Send a heartbeat to . . .the void that cries through you? Or is it something else crying? Someone?

Reality doesn't match up to what I'm told it's supposed to; I don't know any evil men. I think I'm supposed to. By evil, I mean of course the sort of evil men movies premiering the week before Halloween imply are hiding in your car right now. The man with the knife. The man with in the suit in the office with floor to ceiling windows, fingers pressed to fingers. The woman who locks her foster children in the basement, you are not a person, you are a thing, you have to earn your scrap of bread, you dog. The ones who are cruel because they like it.

I read about them in the news; these kinds of evil men must exist. But how could I know them so well when I see them on the screen? "Ah, yes, that is just the sort of evil that exists, and just the sort of justice that must be mediated to stop it." So many of the resonant stories, the ones I think about for days afterward, the ones I sink down into again and again are filled with this evil, from the time I was born, from Red Riding Hood to Lord of the Rings to Boy's Life to The Eyes of the Dragon to Slumdog Millionaire to Let the Right One In, it's there, and the evil men are real, and I know them, without having met them. Cruelty and hate hide under all the rocks and in all the dark empty rooms.

But I look around me now, and I can't see any. Yes, yes, I can peek into the internet and find any number of websites dedicated to chronicling the psychopaths and the serial killers and distant politicians. The kinds of people my friend Adam says don't exist since he can't see them in person. But in my day-to-day life? Even in my excessive lazy-job-induced amount of time on the internet? I see a whole lot of hurting people. I see a whole lot of lonely people. I don't see any evil men.

And maybe I should. If there are any police officers reading right now, I imagine they would tell me that the evil men are closer than I think. That I am glad the police patrol and protect and intimidate. Otherwise, POW, right in the kisser. And if there are any people who live without very much money reading, I imagine they would tell me that the evil men are everywhere and they own everything, and keep it for themselves, and there is no way to get ahead. Even the other people without very much money will do anything to get just a little.

But even those people aren't Hannibal, aren't Goebbels, aren't Maleficent, aren't Iago. Those are selfish people, or desperate people, or angry people. But evil?

Maybe it's the opposite, then. Maybe I know only evil men. And this is why all these stories resonate. Everyone around me holds all this potential for cruelty, and have somehow, miraculously, they keep that pushed down under, letting good shine out. So when Stephen King's cruel children characters torment his normal kid characters, and then are killed for it by supernatural clown/temporal-spiders or whatever, it's not that I identify with the normal kids, it's that I see the cruel kid within myself and want it to be killed there, too.

But that's too simplistic, too. Because I do identify with the normal kid. Maybe I haven' t been bullied to that extent. Maybe I haven't been tortured. Maybe I haven't had everything taken from me. But I feel those things. I want justice for me. I want justice for other people. I've seen cruelty, and I've seen oppression, and, heck, I even have this huge weight of knowing that by typing this on a computer I am in some way affecting other people's lives ecologically and economically, people I could not even attempt to visit and get to know without continuing to contribute to the same cycles and systems. So, I'm right there, too.

So, yeah. I do not know any evil men. I do not know anyone but evil men.

But all this seems to me like it might be a pedestrian conversation. Stuff, maybe, we all know. So, there are deeper questions this idea of no evil/all evil brings up for me. Two sets of questions, actually.

First, how do atheists deal with evil in the world? I don't mean intellectually. I mean emotionally. How do the people who really, honestly, don't believe that there is anything beyond the emperical come to grip emotionally with the fact that there are really cruel people around? Also, even as a hyper-social species as we are, why should I, intellectually-justifyably, care about people who are hurting rather than just kill them off? Just because I get an endorphin release? Because my genetics dictate that 'nice' survives? Those answers seem really shallow. To treat someone as a human, and humanity enough for respect seems like a mystical concept, not an empirical one. But one that I think most people are drawn to emotionally. Maybe I just don't get ethics. But, even on the plane of ethics, most atheists I know believe there are some disposable people. Some people for whom it's ok for the gene pool to remove via natural selection. That I shouldn't care about them because we're evolving past them. In other words, not mine, "Does it make you happy you're so strange?" Does reality match up with what you're told, and what you tell?

