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With an end is now a beginning

So maybe you're driving along some highway and you pass by someone's house. It might be sitting in the middle of an empty field, past it's best days and now simply struggling to keep it's occupants safe from the elements. Or maybe it's a city and you can see rows and rows of apartment towers that look identical standing tall in the sunlight. Or maybe it's that house across the street where you never see anyone.

So you wonder what's going on inside. What does it look like in there? What do the people who live there do? How can they live in someplace that seems so different from what we know.

Sometime when I was a teen or almost so I discovered the idea of truth. I learned that it was a powerful word, a representative word and a descriptive word all wrapped into one. I first compared the concept of truth to the theology I learned while being confirmed as a Christian. I trusted that Jesus was the truth and learned his lessons and took his message into my heart. The seed that was planted grew and soon I found that the terrarium I had built couldn't be contained by the walls of Christiandom and so I began to explore options.

Perhaps, I thuoght, I could embrace anti-truth, an ideal, to me, that represented evil. So I did. I was mean. I stole. I hurt others. I killed.

Maybe I thought that such acts would chase the truth away from me and I could go on to live my miserable life in peace. But that was not the case. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how casually evil I was, I could still see that truth off in the distance, just out of reach but never out of view.

I've moved beyond that and just am me. I know that some people will view me as evil and I accept that role in their perception and only wish to aid them in their understanding of the issues at hand. Sometimes evil can reveal truth if one examines it closely. Of course the concept of truth within acts of compassion and love are much broader in their displays of truth, although an argument could be made that the truth in altruism can be deluded by volume.

So all that's left is memories. I will leave them here.

154th Street and Vine

 

So this is a photo I took a couple of years ago while working one afternoon. It's just a single abandoned home with a marriage proposal. I doubt the person who lived there wrote the message, but I suppose it's possible.

It's kind of hard to look at this house and see the vibrant colors slowly fading, or overgrown lawn. I didn't look too carefully on the sides and the windows seem intact so I assume that this could be rehabbed into something livable again. From the style of the architecture and the area it was in, I'm guessing it was built sometime between 1950 and 1970.

Obviously there was a time when the people who lived here called this place home, and would eagerly return every evening, knowing that they had this little piece of sub-urban paradise. I'm sure there were other times when the house brought pain because of hostile or violent families, or the death of a loved one or even some personal agony over love lost or found.

What makes this picture more noteworthy is where it was taken. Here, you see two houses—one abandoned, and another that was not. It's not quite clear but the brick house next to it was kept up and appeared to have people living in it. These two houses are but two of many in a small suburb near Chicago. The abandoned and vandalized house was one of many. In that particular area, about half of the homes were in an unlivable state, due to fire, vandalism or lack of maintenance. Those homes were scattered throughout the town, and often right next to homes that had well manicured lawns and were well maintained.

And it's not just houses that are like this—there are apartment buildings and storefronts in the same condition. There was even one intersection that had abandoned commercial buildings with apartments on top … on all four corners. The scene of urban decay was staggering and I wished I took many more pictures, but I refrained because it wasn't safe for me to do so. It was okay for me to drive around the neighborhood and knock on people's doors to ask survey questions, but taking the number and kind of pictures would draw unwanted attention.

So I knocked on the the front door of the brick house. A black woman about 40 years old answered, and I asked to speak to Shanelle. She said Shanelle lived across the street and so I went and met her, another woman who appeared to be in her forties with a sad expression that told me she had tasted the bitterness of life. She explained that the graffiti was put there by her brother, who did it as a joke to make her beau jealous. It worked, she said, and a few months later they did marry. They lived for a while on the west side but kept coming back here because the home belonged to Shanelle's mother. A few years ago her mother died and Shanelle moved back for good.

Now she just watches as the neighborhood and her town slowly die. The schools struggle because they don't have enough money to infuse the kids with hope. In the driveway was a car that could take her away from all the anguish and despair that radiated from the empty houses.

I asked Shanelle about her husband and she stopped talking and stared at the door across the street.

 

The 100 year old woman

It wasn't a particularly an old house but rather a younger home that had seen better days. It sat behind a wall of brush and young trees that served to hide it from the rural highway that went past. The original construction was supplemented with sheets of Styrofoam and collected wood to build a protected porch on the back side of the house. The front door wasn't apparent so I followed the tracks in the snow to the door on that back porch. The interior of that porch felt dark but it was close to nightfall and provided shelter from the wind.

