Tranquility in the Airport Lounge

 Amex Lounge, Minneapolis Airport. 

Tranquility to me is simply being in a place that you don't want to leave. An airport lounge is usually not such a place. But on this day I am sitting alone, writing, drinking coffee, watching the day unfold undisturbed. I am on a trip to  Charlotte to wrap up a family business matter. It is without controversy or messiness. It is unfolding just as it was supposed to. Nearby are people to assist me with my travels but they keep their distance and are silent. If you were sitting across from me I would speak this now: "I could stay here all day". 

So as I write I am draw to other times and places when I had this same sort of sense, that temporary well-beingness. I know this will pass but it was worth the wait. This overwhelming desire that the day last very very long. 

Other times...

Once when sitting in the parking lot of a Best Western in Oregon. Cigar and crossword puzzle in hand. Why this always comes to mind is lost to me. 

An evening with good friends at Cajun's Wharf restaurant in Arkansas. 1980's. 

Fishing with my oldest daughter in the dawn of her adulthood. 

On the couch with my wife, watching the snow fall. Any winter. 

Listening to Jack Buck call a Cardinals game. Cigar. Back deck of my brother Kevin's house. Early 2010s. 

Driving across the Flint Hills region of Kansas with my youngest daughter. 

Throwing a baseball with my son, mid 90s, our back yard, 8pm. 

Roan Mountain State Park, When I am the only one there. 

Jackson Square, New Orleans. Cafe DuMonde. Early Morning. Katrina aftermath. 

When was the last time someone cried because they were happy to see you

Not counting the day you were born. 

When one is a hospice volunteer, it happens all the time. 

Hanging out by the exit

 Notes while at the funeral of a friend: 

This is how it all ends, as a piece of paper in hands at your funeral. a few lines about the things that mattered. 

Family+faith+providing+career+hobbies. 

10:30 am Not many here, but I;m early. I suppose attendance at a funeral is driven by when we die. Churches are packed when the dead is under 30. Die at 85 and the only people left are your pastor, your family and a few others. 

10:45 am Big clap of feedback from the AV system of this little church (aging janitor type guy in pony tail finally figures it out).

Guitar instrumental very nice... In the Garden. Old Rugged Cross. A very plain Baptist church, like those I grew up in.  Painted pallets nailed to wall behind pastor. (an homage to warehouses?) One wooden cross. 

As is the custom with all Christian faiths, the Pastor proclaims that the deceased is in heaven (though he does not really know this, and does not know that he doesn't know). Nice sermon and obviously one who cared about this man. 

This is a real funeral, though program calls it a celebration of life. There is a body and a casket and tears and a wife and a preacher. Not a jar of ashes to be found anywhere. Good move. 

11:32 am Cue the mourner who does not know to turn off a phone when inside a church attending a religious ceremony. 

11:33 am In the silence of the sanctuary, you can hear the same phone vibrating as voicemail arrives.  

I chat with the guitarist on the way out. He is talented and knew the proper decorum for a funeral. There is hope for his generation, as mine hangs around the exit, waiting for people like him, and the pastor, to show us the way home. 

The Five String Banjo at the cracking of the day

 Today I watched the musical Camelot, the Richard Burton version. In it Merlin helps young Arthur in his education by getting him to "think like" other creatures. The owl, the perch, the hawk. 

I don't know what this has to do with the banjo, but my brain is chewing on it. Perhaps I need to think like a banjo. What would that be? "It's dark in here", "Hang on shoulder, hang on wall, hang on shoulder, hang on wall," "My strings itch".  

The more I practice and the better I become, the more private my playing. Another counterintuitive aspect of my life. Having spent my business career on stage, my retirement career is much more in the shadows.The gooder I get, the smaller the audience.  

It is indeed the most intense aspect of my life. 

At times even more so than hospice care, or "waking the dead" as one of my patients likes to call it.

It burns me good. 

My Imaginary Pretty Brain Pictures

 Sometimes the words I read will slap me and yell for my attention. It will get into my head. Some startling thought or image. 

I am reading M Train, a sort of diary by the punk rock singer, Patti Smith.She writes quite well and M Train seems to me a poetic balance between between her days of hope and her days of melancholia. 

She wrote the line below and it is in me. In my imagination it was written three hundred years ago as my ancestors boarded ships and sailed west. 

"I was thinking of French time traveling children with Scottish accents breaking the hearts of the future."

Two days after writing this I dreamed that Patti Smith and I were at a party with people from my past. It was a retirement party of sorts. 

Too much introspection leaves one staring out one's arse.

 I read this synopsis of a movie, on a plane. It makes no sense, but jumped at me as I tried to grasp what it might be like to be such a being. I do not know any human being that could be the subject of this situation. Nor do you. I know no Alice. 

