The Greatest Experimentalist of All Time

I first encountered Michael Faraday in a book I read about the atmosphere, and eventually gave to my Mom (so taken with it, I was), though I'm disturbed to realize I cannot recall it's name. I want to say "Up in the Air," but that's a book about flying and airports (strange sort of throwaway book.) So I cannot remember it's name, but my mother owns it, for I bought it for her after I read it at the library.

Michael Faraday is portrayed in that book as a genuinely fascinating character, and I think, a lovely man. He seems to have suffered for his prodigious moral character, his faith (in some strange sect of Christianity,) and in his youth, his poverty. He is actually one of the few enormously successful physicists who started out outside the middle classes. Newton was a servant as well as student in his early years of College, but there seems to be some reason to believe his Mother could actually have afforded him a more normal education. She seems to have been rather parsimonious. Then again, should I endure a modern Black Plague, there's no telling how thin my dimes might become!

So, Faraday was unusual in his coming up from nothing. As is often the case (and ubiquitous among successful people) a great many people took notice of him and helped him along, which bothered them no little amount when later Michael Faraday eclipsed them; their ward became the Warden.

Faraday's greatest contribution were his theories on, and experiments in, electromagnetism. This was in an era when many, many ideas were floating around which would prove to be wrong and in some cases completely rediculous. Theories on heat being a particularly rich proving ground of crazy speculation.

Faraday seemed to have a considerable gift of creativity, noted by none other than Einstein, multiple times (Farraday's work midwifed much that Plank and Heisenberg established near the birth of Quantum Mechanics. His work, more or less began the debate about the split between the behavior of the very big and very small. He was also one of the first to seriously contemplate the notion of gravity as a force in the typical sense. Newtonian physics was more than equipped to describe the behavior of Newton's Apple, but had a great deal of trouble dissecting that force with any sort of ready classification for it's behavior. Farraday ran straight into the maul of that problem as he mused on "forces" and "fields" that Physics had happily, up to then, regarded as indescribable.)

But Faraday had a problem that, along with the depth of his insight, contributed to him having to wait till a fairly advanced age to see many of his ideas accepted. He was unable to do Calculus. He could just barely perform advanced Algebraic calculations. Kind of amazing, when you consider his genius. You can bet his inability to move smoothly through the language of science (Math, Calculus) was a black mark on his Physics. His contemporaries (in Theory) considered him barely a Physicist at all. And today, of course, nobody would regard him as one.

So, while he made penetrating insights into the nature of electromagnetism, few of his contemporaries listened outside of the Royal Institution (where Faraday lived on the top floor, lectured on the ground floor (famously giving lay person lectures on Science) and kept his laboratories in the basement, from his youth through old age.) Despite the fact that he invented the first electric motor (of a kind) few Theorists cared at all, since Faraday's description was far from the vernacular of Physics. Kind of makes you wonder why he didn't just go ahead and give six months to the darn calculations. There are, unfortunately, few in depth Biographies on the man in print.

In case you think this electromagnetism stuff is old news, you might ask yourself how well you understand it. Chances are, if you're like me, you simply have discarded any real attempt at penetrating the phenomena of magnetism, and electromagnetism, due to the perfectly obvious observation: the whole thing is vaguely magical, and otherwordly. It sure is.

Consider the basic ideas behind an electric motor, and tell me if any of it has an address in your subdivision of common sense.

For one thing: somehow or other scientists figures out that magnetism creates forces in regular lines (the iron filing experiment you did in school. Where you see lines of force coming off a magnet, by sprinkling iron filings onto a piece of white paper and placing a magnet on the other side. The lines of force are regular, and don't move or change.)

And: those forces, when crossed by a conductive metal, or wire, create a small amount of current in the metal or wire. When you move a piece of wire, perpendicular to the forces you see your iron filings describe, a small amount of electricity can be detected in your wire by a device that measures such things.

Faraday was the first to perform this experiment and the first to grasp it's essential weirdness. The first thing he realized was that these forces were not, more or less, explainable, given what he knew of the physics of his day.

If you stop and think about it, why should crossing a magnetic "force field" around a magnet or electromagnet create a current in a metal wire? Can you think of any reason that explains such an action (the production of electricity) at a distance (the magnet doesn't touch the wire, and vice versa.)

When you look inside a generator, trust me, all you will ever see is a bunch of wire (windings they are called, due no doubt to some clever cad tasked with performing the creation of them.) attached to a sort of spinning case (that looks like a bike pedal.) Some kind of device that allows electricity to flow through a spinning axle allows the windings to spin freely past many, many wires. The windings create an electromagnet, and the electromagnet creates lines of force, which when they move across the surrounding copper wires, create a great deal of electricity, compared to Farraday's first experimental model.

Again, the power that comes from a generator (depending) can be enough to kill a man. And all of that deadly electricity is produced by wires moving through magnetic fields. Why does copper moving through a magnetic field produce electricity? I think a description is easier, than an explication here, but this isn't the place for either. So many things in life can (eventually) be described, but somehow a description is often out of scale with the human imagination. Perhaps that's why it takes some degree of study and experiment in the first place!

Isn't it great that so many things are basically mysterious and unknowable, even as we conjure them with the flick of a switch? Why so much confidence in the unknown? Because the question, "How's it work?" doesn't obviate that it does!

Anyhow, Faraday is a delicious character to read about, and his interest in experimental physics on the bench, coupled for him perfectly with lectures (still in print) on "The Chemical History of the Candle" for an adoring lay public. He got the difference between science with a capital "S" and it's origin: somebody being hooked on a feeling that led to revealing, through their various disciplines (but also courage.) I read the other day a review of a book that pointed out that anything can be explained if it's purpose is allowed to hook the interest of the reader, or listener or friend. To often in life, the orator, or writer, of husband, or parent, or friend operates on the "just because" method of giving out info. Very efficient if I could only remember why...

Powdery Vines

Well,

One of my cantaloupe's finally ripened a great deal, and I picked it up today, and wondered why it was so darn light. Turns out that a rodent of some variety had drilled into it, like James and the giant Peach, and the darn thing was chewed clean, little rodent dental lines inscribed into the soft orange flesh of my fruit.

Oh well... it's easy to say you believe in sustainable things and organic things, but the reality of food production has always equated my mouth and the mouth of many others. It doesn't really matter whether you are sentient or not when it's a cantaloupe you are considering. What's to consider?

Most of my cantaloupes are lying around on the ground (there are too many of them), but twelve or thirteen are up on trellis. The ones on trellis are going to be fine. So I 'll just trim down the plant, and remove whatever food that isn't outside the grasp of unwelcome mouths.

The other problem is a bright white bloom of fungus all over my plant. I can't believe it's good for the plant to suffer this white talcum bloom. But then, I'm not sure what could be done about it. I haven't really had inclination to take drastic measures this late in the season. I feel it is unlikely that the fungus (on the leaves) will lead to any problems in the flesh of the fruit. I know there are allotoxins (sic.) that enter foods covered with fungus, so the common sense approach to slightly moldy cheese, ect. (cutting out the bad and eating the good) has been swept from the guidebooks as possibly dangerous to your health. Should I see active mold growth on the fruit, I'd be more concerned. Just a powdery bloom on the leaves. I'll see what I can find.

