January 2010 Archives

Speaking with a friend today I ventured onto the topic of God and sin, and in my effort to articulate/confess my transgressions in the context of my perception of 'relationship' with God the whole affair became quite unintelligible and rather embarrassing. As an excuse for the failure to articulate my thoughts clearly I claimed to have been dropped on my head several times as a baby. Shame should have kicked in at this point but to reinforce my justification I pointed out that this fact shouldn't matter because he—my friend—wasn't too bright anyway. We got on famously after that as old friends do.

Well...thank God for old friends.

The spoken and the written word are close cousins to music my friends. All the jazz about triads and harmonic mechanisms is true in the more spiritual aspects of language as well. The moments that lift you up into the magic come when your words are extemporaneous and feel like holy waters pouring over your tongue. It's the uplifting force of call and response in an unsung tale of wonder. Hosanna! Released from formality, cascading and connected, framed in modulated tonalities, words tumble into existence like drops of water dancing on red hot metal. Yeah....

Grooveshark tunes make senseless blogging fun. I've got the Pat Metheny Group, Phase Dance lined up with Lady Gaga's Bad Romance and Morphine's Claire et al while I hit the keys.

This reminds me how I used to write while listening exclusively to the Pat Metheny Group. The idea was simple: One glass of Canadian Club, PMG and nothing but what I wrote. It was perfect. I might have to revive the tradition as I am unquestionably to the manner born.

Now does Grooveshark rock or what? Morphine is pouring Honey White into my head as I tap out these last few words. Outstanding!

I'm revamping the diet paradigm while I've got some time. Two books have been money for the job: SuperFoods Rx and The Nutrition Bible. I'm looking at the whole super foods idea as a foundation for packing nutrition into caloric restrictions. (I'm not sure how I feel about the micro-nutrient synergy thing but I'm not tossing the idea out, and beyond that the book makes some interesting assertions about our relationship with what we chew). The Nutrition Bible is just an alphabetical collection of no-nonsense nutrition information and wild claim debunking. I've pounded out the fundamentals of this new stew of dietary recalibration and now I'm working on cost control and lifestyle efficiency.

I know. I know. I live the rock and roll lifestyle.

Phoebe Nora Mary Prince. I read your story in the paper today. You left us here asking ourselves why when you were so young did you feel the need to leave so soon. But of course the story is old. I knew a girl, beautiful like you...the tale is the same. She hung herself in the shower. (It was her mother who's cruelty drove her to that place). All these years on it breaks my heart still. Today it's broken again. How I wish there was someone with you to tell you it would be okay, that tomorrow would be better...it's going to be better. Phoebe Nora Mary Prince, I wish you had chosen to stay.

Rest in peace.

I've been posting off and on about God. As I've adopted the idea that I'm in a relationship with God I thought I would just make a public confession of where I stand on the issue of the Deity.

My faith is quite simple these days. I'm familiar with many of the intellectual hurdles associated with Biblical Christianity and the questions that follow. I'm less involved in those issues now than I am with making a distinction between faith and action: I seek relationship with God, as an imperfect being, through grace, without struggling to reform my behavior. Call it therapy. I find when I come to God in prayer, accepting my forgiveness as a given, I am free to be who I am so completely as to be blown away by the emotional intensity of the encounter.

It means a lot to me.

You were born together
And together ye shall be forever
Until death should scatter
It wouldn't matter in the memory of God above
Let the wind of heaven dance between you too
Allow the space and time to bring you closer to everlasting love
Cause God moves
What do you do
God moves through you

When love beckons
His ways are often hard and steep
When his wings enfold
Ye yield to all he speaks
The sword it might be hidden there among his pinions
Oh you may wear a wound that truly spoke to you
Believe in all that voice and follow through
Follow so on and on

What do you do when God moves through you
What do you do
Say i do
I do

Just remember love possesses nothing
Nor would it ever be possessed
Oh love is love sufficient unto love
And you can figure out the rest

Your children will not be your children
They are the daughters and the son of a beginning
They'll come through your womb but not be coming from you
They will be with you but do not belong to you
You may give them your love but not your thoughts
Then they'll arrive with their own hearts
They're the coming of angels this blessed season
And then they'll sing oh how God rests in reason
God rests in reason

So what do you do
Ooh when God moves through you
What do you do
Say i do
I do

Think not you can direct the course of
Love itself directs the course allowed
Believe not God is in your heart, child
But rather you're in the heart of God

What do you do
Say i do
I do
I do

Think not you can direct the course of
Love itselfs directs the course allowed
Believe not God is in your heart, child
But rather you're in the heart of God

What do you do
Ooh when God moves through you
Remember God rests in reason
Say i do
I do

A reason for Wikipedia to be appreciated.