I knocked and a woman who appeared a hundred years old came to the door. I told her why I was there and she didn't believe me. She wanted to see the money. I gave her a single fifty dollar bill and she examined it closely before telling me that it looked fake. I told her it wasn't and that she could keep it if she answered my questions, but was prepared to give it to her if she refused. She then held it up to the light to see the outline of a second president in the bill.

She disappeared for a moment in the house and then returned, dragging a chair which she set by the door. She then sat in it and took out a Benson and Hedges cigarette and lit it up. The rest of our meeting was punctuated by the smell of burning tobacco and the slow death of her lungs. She didn't care, she told me, she was going to be dead soon anyway.

So she told me her story about how when she was young she would imagine that she would leave the place she was and move to the big city and become someone famous, maybe an artist or something. She remembered the day she could read, and how the moment came in such a way that she saw the lines and shapes actually talking.

She searched endlessly to get an opportunity to leave, to go someplace where things could really matter and that she would be in an ocean of humanity that would buoy her creative spirit in the way of community support. But despite the pristine beauty of the north woods there laid a trap. “It was like walking through blackberries,” she aid, “and having the sharp thorns drag at your clothes, saying wait a minute, wait a minute, there's just one more berry over here you have to get. You get aggravated at their tiny thorns but them give in and reach for that luscious ripe berry, and when that happens you realize how you've been trapped by the blackberry patch.”

She worked hard at her one talent—singing--and used this as a vehicle to drive her south to the big city. She loved singing when she was young and know many songs, mostly traditional and some modern ones. When she came to the city she found singing wasn't enough by itself. She managed to get a job as a clerk and worked hard every day and would sing on street corners or small bars at night. She met others like her who could play instruments like a guitar or piano and so she would sing with them.

It was one day when she and her band mates secured a well paying gig at a restaurant and they played there but no one clapped. It wasn't an insult or anything just the nature of the place, the people all caught up in the sophistication of their lives so much that they didn't acknowledge the art laid before them. She then realized that there was nothing here holding her back—that if she wanted to go places she would have to charge this thicket of indifference and thrash about to attract attention and fame. It was kike she traded the soft thorns of a blackberry bush into the hard thorns of a thicket.

It was fall when she returned, she marched through the colorful trees up state until she was deep again in the north woods. There she would only sing in church and found a man and scratched out a family among the trees of the forest and relax at the lake in hot days.

I had her sign my tablet for the $50. She lit up another cigarette and said now she was like the wind, no longer full but only an empty force that really was all the weight of the world.

Karma, part 1

“You don't believe in karma?” She said. I agreed and she was shocked that someone couldn't believe in something that was, at least to her, a basic truth.

I actually found this kind of failure to comprehend as a common trait among those people who considered themselves to be very spiritual. Usually those folks would assume that all spirituality would follow the general guidelines of their preferred spirituality. When explaining alternatives, as I was wont to do, I would often refer to things in such a way so that the person would more understand the concept. Sometimes I wouldn't know the actual answer but because I believe in truth I would strive to give one anyway. Hence the one time when I explained to some evangelical Christians the Hindi use of astrology.

Of course, most Christians view astrology as some kind of archaic system of divinity that has no place in Christianity. I had to explain to those Christian souls that yes, Hindus look at the stars for guidance but it wasn't the same as the astrology they read in the daily paper. They struggled to make the connection and so one of them said “It's like a prayer?”

Yeah, that is the default answer for some people. It's like a prayer. It covers just about everything.

Time, of course, told me how inaccurately I had addressed that question. I now have a better understanding that Hindu priests use astrology to determine auspicious dates for life events. My new found knowledge would not have changed my answers in the conversations I had, but only make me realize that sometimes I manage to find truth without intending to.

So … karma. It's ultimately a tool that some religions use to crowbar people into making righteous moral decisions. It's really a threat—mess up this time and you're going to have to wait in the Department of Motor Vehicles line forever only to have the clerk reject your driver's license reinstatement due to the fact that you haven't been neutered by a bunch of frenzied kittens.

