Rhythm and Soul: NBA Life and Meaning

Rhythm and Soul: NBA Life and Meaning

This week has made a lot of us think a bit more about things.

It certainly has me. I listen, I watch, I observe, I think. I like to write. So here I am.

Kobe Bryant tragically and suddenly died last Sunday. Along with his daughter and friends of the Bryant family, fathers and mothers and children. Tonight the Lakers--his former team--will play for the first time since then. Six days ago. They postponed their mid-week game against the Clippers for obvious reasons. I will probably watch that game against Portland.

For people who know me, I watch a lot of basketball. It may seem obsessive to many, I understand, but watching the best (in the NBA or Olympics),  or the elite (like at the college level), or the high schoolers, or my sons or my colleagues with whom I play, does things for me.

It is a bit like music, which can be compared to many things.

Music is art, art is expression, expression is freedom, freedom is life.

Do you like some type of art? Most people do.

I love books. I love stories. I love some film and television, I adore some music and dance. I love faith, and knowledge, and understanding.

I love efficiency, and saving, or conserving, and I love principles like generosity, kindness, community, justice, fair play, good sportsmanship, curiosity, interest.

I love my family, my parents, my siblings, my extended family, my wife, my children, my community, my nation, my planet.

I love certain sports, and playing them is fun, but watching some, to me is like listening to jazz.

Now, I am no grand connoisseur of jazz. But, I know that there are absolute connoisseurs and lovers of it, and I get that. A day or a week without jazz for them might be bereft of much joy or pleasure.

For me, sports, in particular basketball, is like the pleasure, the art, the expression, the community, of jazz. Other sports are like other forms or music and art and their respective communities, but for me basketball, and the quintessence of it, the National Basketball Association, is like a few of these thoughts I had throughout the week:

• Demi-gods
• Overcoming
• Upward struggle
• Community
• Work
• Value

There are other things and elements that might encapsulate the game of basketball and how I interact with it, but I will let those six points stand up to my assessments and your scrutiny.

1) Demi-gods.

When you are little, like five years-old, and and there are giants like Kent Benson that walk into your mom and dad's store, and his head almost touches the ceiling, and everyone remarks on how big he is, and how famous and important he is, and you realize that during the cold months into the spring the entire town of grown ups and big people care so much about Benson, the near seven foot behemoth "All-American" (whatever that is), and his team and their coach at the giant indoor arena where they play on the edge of campus where your mom visits her friends in the Relief Society, which she refers to jokingly as the "Mormon ghetto", Assembly Hall, close to the side of town where all those families and kids like the Kings with their nine red headed freckled children crammed into the seventh or tenth floor student housing apartment because of the thing called "I.U.", a university, school for big smart people, that those crazy big basketball players represent the school, and that that same team called "Hoosiers" and their loud coach happen to go to places like Philadelphia and beat Michigan and win the national championship, it can all seem bigger than life.

What is that all about? What are they all screaming about? I understand why they sing the national anthem, we love our country, and we love our church bishop the opera singer Roy Samuelsen, with his rich booming voice, and his three big boy children who are pretty cool, too.

Do they play basketball? They do! I, at this younger age, played some soccer, and a little baseball... AND I swam, taking lessons to learn most the strokes. And, I played with Star Wars figures, and I played war, and tag, and make-up games using my imagination to create fictitious scenarios. What was real, was so far away. Was the round ball what was real? Or did it merely toy artistically with the truth of reality?

Basketball, I could bounce it, this faux leather toy, sure, but this sport of running and jumping and shooting and passing was far away from me, like chess or pole vaulting or throwing a javelin or hurtling down a bob sled ramp. It was beyond me as a little one.

By fourth grade I learned that I was missing out. I was not paying attention to IU going back to Philadelphia and winning the national championship! Again! My best sports recess buddy Lance Allen did take advantage of it all, frolicking with the thousands of students in the frosty March night.

This was March Madness! And IU, my home town school, were the dudes!

This time, instead of Viking Nordic gargantuan Kent Benson, huge, fierce and blonde like Thor or some other mythic god, the big man on campus was a rather normal sized Isaih Thomas. He was small for the sport but he loomed large across the courts and the imagination. And he had the smile of a beneficent ruler or god. But also like a kid. He was a big kid in a big man's world.

Isaih. Such a Biblically significant name.

From the projects of Chicago to cutting down the NCAA nets while Cool and the Gang serenaded: "We Are Family!". I got all my sisters and me!

Yes! Exultation and delight! 

These demi-gods of my hometown went on from Indiana University, where they brought home national championship honors, banners, and acclaim, and they went forth to even more stardom and fame in...

The N.B.A. The best of the best. They came from Yugoslavia, from Russia, Lithuania, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Congo, Nigeria, China... Big and small, long and thick, they came to the be the best among the best.

So when Isaih was weaving his magic and personality and incredible will across the cities of America in the 1980s against the likes of super huge personalities like Dr. J, Julius Erving, Moses Malone, Maurice Cheeks, Ralph Sampson, Akeem Olajuwon, and greater still Magic Johnson, James Worthy, Kareem Abdul- Jabbar, Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parrish, and on and on...

When I turned 15 I was hooked. I stayed up late watching Chris Mullin, Eric "Sleepy Floyd", amazing cross-over specialist Tim Hardaway out in a place called Golden State, the crazy gunners of Denver like Danny Schayes, Mike Adams, Fat Lever, Kiki Vandeweghe, and this is without mentioning the greatness of the Utah Jazz, the Mavericks, the other Rockets and Spurs and Suns and all over... Dominique Wilkins and Glenn Doc Rivers and the others of the entire land. The Bucks and the Knicks and my home state Pacers... Oh, and returning back to the West, the fabulous Supersonic with Xavier McDaniel, Tom Chambers, and Dale Ellis...

