When I eighteen years old, I was settling a hotel bill with an old man with a Russian accent as thick and rich as whiskey. “I married young,” he told me, suddenly. “And we were very poor.” 

He didn’t look at me as he said this, but as there was no one else there, I stayed to listen. “We worked very hard during the week, but on the weekends.” Here he looked at me, a delighted smile on his face. “On the weekends, we danced. And now you are young, so work hard during the week. And on the weekends, dance.”

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Convention has it that church is boring, and that is, in my experience, very true. There is a story about how Thoreau, shackled by duty, was sitting at a Christmas church service one fine, flurried Sunday morning. The sermon was droning on in the way of sermons (I suspect little has changed since 1775) and Thoreau’s naturalist heart drove his attention out the window, to where snow was falling in the eastern brightness of dawn. There was something in the snowflakes, some serene transcendence they set on him, that struck him as far lovelier and more captivating than the Christmas sermon. And so he took his leave of that church, never to return to it or any other.

Such is the prerogative of a transcendentalist, but I do wonder whether his life on Walden Pond was so much more thrilling than any given Sunday morning at church. I understand the aesthetic appeal of his adventures—who doesn’t—but be your Sunday morning sanctuary an auditorium or an autumn wood, I expect it’s stupendously dull, pockmarked with brief moments of beauty that will break your heart.

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I chew a cigarette outside while waiting for water to a boil in a blue pot on an electric stove. Squirrels and robins surround in jittery flits that make me feel like a cartoon princess. Traffic hums by in street quaking fashion, and old men whistle at pretty girls crossing the street. It’s morning. Lick the dew off my chin. Feel the clothes against my arms. Rub the back of my hand against my face.  Morning. Sunlight drips to the earth and collects in pools at my feet. I toe it, lap it up, paint stripes of it under my eyes. This is the day that the Lord has made, I will hoist it up, fly it from a branch, be glad in it. Witness the world.

Color! I have a friend named Dylan who once asked me once if I thought we would ever be able to create new colors. I told him that I didn’t think that was really a color question as much as an eye question. “Then,” he asked, “Will we ever be able to create new eyes?”  Read the full post »

I am so tired of hearing about the true meaning of Christmas.

These somber homilies that always begin the same way: “he was brought into this world as a babe.” “God became a tiny baby in a stinking manger.” Something about Emmanuel. Something about God being us. Something, something, something. They’ve worn me out.

I’ve heard them all my life now: pulpit reminders of the Christmas miracle. Pastors shackled to the weighty annual burden of reminding their congregations of the extent of the mystery. The incarnation. And these seasonal injunctions have somehow become unbearable. I find myself annoyed. Like how I feel when a parent forgets they’ve told this joke before. I feel the urge to stand up in the middle of church and scream “I know! I know the whole thing!” Mary (how obedient! How wise beyond her years!”) Joseph (“How trusting!”) The innkeeper. The shepherds. The star. The Magi. The little town. The baby God. I have searched for some unexplored nuance to the tale. A fresh angle that would stun me into quiet contemplation.

I’ve got nothing. Read the full post »

(Note: Not for the squeamish, this one.)

In 2006, Germany played host to the particularly strange and morbid case of Armin Meiwes, a 42-year-old computer technician who had suffered an unhappy childhood with a cruel father and a domineering mother. A gawky, angular man with an Eastwood squint and robust dimples, Meiwes waited until both of his parents had departed this world for the next before posting a message on a website expressing that he was “looking for a well-built 18- to 30-year-old to be slaughtered and then consumed.”

It is a point of fascination that Meiwes found his volunteer, a particularly disturbed and stout-hearted individual whose name has never been revealed. The two met at Meiwes’ house (in a room he had dubbed “The Slaughter Room” and designed for this very purpose) and commenced to lobbing off chunks of the volunteer’s person. The man lay bleeding in the bathtub while Meiwes sauteed his flesh with salt, pepper, wine and garlic, and read a Star Trek novel. Meiwes then came to the bathroom, chatted with the man for a bit and, once it was obvious he would not survive much longer, split his throat and hung him from a meathook in a freezer, from where he tore off, cooked and ate 44 pounds of him over the next 10 months.

An web surfer alerted authorities to Meiwes after stumbling across the original posting (one shudders to think what grim business led the tattler to that message.) Authorities took Meiwes to jail, and the press went berserk. What sort of monster was this man, who fit the bill of our favorite serial killers so readily? Quiet. Polite. Well-adjusted, even. An easy smile. They dubbed him Der Metzgermeiste—”The Master Butcher.”

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L-R: My brother, my grandfather, me

I shove the key into the lock on the back of my car and twist it open, pop the hatch, and outs pops a good number of my worldly possessions, avalanching out. Everything I own is in my car, and right now I’m like the Dutch boy, sticking my thumbs in the holes, trying to keep my life from spilling onto the hot streets. Shoeboxes of photos. A crate of old records. A guitar I don’t know how to play. All wrapped in my embrace. And somewhere in this mess is my only suit. It is blue, which I doubt is appropriate for a funeral, but it is better than nothing.

My hands are full of everything I own, and I’m not sure what to do next.

*          *          * Read the full post »

I am making turning eggs in a skillet, spits of oil stinging my bare chest, when a tickle at my feet grabs my attention and I am surprised to see that I am not alone. A moth has hitched a ride on my right foot, and is contented enough that a few mild kicks do nothing to shoo him away. So, I get a closer look.

He’s a black cutworm, and the fourth I’ve seen this week. They’re native to the Gulf, but a smattering of tornadoes last week brought them up by the thousands. Now, they flutter about the Great Plains like itinerant preachers looking for an audience. If my experiences are any indication, they won’t get far. They’ve all seemed rather like this fellow on my foot: slow to react, disoriented, perhaps suicidal. I found one in my bedroom several nights back who singed his wings to embers against my lamp while I was on the phone with a friend, mesmerized. Read the full post »

I said, once, that love was God giving us something back.

As in, “everything else leaves in life and nothing really lasts, but when you love someone, it’s God giving you something to hold onto, saying – benevolently – ‘I know everything leaves you, but this is the thing you want most of all, and it’s yours forever.’”

Now, I said it to a girl that I wanted to like me, so I was being a little melodramatic (nothing new there.) But, I did believe it. Love is God giving us something back.

I know a very little better now. “Love is God giving us something back” is one of those things that sounds true. It’s a sweet thought for Christian lovers to whisper to each other, and it works nicely on a heart-dotted note. It’s wrong, however, as any life will attest. God, He only gives us sacrifices. Only gives us what we can give back to Him. He gives you a gift in one hand and fire in the other – “Will you burn this also, for my sake?” And, mark my words – as you love your life – burn it on the spot. Better to burn it yourself then to have God storm your gates and take it by force. Read the full post »