Sixteen thousand words
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Two
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Nine
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Thirteen
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Sixteen
David on 08.31.04 @ 07:45 PM CST [link]
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Telegram |
| Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. |
Tuesday, August 31st
Monday, August 30th
Run, David, Run
Rebecca is a David. Contrariwise, David is not and is unlikely to become a Rebecca. Growing up, I had the examples of David Niven, the Dave Clark Five, Davey and Goliath and (David) Deacon Jones before me. I learned in Sunday School of an heroic King David, psalmist, underdog victor, dynastic founder and forebear of the messiah. It wasn't until later I learned of the stiffnecked, tragic warlord he became, corrupted by power and sensuality, broken and exhausted by his own excesses. There were a lot of Davids then; it seems like I always had a friend of that name. But now, I notice, when I call and say, "It's David," she doesn't say, "David Who?" I saw a movie, once, which had a running joke about how many Davids there were in Wales. A church member, named David, recently fathered a son and called his name, "Davis". I wondered, if you like the name, why ot reproduce it; if you don't, why not go for something completely different? Would we stand for Rebecca having a duaghter, "Rebecco"? I think not.
David on 08.30.04 @ 07:35 PM CST [link]
Sunday, August 29th
Message
Rosebud. Seven letters of mystery, heavy-laden with meaning as they have been since Citizen Kane began its trip of ascendant reputation, written in red on a paper towel. On two lines:
Rose
Bud
A note from myself, to myself, and cryptic to any others that might have seen it. I read it, I understood it, I recollected, and I acted.
David on 08.29.04 @ 07:16 PM CST [link]
Saturday, August 28th
Minding the Store
In a few days Telegram will appear less frequently while I attend to some of the matters in what gives every appearance of being my real life. I still expect to make irregular entries, but not on a daily or near-daily basis; instead
Passing Fair will go daily, Implicit Arches may appear more frequently, and I will look into giving Telegram a design overhaul. This may entail moving it to its own subdomain, and scrapping Greymatter for something new. There'll still be some new content here, I just can't guarantee it'll be every day: same low quality, just less often.
David on 08.28.04 @ 06:06 PM CST [link]
Friday, August 27th
Fair Grounds
Yesterday I spent a couple of hours getting some maintainence done for the rummage sale. The tents go up, if all goes well, today or Monday or Tuesday, and our first big work days for volunteers are Wednesday and Thursday. We met at the barn to look over the carts, reinflate the flat tires, and assess the damage done in the previous sale. Then we talked: about how sorting can run without a full-time chair, about the gala set for Rummage Weekend (tickets start at $300 each), about our fellow volunteers, about various departments and how they are run. It will be a challenge, this time, with new configurations, new people trying to oversee the madness, and the overwhelming flood of donations. It was a nice, comfortable, calm morning, and I hope it bodes well.
David on 08.27.04 @ 07:30 AM CST [link]
Wednesday, August 25th
Economics
I find that I act from principle, and from interest. Principle, in that I look to the general good, and how an action can help achieve it, even when the action may have no direct benefit to me in particular. For instance, I am active in support of the Sunday School, and serve on the committee that oversees it, not because I have any children that will benefit from it, but because I believe that the nurture and care of children is the busines of everyone, and want to be an example of that principle. By interest, I mean curiosity, and the desire for knowledge, and the hope for wisdom, and I mean love, for curiosity without love is not interest, but voyeurism.
David on 08.25.04 @ 04:57 PM CST [link]
Tuesday, August 24th
New Hobby
I have decided to raise up an army of evil monkeys to do my bidding. The main reasons they need to be evil is that they should be temperamentally in harmony with my grand scheme, and that an army of sweet, lovable monkeys lacks credibility. And a monkey army that lacks credibility is hardly worth the time and effort it takes to raise it. The other problem is that they can only be evil in certian ways. I want them to have cetain good work habits: they should be reliable and obedient, follow the rules, not take overlong bathroom breaks, cooperative with one another, respectful of the hierarchy and the office equipment, and endeavor not to be late or absent too often. Unortunately, these are qualities hard to find in the truly evil character, and hopefully evil monkeys will be more likely to exhibit them than evil people. It's a trade-off: they may lack the intellectual potential, but they're more malleable. I don't really have a scheme yet - I don't want to take over the world, there's too much cleaning involved - but I figure I'll get the army first, then figure outwhat I want to do with them.