Try This (at home)

One day I hope to have half a dozen blogs that differentiate my various interests, so as to protect the few readers who care about me from trespassing lands that bring them no pleasure. For now, I do not have the time (my business requires still more physical exertion, than mere deskwork, and though I enjoy exerting myself, I will one day simply not be able to afford it (as it exists today.) When my business matures to that state, I will have a great deal more time and energy for other things, even when I am "busy." I imagine assigning a day or two per blog and consolidating my various thoughts (most of them occurring while I work, my work not being a particularly intellectual field.) through a blog every couple days. Something like that, to cover my interests, and provide a particular slice of myself to this delightful form of self expression. Oh, how the world spins at the finger of one's ego!

Anyhow, on occasion I wish to write about stuff like the history of science, where I realize my interest to be finally the flowering of a number of years of consideration on my part, about something of a pet interest of mine. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, so long as I can properly explain my motivation for writing about any particular subject. But it is none the less the truth that it is hard for me to realize how accustomed I have become to some subjects, commonly regarded as boring, as windows of wonder, even ecstasy. I am more than forgiving if you do not agree. Had you walked with me from the beginning, had you had the time, and a case been made for your interest, I know you would be as enthralled as I. This blog cannot retrace such experiences, with any sort of fidelity. As to the fact that it might sometimes bore you, I can assure you that you are in fantastic company.

The subject of thermodynamics is one that tends to loom, rather than chirp, like a piccolo, in the orchestra of the scientific disciplines. Maybe it is something of a bass instrument, producing sensations of longing, even as it stands back, supportive to, rather than defining of the harmonies that you discern from the audience. And this metaphor, while ignoring the basic problem with thermodynamics: its complexity in argument nearing an opacity for the casual observer; works none the less, due to the harmonizing capacity of thermodynamics to explain all manner of phenomena, from the stars to the dandelions that bring me to my knees (and cyclically to thermodynamics.)

It is not my interest here to pretend to teach you anything about thermodynamics. Not exactly. My fascination is the manner in which it came to be: the world (and communities, and individuals) that lived before it, and provided for it's birth, and the power, utility, agency, and usefulness that it represents, regardless of it's reputation on the street.

My encounter with thermodynamics is from thousands of references to it over the years, in periodicals and books. Even in literature aimed at the science world, it is often mentioned with a smirk, like a hippie might discuss acid with a ten year old. "If you haven't done it, you couldn't understand, man." Such statements make more sense than they deserve to. But that's a different discussion (though fruitful, from the world of cognitive science, and the narrative structure of human thought.)

If you haven't "done" thermodynamics, you still can understand. I basically haven't done them, and I continue, with pleasure, to walk her wild country roads, deep into the mundane mouths of wonder that I first stared upon, holding my momma's hand.

Two subjects in the last few years grabbed me by the collar and shook me regarding thermodynamics. One of them was the biology of vascular plants, especially photosynthesis, and transpiration. Engine's on two very different edges of an organisms systems. But meshed by a common mandate: to make real the mutterings of a plants genetic code. Only harnessing the difference between states of heat and cold (and harnessing the redox potentials of just about everything, ahem, under the sun.) can result in this fabulous work off anti-entropy: life.

And that's just it: we stand in life, awaiting the rain, awaiting warmth of the sun (but not only the sun, also the wind and water, warmed by it. For a winter day is hardly without the sun, the air and water are the more efficient means by which we truly encounter our home star.) Our elaborate organism's systems, break down carefully crafted structures made to eat or entrap some of the sun. The structures are not, as we are not, literally made of energy (well, deep in the workings of physics and thermodynamics, they are, but at the macro level, not so much), but they certainly have grabbed ahold of it, and embrace it in clever choke holds, so all of life might occasionally escape the entropic tilt of our physical reality. You and I and our food... all of life presents a great surprise to the laws of the universe. Such a surprise that a great deal of religions vim and vigor point best to God, by holding up his fallen creation: not our souls, not our spirit or our dreams, not our beliefs: but our bodies. The substance of faith! Pathology!

Fine by me, as I sort of feel it too. Life is unbelievable (or rather, best believable in a religious sense, ha!). But so to is a lot of other stuff. So the fun is in the trying to believe, to climb that cloudswept mountain.

The other subject is mechanics. Something I never expected to become terribly interested in learning more about (even though, as a child, I assumed blithely that I would one day work with metals, and other primordial materials of robots, and other cool stuff. For Christ's sake, listen to your childhood dreams.) Strangely enough (though it's seeming more normal to me every day) working with your hands changes your brain. You start to look at the world, somewhat like a linguist starts to hear the world, once another language is acquired. What once was a jumble of disintegrated shapes and systems, have become in the last four years for me, the parts of an elaborate puzzle, which even just glancing at throughout the day, start to fit together in your mind. I would never have guessed that my dabbling in the infrastructure of my town would have led to a similar set of fascinations with machines. I suppose the kid in me simply put his foot down and asked not kindly, "Say, are you someone who's going to listen to the common sense, that you aren't capable of certain things, or are you someone who is going to at least try a little grease monkey action." The kids tone, notwithstanding, I liked the sound of grease monkey.

Before I knew it, whereas before I could hardly bring myself to change the oil in my lawnmower (I destroyed my parents, rather expensive, Lawn Boy, as a kid by not adding oil to gasoline, a requirement due to the remarkably clever operation of a 2 cycle engine. Smoky, but damn powerful for the weight.) today I love to take lawnmowers apart and give them their due, beside the high school frog dissection, as elementary and enlightening to the inexperienced like me. To date it is a fresh miracle when I can change a spark plug (especially when it's beneath the engine of my truck, or van (!!!)) But I know what one is, and where, for example, it wont be. Like in a diesel, or a steam engine. They produce power through a different set of phenomena. And given my interest in electricity production (perhaps even doing it myself, one day) I couldn't avoid asking basic questions about what exactly the benefit of one engine vs. another was. Or what components were required to achieve a workable end, say, with a ram generator in a stream of water. Why does the water need to fall a certain distance? Why a certain flowrate? What's the difference between, say, an alternator (a motor run backwards, generating electricity for the systems of a car.) and a ram generator, and a regular motor, ect. ect. ect. Looking at the modern world the questions can seem to stretch forever. It didn't take long for me to begin to wonder about James Watt's steam engine, and the early days of internal combustion. A lot of this stuff was simply learning different different broad concepts like "energy density", which went a long way to explaining why we do the things we do to get around (and pay what we do for the pleasure.) But when I began to discuss this with some of my friends, it rapidly became clear the the most basic questions of machinery and energy came down to thermodynamics. There are a lot of details, that are basic chemistry and math. Physics looms around every corner of the subject of infrastructure, certainly electrical infrastructure. The reason high tension power lines are extremely high voltage comes down to the physics of impedance. It isn't worth going into here, but it sure is fun to talk about with people who work in the industry (while driving past maybe 800 miles of your subject matter.)