Secondly, how should we theists (small-t) deal with all of this? I don't mean emotionally. We've got lots of good reasons to care about people and treat them well. Everyone's made in the image of God, so treat 'em good. Love your neighbor like you want to be loved. Gotcha. I mean intellectually. It seems like an awful big cop-out to say that the reason life really really sucks for a lot of people is that God lets it be so in order to allow for free will. Because life doesn't have to suck this much, does it? And why should a person who doesn't believe in God take seriously the reason that evil is in the world is that God is too big and too wonderful, and his ways are above our ways? Isn't it just simpler to say that life sucks because it was chance for it to be here, and we evolved in such an odd way as to notice it? And also, are people generally, who actually believe what I say they ought to belive actually changed for the better? Actually less cruel? Does entering the upside down kingdom turn me upside down? Or, in other words, not mine, "Is it bright where you are? Have the people changed?" Does reality match up with what I'm told, and what I tell?

My birthday party last year, and yeah, I need to post more, I know.

It's the ancillary work you don't think about at the outset

This evening, during that crazy Mizzou game (Dear Memphis, had you ever seen a defence before?), I worked this up for the novel I'm working on (yay having a part time job to allow times for to be writing!). It's heavily based on Young's Literal Translation. I changed a couple of words here and there to stronger syonyms, modified most of the punctuation, and omited needless words (Thanks, Messrs Strunk, White!), but I did keep as much of the sweet grammar of the translation as I could. Sections of this piece will serve as chapter notation in the first half of the novel. Thought I'd share it with you, since it'll be months before I can share any of the actual work with anyone, and sharing is really motivating for me, re: artistic endevours. (By-the-by, the whole pre-Noah section of this first book is pretty much my favorite passage in the whole collection. I love the untouchable mystery of stories told through the eyes of ancient peoples about times even more ancient, times that would otherwise outside the realm of history.)



In the Beginning
(Of the Elohim's preparing the heavens, the earth)

The earth had existed waste and void,
darkness on the face of the deep,
the Spirit of the Elohim fluttering on the face of the waters.

And the Elohim says,
'Let light be.'
Light is.
The Elohim sees the light good,
separates between the light, the darkness,
calls to the light, 'Day.'
To the darkness he has called, 'Night.'
There is an evening; there is a morning --
day one.

And the Elohim says,
'Let an expanse be in the midst of the waters,
let it be separating between waters and waters.
The Elohim makes the expanse;
it separates between the waters-under-the-expanse,
the waters the expanse.
It is so:
The Elohim calls to the expanse, 'Heavens.'
There is an evening; there is a morning --
day second.

And the Elohim says,
'Let the waters-under-the-heavens
be collected unto one place.
Let the dry land be seen.'
It is so:
The Elohim calls to the dry land, `Earth.'
To the collection of the waters He has called, `Seas.'
The Elohim sees good.
The Elohim says, `Let the earth yield tender grass,
herb sowing seed,
fruit-tree (seed in itself) making fruit
on the earth.'
It is so:
the earth brings forth tender grass,
herb sowing seed
tree making fruit (seed in itself).
The Elohim sees good.
There is an evening; there is a morning --
day third.

And the Elohim says,
'Let luminaries be in the expanse of the heavens
to make a separation between the day, the night,
for signs, for seasons, for days, for years,
luminaries in the expanse of the heavens
to give light upon the earth.'
It is so:
the Elohim makes the two great luminaries,
the great luminary for the reign of the day,
the small luminary and the stars for the reign of the night.
The Elohim gives them in the expanse of the heavens
to give light upon the earth,
to reign over day, over night,
to make a separation between the light,
the darkness.
The Elohim sees good.
There is an evening; there is a morning --
day fourth.