David on 08.24.04 @ 06:21 AM CST [link]
Monday, August 23rd
West Chester
MY aunt and uncle have lived in the same house for as long as I can remember, and that makes it more than forty years now. They raised six kids there, so most of the times I remember being there it was a hive of all sort of juvenile activity. The three boys were within two year or so of my age, either way, and the girls were younger. By now they have all been married for a few years and have children of their own. They all live near the family home so it's likely that many of its days now, even as an empty nest, are as lively as ever. With all that crowd it couldn't help but be a hospitable place to those of us who came and visited more rarely -- and even though I haven't been there in years I still feel as if there would be a sincere welcome for me there. I haven't been dissolute enough to be a prodigal son, just busy and disinclined to travel; it's been too long since I brought myself to rest there.
David on 08.23.04 @ 06:25 AM CST [link]
Sunday, August 22nd
Saturday
Right now I am in danger of overloading my days and not having room for the good stuff. Yesterday: Men Bible study, at 7:30, Ed Council retreat at 9:30, followed by children's ministry committee meeting at lunch. I skipped that one becuase I wanted to get out to Far Hills before it started to rain, then came home for a brief rest before I went to the housesit. It's only two-thirty. Then to the book sale which is in its closing hour; I help consolidate and browse (69 more books I don't really need), then we have to get all the books out of the school building before it closes. There aren't enough vehicles to take them away and it takes more than three hours. I get home about 7:30. This morning I am trying to figure out what I can put off from today to give myself room to breathe.
David on 08.22.04 @ 06:21 AM CST [link]
Friday, August 20th
Our Haunted Planet
I am having difficulty trying to think of something to write about. I am sitting here, half-watching "The Mothman Prophecies" and experimenting with my handheld. I read "The Mothman Prophecies" as a teenager; I wanted to believe that the world was a weird and mysterious place and John Keel affirmed that inclination. The intuition, I think, is valid even though Keel is unreliable in practically every particular. The world is weird: not full of MIBs and BEMs, maybe, but teeming with natural enigmas and the impenetrable mystery of man. The formalized expressionism of the film is reassuring in its familiarity - if the surprises the world offered were as inevitable as these they would hold less terror.
David on 08.20.04 @ 09:30 PM CST [link]
Thursday, August 19th
List
Books from AAUW
Bury Me Standing: the Gypsies and their Journey; Isabel Fonseca
Confronting Christ; Elton Trueblood
Tri-Planetary; E. E. Smith
Jenny Was No Lady: The Story of the JN-4D; Jack R. Lincke
Manual of the Purgatorian Society
Munsell Book of Color
I Am Wind You Are Fire: The Life and Work of Rumi; Annemarie Schimmel
Enduring Grace: Living Portraits of Seven Women Mystics; Carol Lee Flinders
The Quaker Approach; John Kavanaugh, ed.
A Testament of Devotion; Thomas R. Kelly
Gösta Berlings Saga; Selma Lagerlöf
The Lady In The Lake; Raymond Chandler
From Here To Eternity; James Jones
The Alhambra; Washington lrving
Journey Into Christmas; Bess Streeter Aldrich
The Remains of the Day; Kazuo Ishiguro
I Kissed Dating Goodbye; Joshua Harris
Safe Harbor; Luanne Rice
Then And Now; W. Somerset Maugham
The American Thesaurus of Slang
The Amateur Photographer's Handbook; Aaron Sussman
The Surfin'ary: A Dictionary of Surfing Terms and Surfspeak
1984 Bernards Junior Hiqh Yearbook
1994 Ridge High School Alumni Directory
David on 08.19.04 @ 05:52 PM CST [link]
Wednesday, August 18th
On Being Disliked
Today I saw someone I hadn't seen in a while; the reason she interests me is because she gives every indication of disliking me intensely. She was a church member for several years, but moved out of state and recently moved back. We had acquantances in common in the past but had very few dealings with each other, but obviously had contact enough for her to develop a distaste for me. I am confident that she can't know me well enough to dislike me for any legitimate reason (though, heaven knows, there are plenty of those) so it may be based upon some misapprehension or misunderstanding. It's interesting to me that I have become so used to being liked that one person's dislike should be such a novelty; interesting, also, that it intrigues me without upsetting me too much. Everyone wants to be liked, sure; but I don't care whether she changes her mind or not, I only want our coexitence in the same territory tolerable.
David on 08.18.04 @ 07:33 PM CST [link]
Tuesday, August 17th
File Under Z
It's a little too private to talk about out here in the open, but it's really all that's on my mind.