One of the things that has constantly inspired me, pushed me forward despite my ignorance, fear, and insecurity are some of the historical characters sketched with great vigor by some of my favorite books authors. I love these people. The carpenter who invented the toothpick didn't do it with a chisel, though it is tempting to wonder, how exactly it occurred to him not to go that route. Most of us sort of stick close to the margins of our circle of competence, which it turns out is not only smart, but efficient societally, and evolutionarily. So it is with a great deal of admiration that I read about the inventor of the toothpick, in the nineteenth century, forging machinery, and building with his solitary, bare, hands the necessary apparatus to take whole trees, steam them, carve veneer from them, and then turn veneer into toothpicks that have changed almost not at all in the intervening one hundred plus years. Against this leviathon of energy and competence I have to restrain myself from not hating my seeming retardation, given the host of available tools and expertise I have at my constant disposal 24/7 (even the 7/11, for a big gulp. The carpenter didn't have that!) A girl at the bar might say to me, "you can make walls of two by fours!" God bless her, I'm pretty impressed with myself as well. But Jesus! What is that next to the carpenter who invented the H2, housed in Greenwhich observatory (where sometime soon I will travel and stare at it for an embarrassing length of time.) which was the most improved of his three chronographs, the device that made possible a firm establishment of longitude, and therefore safe passage for the captains of seafaring vessels. Prior to a carpenter devising the chronograph, the state of the art in navigation was what was known as "dead reckoning." Perfect words for what often happened at sea. To some extent, not completely, but to some extent, a carpenter, someone untrained in mechanics, devised a machine, essentially a spring loaded clock of insane accuracy, which closed Mr. Davey Jone's locker. Next to this carpenters enormously beautiful H2 (which looks like a five or six inch wide, elaborately scrolled silver watch case) the McMansions built by dudes like me seem a bent plastic freakshow.

I could go on forever. And I intend to. For it isn't just inspiring to feel for these craftpersons, or instructive to realize you can do anything (today, especially.) It gets to the most essential truths of science to read into the narratives that comprise a disciplines growth. They came from somewhere. And that somewhere is not the rocks of the world, or the metals beneath a grinding mill. The Garden of eden of a scientific discipline is not the electron, or the atom itself; it is not the flower, it's pistils, stamens, bracts, and petals; it is not the allele's of abstract trait, that bend to a language unknown in any of their particulars in Linnaeus's time, not for another hundred years to be spied in an x ray crystallography; and that Garden is not even in the sun, as it warms your face, and curdles the DNA in your skin, inviting your very own body to a pathological improvisation: it is in the place science has hardly ever probed, much less described. It is in your head and heart. In the head and heart of the participants of wonder, and questions, and desire. It's so simple. And yet it is quite a challenge. How does this work?

Something as simple as boiling water, is deceptively complex. I didn't really know how water boiled. I used to stare at the pan, and see the bubbles coming violent off the bottom of my stainless steel pan. I was twenty three, and preparing dinner for my friend Tony, or myself. I think I was making pasta for Linguine in Clam Sauce. I stood there after a long day working on the farm, in the middle of the summer, with NPR babbling about the latest atrocity, which for some reason I craved to hear about. I stared down at the pan, nothing to do, really, but wait for the water to boil, and occasionally stir the olive oil, clams, and minced garlic that were contentedly pulling the skirts of their flavor into an approaching curtsy. I'd see these little waves of motion in the tap water reservoir of my metal pan, little fans of illusion, like summer heat off of blacktop (something I had a recent acquaintance with, be assured.) And I knew, "that's convection." I knew it wasn't conduction, or radiation, or some sort of optical illusion. Energy, I knew, was for some reason flowing from the hot bottom of the pan, to the cooler top. But the little bubbles that formed, and their relationship to this shimmering beauty in my pasta water, seemed frankly, unrelated. Convection was just something that happened in all fluids bounded by two different temperatures (the cool surface of the water, the hot bottom of the pan.) I should have realized that convection was actually an important part of boiling water, and very much related to the bubbles, for I knew something of the folklore of a microwave, and that was attempting to signal my pea brain into at least a fragment of a full blown inquiry. And what is that? Well, you know... When you microwave a hot cup of water, remember how before microwaves had turntables it was possible to superheat water? What does that mean? Well, it was possible to heat the molecules of a cup of water to well above the temperature where they were merely near boiling. To heat them to almost 213 degrees F. They couldn't really get there, but most folks don't realize, that due to convection, boiling water enjoys a range of temperatures inside a boiling container of water, only a small fraction of water boiling is in fact at the temperature of boiling. The rest of the water in the vessel is cooler, and that's how it sustains the second arm of the circle from the bottom of the pan to the top and back to the bottom. Once the water molecules are excited to the top of the pan, they cool at the top and return to the bottom. That actually makes it sound considerably more mechanical than it really is. The fascinating thing is that when microwaves heat water evenly, without the heat being concentrated at the bottom (or top) of a cup of coffee, no convection occurs, for there is no gradient across which energy can travel, so the continuous heating of the cup of coffee traps the energy in a randomized scattering within the cup of coffee. No current of energy "transfer" is possible. So you reach into the microwave and the vibration of your hand to the handle of the coffee cup adds just enough dislocation of the trapped and superheated molecules that a significant number of them vaporize, and seem to explode coffee all over the place. So in a sense, heating water, does not make it boil. Boiling is an emergent phenomenon (a lovely class of systems research, just lovely) of energy transfer. Complex, specific, and nearly as delicious as linguine with clams.

The above isn't to say I understand boiling. I remain enthralled by the drama my ignorance enables. I wrote the above, about boiling, to share my emotions, in a sense, about discovering something deep and profound, but also elementary, and crucially, observable by us all. This is what I love about science, and why I find it so shameful that science and math are presented as considerably harder than Football practice in August (which is ostensibly regarded as a rarified privilege. And I think it is.) The reason folks think math and science are hard is that the work is rarely presented as the narrative from which it arose. While it's certainly true that adult students will never have the time (in formal schooling) to hear the narratives of scientific epistemology, it is a tragedy to assume that you and I should not learn the yearning of ideas, and underlying concepts of the world to be known. Boiling water sings a very quiet song indeed. But you can hear it, and surely have some time as you stand above it, staring dumbly into it's swirling vortex.

All the disciplines of science have been composed by feelers as much as thinkers. Someone felt that it mattered how such and such worked. Since they felt, they then thought, and thought, then tried and tried until they felt they had something to share. You see how this is not a dry and cold process akin to the digital processes computers employ in our stead? Thinking about things is sometimes a mere obligation to a nearly abstract duty: like "just doing your job." But damn little of the wondrous world was first described by such a work ethic. The fruit that hangs at your library (and in the person of your friends, neighbors and selves) hangs with a potential energy invested it with passion and storied love.

