But we can come back next year.

And next year. And next year.

A bridge between lives that we didn't know existed.

What a great feeling.

In The Crawl Spaces Of My Life

I crawled on my stomach under this house today - and I grasped what it means to be a mortal human.

This house is intimidating, just by its sheer longevity.

Sometime in the 1930s, we're told. We're not completely sure.

The wood that supports it is cut from the center of centuries-old pine trees. They don't do that anymore.

Old Christmas cards surface in the attic. The plaster cracks. Coke bottles are entombed beneath, surely someone just as frustrated as I at how little room there is to move.

I'm down there because of the smell.

Black spots on the support beams.


Everything is ancient. I feel so helpless.

I'm both comforted by the strength but frozen by the magnitude of how old this stuff is.

Crickets are hanging around.

I knew this. They don't bother me (I hooked plenty to catch fish) - except for the fact that they represent that you might have a problem you don't want to deal with.

I'm crawling with the crickets. And the spiders. And perhaps the baby possum that I saw slink through a hole in the vent (which later would die beneath after sealing the hole; an outcome I tried to avoid but failed).

Choking on cobwebs. Waiting for the next lowly form of life to greet me and show me where the real party's at in my home.

The space crept smaller and smaller as I got to the most-important part of the house - where at that particular time, the most fucked-up shit is going on.

The rusted pipe. It says, "We've been hear longer than you."

This water dripping. Drip, drip, drip. Let's fuck up your shit.

The crickets ... they eat mold, they thrive in a cave.

And, on my stomach, prone, knowing that if some creature chose to use whatever evolutionary tool at its disposal to fuck with my life, I feel connected to our mutual mortality.

We live above these things. But we are interrelated with them. To live above, we must have something beneath.

And I'm here to tell you what's beneath is not where you want to go - because the grandiosity of the human triumph kills a truth ...

We are these things.

We are living.

My face in the dirt, my nostrils clogged with black fibrous dust, my throat swollen from .... whatever ... this is the foundation from which we're all living.

The crickets pop up through the drain sometimes. They see my life.

But they aren't looking for it. They're looking for the cave, the cave below my house that I wish was less a cave experience.

If a snake bit me, it would take me 10 minutes to manage the maze to get back to my space.


Then you realize ... I'm on their turf.

The view my dog sees every day.

And all these unsavory creatures (who really wish you couldn't come back), they'll still be doing their thing when our loved ones in the life above have got no other place to put us.

One with the Earth. We will meet again.

I am a mortal human.

Not unlike them, except the human part.

But that part doesn't feel so significant, when you're stuck with the reality of how this life - and things you think you want -  really aren't possible without the places beneath.

A destination, sooner or later.

Staying Behind

The dawning of Easter marks the end of our self-imposed reflection on what is dark and painful in this world.

The believers say that Easter frees them.

The joy. The colors. The family.

I feel burdened - burdened by faith in something I don't understand.

Or maybe I do understand ...

Humans create God, humans kill man who says he's God, humans deify man they killed after they experience the depths to which his message can change their lives.

During Lent, when it comes time for that stark realism of starting as and returning to dust, I feel most close to Jesus, whatever that means. I thank Jesus for giving me the opportunity to feel like that's enough to know God - but I suspect it can't be that simple.

I can "give up" this or that ... but I really feel that a season I live in year-round is simply being recognized by everyone else.

Then ... the white robes and lilies and incense and beautiful children.

"CHRIST HAS DIED, CHRIST HAS RISEN, CHRIST WILL COME AGAIN."

Christ has died.

And with his death, I find hope.

The life of a perfect man. In fact, you could say I have faith in that life and its promises. Perhaps even that there is a "God" that loves me.

When it comes to Christ rising and, in particular, Christ coming again, I find myself a certain type of Christian here on the eve of Easter Sunday. If I even understand what a Christian is.

I've struggled with this each Easter.

The joy isn't there for me.

I am here in this life.

The genesis of my faith is in how to make that life meaningful. Some days, I'm simply trying to make it functional.

My priest once told me, "You have to believe Jesus was resurrected, or we both might as well be wearing a yamaka."

Fair enough.

CHRIST HAS RISEN. CHRIST WILL COME AGAIN.

I can believe that, but - living in a world where I see people getting the truth twisted until it isn't the truth any longer - not with malice or pursuit of power - just wanting to believe so much - I can't argue with those who tell me I'm suspending my reason.

Not that reason overrules faith absolutely.

But what exactly am I uncomfortably suspending reason to believe in?

For me, it is the life, here, a peculiar collection of interacting forms driven by an unseeable force to survive.

This is where I tread on the edge of hypocrisy - or, I hope, maybe I don't.

If you see me smile on Easter, know that I'm happy for you.

If you see me somehow left behind in a Lenten state, one that I embrace, know that I am still happy for you.

The Thing That Gets In The Way

So did Steve Jobs create the iPhone shotgunning Busch Lites?

I'm glad somebody was on top of it.

War Of Christmas

I've been locked in this War on Santa for going on half a decade now.

In all these years, what was I fighting for?

The real spirit of Christmas, I suppose.

This year, I haven't felt "the real spirit of Christmas."

In fact, I've come to believe that Christmas resembles little of what those who lament its American plasticity wish it to be.

There weren't three wise men. There were wise men - and three gifts were brought.

It's no revelation that Christmas coincides generally with the winter solstice, and that solstice had long been the celebrations - the lights, the debauchery, the friendship - of long-held pagan traditions.

Christianity assumed the solstice. If you can't make them stop all the wickedness, make it yours.

And here we are.

Celebrating togetherness. Everybody agrees that everybody is supposed to be home. Lots of lights. Lots of great beer.

Fun times.

"The war on Christmas," they've said. "You can't say Merry Christmas anywhere."

What I have to say to that is, "Who cares? Your Merry Christmas means little more than enjoy the solstice."

The birth of Jesus? It's not his birthday. It's a time of incarnation - but a birthday?

Let them eat cake.

"Why do we do this," I asked a priest, "if it doesn't really mean what we think it means?"

He answered me with a question, "Why do you do what you do at Christmas?"

"Because it's what I've always done," I said.

Sound familiar?

That's why we do Santa ... because we don't want our kids to be the weird ones.

I tell you, I have lost the war.

The war that this Christmas is waging on my soul, my spiritual understanding.

I can no longer give a gift because I want to show how much I love a loved one.

I have to explain why I couldn't do more.


Every advertisement has a general "Christmas Spirit" it pushes. Just a spirit of emptiness - well-marketed emptiness, born of cynical opportunism.

Santa hasn't stolen Christmas. Nobody's fighting a war on Christmas. There's no true Christmas to be won - only the amalgam of a holiday of lights and festivity with the truth that it's just too popular not to Christianize it.

Believe in Jesus and marvel in the incarnation of the beginning of a new age.

But Santa didn't steal Christmas. We stole it from what his myth represents.

And the fat man can have it.


I will not abandon Christmas traditions, if only for what they mean for togetherness and beauty.

But I've come to believe - through a nagging emptiness that only lifts the day after Christmas is over - that there's not a whole lot there to have.

So, fly on Santa, into that dark night, spread your message of economic inequality and judgment. I don't have the spirit to fight a battle that doesn't exist.