Memories, Nostalgia, Canciones, Family

    My wife and son have been away about four days, but it feels like five or six! Yeah, get ready for empty nester time! Do we need grandchildren to stay together as a couple? Perhaps it requires a lot more than that... I know I got some work to do. I will keep at it.

    Tonight it is dark very early, and I am with the mostly empty house, looking for my daughter at her friend's. We got together, and we will go out to Chinese food. Maybe I have not been to that restaurant before? We shall see.

    It made me think of when I was 14 I would go out during the week, usually with my mom, and we could eat Chinese food at Peach Garden, or maybe Lung Cheung, or House of Hunan... Not far from downtown, close to where she was living.

    Some sort of lonely times, before she met her second husband. My dad was single longer, too. Man, divorce was hard. I so do not like it. A bit like death, in my opinion. But, my step-parents made things much better. It became great, really. No more complaints from me. I got lucky, and so did they.

    God is good.

    Tonight I saw Christmas lights through my kitchen window, so a song in Spanish came to my brain, and then lungs and heart. 

    Veo luces! Navidenhas! Por las ventanas, de mi casa!

    I see luces, de Navidad, through the windows, de mi casa.

    'Tis the season, to be nostalgic and celebrate, yes?

    Okay, if you insist.

    Veteran's Day, in eight more days.

    Enjoy.

Coming Up Short, Falling Back on Jesus

 I doubled this one, I guess a double tap.

    I need Jesus my Savior that much, I think.

    Yep, I need Him every hour.

 Could this be the Last Baseball Post of the Year? Not likely...

    I wrote down on paper what I thought the title would be:

    "Canada Got a Bit Darker: Extra Innings" did the trick.

    Admittedly, not all of Canada and its peoples root for or invest their hopes in the Toronto Blue Jays. But, it seems like the country was ready to welcome back their home team champions from the early 1990s. The Joe Carter days. It has been a while.

    The Blue Jays had this series wrapped up, a number of times.

    But the scrappy, artful Dodgers, came up big in the late innings, and then extra innings, and the Canadian hopes were dashed.

    Sorry, Canada. I like you. I mean, maybe I love you. Canada has given me few reasons not to like you. You have been good to me.

    I happen to be a niner, which means I have been to nine of the ten provinces of this great land. I have enjoyed them all. Since I was child in the 1970s, even very small, I have loved seeing Quebec and the Maritime provinces. I have taken my own family to parts as well. 

    The poutine and the A and W root beers, the croissants and baguettes, the lobster and the... other things. Fun times from Atlantic to Pacific. Even Prince Edward Island. Land of Anne of Green Gables, a bit magic to us. 

    More recently we saw the magic, somewhat, of the plains provinces, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. With a little bit of British Colombia. 

    Sorry, Canada and Maple Leaf fans! Perhaps this winter got a bit darker and colder with this so close win, snatched by the boys of L.A.

    There is hockey, though.

    Enjoy the cold months, see you next year.

    

 Coming Up Short, Falling Back on Jesus

    Many of us have reasons to doubt ourselves.

    We can seem like small ants in forgotten anthills, meandering our ways around holes where we can bumble and slip and fall. We fall, smudge ourselves on weird nectars or at times corrosive batter acids or other industrial wastes. 

    I exaggerate, I slew hyperbole. 

    Some say that Jesus of Nazareth was not who He says that He is. I believe in Him. I trust in His goodness and His redeeming power. 

    I need Him. Many think He is not a God, or not the Son of God, that He Himself was deceived. A friend told me so much recently via a private message.

    We shall see.

    Does the Church headquarters of Salt Lake City delude itself, as some accuse Jesus of doing two thousand years ago?

    But He is about me, and I am about Him. He is perfect, I am far from it. I fail and I stumble; I feel small sometimes like a little insect, of small importance or value. But He commands me that I must be more. I must love myself, and others, and forgive all.

    I must take His holy supper, I cleanse myself and recharge. With millions, perhaps billions, of others.

    I am deluded. I trust and pray that I am not.

    Why should I doubt? Nothing else seems as sure, while so many argue that there is no sufficient evidence.

    I believe Paul, of old. The Bible is true. The Book of Mormon, especially to my referred to source, says even more of the Messiahship of Jesus.

    He is my Savior. He is to millions. Billions.

    But He has me.

    Even when I perpetually fail in so many ways, by sins and errors, He saves and even exalts me.