I started this post, which I know is a bit disorganized, talking about thermodynamics. It is a credit to the scope of that field, and not my ability to stay on a subject, that some of this post has actually dealt with thermodynamic concepts: they are everywhere.

But I hope you sense that in talking about such a maligned subject to the person on the street, such a "abstract," rocket science like, field; It was my wish to share with you why these scientific disciplines should have been named "scientific shores." For it is more akin to swimming, and with a sense of exploration, perhaps even a frontier spirit, that one dips their toe into thermodynamics. There is more than it first appears to the black smoke that pours from one of a cinematographers favorite subjects: the locomotive smokestack. What you rightly consider received beauty, hides her delicate beauty in that smoke: but hear me man, she'd love you to ask her hand.

A Visit To The Burne's (For The Third Time)

This is a blog post I wrote at a friends, without access to the internet, and forgot to include at it's appropriate place, in July.

Good morning heartbreak. The last few days were instructive in a millilon ways, as well as indicative to me of the gold behind a willingness to stretch beyond what I would prefer, to the new place of stasis with my friends.

I have visited Chris and Caryl Burne three times now. And while I always enjoy myself, and State College Pennsylvania, the beautiful locale that is their home, I also always see the play of the generations on a number of my friend, David's, oldest friends. And the whole is a sort of class reunion, of broken, and otherwise relatively unscarred people, coming together again.

The most remarkable would be Toonch, of Turkish extraction, but now middleaged and very much a expert of and afficianado of, American pop culture, and Jazz. It's easy to discount the guy upon aquaintence: he's as pale as a vampire, chain smoking, and staring into the distance punctuated by small bursts of contention against yourself, or perhaps merely the sunlight. Once you think of something to say, and it becomes obvious this thing is not a minor insult against Toonch, he may grant benevolence upon your choice of subject with one, perhaps two short grunts. You'd be surprised the pleasure these grunts bestow upon your person. Who can say why?

Toonch grew up with David, in State College. I forget why Toonch's parents ended up in State College for, but I suspect something related to Penn State. In any case, Toonch was alone in David's school cafeteria, repelling his fellow man, through some strategy of antisocial self expression (something to do with captive flies, go figure) and David, as repulsed as a wad of sticky gum, sat down next to the sad little guy.

In no time, I'm guessing, David was eventually regaled with Toonch's deep knowledge of esoteric subjects, especially subjects important to children, and began his fascination with the man that carried him all the way to my person so many decades later now. Those little boys, sniffing each other out, and not overwhelmed at the odor, are still inhaling now, nearly forty years on.

I could carry on about Toonch. I was not surprised to hear that his muse (name forgotten) has decided to no longer play the role she once did as curator of the Howard Stern wing of his house. As impressive as his filing system was, and as somewhat bohemian the clouds of cigarette smoke always seem to suggest, the hopeful glinting of that woman, at least, was a seriously odd contrast to the cold, dark, certitude, of a man so in need of shelter. Not in those arms, Toonch.

This would be far sadder, had one not witnessed the realm of their creation. As it was, it stood once as a vision of Toonch alone... still does. This is far less sad than it would have been were the creation truly mutual. Toonch suffered in his loss, of course, but... what's strange and delightful abount Toonch was never that woman.

There are a number of other individuals less quirky than Toonch, who brained me with the Pathos and nuance of their lives:

Chris Burne: son of a famous chess grand master, and early childhood friend of David. PHD Mathematician specializing in a few games of his own, namely game theory. Designs weapons systems for the Pentagon, and consults with Quantico once a month, on who knows what. He skipped Quantico to party with us. I guess you can skip Quantico. File that away.

Caryl Burne: Married to Chris for years now, mother to three daughters, and homemaker. Extremely quiet, perhaps introverted, it's difficult to say. The whole of her voice comes from high in her chest, in the manner of a different era of American femininity. Methinks a fair portion of this end of the register can be accounted for in her petiteness. She weaves, in their beautiful open vaulted living room (obviously constructed, by them, over time... it really is something, their house) tapestries, and other gorgeous works of textile magic. Her face quickly moves between a grin and the pausing look of a good recipient, or listener. At her age, her bone structure and figure seem to indicate that she was a hell of a beauty when young. She's still got a chin you could park a yaucht beneath, and twinkling eyes. Her pictures of her over the years, however, display a woman who never much enjoyed attracting visual attention. Three years ago, when I asked her, while walking in the small neighboring town of Fountaine, "Did you enjoy your single years? My parents in many ways never had any." She answered in the most emphatic term, "No."

"So you were glad to meet Chris?" I asked in my usual manner of pretending to not understand the simplest thing.

"I was simply so glad it was over." One of the most nuanced, and honest descriptions of happiness (for a time) I have ever heard. Hit me like a ton of bricks.

I could go on. Caryl avoided our merry, smoky, boozing band like the plague. Never once, really, do I remember her enjoying her house with us. This is, of course, very strange. It is none the less the case. Staying in her house you get the feeling that you are being endured. But, also the feeling that this woman endures much that is not accountable for, by a stranger. "Don't make assumptions," comes to mind. However glad a person might ever be, it is rarely over. Till it's over.

Last, for now, was Caroline (not her real name) wife of Carl. When I met her, it was in the yard of The Main, a sort of Union for Penn State. It was dark and some smashing Jazz musicians were playing (they had been practicing in Chris' and Caryl's basement, while we all ate upstairs, earlier in the evening.) When I first met her, she merely seemed a dark haired, middle aged woman, with a bald husband, with a quick smile, and extremely broad set eyes. Later when I saw their children her husbands eyes came back at me, incredibly wideset, and beautiful: futuristic, exotically gorgeous women.

As I was talking to Caroline it became obvious to me that one side of her face was somewhat slack, even in the dark. The next day while going to a party, which she'd be attending, David explained to me that she had suffered a stroke, at perhaps, forty five years old. She's maybe forty eight or nine.

"She was a very beautiful woman?" I asked David.

"My God," he said, "black Irish." I could see Caroine inhaibiting such a description, and fought my rising pity. At the party I made an effort to ease my discomfort deciding which eye to setle on, and redirected my probity to asking her questions, and being, how could it be otherwise, delighted by the answers of this beautiful, black Irish, mother of two gorgeous girls. She'd lived in Alaska, she'd done all manner of interesting things. We didn't get a chance to talk long enough, but my God, I felt no pity at the end. More on Caroline later.