The Pistons, the Bad Boys, with first Isaih but close behind Dumars and the Microwave Vinnie Johnson, Laimbeer and Spider Salley and the Worm Dennis Rodman. Poetry and force, night in and night out.

It was a dreamland of the gods, and they played throughout waking and sleeping hours.

Before the Internet or really powerful computers, or even that much televising of the games, the newspapers and magazines chronicled the lore, divvied up in stats and figures, that I could pour over for hours.  

Most individual points averaged, most assists, most rebounds, most blocked shots, most steals, most turnovers, most three pointers made, most trivectas attempted, most of this, the least of that. Team shooting percentage, regular field goals, three-pointers, foul shots...

And it just so happened that one of the the premier early statisticians of sports stats was none other than the academic demi-god Jeff Sagarin, of yours truly, Indiana University! In B-town, Bloomington, my native streets!

He was ours! He would make sense of the March Madness, figuring out how little Villanova could take down the monstrous Georgetown Hoyas. Yes, Patrick Ewing, the modern goliath, was brought down by the little David, also known as Cinderella. 

This was the great game of war and chess made simple under the krieg lights and booming sound systems of arenas and stadiums across the breadth and width of our great nation. And the world loved it, too. From Europe to Asia to Africa to the southern hemisphere, the game was beloved.

Our gods and demi-gods strutted across the hard wood and painted lines, and sought heavenly access.

No one died; no one even bled, usually; we all lived to tell the tale of how that victory, the ultimate goal of all shooters and dribblers and blockers was won.

Individuals loomed large, of course, but at the bottom of it all basketball was a team game, a team sport and not about the one self, and each demi-god needed his troops of every fashion to help him arrive at his thrown. And there were always fans, such as us hysterical ones of the heartland of Indiana. The team coaches also made their way above the fray of the sweat and hurry and bounding energy of these endless waves of troops and their pieces...

How can I end this tale of the first epic of basketball that I love, and how the players and pageantry and the jazzy godliness of the NBA captured my heart and imagination?

 I don't know. Maybe you had to be there.

Maybe you had to listen to that first time that Louie riffed his trumpet, or Dizzie or Miles blew their horn, or Ella, or Lena, swelled a chord, or pick your jazz artist of choice with their master stroke, or maybe Duke Ellington and his exquisite oeuvre: in that first time you paid attention, the first time you witnessed and took it in, that amazing jazz, a spellbound feeling, for the the first time, for you, a neophyte and unsuspecting observer:  you realized that he or she really wailed.

The essence of the work spoke to you.

A Goy kills a Jew

A Goy kills a Jew

 Pre-publish disclaimer: the views and feelings shared in the below post do not necessarily reflect all or any truthes of many kinds. The messages may or may not mean what they purport to be.

Also: Davy Crockett died young. Many others do as well, and we think of them with reflection and care.

(Begun Christmas morning 2019)

Not what you might expect, dear gentle reader: maybe it never should be. Prose and poetry, to cite Harold Bloom. He recently moved to the "other-world", the ether realm; I am only "influenced" by his literary anxieties or anatomies, because I perused some of his works and criticisms, deep and thoughtful insights into the poets and writers of our time. Ebulating (whoops, not a real word), perhaps formulating, cumulating (umm! also not a word!), amalgamating, or convalescing, bringing together or reconciling some of his angst and thought and "putting it on paper". Alas, creating a body of literature of a sort. The endless story or plot that he suggests through his last books. One continuous story, it is mine, it is yours, it is ours, it is his, it is hers, it is theirs. Like the poetry of thought and feeling, it is indeed endless. And according to Bloom, it is okay to get lost. So try to find the webs being weaved, not just by me, but by time and circumstance itself.

How does this Gentile wind up ending this person of the covenant?

Dedicated this Christian holy day to the luminary Sir Bloom, of the United States. He loved Shakespeare, but defined America. Our side of the the planet. Yet I think the British might knight him as close to their own.

He was Jewish, but a secular Gnostic, admittedly. And Orphic, I learned. (Thanks, Professor Bloom! Eventually Harry, when I read you enough...)

I am a goy, as some call us, and hopefully a mensch, as some might know me, and if you don't know me, trust that I would like to consider myself a mensch. That has to be good, yes?

But I admit my faults a-plenty. And I am a practicing Christian, of my sort. Christianity, like most major faiths, allows for these imperfections and peccadillos. So I continue. Relatively undaunted and free. Ilhamdu allah. (Thanks be to God).

Being who we are, who I am, I realize that it is possible that God put me precisely where He wanted, or where I wanted, or where someone else wanted. I don't know. But I can accept that it is God's will, my placement in time and place.

And maybe second grade defined me, and others, but perhaps more me, and affected others, and this can only really be about me. It is harder to speak for others, let alone oneself. Right?

Therefore, second grade was when I turned eight years-old, and therefore I was accountable: I knew my right from wrong, my rights from my priviliges, my needs from my wants, my commitments to hardships or self-indulgences, taking lower or higher roads, doing the difficult versus the easy.

By then I knew better, not not he. He was only seven. He was young for second grade, perhaps too young.

In the end, perhaps this is what the tale will show: I chose an easier path, it was largely up to me, and perhaps that helped me transition on and survive, while maybe it resulted in the death of someone else, the unfortunate bullied one. Sound dramatic? Yes, certainly hard on the pathos, and most likely out of proportion, by any realistic means, but maybe life in general is not that realistic, perhaps often times the figurative becomes more real than the logical or pragmatic, or as they say "literal".

