Imagine my dismay at discovering that there is a northwest-by-north and a north-northwest, but no north-by-northwest.  Oh well, it remains a damn fine movie...
*****
     In my bag at the moment there are two books - Cities of Salt by one Abdelrahman Munif, and David Copperfield, by some English guy or another.  I like 'em both, but, at this moment, prefer the Arab to the Englishman.  It's tight, though, I'll tells ya.
*****
     Helped with an engine tear-down on a Cessna 172.  'Helped' here signifies that I handed the guy tools and did some heavy lifting and removed some bolts - the guy could probably have done it faster without my constant yammering and helping...
     It was a beautiful thing.  Did you know there are folks who get paid to work such wonders?
*****
     I forgot how much I hate literature seminars.  Sure, the University is between terms, but this morning I sat in on a sort of informal bull-session with grad students and a couple of professors from a couple different departments [all of whom and which shall remain nameless in perpetuity on these here pages].  They chattered on about everything except the works in question.  Theory, theory, everywhere theory - postcolonialisticalcumstructuralizinglacanism, or something like that - that's all these folks knew.  I asked an apparently quite stupid question - 'Do any of y'all, you know, like this stuff?'  I didn't get a straight answer.
*****
     I don't think the fact that I like flying, taking engines apart, studying physics, and writing stuff, way way more than I like the academic study of littratoor, has any relevance whatsoever.  
*****
     I've a friend who thinks my desire to some day visit Mumbai is, well, insane.  [By the bye, some few of the folks there still call it Bombay - Mumbai is an apparently overheated signifier.]  He notes that the island city is overcrowded, wracked by corruption and violence, on the brink of another battle between Hindus and Muslims, and generally full of vice.  He thinks this will change my mind.  Oh, how little he knows me.
     That city is the future in not-so-miniature.  Best to understand it.  Besides, no place is ever completely fallen until it's simply gone.  Except for Dubai, that is, which will, one can pray, find itself consumed by the desert before too long.
     I'll get to Bombay/Mumbai some time in the next decade for sure.  I mean, there are other places to see first, like Montana.  I've never seen Montana...
*****
     Peter Theroux translated the novel by Munif.  I had forgotten all about Theroux.  Now I want to read his books again. 
*****
     At some point I would like to take up welding - I think it would be fun at parties...
*****
     As you can hear, I've run out of things to say.
*****
     It's all clear to me now...
*****
     Peace out.       

     Well, here I sit in the lobby of a Marriott hotel, using their public pc.  Behind me, a largish group of elderlytype folks loudly shares – with staff, patrons, loiterers alike – shares I say all their habits of oral hygiene.  The loudest argument has been over whether one should take a bottle of water into the shower to brush one's teeth while in Mexico - don't ask me how Mexico came into it. 
     The temptation to self-slaughter becomes if not more bearable at least more understandable.  Oh well, to continue...
     I imagine the hapless Emperor Maximilian sneaking a clay jar of water into his bath in order to clean his teeth…still they prattle on - some have taken sides with real passion like one finds at silly Parisian barricades.  It’s all just good fun, all the peals of laughter and mingling of voices as they talk over one another for the sheer fun of it all.  Yet, I sense that some serious feelings are involved here.  One shudders to think of the pogrom that would result were one of ‘em to suggest that a body might as well take a bottle of mouthwash along with that bottle of water.  
     Dear reader, while I can think of better things to do in the shower, if you wish to brush your teeth, clip your toenails, trim your nose hairs, or do your taxes while the water runs on, well, you have my blessing.
     They laugh so loud.  What...what...what fun it all is.  Now, we've moved on to drinking habits - apparently these septuagenarians like to pound wine into the wee small hours. 
     Is there no one here with a dagger for me?  
     Now let me assure you my friends - I don't care about any of this.  No matter, no matter, as they are so loud I can't help but take the liveliest interest in all they shout.  So it goes.
     Why am I here, you ask?  Well, I'll tell you.
     Yesterday, that is to say, Friday, was the tenth anniversary of this here marriage.  Yes, dear reader, ten years ago we left behind the perils of courtship and went looking for real trouble.  An adventure it has all been.
     Anyway, my wife sleeps soundly upstairs.  I found myself restless, so went for a swim and paid a visit to the bar.  Now, a glass of wine, a mojito, and some bourbon later, it is good to write.  A television plays silently on the far wall; in addition to the loudly liquored up retirees, other gaggles chatter away; the young man at the front desk reads a novel.  Out there, in the night, nothing is open.  This is a sure sign of barbarity, by the bye. 
     The elderrabble has moved to the elevators.  Wait.  Their voices swell to a crescendo as the elevator doors open...wait...just wait...
     Now, it's silent.
     Well, no, not silent after all.  Music blares from speakers in the ceiling, that omnipresent music we never really hear, but which oppresses with its numbing insistence all the same.  I mean, right now Coltrane plays from overhead - does anyone realize it?  A passage from Coltrane becomes imperceptibly an aria from Mozart just as easily morphs into the latest hit from Britany or Miley Whositwhatsit.  
     Insanity.
     It's time to work on a story. 
     Before I leave you, just one more line or five.  Earlier in the evening, as we made ready to go to dinner, I watched my wife as she put on her earrings.  Thinking on that moment, I'm reminded of something the elder Maclean says in A River Runs through It - 'I'd say the Lord has blessed us all today.  It's just that he's been particularly good to me.'  Yes, for some reason we like having each other around even more than we did when it all began.  So, ten years along I feel like we just might have a chance.  For my part, I am grateful for this marriage - how boring it would all be otherwise. 