I've put an email address in the sidebar as opposed to taking comments. If anyone would like to drop a line there's the address! Contact(AT)jephnol(DOT)com.

Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen. A young woman—Kaysen—is diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and subsequently institutionalized. The book is Kaysen's memoir on the subject. This should be interesting.

Writing for My Own Entertainment
Second Draft
By Jephnol

This human was different. She stood still, watching him without looking directly at him. He felt a chill as he observed her. It wasn't temperature affecting him, he was dead, as cold as the air itself. No, it was something else—something almost forgotten— a sense of apprehension mixed with dread. But his kind knew no predators but for the occasional human who understood how to hunt his species, and they were almost always cut down before they did any damage. Why was this woman unresponsive? So unmoved by his presence? He pushed the thoughts from his consciousness and prepared mentally to hunt.

Concentrated energy from the core of his belly unleashed his form into nearly imperceptible movement. He weighed over 220 pounds but his feet barely touched the ground and the only noise he made was the rustling of his clothes as he thrust his form to within mere inches of her. He had moved across the 20 foot distance between them as though the effort was nothing more than a sudden, sharp inhalation. He leaned his face in towards her's and growled.

"Are you ready to die?"

She didn't move or speak.

"Bitch!"

Spittle flew from his mouth as he threw the word at her, and his face contorted around the tensed, bunched skin between his eyes. She remained motionless, though looking into his dead eyes her lips began to quiver. He hovered above her like the shadow of a building about to crash down and utterly crush what ever stood before it. He bent his knees and violently dropped his torso so that he crouched like an animal, he cocked his head up and to the side as he looked up at her, he bared his teeth and hissed, his arms spread at the height of his shoulders with his hands open, palm towards his victim.

"I'm going to cut you open and drink the piss that pours from your veins!"

Her small frame shook slightly as she looked down at him. Then he stood again, now extending his height to its fullest before her, his arms still open wide.

"Are you ready for me now," he asked in a voice that slowly came out of his throat like the growl of a junkyard dog guarding a dead rabbit.

She looked into his eyes. The subtle shaking in her lips and throughout her frame stopped altogether. She smiled.

"You haven't met me yet," she replied in a hushed voice.

He felt the chill again along the back of his neck and over his shoulders. Without a thought he attacked. The sound of clothes rustling against the static air filled her ears...his right hand whipped toward the woman and cold fingers wrapped around hair...his left arm was cocked, preparing to strike the neck exposed by pulling her head backward toward her ass...he drove his claw-tensed hand in to crush her windpipe.

His perception of time biased by ages worth of moving faster than his prey was irreparably altered. Both of her arms moved out above his left hand as though she was going to fly over his shoulder. Lead by her fingers arching downwards, both hands coursed over his bicep and wrapped around and under it locking his arm fully extended under her armpit. As her right hand followed through with the motion she snapped her upper-body toward his right side, unfolding her left arm so the back of her now balled fist caught his lower jaw and twisted his head to his right with its impact. His grip loosened on her hair. Following through, her left hand wrapped around his still free arm and she pulled both of her fists between her breasts, stood as tall as she could and arched her back. The motion lifted him slightly forcing him to stand on the balls of his feet and hyper-extending his arms to near their breaking point. He thrust his face forward to bite at her, but her head dodged to the left and her teeth peeled away skin and flesh from his cheek. She disengaged.

He stared at the small woman and shook violently, his face tensed around a knot of skin and flesh.

"I'm going to kill you, bitch!"

With his hand he felt the bitten cheek and then looked at the black blood that now covered his fingers as she spit the skin torn from his cheek into his face. He lunged forward to grab her shoulders, but before his hands reached their target her hands struck at the inside crook of his elbows tossing his arms up and away from her body. He stood before her once again with his arms open wide.

The arch of her arm as it swung before him reached the very tip of his adam's apple. The well forged metal hook, crafted generations before by the ancestors of the hunter, was nestled between her ring and middle finger and the high-pitched whistling of the tool slicing the air as she flung her arm out reached his ears only after she had turned and stepped away. He tried to growl intensely but the air from his lungs simply forced the black blood oozing from his throat to spray a fine mist in front of his face. She turned back toward him and smiled.

Leaning forward she whispered as if to an uncomprehending child, "Now...we have met."

She raised her hand, holding up the hook for him to see. With a flick of her wrist droplets of his blood flew to the sidewalk below. His heart would soon join those drops, cut to pieces by the very hook that would remove it from his chest.

What a world of hurt the people of Haiti are living in now, as if things weren't bad enough living in biting poverty. Help if you can, pray because you should. Weep for God's people.

Out for the evening last Friday night I pulled into the Player's Ring to take in a performance of Of Mice and Men. My review? Bravo! Well, performed by a strong cast. I was moved.