In this way, I killed him, a brother to a brother-less brother, a poor young soul who did not have the same choices, recourses, blessings, advantages, circumstances, life outcomes...

Fate.

Little did he or his parents know that a young toddler who moved in some three blocks away on the end of an ignored dead end would be his demise. In and around 1972.  That was me, a small toddler moving in slightly to the south and west. A possible brother and then a former friend, a few short years later in second grade at Elm Heights Elementary who started, or continued the process that would end his life--in effect, kill him. I am suggesting the poison released so early and precociously would not find its victim, from me into him, till later. But the contamination may have been real. Who is to say? Come to your own conclusions.

Murder and the causality of death can be tricky things, and I am by no means authoritative in my assertions and suggestions here, but more realistically a whisperer of the possible. Not the likely.

What story is more ancient than brother killing brother? It was Cain and Abel in the Book of Genesis, the sons of our first parents. Moses recounts the tale. Cain hated Abel for jealousy, and a secret compact with the Adversary.

How oft does the zealous Christian slay the unwitting Jew? Michener writes of it consistently and poignantly in "The Source". This too--a novel-- I have read and must finish in some way, a tale of 10,000 years.

When comparing close relationships, as we do brother to brother, father to son, mother to daughter, husband to wife, all of them have their ethos and pathos. George Lucas in his epic saga "Star Wars" has allegedly stated that all the story was really about at heart was the relationship between a father and a son.

Okay, yeah, makes sense.

One of my favorite authors featured the brother rivalry in his masterpiece, "East of Eden". In that case the mother appeared to be the devil of sorts, and dozens of narrative characters, including the Chinese wise men, Eastern magi, if you will, of San Francisco, who dedicate themselves to unravel the mystery of the creation of Adam and Even and their sons, the free will to choose and to kill or let live.

May we choose life! But alas, death is sometimes the end.

Maybe this is why I write this now, as an exculpatory meandering of how I inadvertently chose death for my brother, a little underdog who maybe needed a stronger champion than I was that year, in 1978, or I would be later, in the 1980s. I was not the good one to a fellow brother. But by choosing the easier way, somewhat non-chivalrously, I forced the hands of fate and he wound up...

Gone form the earth many years ago, if you count 2003 a while.

I was not his good brother, I was not the mensch, I was not the good Christian or good soul friend that I know I should be. How hard these things can be. Or, how hard these things can be! Or, how hard these things can be? Letter D) all of the above.

In hardness or difficulty, I was the one who chose the easier path in second grade, because I could. Circumstances fell that way.

Our teacher, I believe an inspired Mrs. Wade, developed three plays that we classmates could perform in our little room at the end of the first story brick building.

(Continued midway through January 2020)

Things in the 1970s lived on until today, of course. Things continued to move along on micro and macro scales, well into the 21st century. Like the revolution in Iran, we all remember so well. Or like Mao of China, Brezhnev of the Soviet Union, Carter and Begin and Sadat...

Thus, in this small classroom of a few meager little students, Mrs. Wade had selected her characters for these nice plays. My story and role assigned was a relatively fun and easy part. Not much to memorize. I went home enthusiastically and we prepared the artistic props to carry it to effect. My dad or mom helped me with a poster where I made pictures of jewels and gold and fine riches, a treasure that I would discover for doing the good deed of removing a rock.

My buddy, yes Jewish, and a neighbor from not far up the road of my neighborhood, was assigned a much more substantial part with a lot of lines. I think it was Davy Crockett, a rather heavy character if you think about it. And, it had a lot of lines.

In not too many days I believe my poor little neighbor (he seemed to be more diminuitive than the rest of us), was having a hard time doing the part. It was too much. He tried to get out of it. His fate.

Mrs. Wade came to me and asked, "Eddie, could you switch roles with Jeremy (ok, I shared his real name, which I debated doing, he died 17 years ago).

I said no. He stuck with the part. And he pushed his way through. He took the harder part; I had the easier.

This may have led to his demise. One can never be sure.

Jeremy struggled with a lot of things (don't we all?), but in his unfortunate case he struggled more outwardly than most of us.

We mocked him for years. That was not good, not right. Things may have piled up on him worse than many of us. His family had issues, I cannot know how deep or dark.

I have written about that, in a semi-public letter/tribute/apology/confession/eulogy in 2012, from thousands of miles from our homeland... Not sure if that part mattered.

Philip Roth, are you pushing me to write this? Who else has done it? Chaim Potok? Bernard Malamud? James Michener?

It's probably you, Harold Bloom! You and your secular, gnostic, orphic, enthusiastic Jewishness!

You Yalie, not the first Jewish giant that I know from New England, land of a thousand accents and postures...

Complexities abound.

No, I didn't really kill Jeremy, no one did and everyone did.

We cannot blame God, will we? It may lead to believing in Him more or less.

Or as some believe, nothing more.

Jeremy H. still lives on in the memories of some, like me, and better in others. He has had his impact, and still will. Less than Davy Crockett, the historical figure he played.

Me, the second grader who happened upon the unusual treasure, who tread upon fortuitous fate, a serindipitous destiny, lives on. The one who took the easier part, sticking it to the pale little red-head.

Look down upon me from the heavens, all grown up one, with the impressive obituary from the newspaper that I read with... Interest, sadness, soberness, appreciation. Wonder, in a sense of wondering how things matter and play out. All these years later you have left us behind.

Alas, Yoric, I knew thee not well, and something may stink in the state of Denmark, but my life and time marches on. And you are elsewhere, my classmate.

Steinbeck, Vonnegut, Paul Theroux, and other fellow Gentile savants may empathize. They give me reasons to wonder and continue in the thoughts of plausibility.

