Mary

I once had a very close friendship with Mary. We shared a lot of the same ideas, attitudes, beliefs, questions, hopes, and dreams. She was one of my closest friends for a very long time. I would go so far to say as she was my very best friend.

But people grow in different ways. We took different paths, followed different dreams, made decisions that were contrary to maintaining what was a close friendship. Her views on religion were very different from mine, though I have since mellowed a bit and can better understand now what she tried to tell me about what she believed. Our assessments of the human condition were at once quite similar and very different. I was, and remain, deeply skeptical about the fundamental goodness of people. On the one hand, I believe people will be good and kind and helpful if left entirely to their own devices in development, that doesn't happen. She believed humans have an inate core of goodness about them. I want to believe that. Some days I do. Most days I don't...or, at least, that point is deeply in question.

But we both had high hopes for the future. We could imagine good things happening. We both were advocates for equality and justice. We were the liberal poster children.

Something went awry. I think she absorbed some of my skepticism and distrust and I absorbed some of her trust and faith. Those things happened without the opportunity for us to have conversations about what was happening in our mental evolution. A friendship that had seemed as solid as granite just disappeared. I miss that. I miss her. I miss whoever I was back then.

Reflections

Where did all the plans for long, aimless road trips go? What happened to becoming a couch-surfer? When did the concept of behaving like a gypsy for a year just vaporize?

Maybe it set in when it became apparent that we still have obligations...check the post office boxes for mail and forward it to clients...pay bills...watch our expenses...look out after the house and yard. They are excuses, pure and simple. And I may be buying into them now. I don't want to. But maybe I am. Now, it's looking like a year of spending time at home, playing word games and wishing I had the money to do repair work on the house.

Has it been me all along that I've been dissatisfied with? And here I thought it was the work, the clients, the constant obligations, the lack of freedoms. Maybe that's it. The lack of freedoms. What is it, exactly, that prevents me from doing what I want to do?

Someone so young

I read something this morning that made me think. It was a post written by a 26-year-old woman whose blog I've been reading quite a bit recently. This young woman is full of energy and positive thoughts and seems just bursting with life. It's energizing just to read her words, so fresh and unburdened by experience and so undeterred by too many years of reality. But it's not just her youthful exuberance that I find appealing. It's her youthful wisdom. It's the fact that, when she experiences something new and gains new knowledge, she shares it in a way that brings that same new knowledge back to me. Her words resurrect in me the knowledge and thewisdom that lay buried under years and years of years and years. I found these words from her blog this morning particularly meaningful:

We cling to things because we’re terrified of empty space. We surround ourselves with possessions because we feel like we need them to help us express who we are. We hold on to people because we’re afraid of being alone. We carry around our sadness because we would rather feel something than nothing. We try to fill our emptiness with whatever we can.

How can someone so young know so much?

More Movies

After spending a Friday afternoon lazily watching two movies, one right after the other, at the theater during "matinee" discount time ($1 per movie), I decided that's exactly the kind of relaxation I needed. When I left the theater, I had the sensation that the stress I brought with me when I entered the building had been left in the seats.

It's hard to say why I feel any stress these days: I am not working much, I have very few demands on my time, and there are very few expectations placed on me. Yet I've felt stress anyway. I don't know where it's from. But if I can get rid of it simply by going to see a couple of movies, then I shall start seeing more movies.

Hygienic Art--New London, CT

Recently, a blogger friend who lives in New London, CT posted a series of photos taken at the Hygienic Art event in New London. I'd heard of it through her blog a couple of years earlier but hadn't explored it much. But this year, she posted a comment about a video that described the event. I finally found the video to which I think she was referring. It's shown below. Seeing the video made me even more interested in actually experiencing New London for myself.

Frost

When I walked outside this morning, I noticed the roofs of the houses all around mine had heavy layers of frost on them. But not mine. That surprised me, since I just had a vast quantity of insulation installed in my attic. I assumed the insulation would prevent the heat from inside the house from entering the attic...and I assumed the warmth of my attic was responsible for the lack of frost on the roof.

In fact, when the insulation guy came to give me an estimate a few weeks ago, he pointed out the same thing to me. My neighbors' roofs were all coated with frost, but mine wasn't. He explained that was because the warmth of my attic either melted the frost or didn't allow it to form. Once the insulation is installed, he said, my roof would look just as frosty as my neighbors' roofs. He was wrong.

