Tag Archives: journal

What’s the news, I ask?
hoping for a different answer

than 1280 gun deaths
since Sandy Hook.

I am a great complainer
That bears the name of Christ;
Come, all you Zion mourners,
And listen to my cries;
I’ve many sore temptations
And sorrows to my soul;
I feel my faith declining,
And my affections cold.

I wish it was with me now
As in the days of old,
The glorious light of Jesus
Was flowing in my soul,
But now I am distressed,
And no relief can find,
A hard, deceitful heart
And a wretched, wand’ring mind.

It is great pride and passion
Beset me on my way,
So I am filled with folly
And so neglect to pray;
I am so weak I stumble,
And so I’m left behind,
While others run rejoicing
And seem to lose no time.

–The Complainer, traditional American shapenote hymn. ca 1835

The man with the steel pierced lips leaned against the utility pole by the bus stop smoking. Blowing smoke from the corner of his mouth, he watched the cars on Broadway dart by like tropical fish returning from the feeding grounds. A heavy young woman with Downs Syndrome ate an apple and stared up at the man from her cross-legged perch on the sidewalk. Four number eight buses went by before theirs came. The man patiently waited as the woman got up off the pavement, counted her change and bought a ticket from the driver. “Things could be better, but they could be a whole lot worse,” he said to me, smiling, as he flipped his cigarette into the gutter as he got on the bus behind her.

I stepped out on the porch just now to see the light show in the evening sky. An hour after sunset, Venus is blazing away in the sky over Portland about 25 degrees above the western horizon. Higher and to the left is the stolid mass of Jupiter, somewhat dimmer but holding its own. I am told that even Jupiter’s moons are visible with a modest telescope tonight. Over the month Jupiter will descend in the sky, relative to Venus, as the fingernail moon rises from below. It as if the God of All Things Unknowable stepped out on his own celestial porch tonight, rang the evening gong, and lit these heavenly lamps to arrest our minds in wonder. How can one not be humbly grateful for such things?

Two bright, talented Oregon high school boys were swept to their deaths by a rogue wave on the coast in Saturday. They had been playing football in a parking lot next to the beach and walked out on a rocky promontory above the beach when they were suddenly pulled out to sea from a seemingly safe place. What a awesome indifference Nature shows it’s most wondrous creations at times. I can only imagine their parent’s sorrow.

Saw a Canada goose make a picture perfect landing on the glass still pond behind my work place. It looked somehow joyful gliding in to part the waters with a loud swoosh and settle in for the morning.

As I drove by the Nike store in Portland last night on my way home from work, I saw three young men sprint from the store entrance, each carrying three boxes of shoes, and tear down the street. They were decisive, deliberate and unflinching in their theft. I paralleled them for a half a block before they jumped in a car and took off. Since Nike is a Fortune 500 company, with sweatshops full of the grateful poor all over the world toiling away making their shoes, I did not begrudge the poor in my neighborhood taking their own small share of the pie. Like Mr. Obama says, “we all want some pie.” While our economy here in Portland struggles for signs of life, our studiously earnest President says he wants to carve up the American pie more evenly, but his hand keeps slipping and the largest pieces keep going to the people who are so fat they haven’t seen their own dicks in years. The young men I saw stealing the shoes had no similar problem.

I watched the super bowl football game yesterday. What a great brawling, writhing, teeth bashing, head smashing, knee popping good time! Several players were injured during the first few minutes! Heaven! With overhead cameras flying over the action on wires and dozens of mobile field cameras, every rolling tackle, quarter back sack and groin smash came to life in my living room in high def. Wahoo! And the much vaunted commercials. Who doesn’t love watching aliens driving cheap cars being sucked into the vortex–or making fun of Tibetans! Well, that last one was a bit low brow but it only made the rest of the spectacle shine that much brighter as dung amongst diamonds. Is there anything more American than carefully controlled violence splayed out across the world and sponsored by KIA and Doritos? And the half time show! Don’t get me started. Watching the Black Eyed Peas dance around in space suits singing highly forgettable songs surrounded by people in Christmas lights with packing boxes on their heads was soul stirring–I had to put down both my beers and stand and do the crowd wave, except there were only two of us so it was more of a rolling drip.

There is a debate going on about Henry David Thoreau–the latest claim is that he was gay. You know, guy moves to an isolated cabin where he entertains hunky woodsmen and swims naked a lot. Hello. I don’t see it in his writings, but why not? And, more importantly, who cares?

Now that the US military is out from under two hundred years of denial on this subject, perhaps it will eventually become a non issue in the USA, like whether or not someone has big ears or is a tenor.

Meanwhile, we must unearth latent gayness in all our heroic figures, from Lincoln to Thoreau to Custer. Come to think if it, can you think of a gayer general than Custer? All that fringed buckskin, soft gloves and hats with feathers. Now there was a guy who knew how to dress for a battle. Hi ho, Silver! Now, Major Reno, where do you think Sitting Bull gets that perfect shade of vermilion war paint?

The morning paper has a story of a new show on cable called Portlandia that makes fun of my home town of Portland, Oregon. Apparently some are upset at the portrayal of a city full of terminal slackers who are tolerant to the point of obliviousness, who celebrate oddness for it’s own sake, who work three hours a week at food carts and play in bands with names like the Restless Futons.

On the same front page is a perfectly serious article about how the city is now going to allow “guide horses” on mass transit. (You can’t make this stuff up.)

If anyone wonders where the spawn of Annie Hall and Gilligan went to raise more nut burgers, look no further.

The newspaper said the tsunami that hit Hawaii yesterday was the best kind.
It was too small to do damage but large enough to remind people about tsunamis. If a tsunami travels across an ocean at five hundred miles an hour, arrives on your doorstep like a runaway train and leaves no damage in it’s wake, is it really a punami?