The haiku, re-examining some criticism, and some (possibly rhetorical) questions.

I'm not proud to say it, but I wrote a haiku back in January and I posted it here. As you might expect, I hate haiku. They seem to mostly exist in English as a cop-out for inept English teachers -- an assignment to give to students to make up for not knowing how to actually teach poetry. Sort of the moral equivalent of teaching the Macarena at a ballet class. Sure, it's dancing, but dancing for people who want to dance without trying. Easy to teach, and you sure as heck don't need to be able to make any value judgments on the quality of someone's Macarena skills. You don't need to critique someone's Macarena dancing if you're teaching a class on dancing; let people just enjoy themselves. Why critique any dancing at all while we're at it? Dancing is a method of expression, and expression is pure.

Or something. Most people teach the form of haiku and never touch the substance. I can write a quick and dirty poem in haiku form any old time. For example:

Poetry Teacher's Dream
"Darkness surrounds me . . ."
began the freshman's poem
I burned with Mein Kampf.

See, it's easy. 5-7-5, home for second breakfast. I even spent a little extra time on the images that I didn't really need to. Not for an English language haiku. English language haiku are lazy punk hooligans. In my opinion, the syllabic requirements for haiku should be thrown out, and we should set wheelbarrows, white chickens, and stations of the metro as the standard. Also, cold, sweet, plums.

But anyway, in January I was in the middle of a lot of people telling me that my blog posts were too long, and I was also in the middle of thinking about something that I didn't want to expand on too deeply at the time, so I took a stab at a poem to try to express it. Also, I didn't want to directly confront the person who was bringing up the things I wanted to address because I didn't hear it directly from her, and didn't know her that well. Also, some days I'm lazy. So, yeah, part irony, part artistic expression, part non-confrontation, part laziness. Here it is again:

Our roast hen cloister,
greasy fingers strumming loaves,
laughs. Is it moral?

Yes, it needs a title. Maybe I'd call it 'Fellowship' if I had to write it again. Clue you into the context. As if you needed it, O Independent Reader. But titles are polite.

My desire to write the haiku came out of some comments that F. (a friend of mine's ex-girlfriend) made to N. (this friend) about our group of friends, that N. mentioned to me as part of his wresting with the deteriorating state of their relationship. So this is partially hearsay, but I think the points are worth examining anyway. Besides, hearsay only means the veracity of the origin of the statement is in question, not the content of statement itself, per se. Especially in non-legal contexts. Also, because it's easy to be overly critical of friends' ex-girlfriends, to pull out the ol' ad hominim hose and spray indiscriminately, I'll try to take what she was saying in the most positive light. This is called self-censorship. Also, possibly, maturity.

F. came to know our group entirely through N., and I'd like to think we made her feel welcome. I know we tried. We love N.; darn right we do. So we added his girlfriend to our Facebook friends, invited her to things we were doing even if N. wasn't going to be there, chatted jovially with her at parties, etc, etc, amen. Welcoming things. I don't think she ever felt part of the group, though. From what I can tell (as I continue to try to be kind), part of the reason was that she felt like we weren't living up to what she thought our Christianity should have been. Or perhaps it was that our lives weren't Christian enough for her.

I've talked about this next bit elsewhere (finally getting back to it, you might say) but there was a time in my life that if I didn't have a board game with me when I showed up to someone's house, it surprised people. It still surprises people who have known me for a long while (Hi, Juliet!). Settlers, Icehouse, decks of cards for spades or Durak (my research has revealed our standard house game includes all the variants), Three-Dragon Ante, anything, really. As long as it was a game, and especially if there was a party. Back in high school, I took a lot of pride in the fact we played board games at parties and didn't drink (more on the drinking bit some other time). New Years parties were official board game fests. One time, back in the days of Jill-at-Avila, I even took a whole backpack of games to a party with her college friends. Not really their scene, it turns out. Apparently, their scene involved watching Resident Evil 2 and drinking. So, yes, I've seen Resident Evil 2; judge me if you will. But the drinking seemed to take precedence even over the people who might have been interested in some sort of game. Ah, alas, Alcohol, how you have thwarted fun activities time and again.

But I've been moving away from playing board games lately. Part of it is that Jill's not a huge fan of board games (but they are growing on her she said the other day, so WOO). I even quit playing D&D, which was not an easy hobby to give up (but that was more for the time commitment than anything else). I just kept feeling like when I got together with people, I wanted to have some sort of substantive conversation, talk about something meaningful. So, that meant fewer board games in my mind. Of course, just as often those conversations end up being just as meaningless (if not more) than the light-hearted camaraderie of sitting around a basement table and building roads out of six pressed sheep.