Salinger and Russo, you family men of disparate paths... Writing your insightful and inciting tales of woes and loves. Of higher powers?

Choose ye this day, Joshua! to worship the God of All Creation, not the petty devils and witches across the way, across the river where perhaps the Hapiru, the Hebrew, hailed from down under in Egypt of old.

Devilry and Godliness, all since second grade.

Who is the goy and who is the Jew? It's deeper than the ancestry of your mother, and mine.

The answers of life and death and identity lie much further beneath, I believe.

Going State to State

Going State to State

I have been to 49 of the U.S. fifty states; I have some type of impression of each one, in person. Minus Alaska. Some day I will make it there. At age 49 I have at least one or more visual impressions from each state. Memories, images, feelings, impressions. Logged in the brain.

For now (beginning of 2020) I recall two of the states that I saw more than I had before last visiting them briefly in previous times: Alabama and New Hampshire.

I did not see much more of New Hampshire in 2017 when we returned south via Maine from the Maritimes of Canada. We stopped for gas; I found a mechanic's shop that was not friendly towards restroom visitors like us. I saw mostly freeway and traffic, and maybe a little city scape. Not much to add to the visuals of my mind's eye.

Alabama I watched mostly through the driver's seat of our Ford Transit from the length of north to south. I was surprised that as we approached the southern part there were still rolling hills.  I saw some cities, like Birmingham, and we gassed up near the end as darkness approached for the day. The last hour or so was in darkness; I saw the Christmas lights occasionally placed on yards or homes that were part of very mild winter seasons. Roads and visages that I had never seen before, for sure.

Corners of our country and our earth that I had never seen. There is a lot out there.

I probably have the most images in my memories from Indiana, by sheer numbers. However, many of those places are repeated often.

I have lived significant times in Utah, California, Virginia. I have memories and impressions, some vivid, from every other states, minus Alaska. It's nice to try and trace in my mind. Roads, rivers, cities, parks, farms, meadows, mountains, beaches...

But why stop there? Why not all the provinces of Canada? 10 and 3, with territories. Why not all the states of Mexico? 31 or so Brazil?  26. Argentina? India? China? Australia?

We have limited time to visit all these places, yet they await.

What is your next state to visit?

Kobe!

The Black Mamba stuck daggers into my basketball fan heart numerous times. For years.

What a wonder.

Just this Sunday afternoon my daughter came up from the basement and announced that the great Kobe Bryant had died.

How?! A helicopter crash.

Where?! I don't know... California. Calabasas.

Ahhh... the men and women on TV remark on his presence and legacy.

I tell my wife and children about a few things: his Afro. His Italian, very fluent, his 80 some points in one game. He played with the one NBA player I have ever known, Mark Madsen...

I saw him come and go... I was done with my first Bachelors when he came into the league as teenager. He had an Afro hairstyle when that was not popular.

He crushed my Pacers the only year that they ever made the Finals.

My Pacers, incidentally, had two southern California players, Reggie Miller and Austin Croshere. I lived in California all those great years with Shaq, from 1999 to 2005.

I cannot recall if I saw the game live or just heard and read about the historic game to 81 points. I looked at the box score, and saw many others on his team had attempted shots and scored. I watched the game in syndication. Kobe took good shots, and even got off to a little slow start!

So much more I could say.

The trial in Colorado, scaring away O'Neill, being a jerk to many, but always a winner.

Wow, what a life.

I knew another 41 year-old die tragically and suddenly just over a year ago. Less fanfare, less "impact" to the public, many would say.

Ahhh, to lose these young fathers.

We pray that heaven and earth may receive their glories, and we accept the humble lessons of knowing them.

Yellow Ties

Yellow Ties

Back in the 1990s I had gotten through college--a four year degree--I felt that that was a good way to achieve the goal that I had, my family as well, to have in case of contingencies: to always possess that in my back pocket so that no matter what other failures or travails in my life that I would have that baseline, a backup in case all else went to ruin.

I wanted to work in television and film; there are plenty of stories how that does not work. How dedicated, talented, or lucky was I for that life? You do not need a college degree for it. I knew there were no guarantees in those dreams. There are not many guarantees anywhere, right? Best to have a degree. Between my parents and me we made this work.

I worked quite a bit as a youth and I was able to save enough money to pay for a two year mission. I had leftover money from that excursion to South America, and that was used to begin college, and then my father helped the rest of the way.

So, this is about yellow ties.

When I was working towards means to make money and/or the career that would or would not work out, I sometimes worked in an office. Wearing a tie is good in such situations, including some television and movie gigs that I did land. My agency got me them.

I think I wore my own clothes a small handful of times for the brief days that I was filmed. And, I just might have wore a yellow tie a couple of those times.

Later when I moved away from that dream and the industry of film, giving up on that trajectory of work and aspiration, I found myself in an office where I would wear ties. And later as a teacher, I found it appropriate at times. I did some other office jobs donning ties where they came in handy, it was appros pos. Yellow is professional, yes.

Yellow ties, some purchased or gifted to me... I felt more than the other colors that this color of tie signified "work", "success", "winning" in some corporate sense. It made me feel that I was wearing the uniform of business, the office, and building something... If not paying into the social security taxes of alone, for some far off retirement down the road.

I collected a few.  Ties. Some of them yellow. And as time and circumstance has its way, I lost a few.

Recently on Martin Luther King Day I was at a thrift store and I saw a few smart looking ones. Yellow ties. I work in an office now, and I am moderately successful. I saw them and I desired them. Four bucks, four ties. No one at my work will know that they were this cheap (unless they read this). They look powerful.