David on 08.17.04 @ 07:53 PM CST [link]
Monday, August 16th
Gay Jim
The most popular topic of conversation the past few days has been the governor's resignation. I voted for him, I guess, and have hardly given him a thought since, but the revelations and allegations of the past week do make him an intriguing figure, though by no means an admirable one. He is young enough that he grew up in a time when opportunity was not necessarily denied to people who were openly gay or bisexual, yet he chose, out of ambition, to live a life of continual secrecy and lying. Now I think if you are comfortable with deceit in one area of your life, you will find it easier to practice it throughout your life -- one of the corrosive effects of sin. And it appears that he has been practicing the more ordinary political sins of favoritism and patronage, without giving it much thought. Now, through sheer audacity, he has managed to take the calamity of his potential exposure and used it to turn himself into a nationally prominent figure. I can hardly imagine what kind of omelet he'll end up making out of these broken eggs.
David on 08.16.04 @ 04:59 PM CST [link]
Sunday, August 15th
Wind
It wasn't much of a storm by the time it whisked past in the night. Hardly more than one of the summer squalls that come through every week or so. I wasn't thinking further than our immediate needs: today was the announced date for the presentation to the congregation of the refurbished organ and redesigned chancel. As the storm approached I began to realize that there was a better than average chance that the power would be knocked out and...no organ, no lights, no unveiling. But the storm went out to sea and the anxiety about the congregational reaction was defused. Not that the reaction was uniformly positive, but the new design was so safe, so conventional, so unchallenging, so tasteful, that people are a little embarrassed not to care for it. But we are so house-proud in our house of worship that this trivia matters, when God is served elsewhere with smaller gifts offered wholeheartedly, and well-served. The Lord is near to all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth.
David on 08.15.04 @ 08:24 PM CST [link]
Saturday, August 14th
Unfinished
Down every lane there is something barely seen. Something invisible to the hurried travelers, it is invisible out in the open. The mysterious walker may catch a rewarding glimpse. What is present potentially, appears actually. The weekend is carried in the womb of the week. The hot tar oozes out of the pavement like blood.
Sorry, that's as much as I can get out of that game. A friend, whose mother's funeral was remarked upon in an earlier version of these pages about a year ago, brought some books in to donate for the AAUW book sale. Another friend, mentioned often, appeared to me out of the pages of a donated book, a junior high yearbook. Readers, she wore braces. Seeing the image of that child, I feel like I have learned much about the adult she is -- all at a glimpse. A year ago, I was at Eunice's funeral, and I learned much about her the same way, extracting the life that is the pearl inside the dead oyster of a photograph.
David on 08.14.04 @ 05:52 PM CST [link]
Friday, August 13th
9W
Nine words, selected at random: weekend down travelers glimpse ten blood a would actually. What can I build with these nine bricks?
David on 08.13.04 @ 07:40 PM CST [link]
New Toy
I don't know whether it's a good thing or not - at any rate I am a little embarrassed to admit it. I am writing this entry on my new PDA, which I bought primarily with the idea that I'd be better able to keep journal entries, and upload them with it. Maybe I'll also be better able to keep track of the untidy threads of my so-called life, but I have to admit: I feel compelled now, somehow, to write these entries every day. I don't really want to read them, though; enough so that I spent a not inconsiderable amount of money on a machine that, basically, relieves me of the effort of transcribing these words. Otherwise, a pad of paper and a pencil would be sufficient. It's funny the tasks we'll pay to evade.
David on 08.13.04 @ 07:01 AM CST [link]
Wednesday, August 11th
The Bad Can of Spam
Some days you fall out of sync right away and never get it back. I knew it was going to be a weird day to keep focus because I was leaving work in the morning to go to a rummage meeting at 9. When I got up, too early, I was already jumpy. I wasn't able to concentrate on my short drives, first to work, then to VNA, and seeing so many people that I had to catch up with left me completely distracted. When I got back to work I tried too hard to make up for the lost time - forgetting that lost time is gone and can't be made up for - was trying too hard to be helpful, and stayed just a little behind the swell all afternoon. The downpour was a welcome distraction; I felt like it was justice pouring down on me when it was only rain. When I got home my new PDA was waiting, but I can't play with it until the battery is charged. No catastrophes, but nothing went quite right and I need to send this day down the drain and open a new one.