I am sure my attic needed a LOT more insulation. I am not sure, though, why my roof does not have frost on it. Is my assumption about the warm attic right? If so, where is the warmth coming from?

You probably don't know. You probably don't care. That's alright. I'm asking anyway.

What's behind it?

I wonder why, tonight, my emotions are overflowing? I've been trying to think of what might have caused this flood of memories or wishes or whatever it is that's overwhelming me. But I can't think of a trigger. Maybe it's just time. The steady beat of time continues without pause. In fact, it's faster and faster with each passing hour. Maybe that's it.

I listen to Tacoma Trailer, an instrumental piece from Leonard Cohen, and I cannot control myself. I just weep. I am no longer embarrassed by it. I'm just surprised. And I wonder. What's behind it?

Oceans

I have a great many friends. Unfortunately, most of them do not know about our friendship, since I tend to keep it under wraps, even from my friends. This rather secretive side of me, coupled with the fact that I've never met most of them, makes it impossible to say we have an intimate friendship (not that kind of intimate, damn it, be serious here) friendship in the traditional sense, but I think it's intimate. I think it's intimate, though, because I feel like I understand at least a part of what's inside their heads. At least a little.

Let me explain. I believe poetry and its cousin, music, reveal a great deal about what a person believes, feels, sees, understands, and cares about. Music, especially, opens the door to a person's soul (not in the religious sense...bear with me). It's not just the lyrics. It's the emotion carried in the tune and the way it's delivered. A person's humanity can be revealed in the degree of attachment he or she feels to music. Of course I can't measure the degree of attachment. But I can sense it. And when I'm right and I feel a deep emotional attachment between a person and music that creates that same deep emotional attachment in me, I feel attached to that person. Whatever communication we've had, whether via telephone, email, or simply comments on a blog or social media site, I feel that level of attachment.

Ideally, I'd break through the barriers of space and meet these people. Sometimes I do. But mostly I don't. Yet I have friends in them. Maybe our friendships are very, very close. Maybe they don't feel that way at all. But isn't that true of more traditional friendships, too?

I listened today to some music by a woman named Brandi Carlile. I encountered her by chance as I stumbled across an "activity" on Facebook of a friend I've never met. When I listened to the music, it evoked music of others I like and it made me realize I have a connection with the friend who inadvertently shared it with me.

What does all this mean? I suppose it means that the dimensions of friendship are changing. It's no longer necessary to have a physical presence with a friend to BE a friend. But, come to think of it, if we read the letters of poets and writers, many of their friends were distant. Maybe social media and the internet are becoming today's version of oceans and distance.

Ice cream man

Goddamn the ice cream man.

He lured me into thinking vanilla was a natural thing. He led me to believe pineapple and peppermint would always be there to brighten an otherwise dull day.

Goddamn the ice cream man.

There was no okra-ice in his truck, no garbanzo swirl, no chemo-crunch. His truck was a lie told to unwitting co-conspirators.

Goddamn the ice cream man.

If only he'd laid it out plain, if only he'd been honest, if only he'd served up what he didn't have, I might not have been blind-sided. Come to think of it, though, I don't really remember the ice cream man that well. But I imagine what it must have been like, with all those cold sweet flavors. If I don't really remember him, why do I think I know what it was like? Why do I think it's different now?

Goddamn the ice cream man.

Right...uh huh.

What would you do if you fell in love in late middle age?

I didn't think so.

Thinking about someone on the coast

Damn. Just damn. If only I could head south tonight, I could be there in the morning. But I can't. Damn.

Adjustment

Muffled sounds pierce the thick, warm fog, but they are mere noises, nothing meaningful. The time between becoming conscious of the noises and the point at which they seems to have some rational content might be seconds, but it could just as easily be hours or even days. Finally, or perhaps not finally but just suddenly, an irritatingly repetitive noise becomes louder and louder and then, like the fog was lifted, becomes a question. "Mr. Kneeblood?" Louder: "Mr. Kneeblood?" LOuder: "Mr. Kneeblood?" LOUder: "Mr. Kneeblood?" LOUDer: "Mr. Kneeblood?" LOUDER: "MR. KNEEBLOOD?! Can you hear me?"

This questioning robotic voice won't stop until I respond, which I try to do, or think I try to do. I can hear myself responding, but then maybe it's just my brain telling my body to respond. Maybe my body isn't properly interpreting the instruction. I try again. I try again. Nothing. The robotic annoyance continues. "Mr. Kneeblood?!" Then, finally, the blanket of unconciousness that silences my response is torn away. I hear myself respond. "Jesus Christ, yes, I can hear you! Stop it! "

The woman seems pleased. "Good! You're doing fine! It will be just a while longer!"