     Been a while.  How are ya?  How're the kids?  Work treating ya all right?
     Enough small talk.
     Lessee'er, 'tis been a while indeed.  Since the 8th of June to be exact enough.  Much has happened, and much has failed to happen, in that time.  For one thing, we almost lost ER thanks to a billing snafu with the ever incompetent Paypal machine.  That's right, the subscription lapsed, and it's only thanks to the kind folks at Blog-City who, whatever one may say of 'em, kept the thing alive while I cast about for a way to solve the problem I didn't cause, that we can meet again under these dubious circumstances.
     The air conditioning has long been fixed so we can continue to melt the polar ice caps.
     Haven't flown again because, well, I've a lot of stuff to get.  Headphones, two more books, an FAA medical certificate, charts and a little ol' hand-held computer that'll allow me to compute courses and fuel consumption and weight/balance calculations on the literal fly, a bag to hold it all [the backpack just won't work, I've tried], a new prescription for my glasses and some bona fide prescription sunglasses as opposed to this clip-on thing, my airport ID, my airport parking pass...all right, I have those, and the headphones are on the way, and I've been busy reading my textbooks, but you get the idea...I won't really have a steady schedule of lessons going for at least another month, and then I doubt we'll be able to swing more than one or two a month.  So it goes...
     By the bye, your humble narrator has rarely felt so at ease as he did for those fifty minutes at 3500 feet over Columbus.  Not that I knew what I was doing - heavens, there's a lot to learn - but it all felt right in a way I can't describe without rendering it all so banal.  Since I was a boy and took the yoke of a plane for the first time I've had a sense that those who design, maintain, and fly planes have gotten something fundamentally right about life.  I caught a glimpse of that while airborne that day.  And, and it was so very surprising my dear readers.  So little was required of me in the way of actual force to control the plane.  Gentle turns with the yoke, little if any use of the pedals unless the plane started to fishtail on me, just enough grip to hold the yoke so the plane wouldn't dip - the thing is so balanced that it wants to stay upright, wants to remain in the air.  You have to do violence to the plane to push it over on its back - the Cessna 152 is not designed for that you see.  Turbulence - like waves in the ocean - are the only things that gave me trouble, and that's because I haven't learned how to compensate properly for it.  Much of what my instructor did was counterintuitive, especially since the impulse was to make huge corrections for any little thing.
     Now, to make a plane designed for high-performance flight do all those nifty maneuvers like Immelman Turn [the original dogfighting move bears little resemblance to its tricky yet rather tame modern aerobatic namesake], the Barrel Roll, or even the elegant and deceptively simple Chandelle, to commit such acts requires more english on the plane than I currently understand.  As a novice, I flew and will fly a stable, simple, lightweight, remarkably strong little plane, and count it a marvel that I kept it in a straight line or a level turn on that initial flight. 
     I've learned a few things about that little ol' Cessna.  According to standard specifications, the Cessna 152 has a four-cylinder engine with around 230 cubic inches of displacement which yields around 110 brake horsepower.   The plane we use is rather old, but well-maintained, so it's likely close to those specs.  I can tell you that it's faster than anything I've driven, to include the old Mustang convertible with the broken speedometer.  In fact, the standard top speed for the thing is around 107 knots, which is around 123 mph [a knot is roughly equivalent to 1.15077945 mph].  It even gets somewhat better mileage than my truck.  What's more, one never has to stop at a red light, one of the most infantilizing inventions in modern traffic planning.
     That's enough showing off I should think.  I really have no idea what will come of this.  All I can say is that, God willing, I plan to proceed through the Private Pilot certificate, to an instrument and multi-engine rating.  I hope to complete all that before my eightieth birthday...
     What else is new around here?  I thought it meet and right to take up reading - it passes the time.  As for those decisions I have mentioned rather cryptically from time to time, some have been made, some are in process, all will be in the past by the end of next week.  I have left the sales game behind.  It was interesting, sometimes fun, occasionally lucrative, most often annoying, and in the end a tad degrading.  I learned a lot about the world, met some interesting folks, and don't regret it.  All the same, it's time I realized that, all in all, I don't really like it.  It's just not...how to say it?...real enough for me.  To get paid to give a canned presentation over and over again just makes no sense to me.  In the end, though I can't elaborate yet, it all came to be too disembodied.  It even made me sick.  Now, sales ain't evil, and there are places where those who like it and are good at it can make a good living with honor and dignity.  I met a fellow last week who sells planes, and it's good for him.  For me, though, I'd rather take 'em apart and put 'em back together again than sell 'em.
     So, it looks like, for the time being, it's back to the warehouse for this kid.  Beyond that, I'll have some more to report after next week, when the Really Big Decision will have been made for better or for worse, once and for all, with no turning back unless I really really want to...
     Peace out.