Chris Kids:

Adrianne : Abe

Grace

Keleigh (Kee Lee)

Two of Chris kids were there: Grace and Keleigh. Keleigh is nearly thirty now, and fresh out of an investment firm, travelling the world. Highly educated with the most beautiful curving eyes, and the seemingly sad nuanced visage of her mother, but obviously ennervated in a far different fashion by the presence of her jumping jesus Dad. Quite a confection really. And I think, a killer woman. She made a number of attempts to sit with me and share conversation with a number of the extended party members. I felt a huge desire to secretly get away and have converstaions like we'd had in the past, but there was no way I was going to settle my attetnion on this gorgeous woman to the exclusion of these toddering contemporaries of my friend, David. Duh! Anyone could guess whom I'd rather be talking to, though to a certain extent, with some individuals, that was not exactly the case. But yeah, I fantasized about an extremely long night talking with Keleigh about whatever. And I have a feeling we will share a lot through Email. Sort of an ace in my fly... so to speak.

Adrianne the singing, flute playing, keyboard crashing, musician of statuesque proportions, was in L.A. trying as all of the description must, to bust through the paper target, and fall in a posture of stardom. Her fathers face, when describing her, is probably something of a burden to his other children. But you know, beauty isn't very hard to see.

Grace is a very young woman in her early twenties who seems to be just beginning in the department of adulthood. She'd fit right in in Bloomington, with her knarly hair, half shaved and knappy as all get out. But State College has it's own pantry of such delights and I've no doubt, whatsoever, "It's all good."

Not much else to say now about the trip. It was, as I knew it would be, a mixture of pleasure and pain. Though the cast of characters can't help but entertain.

The Lucky 'Ole Sun and The Bonneville Mud Flats

It's difficult exactly to put my finger upon what most excites me, to write about, or talk about, or read or think about. I know at some level I am a generalist, and fairly ignorant of classical frameworks of thought (due to having never formally studied anything at all.) And yet I spy in my (clearly my favorite subject is myself) choices and enthusiasms a certain distance between the parts of me, born perhaps of pain I have experienced (as most do) or maybe just endemic to certain sorts of men ("yeah, endomorphic boys," my friend Rick would say. He underlines passages in the copious magazines and Times articles that he reads, then slips them into his conversations (such conversations comprising something like sixteen hours of his day.)

There are so many tensions between values and certain anxieties you get the feeling "values" and "virtues" were conjured originally to paddock these very things. One of my favorite riddles, in the realm of "values" and "virtues" is the question, "What, really, is the difference between chastity and impotence?" A lovely question to apply, especially metaphorically, to many of the mean emotions our animal selves conjure. How I love to remember the tiny distance between some of my feelings, and the humping dog... I rather doubt lust is elaborately different in a dog and a man. Stand between your lust and yourself, however, and your grey matter will conjure a great deal to explain that thin organ sitting at the seat of it's two hemispheres: the brain stem, the old brain, the thing that helps us higher creatures hump.

But can standing between your ancient, practiced, animal desire, in most any instance really be regarded as a higher purposed behavior, fitting for the supposedly cultivated appetites of man? Is your chastity, even in an instance, just that, a principle enlivened by your flesh. Or is it impotence, an inability to act upon the constellation of your desires; a fear that rejoinder with the old passions of the pack might lead to a crowd dynamics pushing your notions of your self, straight over a cliff.

Kinda funny to imagine that the impotent want it bad! Isn't it? It is only that they don't take it, even if it's on offer, due to some cerebral rationale, or physical immobility. Or keening fear (which Lord knows, can be rational. Rape, STD's, social stigma, Daddy's golden key to the lock around your neck (a common evangelical ceremony that keeps your little sweetheart from whoring around.))

I bring these things up to people on occasion, and let me tell you, opinions vary. The most thoughtful (and possibly most self identified as wimpy) really take to the potential for a mistake to be made as to the allocation of one label to the other. "It's not impotence, it's chastity." Or, "It's not chastity, it's impotence." The important thing to, sorry, the scared and wimpy, is that the universe, or our social and spiritual arena, at the very least, be regarded as somewhat fickle, and random. Bad labels apply to good people.

The vastly less thoughtful (and possibly most self identified as a billy goat or seductress) will consider for perhaps a tenth of a second that a chaste individual is not by definition impotent. Then the matter will be settled. They like this question. To them it is not a riddle, but rather a parable of sorts. Your entire point, in bringing this up, Andy, is to show the chaste man can't get it up, and are therefore looking for a back door. Then they giggle at their homophobic pun, and move on to other issues of similar magnitude. It is easy for me, or rather, used to be, to regard this attitude with contempt. And yet people have limited resources to address most of the issues in their life, and lust can seem more or less straightforward to the self identified as "normal", and as such, be a buoy to far more unpleasant existential questions. There is weakness at the root of all our aims for uprightness. And fear. Looking down on that is like conjecturing the worth of a woman on the basis of her size next to a oak tree. You are much smaller and therefore.... Weakness and fear is the basis by which we operate (and the probable self knowledge that accounts for our marvelous adaptability. Necessity, or feeling better, is certainly the mother of a winter coat. Hairlessness is a weakness, but sewing draws on fear, for survival and strength. A complex network of associations and feedback. Not easily labeled, though, for who has the time to think about this nonsense?)

The weak and the fearful (as I have been, am, and will be) have all the time in the world. The trick is knowing you are weak. And knowing you are afraid. It doesn't really feel that way.

The word "answer" is a fencerow trickster. One moment the terminus of an algorithm. The next the fulcrum of an elaborate curve, meant really, to describe a entire category of points in a set.... and not necessarily concrete (addressable) ones.

I will never forget loving somebody who's favorite line was, "give me a concrete answer." About God, or ideas or feelings about the world. My answers to her about my feelings about her were as solid as a rock. But she couldn't live within my faith in her (actually a beautiful reality about all of us human beings, most thoroughly embodied, sadly, or not, in women. I can't really say. See how it kinda infuriates!) She longed for the company of a people who lived in the forward motion of an algorithm. I have always been moved most by the balancing of the scales in every footstep regardless of intention. "To infinity and beyond! won't get you there," I might have said to her. She liked the rockets red glare, none the less, and bless her, gifted me with a little of the succor of such passion. You see... while the mind and spirit might not exactly meet, Lord can they sympathize. Not exactly a grounds for a proposal in marriage. Lucky me.

It is hardly rational, or interesting, to look upon all relations with this sort of analysis. Plenty of people have the perceptive fiber to understand their place, in relationships, or even the world, as perhaps one not meant to be shared completely, but rather complemented. What a mercy. Is there anything sadder than the fool who longs more for a reflection of themselves than the challenge of somebody who can see as much or more of them, than a crude apparatus that only a type of reflection requires? I have been taught as much by people who ask me questions from the distance of their tradition, spiritual temperment, and culture as I have by some who have strategized to help this man. That, I suppose, is why so many of my friends over the years have been so deeply unattractive to the mainstream of my generation. Mothers of friends, or fathers, with all the wrong sentiments and feelings. Foreigners who only technically deserve the interest of my people (while inviting mockery with nearly every assumption and stylization they template to my dominant culture.) Broken and weakened True Believers, who avoided for too long the cynicism that girds against feeling for the homeless and helpless; eyes best avoided, given the epidemic of depression and mental illness. All of us have mistakenly in childhood, prior to the end of our innocence (if we're lucky, instigated by mere sexual maturity, not violent removal from a sense of security.) chosen friends we later realized were either embarrassing or abusive. The pecking order begins earlier than that, of course, but we learn. And we remember the shame probably more than any instance of embarrassment or abuse.