"While on vacation with two girlfriends, Alice rediscovers the essence of herself and gains some much-needed perspective. Slowly, she starts to fray the cords of codependency that bind her."

My essence is missing? Dang it I discovered it once before and now I must discover it again. Repeating this quest for my essence will give me some perspective. On what? While I'm at it, might as well fray some bad stuff, but certainly dont' get rid of it, just fray it. Dependency, Co-dependency, Tri- and even quad-dependency can't be all bad. Fray it but don't ditch it. If I knew what it was I might argue with that. 

I think this senence reminds me of the poems that came from my 8th grade english class, though essence and perspective had not yet been invented. We were more into vacations and girlfriends.  

The Master - In Augusta and in the Whole World

At the Catholic Churches in Augusta and Pebble Beach and Pinehurt and St. Andrews and around the world., an event like no other is now underway. The Church knows it as the Easter Triduum. 

Cornbread and Buttermilk and the unrolling of stuff

 When I was in my early teens or so my grandfather tried to feed me cornbread and buttermilk. Crumbled it in a tall glass and poured cold buttermilk over it.  Handed it to me, "try it, nothin better than cornbread and buttermilk." In my teens through present day, this seems a disgusting combination. I could take either separately, but not the combination. Like mustard and ice cream, Japan and Korea, Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, lobstermen and opera - cornbread and buttermilk were two of God's gifts best left separate.

Yet, it is taxing to resist the touching of a family tradition. Doing things my grandparents did, and their grandparents did, has always had appeal. Not something of power or magic or mystical source of strength. Yet a thing with purpose that I often feel I should do. The past matters, my past, my ancestors past, my grandchildren's past. When I can touch it in some way that is not make-believe I do. 

It is Holy Week. My wife is in Arkansas, chasing tornadoes and siblings and the offspring of siblings. 

I made a pot of soup beans a few days ago. They are only available to me at times such as this. Solitary times. 

I also made cornbread, of course, to go with the beans. Used corn meal and Martha White flour and all the usual components. Baked it in my great grandmother's iron skillet. I had one hot slice after another, big wedges covered with butter, or mashed into a bowl of beans. While cleaning up I stared at the cornbread leftovers and a half quart of buttermilk, sitting side by side on the kitchen counter. I heard the voice of my ancestor, Houston Blevins, my mother's father, speaking a simple truth with his mouth full, drippings on his chin, "You ever had cornbread and buttermilk? Honey, it's good! "

After 50 or so years of resistance, I caved. Like the chicago cubs in August my strength of will faded before the still clear memory of his voice. 

If there is a Cornbread Church, this was the day I saw the light. The scales fell off my eyes. The sea parted, the rain stopped, the dove flew away, the fire fell and the lady turned to salt. This is day I walked the aisle and said "sign me up, and give me some more of that mountain stuff". 

That good mountain stuff. That good mountain stuff. 

2022 Travels

 Places where I went during the year, and were there long enough to spend the night. Like most of my life these travels were around the Mississippi and places east. 

Victoria, MN, Minneapolis, MN, Webster Groves, MO, Quincy, IL, Roan Mountain, TN, Lexington, KY, Woodstock, IL, Kansas City, MO, Steubenville, OH, Charlotte, NC, Roan Mountain, TN, Kenora, ON, Freeport, ME, Biddeford, ME, Webster Groves, MO, Chattanooga, TN

Books read in 2022

The following are the  books I read in 2022. Most of them are quite good. A few were not worth reading, several are worth reading a second time. Although I do not read much science fiction, I got started on the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov and had to read them all. 

A book that took me almost 50 years to read, The Dreaming Earth. I started it in high schook, got bored with it, lost it some time in the 70s. I thought about it last year and decided to find it online. I did, and am glad to have done so. Nice little sci-fi story. The Best Loved Poems of the American People was a book in my parents home as a child. A wonderful collection. 

I hope to someday read again Marina and Lee, and Churchill's six volume account of WWII. 

The worst book of the bunch was "I lived to tell it all" by George Jones. He was a bad man who treated people terribly and squandered his wealth and talent. He wrote this book to brag about the amount of liquor,  drugs, and human souls he consumed. 

Another loser was "Pre-Colonial Black Africa" by Chiop. Basically a rant that everything good in the world came from P-C B A. World religions, economic structure, democracy, music, art, writing, mathematics, astronomy, skittles, tacos, Buddy Holly, pickup trucks, checkers. The writer makes the case that even the pre-colonial slavery of Africans by Africans was a good kind. 