     The air conditioning is out at home.  Checked the circuit breakers in the basement, then took apart the unit outside and found nothing obvious to my untrained eye - no loose or disconnected wires, no vines wrapped around the fan, no nests of strange beasties choking the life out of the thing.  Put it back together with a heavy heart.  We hadn't used it for a few days - it's not yet the time of year to put it to heavy use - but last night was a tad muggy, still, and warm.  Couldn't sleep really.  There is a hint of good news - we have these oscillating fans, big ones with all manner of settings, and, and, and, dear reader, they all have remote controls.  Yes, that's right, we need never get up to start or adjust the things.  Just fit us for a couple of them Wall-E Axiom levitatin' chairs, and we're set...
     I've taken a renewed interest in Thomas Bradwardine and Gregory of Rimini, two of the most notable fourteenth-century Augustinians and opponents of the new crop of Pelagians and semi-Pelagians that ran amok in England and on the Continent at that time [they're ever with us you know].  Bradwardine in particular published in logic, philosophy, mathematics, as well as theology, and also served as Archbishop of Canterbury, a post he received thanks largely to his mastery of ecclesiastical administration, no small feat in itself.  His chief theological polemic, De causa dei, is his broadside against them there Pelagiastical types mentioned just now.  Anyway, I'm looking into him and Gregory of Rimini, so who knows what fruit'll come of it.
     Speaking of books, I rummaged around the stacks for a while, and came across Senses of Touch:  Human Dignity and Deformity from Michelangelo to Calvin, by one Marjorie O'Rourke Boyle [I'm guessing she's from Tashkent - the name's a giveaway].  Anyway, we here at the ER offices have no idea if the book's any good, but it sounds interesting so I checked it out.  I'm also reading a lot of history lately - as in straight history, especially of India, China, Japan, the Mongols, Inner Asia [various Turks and Afghans and suchlike]...don't really know my way around the historiography, and most of my reading at this point consists of large surveys to get the lay of the land.  We'll see what, if anything, comes of it.  Nothing need result, you know - it's just fascinating for its own sake.
     This Sunday is Father's Day here in the US.  'Tis also the time for graduations of various kinds - high school, college, and, now, preschool [a psychotic custom yes, but more and more widespread].  All this means to me is that I must endure the phrase 'Dads and Grads' ad nauseum.  I hate Father's Day in any case, because, you know, I hate my father - and I love him, you know the drill.  I find Father's Day ridiculous on its own terms, however, because it's one further sign that fatherhood around these parts has no significance.  The father in the household - if he hasn't skipped, that is - most likely is that dumb guy over there with the baseball cap and shorts who really doesn't know what's going on but sure would like some kind of power tool or a necktie as recompense for not really knowing what's going on.  Our culture, to judge from most popular depictions of fathers [and husbands for that matter], sort of has constructed 'fatherhood' as a kind of dumbness, a haze.  But hey, fathers can look forward to a night out at The Olive Garden, so what the hell, eh?
     The hour is coming and the hour is now when I will have to make a couple of really quite crucial decisions around here.  No pressure - they'll just determine the course of our lives for the next ten years or more.  Should be fun.
     I must away.  Peace out. 