Longer? For what? I know only that I'm not fully aware of where I am, or even whether I'm awake or am dreaming this. The fog has lifted, but only the heaviest layer. I still feel as though I'm breathing through a mountain of cotton. I feel like my body is wrapped in thick, cold blankets. I don't know exactly where I am. I'm not even conscious of whether I am aware of who I am. But the blankets are being removed, somehow, and I have the odd sensation that I'm getting warmer with the removal of each successive layer. I am becoming more aware, more conscious, more an actor in this environment instead of simply the subject of actions around me.

It seems like I have been wading through this odd purgatory of molasses-speed awareness and slow-motion movement for hours, but it may be only seconds. I see time seems as a physical "thing" that bends and molds around my body, then becomes a fragile mirror that shatters when touched by a feather. Eventually, its tangible presence fades away to reveal only shadows and a sense of loss and vulnerability.

Then I open my eyes. Finally, I open my eyes and that simple act brings the sounds into sharper focus. I hear the hum of the machinery, the beeps of gauges, the repetitive "swoosh" of pumps handling things I can no longer handle on my own.

Hospital. Surgery. Hours? Days? Weeks? Who was calling out his name? Kneeblood. Who the hell is Kneeblood? And then it hits me. It will take some adjustment for all of this to sink in.

Edges

I don't know exactly where my edges are. Maybe they're just over the end of my patience. Maybe they're more distant and less visible. But I know they are there. What I don't know is what I'll do when I go over them. What happens when the edges are behind me, or above me? What happens when I've run past the edges and can't get back? I don't want to learn when it's too late. But I may not want to learn too early.

To Hell and Beyond

I think I know what it is. It's fear there's just nothing there.

After digging deep, looking under every thought, studying each action, there's just nothing to be found. At least nothing substantive, nothing coherent. Just a mass of jagged emotions and attitudes, most of them only partially-formed, badly underdeveloped, irrelevant and pointless.

Fortunately or unfortunately, their irrelevance is hidden from all but the most relentless explorers. As if someone could explore another's motives. You just cannot know what drives a person to be who he is. Not even yourself. Or maybe it's just me. Maybe others have a clear understanding of themselves. Maybe others really are as deep as I am shallow. Not shallow in the traditional sense, though that may describe me, too, but shallow in the sense that this shell I live in doesn't have much depth. It's the stuff beneath that goes all the way to the bowels of hell and beyond.

A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese

A friend I made through Facebook has recommended a film I want to see, but I have to be in the proper mood and have adequate free time to watch it. To ensure I won't forget where to find it, I'm "memorializing" it here: A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xdmrny_a-personal-journey-with-martin-scor_shortfilms

Daily Spirituality

I have a new friend on Facebook, someone I've never met. He teaches a college English composition course (courses) at a college on the west coast of Florida. He is either "from" my hometown or spent a considerable amount of time there. He considers it his hometown.

My new friend and I have had some short conversations via online posts and messages. He seems like a very nice guy, a very down-to-earth guy who delves deeply into issues that interest him or that he finds illuminating. Based on some of the conversations we've had, and on comments I've seen him make on others' pages, I gather he grew up Catholic and has retained his belief in a supreme being, but has lost...or is losing...his connection to the church. His beliefs are changing, or have changed, enough to cause him to question (perhaps 'reject' is the more appropriate term) the traditional church dogma. But he retains a sense of spirituality that is, or may be, religious. I'm not sure. Just recently, he posted some comments about Scientology; while not endorsing the 'religion,' his comments demonstrated an extraordinary sense of open-mindedness about something I always have considered greed-driven espousals of magic. There's something about his willingness to give 'believers' the benefit of the doubt that I find refreshing and genuinely good, despite the fact that I cannot bring myself to be as generous as he appears to be.

All of this is a prelude, I suppose, to what's really on my mind right now. And that is, what IS spirituality? Is it the sense of wonder that I have at the world around me? Is it the utter amazement I feel when looking deep into a pool of clear water? Is it the sense of amazement that I feel when I look at all of what humankind has accomplished in harnessing the resources of the earth? What the hell is it?

I guess it's something different for everyone. For me, it may be something different for every day of the week.

Love of...Country?

This morning I read an exceptionally thought-provoking piece that bears sharing here. It gets at my personal beliefs about "love of country" and how dangerous that can be.