David on 08.11.04 @ 07:54 PM CST [link]
Tuesday, August 10th
Color
I have been wearing a lot of blue. I don't have any particular preference for the color, nor for cyan, nor aquamarine, nor periwinkle, nor teal. I do wear blue denim a lot, and when I top that with a blue shirt, I am in a scheme. When the cold snap hit I took out my lightest jacket, also of blue denim. My blue slacks have been holding a crease pretty well lately, and I have been wearing them on Sundays. I like blue skies. I can't remember ever seeing a bluebird, and bluejays are annoying oportunists. I remember with affection the winedark sea, which was, nevertheless, more blue than any other color.
David on 08.10.04 @ 05:53 PM CST [link]
Monday, August 9th
Snapshot
She saw the three fawns from her office window, browsing in the cemetery under the oak tree. We all got up from our lunches to get a peek. I had a dribbly half-eaten peach in my hand, but I ran and got my camera. I crossed to the cemetery side and got quite close, using the trunk of the tree to conceal my approach. I finished the peach and took the pictures. The deer wandered off, unhurrying.
David on 08.09.04 @ 05:56 PM CST [link]
Sunday, August 8th
Arrows
Vision is an act of the will. We don't see that, nowadays, because we are so well aware of the physics of light, the physiology of the eye, and the mechanics of the brain. But we choose to see what we see - cropping and composing the pictures like artists, evoking meaning from the images like poets, zeroing in on clues like detectives. The ancients were right; light is a ray that goes out of the eye until it hits its object. Seeing is an act of love, wherein the self is the lover, the eye is desire, and the thing seen is the beloved.
David on 08.08.04 @ 04:22 PM CST [link]
Saturday, August 7th
Bat Talk
I heard they had had bats, and today when I was driving by I saw the exterminator's truck outside. DJ was watching the exterminator guy crawl around on his roof. I got out of my car and we both looked. He recounted their bat experiences, and I told about mine. The guy on the roof answered his cell phone. We talked about pest control people who prey on fears. We went inside to ee if they had the senator's number in the book. No. I had to go to work. The guy had moved to a different part of the roof.
David on 08.07.04 @ 06:31 PM CST [link]
Friday, August 6th
Exaggeration
They are three words which will surely chill the heart of any knowledgable adult. No, not "sexually transmitted disease"; "vacation Bible School". It's all over now, a week of sugared-up, overheated children under foot at every turn, of spilled juice, tantrums, unflushed toilets, humidity, messy crafts and a seven-foot volcano. I spent my forenoon every day avoiding the crowds, talking to the moms, handling minor emergencies and talking in the boiler room. After they all left each day I was able to get a little work done. The kids are cute but one week of them is more than enough.
David on 08.06.04 @ 04:13 PM CST [link]
Thursday, August 5th
Natural History
There was the Luna moth; that was exciting. I spotted it on the transom above the door by the counseling room. I took some pictures of it, which did not give any real indication of its size and delicate beauty, and then I captured it and showed it to a few people. There have been the frogs: every day I have been fishing them out of the wimming pool where I am housesitting. They die in there after a while; I assume the chlorine is toxic to them since otherwise it is a very attractive environment for them. There's some sort of parable in this, how they are irresistably drawn to the very thing which will kill them, how they resist efforts to rescue them, how they try to hide in plain sight from their savior. Also this week the groundhog bit the dust, certainly by accident though some whisper of a killing and a conspiracy; the case of Scabbers, the Mouse That Wouldn't Die, indicates to me that it was an accident. Scabbers got out of a glue trap, in pretty bad shape, and limped around the kitchen, just energetic enough to avoid capture. I put out a snap trap which fed him without snapping; I saw him sitting on top of the trigger. I put out another trap and that got him. Anyway, the prime suspect in the groundhog case was so upset about the death of this little bitty mouse that I'm convinced she would never deliberately kill any creature.
David on 08.05.04 @ 12:00 PM CST [link]
Tuesday, August 3rd
Haiku
Bright green luna moth
Above the shady entrance
By the sweetgum tree.
David on 08.03.04 @ 03:40 PM CST [link]
Monday, August 2nd
Shining the Light
Memory is mostly a truthteller, but the light which the present casts upon the past is a harsh one. The details and subtleties are lost, the highlights are accentuated, and the faces appear exaggerated and ghoulish. When I look at my past, I look from where I stand now; the context is what concerns me now. The others who were there see it differently, and that's as it should be.
David on 08.02.04 @ 07:28 AM CST [link]