As adults we are supposedly cured of such circumstances. Suddenly ready to embrace the entire world, in all it's complexity, we look back on the school days as a place of "hormones" and cruelty and stigma. People still come up to me in the street and pour their hearts out, slowly reaching back, further and further, till they finally get to the place where their troubles began. A triumph of humanistic designs on causality, these stories are important to listen to, perhaps even sympathize with, but markedly unpersuasive. We remain our entire lives grasping and cruel. We continue leaving our shame, and those we've abused or abandoned behind, our entire lives. It is only the pure technicolor of childhood, where we are expected to have open disputes under enforced contact with a diversity of people, that sets it apart from the adult condition. Most of my sweet liberal friends would not take well to being teased at an Indianapolis bus stop by a gaggle of giggling bus riders. Trust me, if you ride the bus, you will encounter, should you stand tall, and engage your electrical apparatus, now a common part of your existence, ridicule and provocation. I have seen grown men many times teased, as they silently withdraw into their private realms, their eyes glazed with the faith that their torment will pass, and their feet moving them to the edge of the group waiting for the bus to come. Just come... The mix of mental illness, poverty, substance abuse, cultural misunderstanding, and, of course, prejudice, can make a inner city bus stop seem a place perfect for the pigeon shit that sprinkles it like holy water. My nice liberal friends know when and where to get real. With some exceptions (and many across the nation, thank God) the bus stop is a step to far.

In order for a culture under as much flexion as ours to have the upwelllings of sentiment necessary for a pseudo-democratic change, a certain degree of myth making about who we are is probably what spans the gap. Should I put my boot against the head of every so called open minded, "spiritual" liberal six miles from where I sit, I've no doubt I'd find just as many bobble headed lemmings, as genuinely open minded souls. But that doesn't bother me. For every hopeful person born, someone certified dies. Given the vississitudes of youth, probably more hope makes it out of the gate, and into the world, than the devil had ever reckoned, given our constitution.

So my hopes are fractured floor of mud, willing to hold the roiling waters of change, but just as willing, I guess, to sit in the light of the sun and know that the glare can blind, even as it enlightens.

Hoosier Fisheries

Thirty seconds ago I was bid farewell by the host of the PBS show "Made in Spain." I need to look him up, he is a somewhat cartoonish, and fairly hilarious acting bear of a man, but the food he depicts reflects a kind of sensibility I don't see in everyone. Mostly just regional Spanish traditional food. I'll talk more about him some other time, I need to learn more.

It struck me while watching him eat barnacles (then collecting them off seaside rocks) and mussels, how dearly I'd love to see a resurgence of Indiana's fresh water fisheries, one day.

There was a time when eels, mussels, one hundred species of freshwater fish, even Salmon off Lake Michigan, all were part of what Hoosiers depended upon for a part of their diet: fish, and crustaceans from the capacious Indiana fishery. I need not tell you what happened next. It took time for the Ohio to experience the worst of our states industrialization, but even in the year of the Hoosier States admission to the Union, 1816, Chicago was casting about for a sewer, and Indiana's Northwestern riperian waters, being connected to the Mississippi watershed to which the engineers redirected the Chicago River, were eventually fouled by Chicago's famed slaughterhouse offal, and municipal sewage. Originally the Chicago River emptied into Lake Michigan. You'll never guess why they wanted to quit pouring viscera and feces into their drinking water.

It is astonishing, despite all of this, that even today the Chicago River itself is heavily populated by rich populations of fish and crustaceans (including tons of crayfish.) Needless to say birds enjoy this bounty, and so do we: human beings. I would not personally fish and eat from most any river in the Lower and Eastern Continental United States, though an occasional Great Lakes catch probably doesn't hurt me any more than the coal fired power plant that supports Indiana University, but somehow isn't reviewed to the same standards of air quality as the other coal fired plants around the state. If I can live with a coal plant seven blocks from my broccoli plants, I can probably ingest a few small fish from the Great Lakes.

But obviously what I dream about, and know will happen one day, is for the Hoosier archetype to look up from his/her golden hour glowing feed cap morning rounds about the silo, and remember the handiwork of the Good Lord. You know, the gifts of the land, and her bloodstream, her riparian waters. Almost any farmer, when you make a case for the fecundity of the land, will nod with the same appreciation, from their simple long reliance upon a constant watchfulness about the same. Perhaps staring out out at the freeway on the way to and from work has given you the same strong affinity for pseudo fossilized ancient forests: asphalt. Pretty amazing stuff, you know. If not, then I certainly understand. But the farmer, when they aren't giving up, or thinking about the hopelessness of their endeavor as an individual, has at least stared upon the land in a different fashion than you and me, and seen fertility and fecundity and sometimes even personality in the hills, and the plains, and the bottom land that pretty much summarize my more or less flat agricultural state. The farmer, might, at least agree that the land has a strange power. And I think it is a reflection of the financing of the farmer, and the trade organizations that have relegated what used to be works of love, like trade in seeds, and breeding of varieties, that eventually changed the farmers view (and the seed breeders) from one dominated by the mysteries of the land (or plant traits) to one dominated by the mysteries of Microsoft Excel.

Even the most seemingly conservative individuals in our midst, with the most inflexible of livelihoods to which they are attached, have none the less, the capacity to agree, on neutral ground, that the land is the thing, in the end, that is doing the heavy lifting. All the farmer wants... all she/ he wants is to get the seed in the ground, then get out of the way, to let the earth do its thing, God willing. Kinda interesting when you think about it, isn't it. Sure, there is cultivation (at least on Organic, or sustainable farms) and perhaps an herbicide and insecticide application, or two, depending on the crop. But, farmers know that the two actions that matter in the end, and which when delayed, or mismanaged will spell the difference between being allowed to continue farming, and becoming yet another civilian in the "work force", are planting and harvesting.

The rivers and estuaries (or tidal areas, if you'd rather) of the Hoosier State are shepherds and cultivators in their own right. They take from the still of the sun a dispersed sprinkling condensed of just about any water source, and direct that water to a long ago agreed upon compromise, a sort of controlled flood. As to whether the channel directs the water, or the water directs the channel: it's a temporal question confused by the quickness of our lives. The oxbow lakes seen from any plane flight over temperate lands will spell the evolution of a river, it's dance and change, it's supple acceptance of the rain's unliving promise: as long as the sun shines on water, and the sky kisses space, I will fall. You can understand not arguing with such an argument. It's hard to believe that the weather is animated by no intelligence whatsoever; it simply reflects gradients of heat in geofluids. Then again, gradients of heat in geofluids can be nearly as complex as some of the more basic functions of life. Without being too philosophical, it simply surprises me sometimes that rain is unliving. And that it's so damn old (as one of my poems suggests, a bit older than much of the Earth as we see it today, for sure.)