I will admit to wanting to document it here for my own selfish purpose of wanting to be able to find it more easily in the future. Regardless of my motives, though, anyone who stumbles across my post and then moves on to "High Treason" on via Negativa will be fortunate. He writes about a poem by José Emilio Pacheco, a highly-regarded Mexican poet.

So This Is Christmas?

It's Christmas Day, 2011. It's not yet 7:00 am, but I've been up and awake for close to three hours now. I didn't get up early to prepare gifts or stuff stockings—we haven't exchanged gifts in quite some time and we decided this year we wouldn't even do our "traditional" stocking stuffers. So I don't know why I got up early. Maybe I just needed a bit of early morning reflection time.

After my wife and I decided gift exchange was rather pointless for us—if we need something and can afford it, we buy it— we shifted to doing stocking stuffers. We would fill one another's Christmas stockings with little treats: a can of smoked oysters, special jams or teas, a tin of sardines, a whimsical toy. It was fun and we enjoyed it, but I guess it just played out. This year, we didn't put up a tree or any ornaments or decorations.

So today is Christmas Day, but it doesn't look like Christmas Day. We'll have a special breakfast this morning and a special evening meal, which will add a bit of seasonal celebration.

Maybe next year we'll return to the old traditions. Or maybe we'll make some new ones.

The Embarrassment of Low-Dose Sentimentality

I sometimes think people are embarrassed by their emotions, by what some would call their "sentimentality." I would argue that's true for some of us who tend to view the "Christmas mush" as a profit-driven, media-induced effort to persuade us that we should listen to our "consciences" and spend accordingly...our "consciences" tell us we must buy to express our love. Because we are skeptical of the motives behind the "Christmas mush," we are loath to buy into—and certainly loath to express—the emotions that the media present to us as evidence of the Christmas spirit.

But I think if the skeptics among us were to be completely honest with ourselves, we would not work so hard to present ourselves as unwilling to buy into the Christmas spirit.

Despite my lack of belief in the biblical basis for Christmas, I have no particular reason to find anything offensive about Christmas. While I think Christmas has been co-opted by capitalists to a very great extent, I find the themes surrounding the Christmas holidays (and many other religious holidays, for that matter) to be good and valuable and attractive. Goodwill toward men. Peace on earth. Sharing. Helping those less fortunate. Love of family and friends. Being charitable in thought and deed. Those are good things. (Noticeably lacking, unfortunately, is goodwill toward the Earth, but that's another post.)

But back to my opening comment: if you're skeptical about the motives of those around you, you tend not to want to reveal your own...especially the ones that are REAL inside you but that appear, at least to you, PHONY in others. Part of it is that you're questioning your own skepticism, I think, and part of it is your concern about your image among those who share what you may think is your intellectual superiority. You don't want to look like a patsy for the proletariat, as it were.

I will readily admit that I remain highly suspicious of the motives behind a lot of the "spirit of the season." Earlier and earlier Christmas sales, earlier and earlier Christmas tree availability (another issue for another post), bigger and bigger splashes by the media about their toy drives and help for the homeless and so forth. But I have to acknowledge that the results of toy drives and efforts to help the homeless are, or can be, wonderful. The fact that the motives behind them may not be "pure" in the way I'd like them to be does not change the results. While the results may not always be as good as I'd hope, they're probably better than the outcome of inaction.

Granted, some believe, as I once did, people are not naturally caring, empathic beings. But whether people come by those attributes naturally or not, I believe many people and perhaps most people do possess them. They want the world to be a better place. They want to help their fellow humans. They don't want to allow themselves to be the beasts we all can become. And I think most people, even those who present the face and the attitude of a hard-ass, believe the same thing.

In my admittedly schizophrenic assessments of people, I think the hard-asses are just willing to allow themselves to exhibit sentimentality in extremely low does, if at all, and that's an embarrassment in and of itself. I've been embarrassed across the board in that regard.

As of this moment, though, I am allowing myself to revel in the spirit of the season. I just wish I'd revel in it year-round. I wish we all would revel in it year-round.

Cabin Porn

Thanks to my friend Bev, I just spent quite awhile salivating over design concepts, photos, etc. for cabins. I want DESPERATELY to have a place far away from the madding crowd as an escape. Take a look at this blog of Cabin Porn and you, too, will be converted.