But yeah, as I so politely told that lady in that worn clapboard house outside of town,it was bullshit. I was there to ask her opinions about politics. At first she was reluctant because she thought I might be offended, but I was being paid to be there and I was ready to pay her for her opinions. I handed her a fifty dollar bill after asking my questions and she said “Wow, my karma is good today!”

So I said “I don't believe in karma.” And look where it got me.

God in a sphere

The house I was supposed to go to was one of those Victorian style painted ladies—a large home build a century ago with a large porch, rounded windows and piles upon piles of roofs and windows. Like all painted ladies she was past her prime and had succumbed to the plastic surgery of subdivision. And so it was number two I knocked on.

A woman answered. She obviously was born in the last century and the wool knit cap and colorful shirt she wore told me she was of the hippie mindset of the 60s. I asked her my questions and she gave me answers. She was pleasant and I began to wonder what she was like when she was younger.

“You know,” she said, “I have figured out the place for God in one's life.”

“What do you mean?” I asked

“You see, God is the barrier between the self and not self. Imagine that one is in a sphere. At the core of the sphere is the self, an entity that contains all of the elements of the sense of self one has, including the things that the self perceives around them.”

“Kind of like a planet, you mean?”

“That would be a good analogy.” So the self is planet, mostly inside, but with an exterior exposed to the atmosphere. The atmosphere would represent the world we perceive outside of ourselves, including other people and the physical conditions around us.”

She paused and then continued. “In this case, God is the blue sky above us. When we stand on the suffice and look up all we can see is God, because God is shielding us from the unknown. If we blast off from the surface in a rocket, then the blue sky begins to fade. Once we get beyond that, there is no more God, just space.”

“So there is no God in space?” I asked.

“Only the God you bring with you. If you are able to expand your planetary view to go beyond God, then perhaps. But regardless of what you believe you still have to break through that blue barrier. And even if you do, It'll still be likely to be with you because you will have remembered that it was there at one time.”

When you have a cat around you there is always a point in the day in which you stop whatever you're doing and take a few moments to pet the cat. You might say a few nice words while scratching behind the ears or just quietly stroke their silky fur while the cat does nothing except to accept or sometimes embellish the love by purring and nuzzling your hand. Then you walk away and continue with the agenda that's today but with a warm feeling because you just passed on love to another.

A Birth

This morning at 2:53 am in a room that was carefully darkened
with the light and hum of electronic machinery
a group of trained cheerleaders
shouting strangely as the sound did not bounce
off the deadened walls
and unknown to passers by
G-d was born.
 
Yet again His forehead was slick with the
water in which he had walked upon
pudgy fingers struggled to quantify
His first score in a long line of tests
that were strangely enough designed
to avoid the issue of his being
the Almighty.
 
Some may suppose the presence of mangers and lambs and hay
but it was truly needles and bleached polyester and cotton
finally here after being lost in 
a bureaucratic maze of insurance
that the coming blessed event
was not marked by a star
but the ritual assigning of
a nine digit number
in place of a name.

Brownsville

I was hitch hiking across country with some companions and we stopped at a bar in Brownsville Texas to make a phone call. Sitting in a corner table was Carl Jung. He had a almost full bottle of blended tequila in front of him and two glasses. I asked him about the collective unconscious. He said “See this room—with the tables? The tables are people's egos.” I looked about the room and there were many tables. Some were clean but others had people sitting at them with different plates and glasses and condiments. He then continued. “The collective id is the floor.” I absorbed and then asked a question: “What about G-d?” Carl smiled and said “This table is your theology, your scripture.” He filled the glasses with tequila and continued, “and G-d is the floor.”

Good Sisters

The good sisters that now lie
in the mud beneath my feet
now know evil because
they've seen it
heavier then the stones and earth pressing upon their flesh
or what's left of it
amiable pathway for the verdant vine intertwining
a wired fence
to keep out the curious such as me
from wondering what manner
of soldier sleeps here.

Kitten Question

On a certain crisp fall day a kitten ran up to me while I was raking leaves. His tail was in the air and all I had to do to make him purr was scratch around his ears. He was brown with a black nose and tail. He looked at me and asked “Do you know how to change the nature of the universe?”

I looked at him and laughed. “Of course I do. I can do it here and now with my rake.”