So rivers form and mold lands and deposit mineral salts in all manner of places different from their arising. Rivers bring the wet to the dry, and freshwater to the saltwater. They look arbitrary on a map (and I still sometimes can't believe that they can travel any of the four directions, the orientation of a map having nothing to do with their flow.) But there are geographic rules that have been observed, and can be relied upon more or less. By and large rivers dump from land into the ocean. They might instead dump into a freshwater lake, or into an ancient seabed (thus forming a freshwater lake, like the Salton Sea.) Or they might peter out from the thirst of the land that surrounds them, and end like they began, a mere trickle.

Rivers are usually surround by a boundary of riparian ecosystem, noticeably different from the flora and fauna even a somewhat short distance from the river. At the delta of a river, of course, this ecosystem expands dramatically, creating a huge swath of wetlands, that seasonably host drastically different habitat for the legions of creatures that learn it's habits. The most dramatic of these sorts of circumstances occur in the deserts of Africa, where nearly every animal becomes an extremophile for a portion of the summer, before the rain, and the return of the water, and green. No system in Indiana is anything like that, of course, but the seasonal rainfall none the less does effect the Hoosier States rivers and especially her ecosystems and ecology.

When the ecology movement turned away, in the 1980's from it's chief concern, being that it should be defended as a field of broad interest and many claims (and not simply "The Experimental Analysis of Distribution and Abundance" as one of my textbooks would have it.) the biologists who turned with relish back to the basics of their research in the field were astonished to discover that our enormously molested rivers (in America) were teeming with a massive diversity of species, despite their poor treatment. The rivers were far, far from dead.

This presented something of a problem for those who wished to continue efforts in clean water and air (conservatives and industry think tanks have had a field day painting the resilience of nature as shadow to the "paranoia" of conservationists. And human beings being what they are, it should surprise no one that protectors of the environment, are, sometimes wrong. So are Mom and Dad and the President and maybe even God. So what do you do?) In fact, our ecosystems, due to the clean water and air legislation of the seventies and early eighties, have rebounded significantly in many respects. Bird populations have soared straight out of near extinction for a number of the keystone species, which leads a person to believe that the underlying strata of habitat and species upon which the top predators feed, have had some stability, perhaps even success. This is in the face of an otherwise steady drop in terrestrial habitat for large animals, and sensitive pseudo wetland species like frogs, and salamanders. Riparian strips, on either side of rivers provide some habitat, but are famously popular with human civilization as well. So there is always the tension between civilization, and the complex unity of an ecosystem, usually not possible in your and my back yard.

My reasons for mentioning all of this is that there are many things I dream about that can come from rivers, lakes, streams and wetlands, here in Indiana, should we desire them enough to deploy a campaign of self recognition in my state: for the reestablishment of fisheries in Indiana. For the protection of the foods that were so long a part of our regional character: freshwater mussels (with what, can you guess that the native American mounds were made? Dirt? Wrong! Shells of fresh water mussels, and other species. Tons of them. I want them back.) Apple orchards that were established along the Ohio river, just as much a part of the National story of America (it's the Ohio, after all, and booze.) as a proud chance to point up, again and again, that we were always, since Jefferson, an integral stop on the Westerning dreamscape of our country. John Chapman, Johnny Appleseed came to this Indian Territory, and with a canoe sagging in the water from the weight of apple seeds, hit what today is our States soil with his bow. He knew a garden when he saw it (and even today you can feel the atmosphere of the Romantics, when looking upon that gorgeous glacial moraine that the Ohio both follows and defines. The hanging emerald forest and curved tobacco, bean and cornfields are enough to send a Calvinist straight to his hairsuit. The Ohio was the only thing that could stop the approach of the forest through most of history, save the fire of Native Americans, and the axe of the white man. For a very long time, a bird would have seen only The Beautiful River, in the wide ocean of knobby forest that the state seal of Indiana backhands, with it's frontier woodsman, chopping away, and a Buffalo jumping a log, still down the list for "extraction."

So, you can't give me a home where the Buffalo roam,

For even small ones require a fence;

But the waters are wide,

In this state I reside,

Wide enough, anyway, for fish.

I'm not kidding. It is fun to watch Spaniards falling all over themselves cartooning the delighted master of his domain. I sometimes pity my parents for having the desire to honor their own culture in this manner (and really, they go a long way toward this, but still..) but having to deal with the fact the Americans have done away with so much of the colloquialism of even our own local customs, that we sometimes can conclude that consumerism is the custom du jour of our people. It can seem that way.

This is not true, however. Americans when presented with an alternative view, to their own upbringing, or even self adopted habit, have in huge numbers sought a middle ground, again and again. Each generation wishing to gaze with Wendall Berry a bit closer to something less sentimental, but still muscular in this enormous gift we have from Sea to Sea. We have done the looking. We are not at the crawling stage, we are tinkering, we are hoping, we are changing, and sometimes celebrating. We will always have the insecurity of being only a few centuries old, and comprised of a recently integrated confederation of diaspora. Within such a confederation, one might find it difficult to bandy words about twenty generations of people on the same piece of land. Well, remember, we will have a fishery again in Indiana, not because of the careful preservation of a tradition handed down, but rather from the casting aside of assumptions and a placement of all of our hands on the yoke: for that's what we do; we move, with desire.

Then, maybe, go fishing.

A Song Flung Up (To The Seven Eleven)

Went to "Prayers For Peace" this morning. Had a blast. Could only have been better had Robert been able to come, but that is his path no longer, and I completely understand.

The minute I closed my eyes, after everyone was settled, and the Matriarch had said her greetings, I asked myself, "Why don't I sit in silence three times a day?" Gosh, it is so lovely to pray, or meditate.

The reason I don't is that it is not my agenda, or rather, it is not the agenda I frequently think is mine. I frankly don't think the agenda I imagine for myself, is in fact mine. It too often correlates culturally and otherwise to be imagined in any authorial sense. I have a set of presumptions, goals, and ambitions that I have adopted and call an agenda, sometimes. That's normal. And so is never stopping once to notice the sheer inertia of such an unconscious harness. "Prayers For Peace", despite it's early hour, is something of a slap in the face, given "my" agenda.

Not all prayer and meditation (one would hope) is lovely and effusive like a teenage evangelical, of course. "Dearest Creator" isn't likely to be the way I begin a dialogue. I doubt Mickey Mouse would say that to Walt Disney. (Some day your Prince of Peace will come, yeah?)