I said to myself and my family members: the man with the most yellow ties wins. We purchased four. Different variations.

I am 49 now. I have given up some hopes and dreams and acquired others.

I spend a large amount of time in an office environment, not always, but mostly.

I dress for success, and sometimes my confidence matches my skills and experience, and dress.

I now have a substantial amount of yellow ties, thanks to last Monday.

I am dressed to succeed, and fortune will follow. This from the guy who saved his money to serve a mission, get started in college and earn that degree, who dreamed to exist among the artists and worked a little in the entertainment industry.

Yellow in the ties leaves one here and there. Moving on to greater things.

My dad never had yellow ties in his workplace. He was blue collar. He would wear ties to church, which was good for me to see. He has published books which may lead to television and film. Perhaps for those occasions he will wear the yellow tie.

I will, however, win or lose.

I have them, and I will. I will wear them, Sam-I-am. I do like the yellow in those ties, something about what they say.

Love

Love

Love is hard to explain and simple to describe.

I could go on, but I will not for now.

What to Write About

What to Write About

Paul Theroux is an interesting example of what to write about. He writes A) fiction and B) non-fiction.

His non-fiction is about traveling and writers, mostly. He goes places and reports on them, finds what is unique around the world. He is extremely gifted at reading about writers who do that, too.

In non-fiction he is somewhat of a know-it-all and in fiction he explores some ideas and characters. Both are informative in many ways. As far as fiction, does it match the greats? Probably not, but it helps inform the overall nature of the writer, which I have become susceptible to.

He writes mostly 1) realistic fiction, while a couple of his stories have some elements of the supernatural.

2) Science-fiction and 3) fantasy both have large places in literature. Some books and stories combine both. 

I have enjoyed Arthur C. Clarke and others' science fiction throughout my life, very much as a younger reader. I have encouraged others to read him. He does his non-fiction conjecture as well, which borderlines physics and science.

Orson Scott Card has interesting science fiction, plus a good amount of fantasy and some 4) historical fiction. He writes about Biblical characters, which could be considered historical and 5) religious.

6) Crime novels take up another genre, which can be both A) fiction or B) non-fiction. Truman Capote's In Cold Blood is of the latter, while Michael Connelly and Lee Child tend to be more fiction, with Child's Jack Reacher having an element of the above-human aspect. 

Stephen Ambrose focuses on the real aspects of war and their  stories, while Jeff Shaara does this and embellishes where he thinks that this works realistically. Both are incredible researchers and story tellers.

Vonnegut has his own way, and Salinger yet another.

Hemingway and Steinbeck are master story tellers, I am less thrilled about Fitzgerald and Faulkner.

We all mix fiction and non-fiction.

 

The Church Party

The Church Party

This story is about Jill and for Jill. It is also about the other characters in the story, also, which include you and I. It is also meant for the powers that we cannot see to become more felt and seen.

Joplin, Missouri. 1977. 

Jill was the eldest of her family, therefore she was the guinea pig, as they say. Her parents tried things on her first-- that was how things went as far as learning and establishing rules for the Clendenings. This process, experimenting on the firstborn, occurs millions of times in the world over, family after family, generation after generation.

Both of Jill's parents had similar traditions, beliefs, customs that they tried to amalgamate and reproduce to the best of their ability in order to provide the best existence for their progeny. They wanted their children to have good and happy childhoods like they had experienced. Perhaps they could provide better?

Humans are the most unique creatures at this process, the rearing and guiding of children, because of their powerful memories and their mutually spoken and unspoken rules.

Jill's family was pretty happily Methodist, which meant a standard level of activity and expectation within their family and community. They always attended church Sundays, both morning and night, and went to Wednesday evening Bible classes, and participated in all the weekend parties and dances.

A good, wholesome, virtuous Christian life it was. Some considered it too sheltered. The "world" had so much more to offer, outside detractors would claim. The Clendenings, in their way of thinking, thought that a fortress must be built around the individual and its loved ones to combat the snares and traps of life, and that good people needed to build up trenches and fortifications in order to battle the temptations and pitfalls of the Adversary. For there were many traps and snares, darts and poisons. Jill's parents had seen plenty of ills through the 1950s and 60s this far into the 1970s. Be ever ready, the Bible teachings exhorted. And they tried pretty hard, pretty effectively. Their home was free from most evils.

Ultimately, the prayer and vested hope was that Christ would lead the way through sin and turmoil. Christ would overcome, we would overcome, like the former generations of slaves in the United States with new-found freedoms, we would all overcome some day.

Jill believed it and accepted it. There were always inconsistencies that would be picked at in her beliefs by others, but that did not phase her or her family. They were upstanding Christians, always. They believed, they were happy, they prospered, and gave and shared. She saw some more affluent, some poorer, but fewer as happy.

Life was going okay, decent really. More siblings were there in the family alongside her, younger than she; they enjoyed the love and sharing of their family; Jill grew up and found herself at a church party after her junior year that summer.

The church party was a really fun occasion. Two hundred some people were there, it was still early in the beginning of the summer break, families and food and the light music in the background at the nearby town park made it festively idyllic. Everybody had every reason to be happy. 

Jill had met a young boy a few weeks prior at a church encampment. He seemed nice, he seemed fun and attractive.

That night at the party there was a hay ride arranged from the party that would take a leisurely pass by the river. It took about half an hour and would keep recycling four times till the end of the party at 10:00, just as it was almost completely dark, late in that June evening. Then they would go home and enjoy the rest of the weekend, free of school, worries, and preparing for the Sabbath as was their priority. Life was good, was it not?