So, our group's board game playing sparked some of F.'s criticism, I know. For example, she came along to a party at N.'s house - I think it was our New Years party - and we played Settlers, as you might expect, and there were more games going - Spades tournaments and the like. We spent the whole party playing games. She didn't say anything then, and never to me, plus, they had another party to get to, but N. said (as I recall) that it wasn't just the games that bothered her at that party, it was how much time we just spent being together. Eating, playing, talking. Maybe she thought we should have been out doing things. Things she thought were substantive. Out protesting for change, or feeding people who were hungry, or whatever Christians are supposed to do. And those criticisms do resonate with me. I want the things I do to be meaningful, to have weight, to be worthwhile, to be in line with the things I think God is in line with.

And F. isn't the only one asking these kinds questions about the group. I been in several discussions lately where we talked about how much board gaming we do, and how many people come to parties we throw, vs. and how frequently people show up when someone needs moved, for example.

Is there even a 'supposed to' when it comes to action?

The amount of money Americans spend on ice cream every year is greater than the amount of money that not-for-profits have said they would need to raise to make sure everyone in the world can eat if they're hungry. Should I stop eating ice cream? Should I match the money I spend on ice cream with money sent to organizations that fight hunger? Should I match my ice cream money with money spent on feeding hungry people I know?

I know I'm always supposed to love people. I want to, and usually do, but I don't always know how to act that out. It's something that's taken me long enough to start learning in marriage, let alone with people I don't have the benefit of sleeping with. Is love love if it's not acted out?

So, I have to ask the question of the haiku again, for me, is sitting around a table and eating food with people I am similar to, and enjoy the company of, moral? What if, instead of chicken, it's a vegan meal? A freegan meal? Is sitting around a table and playing a game with the same, similar, people moral? Is sitting in the same room as people I am similar to moral at all, or should I only associate with people who are very different from me? People I don't like? If so, what is the point of reconciliation; what then am I trying to reconcile people to? Is sitting in a room moral? Is watching the Stanley Cup finals with a good friend moral? Are sports at all moral? Good friends? Watching movies? Reading books? Are games? Is anything that isn't sacrifice for the other moral? Is everything moral? Is nothing?

Or perhaps the better question is, what should I/we be getting up to these days? What's a good use of time? Is time something for which we should even appropriately consider the word 'used' to be used? Is fun ok if it's restful/sabbath? Is fun ok if it's with your enemy? Is fun always ok? Ever ok? Why if all things are permissible are some things even so forbidden (Hi, adultery and drinking blood!)? How do I reconcile the things I think I ought to do with the desire to not be legalistic? That is, is trying to be disciplined legalistic? Is encouraging other people to be disciplined legalistic? Can I do anything without discipline?

Is asking these questions even a good use of my time, or should I be out living what I already know, which I don't do most of the time anyway? I know a lot of easy answers to these questions. Answers like: love. But like I said. Love, how?

The (kingdom, block party, diaspora) of God is like a teacher teaching the haiku, who when he planned to teach it, could not decide how to discipline and forgive, be grace-giving and instruct, work hard and have fun. So he walked the tightrope of love and grace and discipline and told his students to both use the 5-7-5 format, and striking, fresh images, especially of nature.

If an occupied cell has two or three neighbors, the organism survives to the next generation.

At James's birthday party on Sunday, one of his old youth pastors asked me what I do for a living. There were, actually, two of his old youth pastors there along with about 20 other close personal friends of our dear own Mr. Parker. We sat in the back room of Chubby's along a long set of table table that grew more tables like mitosis o as people showed up. Chubby's is a place I can hardly recommend to anyone on Weight Watchers, but I can hardily recommend to all those whose weight is not currently held under suspicion, like mine is. Especially if you're hungry at three in the morning, and you want something a little less sketchy than Poncho's over on Main. Which, although delicious, is not my first, chubby's choice for pre-pre-dawn meals.

I had already decided how to answer the question should someone ask. I asked him if he meant what I do for living, or what I do for a job, because they're different things. For a living, I spend time with good friends, and eat meals, and hang out with homeless people, and love my wife. I read books, and comic books, and web sites, and I blog (now), and play in the rain. I work with the youth at church, and lead (ish) a small group, and am part of a smaller group of guys who are trying to encourage each other by speaking the truth, as hard as that is when you're good friends and you want to enjoy each others' company. But, once a day I head off to Olathe for 9 hours or so and do tech support for real estate software.