     ...or else you'd hear 'em around the ER offices of an evening.
     Been reviewing Latin a little each day.  I forgot how beautiful it all is.  Of course, each day I get deeper into Latin - and believy me, I'm such a novice at it all - the further entangled I become in Western Latinist Rationalist Philosophical Wankerist Heresy.  Can't be helped.  I'm already planning my treatise on The One Essence of God as Supreme Over the Persons.  Next thing you know, I'll be all agog over Predestination and Election and making in fact Predestination the Center of a Dogmatic Scholastic Systematizing Ordo Salutis That Must Be Memorized...
     Well, I have been reading a bit of Peter Martyr lately...
     I sold a subscription to a fellow on Wednesday, and as we were wrapping it up he offered me a job. 
     Strange days these are, strange days...
     None of this matters, of course, since Little Kim, King of Crazy Town, North Korea, plans to nuke us all.  I don't think we should underestimate the deathwish of this man and his febrile kingdom.
     What else what else?  I do indeed plan to post a piece on learning to fly.  Lack of internet access at home has made such things difficult.  Working on it, though, working on it at a feverish...well, at least a diligent...uh, er, um, not so much a diligent as an indolent pace.  For now, content thyselves with this all-too-brief apocalypse.
     Peace out.

     Have updated all the links to your right once again...well, I still haven't done anything with the archives.  I'm lazy that way....

     Just walked to the library down the usual streets, past the same houses and along the same sidewalks I've seen thousands of times.  All manner of flowering plant was abloom; the sun shone strongly; it was warm and breezy; all in short was well.  It was beautiful in fact, formed to allure with delight and offer a consolation on the way.
     And yet, and yet, my friends, I saw only a solitary bumblebee flitting across a shady yard.  I saw not one other bee, not a hummingbird, not a butterfly, and this is far from unusual.  Someone will helpfully tell me that it's called 'Colony Collapse Disorder', yet another anodyne euphemism for 'the wrath of God'.  I know what the scientists say, and that many are at work to heal the breach.  I wish 'em well, pray all blessings on 'em.  And yet, and yet, as I walked in that Springtime beauty, I could feel it all slipping away.
     Our life is one long slipping away of all that we love, all that is most precious in this world.  That is the simple truth.  One can either cultivate Stoic or Buddhist indifference to such sorrow - pusillanimous responses dear reader, full of the cowardice of those who feel entitled to a world without pain - or one can mourn in good measure the losses that mount both for each of us severally and for our benighted humanity as a whole.
     What is this mourning in good measure?  To name the sadness, to avoid clichés and prattle that fend off the reality of loss, that makes a good start of it.  How avoid despair, though, how avoid despair when all we love, all this is most precious in this world slips from our grasp?  I only know of one answer - Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again. 
     Christ has died - so all have died in him, and needn't fear either personal death or even the death of the world.  Christ has risen - so all who have been buried with him in baptism can and may hope to rise with him to truly new life.  Let us therefore cease our self-flattering talk of emergence and our heedless motion and allow him to recall us to our mission - calling and baptizing all we come across.  Christ will come again - all creation groans, we're told, in subjection to our sin, our death-dealing pride, our stupid desire to wrest from God the rule of the world.  All creation groans, however, in anticipation of Christ's return, when all creation will be rolled up like a moth-eaten cloak and then transfigured, made whole, new, radiant with the light of his countenance.  Then those who are his will be revealed - the revelation of the children of God, don't you know - and all creatures will rejoice at the last through our praise and thanksgiving and wonder at the delight of it all.
     For now, we await this with pained longing, for this life is one long slipping away of all that we love, all that is most precious in this world.  I miss the bees and the hummingbirds and the butterflies, miss 'em terribly, and must confess to fear at what will become of a world so bereft of creatures so essential, so crucial in fact.  Only Jesus holds the keys to death and life, only he knows what will become of us all.  He holds it all in his hands, he who is faithful and just and true, who is goodness and beauty himself.  And, we confess and believe and teach that in him we have the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, whom the Father through the Son casts abroad over the face of all creation to renew it - such is the promise.
     Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again. 
     Trust him. 

     I've updated the list of recommended books to your right to reflect what's ahappenin' here at the ER offices.  Do have a look.
     Peace out.