Jill and Philip managed to get on the last hay ride together, which was being pulled by Jill's father, Mark. No one knew if Philip intended to have it play out as it did, but he and Jill were at the part of the ride behind and between everyone where no one else was watching. Then the precipitating moment of the story happened. Phil took advantage of the situation.

A few people wondered since: did Philip have extra stresses on him since his mother was divorced and she was the main parent in charge, thus not exerting enough parental authority and control over him? Was little Philip, as a smaller child, predisposed to doing things of such magnitude, even as a pre-pubescent runt? Were there clues to his sordidness, as others saw it and deemed it? Was he troubled, was he not churched enough in the wisdom of the Good Book and the fear of God? Was he a simple victim of his own lust and lasciviousness? Had he become an ogre-like predator as a teen? Did he somehow justify his prurience in the New Age of the Free Love Seventies? Did he see it in a film, a Hollywood special served up to perverse notions, of which plenty abounded? Was he another loser pothead? A druggie? A wanna-be beatnik hippie? He had given off so much better vibes to those at the church setting. Maybe he was just a typical youth. Hmmph.

Nevertheless, it happened, and all the details were not known nor understood. But the afterthoughts were felt in confusing and serious ways.

This offense was certainly not as bad as things could be, but they were bad enough. They, these acts, did not go as far as what a couple adults would be found culpable of a few decades later in the White House, famous beyond measure, true, but things were certainly that serious. In the 1990s the acting president would be impeached for lying on oath about such interactions. Perhaps the real truth of this hay ride would never be known, except for the three involved: Jill, Philip, and God. Where was God during this episode? some wondered. Some continued to wonder over and over. And where was the faith in God of those involved? Yet, the Gospel of Redemption allowed us our sins be committed.

Her parents, almost two years later, could not believe it when they learned the news for the first time. They had not found out till much later, relatively. Yet, they could understand it as it entered their hearts and minds. Something had changed with Jill. They thought back on those things. She had lost a spark that they knew, which they had tacked up to "growing up"; she had turned in a way that looked as though she did not handle things the same. She had changed, but the parents thought that other things had caused these changes, or an evolution perhaps very natural: other boys, other classes, other friends, other entertainments or arts, all these "others" had done the change. Maybe they had, in fact, affected the entire change of attitude or disposition, despite this particular incident, this one apparent ugly moment in time.

Is that what growing up was? Secrets and unknown happenings inside the mind, heart and soul. We do not know if one thing or the thousands surrounding it

Were things as such thousands of years ago?

Were things as such in India in 1977, half a world away where the largest group of non-native Americans in Joplin hailed from? They were Hindus, with very foreign beliefs. But they were like the Christians of Missouri, weren't they?

They were surely the same as the Clendenings and others of Joplin, of Missouri, of the United States? The same as American families, where the parents wondered how their children grew, matured, changed their views of the inside and outside worlds?

Millions of people had followed these patterns. Had millions followed the pattern of Philip that June night, or the ways of the U.S. president at the White House nearly two decades later?

Awful! Mark and Judy thought.

Why could not at least our kids not face this until --never? Why would this happen under our watch? Who is the stupid and naive victim?

Well, the water has been spilled. So it goes.

What can be recovered? That was the ongoing question.

Mark had a few of his own demons to deal with as far as handling this news of his daughter's violation, as he saw it. She was humiliated and lowered in his own hay wagon, he being mere meters away! But these other demons, or specters, or nightmares, were enough for him to stew on, which was what kept him fitful but reserved when it came to thoughts of justice or retaliation towards an American boy in Missouri.

Judy had her own issues in processing this consequence...

               ....      ________________________________________                                      

Mark served in Vietnam in 1970, when Jill was 11 years old. Being away from the family of Judy and the six young ones was hard enough to do no matter where he had to go. The letters and occasional phone call he made to his wife helped a great deal, but it was not the same with his own kids. But worse still, were his duties. Mark became a tunnel rat, which was terrifying, dangerous, and exhausting. By the end of his eight months of it, he was done. He could do no more. In fact, he swore that he would never take another person's life again, unless absolutely forced to do so in self defense.

Returning back to stateside and accepting his Savior Jesus Christ was really the only thing that kept Mark sane, or alive on the mend, after the trials and horrors of being a tunnel rat in the caves and underground systems of the Vietnamese highlands. He saw the worst of it. The worst of the Viet Cong enemy, the worst of his own troops, the awful degradation of his own brothers that he saw bleed and die and make others do so, and inevitably he saw deep into the worst of himself. The worst of humanity for eight straight months. He did not want a two week break for a multiplicity of reasons.

Going back to the "normal" of before for 12 days, and then having to return to the hell of the tunnel fighting, or any fighting, would be too much. He had to get through this all in one lump, and live or die, and move on. Either way, his wife and kids were not for him now-- then. During the death and terror.

Upon finally returning to his blessed USA, after surviving physically the mean cruelty and inhumanity of Vietnam, he knew he would depend on the deeper faith of his heritage and childhood for spiritual healing and recuperation. The Christ of the legacy of the prophets and apostles would be his refuge. He would become whole again, as Jesus promised.

He swore not to kill again. He trusted God would forgive him and make him whole.

This was his only hope.

Not the love of his parents, his siblings, his pastors, his wife, his children: none of it could bring him back to humanity sufficiently to do the job to get him one with the universe. They could help, sure.

Only God and His Holy Spirit could do it. They had to. Otherwise he was lost. He knew this was all that mattered for him or anyone.

He did have a few back up ideas. If Christ and His vaunted Christianity weren't the answer, he would try Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and a few others until he truly exhausted all of them. The answers of peace and wisdom had to be out there.He had to find the calm assurance of peace, and the answers were promised to him. He would continue that search and pursuit.