I used to be a teacher for a living. Like the Spice (without the cool eye color change) it permeated my whole life. I talk about the caffeine affecting my sleep cycles back then, but the teaching was just as much a part of that as anything else. A normal, good life should have a rhythm. Nights and days and rest and hard work. Live in the seasons and let them reverse the pathetic fallacy on you. But teaching for me was a full-revved engine twenty-four hours a day, all the days of the week, even on breaks. At a gaming session I once drank one and a half shots of AMP after having consumed three or four cans of the Diet Mt. Dew (seeing any trends yet?) and my heart started racing, and I felt seriously up for a couple of hours. The tail end of that feeling, when you're out of activity but still full of energy was what teaching was for me most of the time.

I taught English. Now, the NEA isn't going to acknowledge this, but teaching different subjects amounts to entirely different jobs. Believe me, I subbed for three years. I've seen it first hand. Gym teaching is pretty easy, it's the platform our school system has set up for coaches to actually be able to do what they really care about, which is pour their lives into young people. Something the typical school day is antithetical to. Math teaching is mostly setting up good assignments and then going over them. English is a different beat entirely. I don't want to dwell too much on that time period, but English teachers are tasked with teaching the building blocks of all the other subjects: reading, writing, speaking and listening. And on top of that, they're supposed to teach literature, too. Of course, for a good high school English teacher, the literature is only the delightful and rich tool to teach the other, more important, building blocks of learning. At Turner, every teacher was supposed to be teaching reading and writing (along with problem solving) in their curriculum. You can imagine how well that went over. So it ended up falling to the English teachers, as you'd expect. One short writing assignment is a minimum six hours of grading. And that doesn't get spread out over the whole school. You can't toss a writing assignment at a teacher's assistant like you can a multiple choice test. It was just me.

It was my first year, and I was dealing with learning to be an authority figure, and be organized for other people, and keep my energy up. And on top of that, grading (six hours for a single good assignment, remember), and plan five lectures a day.

It was my life.

More than living it and breathing it and tasting it in my food, it was who I was. I taught for a living. I loved it. I love the students. Like I said when I quit, I didn't dislike any of them. Even the annoying ones. I taught in my sleep. When I bought things I thought about how it would affect teaching.

I trained the new guy this afternoon just like I did on Friday. I took my lunch off to organize my new laptop. This morning, read all the blogs and comics I wanted, searched all the aggragating sites I wanted, played a game I wanted to, talked with Steve about the estate tax and a little about Ron Paul for a couple hours, worked on the book that I've been too lazy to write, and still had time to write this this afternoon. And I still took forty-one calls today. I get to see Nicholas and Dan here and laugh with them (and Rick Roll them). Mondays I have lunch with my dad. That's my job now. You can read Dan's Tech Terrors if you want a taste of the details, but for me, mostly, this job it's a necessary interruption to living, which really gets going when I leave.

It comes down to identity. Teaching used to be it. Performance, maybe. Succeeding. I like to think I'm giving that up. Learning that it's who I know, and how well, not what I do that matters. Being willing to follow Jesus to any weird places he might take me. Palces where I may or may not teach.

I don't know which life is richer. But I know which one affords me rest. And time with friends. And evenings with Jill where nothing happens at all. But it's also the life where I make up not-so-clever answers to the "whatya do?" question so I can spring them on people who think my job is who I am anymore.

Never thought I'd be that guy

The first semester I taught high school, my addiction got so bad that I would drop by the convenience store at the corner of 47th (Johnson County) and 55th (Wyandotte County) and get my fix on the way to work most days. That gas station is a scuzzy place. Like a lot of places in the Turner area. Not shady, mind you, just scuzzy. Like when you go to a small town in the middle of Kansas, and things are dusty, and no one notices because there's nothing to compare it to. That's Turner. small town feel, but they've got some big town issues. Gangs, if you believe it.

There is a liquor store next door, and a bar I went to one time to celebrate an early year Friday with some colleagues. It ending up being just three or four of us, and I had a Mountain Dew, and they all had beer. Step one of the reasons I never fit in with the teacher crowd. By January, I was already uncertified, and one of those guys at the table had drunk-dialed one of his volleyball girls and he got swept under the Turner rug like everything else there that doesn't fit the Turner values. He wasn't the only teacher that left in the middle of the year, but I guess small Wyandotte school districts don't matter in the grand scheme of things unless plagiarism is involved. But then again, Piper's got some money, and Turner's the cat that you walled in during remodeling and you can't even hear the meows to know you screwed it all up. Probably one of the reasons I loved it there. I don't think I would have quit if I hadn't had to.

I never fit in with that teacher crowd. For people that are supposed to be teaching kids how to become, they haven't become very well themseves. Petty people, a lot of them, thinking they're helping, but unwilling to change. I'm not sure if it was that I still felt young, or that they were all very populist and I lean on Libertariansm, or that I liked to hang out with the students and they mostly liked to kick them on the way out the door at 2:30. You home life sucks, but you can't be here. Get out. And they wonder why so many Turner girls drop out right before they move in with their baby daddies.