     So, turns out this whole 'That's it, I'm going to be a science teacher' business was a ruse.  Didn't know it was a ruse, mind you, because I was the one being, well, um, rused...
     As much as I love math, physics, chemistry, let's face it, I'm not going to spend the next six years on 'em.  I will no doubt spend some time with 'em here and there, but they're no more than pleasant dalliances for me.
     With all that in mind, I have executed a fifteen point turn and procured a new advisor at my new home department here at the university.  I am now ensconced in the Department of Greek and Latin, with minor appointments in Hebrew and history.  I must, dear reader, remember that I'm a poet and [maybe] a theologistical type first and foremost, and it's time for me to take the next step to grow in my vocations.  I can read Greek for New Testament study, but the whole gamut of the language from Homer to Maximus and beyond, well, that eludes me yet.  What's more, to read Augustine and Bernard and Ovid and Horace and the Latin poems of George Herbert and the like with fluency is a far more important skill for me than balancing chemical equations.  [I can eke my way through Latin at this point, but that's about all.]  And let's not forget how important and beautiful Hebrew is.  Finally, I also need to refurbish and then burnish my French, and take up a bit of German.
     To what end all this linguistic, poetical legwork?  Don't know, really.  My only concession to practicality at this point is the thought that if all else failed I could find the last school in the country that offered Latin and persuade someone to let me teach it.  You know, the kind of rich, perhaps private school that has a Latin teacher as a decorative antique, sort of like a faux Bernini fountain in a public park.  Really, though, it's more likely that I would parlay this into admission to some sort of theology program.  I mean, what's the use of rehabilitating myself academically if I don't truly waste my money?  At this point, however, I still have no use for a s-s-seminary - how the hell can I even think of that when, first, I'm apparently a heretic by today's use, and two, I live in a damned wasteland where it's impossible for me to find us a church?
     Seems that for me and mine, the most practical thing to do is forget 'practicality'.  As for the flying, that remains something I want for the sheer pleasure of it.  I can't help thinking, however, that it might play some small part in my life as a wandering theologian and poet.  We'll just have to see.  For now, I just have to recollect myself, go deeper into my vocations, and stop scattering all my energy.  Only God knows what awaits on the other side of it all...
     Peace out.
    

Down the Back Streets

Trash on the curb; a field of brick laid long
ago now abandoned to groundling birds;
each passing car a blur of color; words
plastered on those distant buildings; a song
from an open window - all things belong
here, have their place along this way where herds
of students, office drones, assorted nerds
will rarely stray for fear they'll lose the throng.
So here I walk alone at close of day
to see these fragments of the city's soul
now long forgotten in the press and play;
it's cooler and, though late, I have no goal
except to keep my feet even as I stray;
above us lowering clouds like dark waves roll.

     I think my proposed title is sufficiently different from Eat, Pray, Love.  First, I put 'Pray' first, which shows how pious I am.  That always sells.  Secondly, I don't just say 'Eat'.  No no no, I get more specific with 'Eat Food', which of course I stole from Michael Pollan.  [Perhaps I could get him to write a preface in return for a kickback....].  Finally, 'Love' is so vaporous, whereas 'Move About' implies specific action.  One could, under the first title, eat all the high fructose corn syrup in the world each day, have a little prayer, and sit around conjuring loving feelings in one's warmed - and ever so strained - heart, and thus balloon up nicely thank you very much.  No, I think I offer something unique to the Christian Self-Help And Purpose-Driven Book Market.  I expect a call from an agent any day now....
     Yep, waiting for that call...
     Any time now, the phone will go off, and the windfall will be mine...
     Still waiting....
     .
     .
     .
     Yessiree, patiently awaiting my new agent....

     That's all...just thought I'd mention it...

     Why o why can't we just be simple saved sinners grateful for what we've been given?

     A highly stylized version of a conversation at the little Luderan church I thought we'd attend -

Him:  Did you hear?
Me:  Hear what?
Him:  We're finally getting a contemporary service.
Me:  What?
Him [with a giddy tremolo to his voice]:  Yes, finally a contemporary service.  We really need one.
Me:  Why? 
Him:  To attract new people.  Besides, why shouldn't we try new things?
Me:  What if it's not really new?
Him:  Come on, Jesus never told us how we had to worship him.
Me:  I've heard that one before.  It's irrelevant you know.
Him:  Oh, the church has always taken things from the surrounding popular culture.
Me:  How do you know?
Him:  You aren't excited by this?
Me:  Well, as compared to having my tongue ripped out and fed to me, this is somewhat less appealing. 
Him:  I think it's gonna help us to grow.
Me:  I don't want us to grow.
Him:  How can you say that?
Me:  It's no trouble at all.
Him:  Luther used tavern songs you know.
Me:  That's not really true you know.
Him:  How do you know?
Me:  Do you really want me to answer that?
Him:  Not really.  Oh look, there's something shiny...gotta run...

And so it ended, my brief flirtation with a little Luderan church that looked just unpretentious enough to fool me for a short while.  Turns out she was really just a rebound dame...now, once again, I'm faced with the great wide desert of praise bands, Purpose Driven Lives, liturgical dance, and hidebound Neo-Palamites that is central Ohio.  God help us all...
     Peace out.