As a Catholic I am supposed to like Flannerty O'Connor and see how her Catholicism is relected in her writing. If I am a proper intellectual Catholic, this will just ooze out of her brain into mine. Didn't happen. I liked one, one, only one short story. A Good Man is Hard to Find. I asked my wife to read it but she did not. 

The books are listed in the order I read them. 

Foundation - Asimov 
Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life - Lacey
The Second World War - Volume 1: The Gathering Storm - Churchill
Marina and Lee - McMillan
Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Revealing the Jewish Roots of Christianity - Bergsma
Prelude to Foundation - Asimov

Beyond the Veil: The Adventures of an American Doctor in Saudi Arabia - Gray
The Dreaming Earth - Brunner
Rural Roots of Bluegrass: Songs, Stories and History - Erbsen
The Second World War - Volume II: Their Finest Hour - Churchill
The Second World War - Volume III: The Grand Alliance - Churchill
The Second World War - Volume IV: The Hinge of Fate - Churchill
The Second World War - Volume V: Closing the Ring - Churchill
The Second World War - Volume VI: Triumph and Tragedy - Churchill
The Guardians - Grisham
The President is Missing - Patterson, Clinton
Second Foundation - Asimov
Foundation's Edge - Asimov
The Best Loved Poems of the American People - Felleman
Forward the Foundation - Asimov
Salvation on Sand Mountain - Covington (2nd Reading)
Foundation and Earth - Asimov
The Big Short - Lewis (3rd reading, at least)
The Practice of the Presence of God (3rd reading)- Lawrence
I, Robot - Asimov
The Caves of Steel - Asimov
The Naked Sun - Asimov
Into Your Hands Father: Abandoning Ourselves to the God Who Loves Us - Stinissen
The Robots of Dawn - Asimov
The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor
Robots and Empire - Asimov
The Stars, LIke Dust - Asimov
The Currents of Space - Asimov
A Pebble in the Sky - Asimov
The Joke - Kundera
The Saint Monica Club (3rd reading) - Green
The Hope of the Gospel - MacDonald
Basic Music Theory for Banjo Players - McKeon
The Diary of an Old Soul - MacDonald
Fantasy Classics Collection - MacDonald
The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism - Bouyer
Unspoken Sermons: Series I,II and III. MacDonald
Four Witnesses - The Early Church in Her Own Words - Bennett
Introduction to Christianity - Ratzinger
Cash - Cash
I Lived to Tell it All - Jones
Precolonial Black Africa - Diop
The Hidden History of East Tennessee - Guy
Defeating Dictators: Fighting Tyranny in Africa and around the World - Ayittey
Disraeli - Blake
Churchill - Gilbert

Listening to my eulogy at the rehearsal for my funeral

 I recently had the experience of attending my funeral, via the imagination of my granddaughters. It was one of those experiences you could not think up or plan. The two masterminds were ages 8 and 6. 

We built a fort in their basement with blankets, cushions, pillows, etc. I was the bad guy they had trapped inside. When the fort collapsed on me, one of them said they needed to have a funeral for me. In enacting the funeral I was transformed from the bad guy to their real grandfather. 

The younger of the two, Ava, went first and said that I was "the kindest and nicest man" she had ever known, and how sorry she was that I was dead. That was very very nice to hear. 

The older, Lillian, began to recite the act of contrition, which she is learning for her first confession next Spring. She missed a few pieces of it, but basically she said something like this, 

"I am sorry for my sins with all my heart. In choosing to do wrong and failing to do good, I have sinned against you whom I should love above all things. I firmly intend, with your help, to do penance, to sin no more, and to avoid whatever leads me to sin. Our Savior Jesus Christ suffered and died for us. In his name, my God, have mercy"

I thought it was rather fitting, and I think she changed a word or to so that it would sound like it was coming from me. But it was sweet and true. Her way of voicing the most serious thing could think of at a very serious, though make-believe, event. 

Most of us will attend our own funerals, at least in body. This "rehearsal" was short and to the point and was just about as good as the one that awaits me down the road. I hope they both speak when the time comes. 

When a drug addict steals your F150

 My truck was stolen last month. Once it was recovered by the police, it was obviously the woman, or man, who stole it, had not yet mastered the art of driving an F150. It was Kevin's truck once. 

Our Lord says to pray for your enemies. I do so by keeping a list of those who have been particularly unkind to me and my family in order to pray for them. This person became #8, and was added to my list on September 5, 2022. 

As I looked through the drug-related trash left in my vehicle it was hard not to feel sympathy for the thief. Especially when you know there was a time in your life, so many years ago, when you could have gone down this path. I grew up in an age when the life of the aimless, drifting, drug user was romanticized. 

In a way I will some day understand, I was preserved from going down to such a defeat. So far.