But besides of a couple three people who were gone at the end of the year, I never made the connection beyond 'hi's in the hall, and the occasional lunchtime debate over politics. Maybe if I'd had more than a year to become a teacher. The common wisdom says you need three years to get acclimated to the job. And stuck myself with one because I'm not much for bureaucratic red tape and reading. But that's my fault, nobody else's.

But like I was saying,there were a whole string of mornings I stopped by that gas station to pick up two cold 2-liters of Diet Mt. Dew. One for before lunch, and one for after. That's 4 liters of caffeinated bliss every day. Or, in terms perhaps more existential, approximately 1/6 of the dose of caffeine it would take to kill a 200 lb. male if ingested in less than an hour's time. And I was right there at 200 lbs. Some days I got a fifth liter as I gassed up on the way home. Or 42 ounces at Quicktrip over lunch.

Let me say something about Quicktrip here: It freaking RULES. If you've been there, you know, man. You know.

It was around this time that I made my Christmas list for that year. Now, this was back in my consumerist days, before I learned to fight the power of the Needs Stuff Empire, and when my Christmas lists were multi-page categorized and hotlinked affairs with options for all price ranges and purchasing abilities. One of the myriad items I asked for from Think Geek that year was a hoodie with the caffeine embroidered on the front. I'm trying to say that I was hardcore into that stuff in late 2005.

After a while I started to notice that my mental math skills weren't working as automatically as they usually do. Most of the time, if I want to know how my 57+62 is, I ask my brain, and it spits it out in a second or two, like an old school adding machine. That fall, I was having to spend the time to write it out in my head. It was like I could feel my myelin sheath dissipating, clouding up in a dust cloud after it left. I wasn't sleeping well either. Wake up in the middle of the night, terrified that I had slept in and missed work. Did that once, even. Sleeping in, that is.. And then there were nights I couldn't get to sleep. Admittedly, my schedule wasn't helping. I am not a morning person, and on top of that, I like late nights. Double whammy. But at least I wasn't doing it with sugar pop. Ida been twice my weight by then ifa had.

So I quit. I remember being pretty irritable and anti-social for three or four days, but I did it. Even with first year teaching and everything. And it felt good. Like I was living again. It was like spring. Every winter I fall away from the surface of alertness and motivation, so slow I don't even know it. And then one day in March or April, I realize how deep I am and kick back up to the surface, finally getting air I didn't even know I was missing. It was like that.

Today, before work, I went to the convenience store with Dan. He got a breakfast sandwich, and I got a 64 oz diet Mt. Dew. Later in the day as I started dragging after lunch, I had a cup of coffee to get the motivation to keep writing this post. And as I'm finishing this up here in the corner at Jeremy's birthday party while people play Halo2 (my favorite game of all time; a post for another day), I almost grabbed a can of Mt. Dew to muster the mental acuity to finish. Like Derek Webb said in that song about the box of letters, I find the same old things are plaguing me still.

I was off for a few months. Maybe it was the fact that I now owned a blue hoodie with an electric green caffeine molecule on the front, or maybe it was just that I like the community coffee creates, or maybe I liked the illusion of being able to function on very little sleep. But I hopped back on that beast as soon as I got the chance and took a ride.

It's not as bad as it used to be. Believe me on that one. I did drink a gallon on January 29th, but that was over 8 hours. And halfa one most days at work. But it's not nearly as bad. Maybe I'll quit again, and get awake again. Maybe I'll take the wide road and go get a can out of the fridge right now. I'll let you know either way. But I've got a party to be at, so, tootles, ya'll.

Edit: I had one 12 oz. can. And it's 2:15. And I'm trying to figure out why our old router doesn't like our new cable modem and flakes out when acquiring a new IP address. I got nothin'.

Training Day

I spent a good portion of the part of the afternoon in which I intended to write this post unexpectedly training our new guy here at work. Any chance to teach, really. I'm cool with that.

Speaking of teaching, I'm going to be teaching on 'The Other' in The Story Of God over the next two weeks for the middle school folks at Jacob's Well. I'm excited to do this. First, because the last time I taught, it was just a brief overview on the Advent Conspiracy, and secondly, it fell pretty flat, in my humble yet highly accurate opinion. Also, I like teaching. What with the degree an all. Go figure.

Anyhow, people have been awfully needy since my trainee left for the day, so, this is all I've got.

Said I'd write every weekday, and I have.

All two days so far.

I am a champion of freedom and justice.