Jill had similar feelings about grace and redemption according to Christianity, to the very Master of the Seas and their Tempests. Her feelings were also guided by a sense of justice, perhaps greater than Mark's, which led her to some more developed thoughts about her daughter and the boy, this one who had so upset her sense of place and right.

Some time later, (it was years), Jill, purchased a rather potent hand weapon and visited the college where the young man lived. Phillip was struggling to find his niche, as usual.

She found him on a Saturday night, not far from his dorms. She had reached out to a few people at the college previously, but there was no apparent follow up with him  as she had desired. No justice, no peace.

"Hello Phillip."

"Hello? Mrs. uhh... I forgot your name. Are you Mrs. uhhh--"

"Yes, I'm Mrs. Clendening. Do you remember me?"

"Yeah, sure, it's just I'm surprised to see you here. I thought that your daughter was at the state school. How-- how is she doing?"

"Jill is doing all right. How are you doing?"

"I-- Well,  I'm pretty good. I have done okay at school so far."

"Good to hear. Do you have a girl friend?"

"Whu--? I mean, yeah... I mean no. No one in particular. I don't kn---"

"Yes, I thought that you might be seeing different people. I have thought a bit about you, I don't know you that well but I have constantly wondered how things were for you, and those that you courted."

"Oh, so you mean that..."

Phillip looked flushed. He was confused but he had an idea what was afoot.

"Phillip, do you take advantage of girls that you go out with?"

"I... I mean..."

"You don't have to answer that. Just think about it. Also, think about the fact that things that you do and say to others are not always forgotten easily."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And, another question if I may be so bold: do you believe in God?"

"Well, I mean, it's sort of like... I have a lot of doubts. I really don't know what that has to do with the right now. Mrs. Clen-- Clendening. I'm sorry, but I don't know what you want to talk about..."

"Yes, I understand your perplexity with me right now.  You may not believe in God, and some Eternal Justice that He might be in charge. That's okay, everyone is entitled to his or her beliefs, which is how we were created by Him. Free to believe, free to choose, free to act. I am free to load up a weapon right now and put a bullet in you, true?"

"Uh, Mrs. Clendening, I really don't get what you want to say..."

"That's okay, let me finish and explain. I'll get to my point. The truth of reality is, God or not, we all get to choose what we wish to do. We all have the opportunity to believe in a greater justice or not. I believe that that will happen: God will mete out His justice and mercy, so me putting a bullet into you may not solve much in the grander course of things. But I am free and within my power to do it. Understand?"

"Yes, I get it, but why do you--"

"Wait, again, Phillip: let me finish. Okay?"

"Okay."

"So, some things are hard to change, some things are really hard to rectify. God will make things right in the end, but for now, we all must choose how we will act. Do you understand how things that we do now have effects into the future, and how our actions can affect others?"

"Yes."

"Good. That is what I wanted to communicate to you. I wanted you to know that I have a weapon right now, and if I so chose I could do an awful thing. However, I believe that God is greater, His justice is bigger and more beautiful than I can comprehend, and I wanted you to know that, to feel that. Does that make sense?"

"Yes, it does Mrs. Clendending."

Phillip had had a lot of things go wrong in his life. His parent's divorce, the bullying at his schools all his life, his attempts to be cherished by members of the opposite sex which did not turn out right, his doubts and misgivings about God and any good church or organized religion, his qualms with oppression across the world, these negative things that he dwelt on, big and small, related to him or not. They all seemed so wrong.

He though about overpowering Mrs. Clendening this instant, to take any weapon from her, but he thought about how that might go. She might pull the gun too fast and he would be dead or wounded, or he would succeed in taking the gun from her, and if he did, the police might get involved, and that was no good.

Phillip was at her mercy. Very humbling. In this moment, at that precise and later in the day excruciating surreal moment, and weeks and months and years later, when he re-lived it and analyzed it, he believed she really, truly wanted to achieve those things. She wanted to show him power and mercy, a rather God-like attribute. For him, for herself, for her daughter. He thought that it worked. One, it humbled him as a guy who had done some rotten things to others, against those who did not deserve them, and two, it enabled him to see into the face of God.
.... _______________________________________________________

She achieved it, he thought. God bless her. And forgive me, my trespasses. When he read Crime and Punishment in his late twenties he even more fully appreciated this interchange and its ramifications, implications. He couldn't get enough of Dostoyevsky and increasingly other Russian authors, and others...
 ... ________________________________________________________

On the drive home and later, days and nights and thousands of dreams and a few nightmares later, Jill thought about who to share this experience with, this unique conversation with.

With her husband, Mark, a man who had taken more souls from the planet than she would ever know?

Yes.

With Jill, her daughter?

Probably.

With her pastor?

Likely.

With God the Father, and His Son, Jesus Christ?

Of course. She knew them, or at least she knew that they knew her. Her prayers to them were answered and reciprocated, richly. She loved them, and They her, and she knew where her trust belonged.

Good or bad, reckless or careful, she knew that the Master of Universe and Justice and Mercy would look on her and bless her all her days. Even if she did the worst... But she must forgive, that she knew. And she must take the higher road of grace and mercy.

The weapon, a large, or at least deadly and powerful revolver, she buried in a rusty box by the stream behind her back yard. It served as a good reminder of freedom and choices. It was a part of her past. She would let people know about it if they ever asked. Yes, I did that, she thought.
 ... _______________________________________________________________

The church party, of which this story was named, is not really the crucial part of this tale. It was a point in the lives of some, and it had its after-effects, but it was only a time in the lives of a few individuals linked, for them to figure out how they would proceed after some ugliness that happens, that God permits to occur, in this world, and probably other negative things that will come to pass before now and possibly even in the next world. We were promised better in the future, but evil and err will always be there, right?