Prayer that is a thinly disguised apologetics for being someone so gullible that they are talking to poltergeists, tends to have the salient feature of simultaneously accomplishing nothing, and saying not much else. Usually a, "thanks," and "please give us some skin in this game." It's so freakishly common in the Christian saturated midwest, that you become completely accustomed to hearing the sing song nonsense. "Hey God, buddy, I earnestly talk to you about how you are great. By the way, I got this problem, or rather, my Brother Matthew does... Cans't you cast your generous blessings a little closer to Thy shadow?" It's no wonder prayer is regarded as one of the flimsiest aspects of the all consuming phenomenon of belief. It probably sounds patently false to say that, but it's not. When was the last time you heard someone speak as soberly in prayer, and as contritely to their Lord (Who, after all, they supposedly believe has intervened on their behalf, through a blood ritual on His kid) as you might hear almost any man speak in a court off law? You won't hear this, in Indiana, at least. Maybe in a Quaker, or certain Anabaptist backwaters (where belief plays a distant role to culture in the religious community.) American Christians are so busy fussing with the exposition of their proposition, their deal with the Lord, that they inadvertently become groveling idiots, before Him. A Judge has a booming, huge voice, but the Lord's is as advertised. And his answer, my friends, ain't blowin' in the wind.

So given all this drum and sturm (yes, Katherine, my opinion, just that...) it's nice to sit amongst committed Christians, and a Ba Hai (sic.) man, and just pray to something, for something, more like a workable field of hope, than Walt Disney. Sure, some of them amongst me might view the world as somewhat beside the point, next to the realm of their most proper intentions and perspectives. This view is philosophically challenging, and perhaps a bit magical in it's thinking given the struggle a human has in even accounting for the tiny slice of the world it can discern with our crude sensory apparatus. So we should turn our attention to some "no place" that amounts, at least Spiritually, to higher ground?

Well, yeah.

That's why I mentioned the agendas. A woman brought it up today, at "Prayers For Peace." She put it wonderfully, in a way I could not. And her bearing is so tender and unsentimental. These old cogers I pray with have been disappointed their entire lives by the world around them. Kinda spooky in that sense. But they all love life, and people.

We finished our two half hours, one in silence, and one where Quaker style you are free to lift your voice, if so inspired (Robert never manages not to notice the folks who are supremely inspired. This is the sort of low level mockery that gives friendship it's companero zing. It's probably screwed up, but a lot of fun. So there.) At the very end, the most inspired of all of us, in the Robert sense, and contender for crustiest man on Earth, John, was invited by Aase, our Matriarch (and contender for loveliest soul around) to say a final prayer, as we held hands. And John, without his usual paper rustling concordance of didactic commentary, whilst under the gun, invited us all to remember some of the prayers, and comments held out that morning by each of us. Then he did something genuinely lovely, and distant from the Walt Disney crap that SuperChristians employ to close their deals with the Lord. He took us on a tour of the prayers of people of the world, and sort of tolled a Global bell from Bloomington's seven in the morning, through Greenwich, England, and on around Eurasia and the Lesser Antilles for all I know. I can hardly remember so taken with that crusty cat's metaphor, was I.

So often I spy the Great Animator in the Sky, as an odd fellow indeed. Can't He see the fraudulence of His stupid series of covenants, with His Frankensteins? Whether He "watered" us in the deluge (and punished all but a handful of our pets, in the process) or He sent down wrath upon all the babies in the land save those who's parents had a taste for Gram Parsons minstrel suggestion to "paint another color on your front door." Or, He recognized righteousness in that pimp: Lot... the Good Lord can be relied upon for making some pretty cosmic "White Man's Treaties." And our choices, are always, it seems, right back at the factory store. Guess who's behind the counter?

[...and now for my "prayerful" interlude]

But the thing that gets me more than anything are the voices of the people throughout History, but especially right this second. Voices that plead with our CEO to merely allow for subsistence, or perhaps the health of their kid, or husband or wife. Or ninety year old friend. I actually take that back, for Robert has had a good life with the fingerprints of God all over him. It's difficult to accomplish that, but not exactly impossible, in this well watered world of Christiandom. But what does God make of the voices you know are whispering in desperate appraisals? So often I imagine the sobs of the world, echoing into the atmosphere, and out to metaphysical realms, and wonder: my God, if You did exist, and I don't think You do; but if You did exist, what do You make of these cries? Are they merely like birdsong, or the cicada on a hot late summer eve to you? A sort of atmospherics in Sol's neck of the woods? Are they comprised snippets of unintelligible Babble, given your displeasure with what the words had accomplished, given that Tower, and all? Or, Lord, do you hear words? Words, lingual, of the tongue that your fine fingers formed not so long ago, really. My tiny little spot on the timeline, bodily at least, is significant to me, and may, should you truly be as flexible as claimed, even be significant to You. But, certainly what proceeds glacially to me, or in the flash of a light, is seen by You in a somewhat different frame of reference. Call it relativity. So, in a sense, You carved the form of the tongues of these anguished souls who wish for Your help, something like yesterday. And know the animating power of Your intentions have sprung some Billion soul filled fruits across the lands, and while cruelly fertile, their bodies, their lives are not. They sometimes stop, and ask for help, do they not? They sometimes know the shortness and meanness of their existence is veritably the meaning of their lives, don't You know? Well, don't You? I sometimes wonder.

It goes without saying that should you follow enough Priests, before long, you will find merely a man wearing a collar lent him, by mistake. I haven't much problem with calling even these dipshits men of the cloth. But nobody is a man of God.

Can you imagine what a man of God would hear? Might he not hear the voices of the billions of wasted souls? Might not the fundamentals of his human sentiment conjuring systems be dented beyond repair, were he to sense what the Good Lord can as a matter of course? You better believe it. True Believers (not Christians, who deal, rather, than believe, in belief) who attempt a resuscitation of the world can only go until their cartilage wears thin, and then you'll notice, the gasps between their statements of faith, make for a far less convincing argument. Their hangover eyes have never teared up in Bliss. Not really. They are dark, hallowed intimations of their skull sockets. Corporeal signposts to the wishes of the big hearted: tear these eyes from my soul, and leave the holes to stand for all to see. The world is but a cavern, as the sockets that remain should amply remind an interested party.

Amen

That is something like what a prayer from me sounds like. Just a little reminder to myself and Big Brother, that things, whatever Walt Disney might prefer, aren't all that great for some sizable percentages. And guess what, it matters. As does the universes silence on the matter. It matters. So, before I coddle my most precious baubles and friends and family, perhaps I might bow my head and wonder why so crooked a man as me, can stand, and stand himself, from any standpoint of belief.

Though I did see a vision while John was praying extemporaneously, sort of Time Machining the good 'ole gospel ship. And that vision was something of a respite from the gaping implacable billion who are the bottom sixth on God's Honey-Do list. For, I saw briefly, that despite their circumstances, and their pain, that they speak to the Lord. They pray. I forget that more often than not. And praying in the hands of the least among us is valorizing to my conception of them: they are perhaps victims, even perhaps to an implacable God. But they pray.

So thanks Honorable Crustiest Guy, John, for the Prayer!

And apologies to Maya Angelou, for the title of this post. I couldn't resist.

(Her book, not my favorite, A Song Flung Up To Heaven.)