The night went forward at a local watering hole where many cast members where gathering. D-man was at the show so he joined me at the pub where we found Mr. Dean and the three of us were joined by Fling. With Fling in our midst actors came and went as we fellowshipped around the table. Young, lovely C— waited on us—by D-man's design—and she was willing to play along with us as we entertained ourselves. Good for her! Bravo! Another fine performance!

The rest of the evening was light and frivolous, a perfect event! My table companions were exceptional in their conversation and the coming and goings of various actors made for a jovial affair. C—'s constant presence, her eager laugh and affable smile capped the night with uncommon grace. Nights like this are to be remembered. Bravo!

I mentioned seeing the movie Avatar the other night. It was worth the price of admission, especially on an Imax screen in 3-D, but some people have lost sight of the big picture. Apparently, some folks are losing their minds after seeing the movie. They get so depressed because we live in the real world that they want to kill themselves. How do you respond to something so absurd? Okay, these people probably had mental issues before they stepped foot in the theater. I understand they might not have the faculties to deal with real-life issues and so they hide behind a bunch of primitive defense mechanisms to put on a brave face, but suicide? Really? As an act of mercy, I'm going to do my part to help any disheartened Avatar fantasist get a grip on a different perspective.

What we know:

• Na'vi fight with knives, presumably to kill one another


• They experience illness and old age


• They're mortal, so they're going to die eventually just like us


• They live in a jungle with animals that want to eat them and I assume often succeed in getting the job done


• They are unprepared for invasion by alien races with bad motives and big guns


• Uncoordinated Na'vi don't last long in those trees


• A rite of passage includes hooking up with a flying dinosaur who's first impulse is to kill you


• The mean Na'vi laugh and joke about how you're going to die as you try to subdue the flying dinosaur


• Na'vi kill pretty dinosaurs for food

What we can imagine (if reality is any kind of educator):

• The Na'vi war with competing clans over resources


• There is such a thing as a Na'vi slave trade


• There is a hierarchy in Na'vi culture and low Na'vi on the totem cleans the latrines and lives among the roots of the tree near the hungry dinosaurs


• Towards the Northern pole of the planet there are Na'vi with light pink skin who are considered inferior by the blues


• Acts of cannibalism have been recorded in Na'vi history where blues have eaten the children of pinks


• An insect known as Qua'a bores into the brain via the foot and causes the infected to experience seizures and eventually coma and death

Listen Dances with Na'vi, the list goes on and as I'm not here to hold your hand my advice is reflect on these things, comb your hair, get into your Prius and drive to the closest biker bar. Go in and yell, "I see you", and tell all your new friends about the perfect world of the Na'vi and how you long so badly to be with them that you're afraid you might kill yourself. I'm pretty sure you'll see hidden elements of Na'vi culture in three dimensions and living color.

My new friend, mentioned in the post below, tossed out a comment about her affection for Rilke. Turning my library over the other day I unearthed my copy of Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties and had it on the kitchen table for a reading. Tossing the pages about I stumbled upon this text, underlined years ago:

"You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

"Resolve to be always beginning—to be a beginner!"

I'd like to write a few posts I've been thinking about this weekend, but it's almost bedtime so I'm just going to poke my head into the room and wave.

D-Man and I went to see Avatar, a movie about blue people living in a green world who open up a can of whoop-ass to save the trees. We saw it in an Imax theater in 3-D. Very cool. Movie is in the must see category.

While I ventured to the head, D-Man started up a conversation with a woman in the theater. As soon as I joined the talking I was wise to the irony...she was a poet from Vermont visiting beautiful New Hampshire, so she was a green woman from a blue world. World's a strange place. It turned out we had some bits and pieces in common: A love of literature, we've both traveled to France, she's met Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and I've met May Sarton...okay, so the last bit isn't so similar. Anyway, she's getting her MFA in poetry so we talked a little and I tried to sound educated. Ha!

Funny stuff. She brought up the subject of travel and then Paris while we were sitting in the theater where Moussa and Gaston saw Batman with us! Too funny.

An added benefit of organizing my library was realized when I stumbled upon my copy of Kahlil Gibran's Lazarus and His Beloved. After a meeting this morning I sat in a local coffee shop reading the introduction and the first few pages of the one act play. The story concerns the temper of the resurrected Lazarus as he laments his return from heaven to the 'winter' of this physical existence. His beloved, found in that majestic place, must remain in the heavens and the separation is a torment to the once dead man. Was this reprieve from death a blessing? Are blessings always a relief from our burdens? How do we imagine, if we've even ever tried, the heart and mind of Lazarus the man? Good thinking comes from the reading of this play to those who are interested.