    

    I love Him, as He loved me first. And last.

    The Alpha and Omega.

 Distance from Family, Distance from Self

    Most of us want intimacy, and to connect. When we are pushed away, when we feel isolated, alone, not connected or even not understood or accepted, we suffer.

    Yes? But many of us want to be isolated and alone, or eschew the very people or things that wish to commune with us!

    Ah, the paradoxes that we encounter and face.

    I wanted to talk to mom a few minutes ago. But, however, we all know that she has been gone for more than eleven years. My wife attended a memorial for the dead in a cemetery yesterday. All Saints Day. A Catholic tradition? A universal urge and instinct? Commune and connect to the past and the dead.

    These people reached out to their parents, their ancestors.

    We dream and we talk, we sing, and we dance.

    Like at the big football game yesterday. Lots of songs, quite a bit of dancing.

    Noises, sounds, cheers and jeers.

    Yells and chants, costumes and colors.

    She said she O.D.s on music. We all have our drugs.

    I met folks who attended Indiana University, or who are from the state. My native Hoosier place. Places.

    Of course, my parents went there because of Sierra Leone, and Kennedy, and Nixon sinking but before that saving himself with television.

    Ahh, the developments of Philo Farnsworth and all the creators and innovators, bringing us the technology and modern day advancements of where we are today and where we will go tomorrow.

    Shakespeare saw the future, but he saw the whole thing.

    Maybe.

    How much do we see?

    Distance from others, distance from ourselves. Closeness and proximity, how we come close to God or the sublime. Peace and tranquility, prosperity and hope.

    A good, even keel. Hemingway sought it all and many different ways.

    

    Like all other artists and livers.

    Count me, and you, among them.

    Amen.

 Ach, Life, and all those Angsts!

    Where are we now? Wo ist meine liebe? 

    Auf Deutcschland, ich weis. I think. I tink.

    We make fun of stereotypes, be they Germans, or French, or Ethiopians, or Filipinos, or 

    Americans.

    Nous sommes Americaines, say the Chilean rock group Los Prisioneros.

    How the South American rockers characterize how they see themselves,

    much in comparison to everyone else.

    Existential gripes--angst, as I said up above.

    I tried the m dash. Artificial Intelligence, is the M dash, says a co-worker.

    History has led us here, intrapersonal and interpersonal.

    Contextual, material, and factual, and sometimes the irrational enters as well.

    The fictional, the untrue even.

    Style and tastes, predilections and drives. Or styles, plural.

    Marx and Freud, and less known Germans and theorists and philosophers, and "thinkers" and "influencers" (at least academically), who create environments where we operate and behave and live.

    And eventually die.

    The whole circle of life, Walt Disney.

    It's the circle of life, Elton John.

    I have gone into my consciousness stream,

    where our dreams have been and go.

    The music and the lyrics and the drugs and the overdoses that we confront, daily or hourly or week by week, year by year.

    How are we doing?

    How are you?

    How many things and emotions do you sublimate. Repress? Hold down. Keep hidden.

    What do we hide? What do we wish to say and do?

    Where are we today? Emotionally. Psychologically. Mentally, spiritually. Physically!

    Where are you now? Where have you been?

    Can we, should we, do we have the capacity or band-width, to answer all these questions?

    No, we must prioritize. Create hierarchies of care.

    Mazlo and needs.

    Do what we can, do what we want.

    Sure. Easy for me to say. East to write. Easy to blog.

    There, I have said it. Okay, I said a few things.

    There is always more. And that is, hopefully, a beautiful thing that we call life.

    God, us, and all the rest.

    Happy Sabbath. Wish you were here. (To quote Floyd).

    But, really, I am glad and appreciative that I am here and you are there.

    Ich liebe dich. 

    Ich liebe Got. God? Auf Deutsch, it is the Father in Heaven like in most other places.

    We have and make room for Buddha the Enlightened One, too.

    Sure. All good.

    Bavaria and our bloodlines.

    We are all connected.

    Angsts and calms.

    All of them.

    Cheus.

 I Need the Lord

    Without the Lord,

    I am lost

    Without His grace

    I lose my way

    All me alone

    I cannot find

    My peace

    I need Him

    I crave others

    His creatures

    His children

    My loves

++++++

    Break: I had a tune to this melody. I shared it with family. But perhaps I will not retrieve it.

    I had more words and tunes in my head, too.

    But yet, I need the Lord.