Wonderful Breakfast

I stumbled upon a very interesting blog this morning. "Stumbled upon" may not be the way to put it. A post from the blog was the first link listed when I did a search on Google for "wonderful breakfast." The blog is called Hallucinations. It is written by an Indian woman by the name of Shruthi Rao. She lives in Bangalore, India. She is a "foodie." She is a gifted writer. She was featured (with an incorrect spelling of her name and other details about her misrepresented) in an article in The Hindu (page 1, page 2). Despite the paper's apparent inability to get all the facts straight, it's interesting to read an English-language paper from India; gives a different perspective on the world.

The image is linked from the article on The Hindu.

Later I may explain why I was looking up "wonderful breakfast."

The Pleasures of Pie

My fascination with pie, and the tendency to indulge that fascination, came upon me abruptly. I don't know the exact moment it happened, but I would say it occurred within the last four to six weeks. For reasons unknown to me, I have become moderately obsessed (say what?) with pie. Not all pie. Mincemeat, my favorite from my childhood, is no longer high on my list. And the pies shown in these images are not the kind over which I obsess. No, the pies with which I am profoundly fascinated are these: cherry, apple, pecan, and peach (not cobbler, pie!). There may be others, but I am not sure. Oh! I'm partial to rhubarb pie, too, though I've only had a few pieces in my life and none recently. So my affinity for rhubarb pie may be a function of memory playing tricks on me. I mean, I could have a piece right now and might loathe it. In fact, come to think of it, it may be a little too sweet for my taste. But then it may not be sweet at all. And since we're talking sweet here, is that not what pie is all about? I do not have much of a sweet tooth, though I tend not to turn up my nose at cookies and candy. But cake? I can do without it. Pie, though, is like nectar of the gods. Assuming, of course, that I am gods and it is my nectar (are my nectar? I mean, since we're talking plural here).

The pie in the top photo is a lemon pie, which was very good, but lemon pie and its cousins lack something I like: chewable substance. Lemon pie just fills my mouth with flavor. The crust adds a shade of substance, but not quite enough for my liking. I like a bit of "meat" to my pie. Which leads me, inexorably, to another favorite pie: steak and kidney. But that's another story. For me, "pie" immediately calls up something that goes extraordinarily well with coffee. Steak and kidney in a crust does not do that. But it's known as pie and I will not argue the point. But for the purposes of this treatise, I will ignore steak and kidney pie, if that's alright with you.

The bottom photo is a coconut pie, a coconut cream pie to be precise (if I am correct, which may not be the case). It was very good, too. While it also lacked the degree of substance that I enjoy, the little slivers of coconut gave me something to chew on, which satisfied my oral fixation a bit better than did the lemon pie. With the way I've been describing these two pieces of pie, you'd think I did not truly appreciate them. I did! I enjoyed them immensely! But they were not exceptional pies the way an apple can be. You know, an apple pie with firm chunks of apple that require your teeth to work a bit.

Back to my fascination with pie. It just took me by surprise. I have always enjoyed pie, but did not seek it out; I was satisfied to have a piece on rare occasions when someone else decided to buy or build one. But suddenly I am on a mission. When I drive by a funky little diner, I am just as likely to swerve into the parking lot with pie as my purpose as I am to check it out for what I call "diner food," which is a term I cannot define well so I will not try here, lest I go off course entirely and head in a direction not anticipated as I began writing this.

I do not know why pie is on my list of priorities of late. But it is. And when I think of pie, I cannot help but think of riding along with my father, as a kid (me, not him), on his trips to visit lumber yards around south Texas. He would stop and visit with the lumber yard owner and write up an order for a carload of lumber (my father was a lumber wholesaler) and then, as often as not, he would take me to a local diner for a piece of pie. We ate pie in several small towns in south Texas. Now I wonder if my recent excursions into pie-seeking is related to my recollections of my youth and my attempt to regain a foothold on memories long since lost. If that were the case, my fascination with pie could be a symptom of unresolved psychological issues or, perhaps, even some sort of psychosis the likes of which I have never faced before.

More likely, I think, I just like pie and have come to realize there's nothing inherently wrong with that. Except, of course, for the calories. I'll have to work on that.

West of Fort Worth

This was originally posted on September 1, 2008 on another blog that I created and subsequently ignored. Let's see if this looks the same:
If I were looking for a planned residential community, I might want to avoid this one. Of course I realize that there may be many other people who enjoy spending time with rattlesnakes. Obviously, the people who own the Brazos River Rattlesnake Ranch do.

If you have been looking for acid stains, here's a number to call.


The courthouse in Weatherford is an attractive place.