The Voice of the Master and The Prophet—other works by Gibran—are in hand today as well, after an inspired trip to the library. Fortunately, along with the shuffling of my books I've reorganized my reading spot with a comfortable seat under a very good light. The echoing cry of my literary youth tumbles into the present! Kill your television! Kill your television! For goodness sake read a book!

Such good stuff....

I often turn to PBS for edification in my moments of odd-hour wakefulness. As of late they seem to be giving an inordinate amount of attention to Frank LLoyd Wright, his life and his work. Bonus! I lived in Oak Park, Illinois and I've visited his house there. I'm into it! Moved to learn more I scored a video featuring his homes and a book on The Fallingwater house from the library. The next quest is for a biography of the man. Too cool! Man, this is good stuff.

These are the books, videos and CD's I scored at the library today:

• The Homes of Frank LLoyd Wright (Video)


• The Voice of the Master by Kahlil Gibran


• The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran


• Frank LLoyd Wright's Fallingwater: The House and Its History by Donald Hoffman


• Economics with Professor Timothy Taylor (CD - The Teaching Company)

Today I noticed for the first time the fraying cuffs of my coat. I've had it for nearly 15 years. It's showing its age. I looked at the cuffs for a moment, considered the degree of urgency in my need for a new jacket and noted the need was upon me. Moving on, I was collecting myself up for a trip to the library and I answered a phone call before I walked out the door. Cork was calling to let me know he had a present for me. I anticipated some sort of joke, but he assured me it was serious. I told him I would drop by his place on my way into town. As I walked into his house he met me at the door holding a Carhart jacket. His mother-in-law had dropped it off for him to give to me! She had graciously picked it up at a local swap shop with no idea I was thinking earlier that day of my need. This is a gift from God.

Okay, so I'm re-reading Real World Photoshop CS by David Blatner and Bruce Fraser and Adobe Photoshop for Photographers by Martin Evening. Good books! Every time I open them I learn something new. I'm telling you it pays to review the things I think I already know, and it's nice to find those inevitably unexplored aspects of the program that pop up while I'm reviewing! Every time I dig into the workings of PS I'm blown away by the power of the software. Time well spent, I say.

Patriots lose @ Texans, 27-34.

A few years ago I made a quick purchase of some huge rubber boots to take on a flood in a cellar. They were over-sized and intended to be worn over shoes, but I bought them hastily so they were too big for my feet and too small for my shoes. They served their purpose well, though. My feet remained dry in the cellar, and since I only paid somewhere in the neighborhood of five-dollars for them I felt they were a good purchase. Well, today I was going out to shovel the driveway and I needed something other than my hunting boots to wear. I put my slippers into the big, yellow boots and discovered a dry winter paradise for my feet! So I cleared the snow from the driveway in my slippers. It was quite comfy and as an added benefit I was able to realize a more favorable use-to-cost ratio for an already good buy. Score!

The chapter ID for the Isaiah quotes below was incorrect and the KJV text was a mash-up with the NIV. I'm up to speed now.

...but mine's better!

Since Jasper the Weimaraner has come to visit the carpets have gotten a bit mussed up. I hit the floors pretty hard today with the Miele and subsequently decided some re-arranging was in order. Since what was once the living-room is now the bedroom/living-room/gym I needed to do some serious Feng Shui to get the mojo back into the room. So I shuffled the bed and the couch, and I tidied this and tidied that, and no sooner than you could say 'Jasper stop chewing that thing' the room was just right. I even dusted. My Feng Shui is good.

Walk along the river, sweet lullaby, it just keeps on flowing,
It don't worry 'bout where it's going, no, no.
Don't fly, mister blue bird, I'm just walking down the road,
Early morning sunshine tell me all I need to know

You're my blue sky, you're my sunny day.
Lord, you know it makes me high when you turn your love my way,
Turn your love my way, yeah.

Good old Sunday morning, bells are ringing everywhere.
Goin' to Carolina, it won't be long and I'll be there.

~Allman Brothers Blue Sky from Eat a Peach

I took you from the ends of the earth, from its farthest corners I called you. I said, 'You are my servant'; I have chosen you and have not rejected you.

So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

All who rage against you will surely be ashamed and disgraced; those who oppose you will be as nothing and perish.

~Isaiah 41:9-11

Thou whom I have taken from the ends of the earth, and called thee from the chief men thereof, and said unto thee, Thou art my servant; I have chosen thee, and not cast thee away.

Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.

Behold, all they that were incensed against thee shall be ashamed and confounded: they shall be as nothing; and they that strive with thee shall perish.

~Isaiah 41:9-11

Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,
About a prophecy, which says that 'G'
Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here
Clarence comes.

~Richard III by William Shakespeare

As per my last post I'm forgoing the rite of declaring a New Year's Resolution. I mean, should that even be capitalized?

I got nothin'...