Mark and Jill grew old, and they had their worries. They died and left behind their children, like their parents before them.

Jill grew old, and was happy, and discovered all she needed to find.

Phillip grew to a ripe old age, too, and let some people know in no uncertain terms that actions have consequences.

And, churches kept doing their socials, and kids and adults kept moving in their circles across the warm summer nights and the endless years beyond the parties and dances and camps and weddings and trips and school functions.

And, the families continued to grow and increase.

The Unwritten Novels...

The Unwritten Novels...

Second grade, the tailor and the rock.

Senior year, the being a member of the church.

Grad school, Mexico memoirs.

Chile, the boy convert jihadi.

Chile II, Omer and Rayen.

Last year, colonizing Mars.

What else?

Forgotten Conversations

Forgotten Conversations

Today I had quite a few conversations. I worked, I conversed with many. Many of the discussions are probably worth forgetting.

But: what about the ones that I should not?

Ahh.... journals are never complete.

Holy Lands, Holy Causes, Holiness

Holy Lands, Holy Causes, Holiness

This morning I went to the chapel where I usually play basketball weekly. It was fun, I had a good time. My teams won most of their games. This helps. I also had been away for the holidays, and before that I was ill so it was nice to participate with this group and get some exercise after a while away.

Almost every time that I go to play there, I visit these corner rooms of the church in between games and expel stuff outside on the bushes next to the corner doors. Spit, mucous, maybe blood, some sweat. That is not the point of me writing this, sorry for that. The least intent of this post was meant to be crass or vulgar. I wanted to explain why I go in these corner rooms, and that in order to lead to something more highly thought of, some reflections on holiness.

Today as I was leaving the room of the northwest corner, where I find myself alone and quiet, I noticed a couple things in the little trash can by the exit door. One was a map of the Holy Land. The other was a smaller poster with --

(For some odd reason this erased from this point above; I will try to re-write what I had put. I published it this Sunday afternoon, it was another 5 or so paragraphs with 3 numbered points).

 --scriptures and inspiration for doing what the Savior would have us do. I wanted to put one up in my house for my family to see the Holy land sites and be familiar with those locales, and the other for personal motivation. But, I left them on the stage by the basketball court and forgot that I had retrieved them. Hopefully I will  find them the next time I go back, or someone at church today may take them and use them for their own benefit. The point being, do not let them become trash.

Who would throw such treasures away?

Holy towns, holy places. Sacred history cast aside. It happens too often in my opinion.

Recently I have been accused of hoarding things, but I consider it "collecting". I believe, or have believed, that the large assortment of nick-nacks, magazines, books, tickets, handbills, pamphlets, and other odd assortments from my childhood and adult life would add up to one large treasure trove to become a resource to put together a history of significance, to spur my imagination and memory for a greater good. I still hold on to those fancies.

If nothing else, the items of sentimentality and nostalgia will serve as heirlooms of some sort for my children or grandchildren... But I wish for them to be more. We shall see.

For now, the  questions remain:

1. Are there holy places? Are there holy lands, and places worth venerating and revering?

2. Have there been holy men and women, legacies worth remembering?

3. Is there such thing as holy, sacred, a higher plain or realm to aspire to?

Is there a greater beyond?

Bethlehem, Capernaum, Nazareth, Jerusalem, Bethsaida, so many other places where the believers see their beloved remains of former legacies and holy prophets and lines of the ancients, from Abraham to Joseph, Moses and Aaron and their Levites, David and peoples of the Israelites through Judah, to the time of Jesus the Anointed and His apostles.

The Jewish inheritors since and the faithful Muslims since, and so many Arab Christians, now politicized and militarized, Palestinians and Israelis and a dozen other nationalities and groups...

Is it worth what the people down below are fighting for, striving for, yearning for, trying to revere and remember.

I was writing, recalling a few more things...

It is worth collecting, remembering, keeping hold to?

Do we cast all of it away, and relegate to the trash what is seemingly of no worth... ?

I will publish this and try to re-capture what I had not successfully published, yet tried to record.

The cause of memory and attempt to achieve the sacred.

Life, death, all of it.

Collected and reflected.

Hoosiers Fight Valiantly on the Gridiron, But...

Hoosiers Fight Valiantly on the Gridiron, But...

They lost.

This has happened before: close bowl losses in 2015 and 2016. And a bigger one in 2007, score-wise. This is the four game result of IU bowl games thus far into the 21st century.

The upside is that they achieved 8 wins in the regular season (2019), a feat that has not been arrived at much at all, ever. Not for Indiana.

A nine win season must wait another year... Not since 1967 or 1945 have they have won 9.

But it was a good year, and the Hoosiers had a 13 point lead with 5 minutes to go... Before both the offense and defense (and special teams!) lost to the resurgent Tennessee Volunteers.

Indiana was leading by 13 late in the game, forcing the Vols out after 3 downs. THEN: the IU offense went 3 and out and the rest became history, the Knoxville guys recovering a 10 yard kickoff after their quick touchdown, the first score for them of the second half...

Many ways that the Hoosiers could have won...

8-5 season for IU was not bad.

We beat Nebraska and Northwestern, and Purdue and I saw the Maryland road win in person, with family.

Satisfying enough.

We will get 9 wins or more next year.

Beat Michigan. Ohio State.

Good returnees, good recruiting.

Stay in the fight, IU!

I liked this team.

12th bowl ever. First in Florida, ever. 3 wins, 9 losses, overall.

Indiana is in the right direction.