Here's one of two signs we saw on our outing today, advertising dance lessons.


We had lunch here today. In Thurber, Texas. It's a place called The New York Hill Restaurant. My favorite wife and I felt rather young; the clientele was, by and large, über-elderly..


My seat at lunch allowed me to watch dozens of hummingbirds feast at several feeders. When we went outside, though, it was tough to get close enough for a shot.

The other dance lesson sign. I am dangerous on the dance floor. Seriously. I could hurt someone. And I probably have.

Drab

It has been only a few days since the greyness of early winter descended upon us. Insistent winds have torn most of the yellow and brown leaves from the trees, blanketing the lawns and streets of our neighborhood with dull-colored rags ripped from the limbs above us.

I am surprised by how quickly the stark dullness of these early winter days has ground into my psyche. I am tired of the uncomfortable coolness and tired of the lack of sunshine and tired of the wet, sloppy streets. It is too cool for shirtsleeves and not cold enough for a heavy jacket. When the sun tries to peak out from the clouds, the dullness seems amplified and exaggerated.

The time has come for me to kick through the doldrums. It's early. There is too much more of this coming to permit myself to be smothered by it.

Personal Instruction

I arranged for web hosting for a domain name I secured a year or two ago, with the objective of creating a WordPress blog. The host allows "one-button installation" of WordPress, which I finally did. But I haven't a clue where to go from here. I have downloaded long and convoluted instructions that I simply cannot force myself to read. I need personal, hands-on, step-by-step instructions on how to get this rolling. I may be willing to provide room and board for my teacher. And maybe airfare. Meals, certainly.

Who will be the first to jump in and offer personal instruction?

No Smiling Where I Can See It.

Thanksgiving is done. It was good here. My brother and my niece joined us. It was good.

But tonight I am no longer happy.

Goddamn it.

Seriously. Why?

Get Over It

Arrogant, self-important pseudo-intellectuals annoy me. You probably know one or more of them. You know, someone who sneers at "authors" who don't see eye to eye with the "intellectual." Or, someone whose interpretations of poetic rectitude MUST be right.

So what? Other people annoy me, too. I'll get over it.

Explosive

I think I understand how people can, under pressure, become terrorists. They feel trapped and unable to control their own destinies. People and/or institutions around them behave badly and abuse them and others. Call it capitalism, self-absorption, or whatever you will, but being surrounded by intense and uncaring greed seems to set alight the fire under the pressure cooker. The only outlets are explosive eruptions, unless the perpetrators of binge-greed quickly back off. But they don't. Hence terrorism.

It may be different in different contexts. But I think I understand it to a great extent. Explosive rage let loose in unproductive ways. I believe I know it. I believe I've seen it. I believe I feel it.

Knowledge

I wonder if it's the same for everyone. You reach a point of understanding and appreciating the reality of one's mortality, which seems like such an extraordinarily grown-up accomplishment. But then, out of nowhere, you run head-on into the real world. The REALLY real world.

For reasons I cannot explain, I ran head-on into the real world. Suddenly, tonight, I became aware of my own mortality. Completely, fully, entirely aware. One day, years hence or just moments away, I will be dead. The switch will be flipped and, instantly, I will be no more. Other lives will go on. My won't. I won't be aware any longer. My existence will have ceased.

I wish I had words to explain this revelation. It's both frightening and freeing. I don't want to know this, but I do.

Am I experienced?

Today was too warm. The skies were too drearily overcast. The humidity was too high. I was in no mood for any of these discomforting excesses. What could be causing all of this ugliness on the day after I very nearly achieved freedom? Being an atheist of immense proportions, it would have been absurd to blame god. But having a seed of agnosticism lodged deep in my soul, I decided it couldn't hurt to consider the possibility that god was to blame. And so I expressed my displeasure.

"God," I said aloud as I drove my deeply unsatisfactory old pickup truck down the splashy boulevards of north Dallas, "this is bullshit! Just because you're an annoying crutch for people with belief in magic doesn't mean you have to punish those schmucks for my disbelief!"

"Son," a tinny voice responded, "you give yourself too much credit. You matter to me about as much as I matter to you. I don't care. The cycle of weather is one I can set and forget. You get what's programmed. Don't assume for a second I'm punishing anyone. You're not worth the ashes of my cigar."

With that, god stepped out of the truck and, with a sharp glance at my right front tire, caused it to go flat.

"Donkey!" I called after him. It was a necessary linguist bomb.