And the Elohim says,
'Let the waters teem with the teeming-living-creature.
Fowl, let fly on the earth,
on the face of the expanse of the heavens.'
The Elohim prepares the great monsters,
every living-creature-that-is-creeping which the waters have teemed with,
every fowl-with-wing.
The Elohim sees good,
blesses them, saying,
'Be fruitful, multiply,
fill the waters in the seas.
The fowl, let multiply in the earth.'
There is an evening; there is a morning --
day fifth.

And the Elohim says,
'Let the earth bring forth the living creature,
cattle, creeping thing, beast-of-the-earth.'
It is so:
the Elohim makes the beast-of-the-earth,
the cattle, every creeping thing of the ground.
The Elohim sees good.
The Elohim says,
'Let us make human in our image, according to our likeness.
Let them rule over fish of the sea,
over fowl of the heavens, over cattle,
over all the earth,
over every creeping thing creeping on the earth.'
The Elohim prepares the human in his image;
in the image of the Elohim he prepared him,
a male and a female he prepared them.
The Elohim blesses them,
says to them, 'Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth. Subdue it.
Rule over fish of the sea,
over fowl of the heavens,
over every living thing creeping upon the earth.'
The Elohim says, `Look around, I have given to you
every herb sowing seed upon the face of all the earth,
every tree, the fruit of a tree sowing seed.
To you it is for food.
And to every beast of the earth,
to every fowl of the heavens,
to every creeping thing on the earth in which breath of life,
every green herb for food:'
It is so.
The Elohim sees all that he has done very good.
There is an evening; there is a morning --
day the sixth.

The heavens, the earth are completed, all their host.
The Elohim completes by the seventh day.
His work which he has made ceases by the seventh day,
all his work which he has made.
The Elohim blesses the seventh day,
sanctifies it, for in it, he has ceased from all his work
which the Elohim had prepared for making.

Never easy.

I've taken down two wall hangings this week. One of them is a huge orangey-red Celtic knot, faded from washing after it got all dirty and wet when the ceiling caved in. It happened a couple of years ago, and was a direct result of water pouring through the ceiling of our old place, as upstairs pipes burst during a 50 degree warm snap. At this apartment, it hung above the antique mirror from my Omi that we set above our bed like a headboard. Now the wall is white and there is a gray crack running up from the floor that someone patched once upon a time.

The other hanging I took down is the vintage British flag that hung above the computer. Next time you see one, look to see how the stripes are uneven. The red against white is shifted to the counter-clockwise side. Having one in the house, you notice things like that .Jones's parents brought it back from England in the 70s, and she gave it to us when she moved in with Eric, what with being married and all. As I took it down, I wondered why we hang it. I was careful to have Jill sew on some loops to the upper corners so we didn't have to punch holes in it. Something about respect. I wonder if we should do something to make it an art piece, rather than just a massive hanging reminder of the existence of another country; I mean, we are no great anglophiles. Maybe we should paint "Jesus is bigger" on it, and get an American flag, and do the same. Hang them on opposite walls. I doubt that will happen, true as it may be. BUt it's fun to think about it.

The wall is empty where the flag used to be, too, and you can see the boarded up door that leads to the stairs to the neighbor's place above us. There are holes in the wall, where we miscalculated the height of nails. Apparently, we've covered a lot of imperfections with decorations.

The bookshelves that cover the window in the computer room so Jill wasn't as cold when she was studying French this winter are also empty, except for a couple of straggling knick-knacks and our copy of the board game Dominion.

See, we are moving.

On Sunday afternoons, before church, our friends stop in to drop off food for after, or sit on our couch and talk. They park in our driveway, and if you've been to Jacob's Well, directions are easy. You can see the building from our kitchen window. One of the biggest reasons we moved here was to be close to that building -- brick, with Scopes-era crenelations. Sometimes, late at night, Shayne is sneaking in for late night pastor stuff, and I am taking out the trash, and when I call out to him, maybe he thinks it's God saying hello. When I'm hanging out with the youth upstairs Sunday mornings, and there is a book I want to loan one of them, or we are done early, and I want to grab a game to play, it's a quick walk back, hardly knew I was gone. We jokingly named our wi-fi network The Rectory. After church, I invite someone over. "It's right there," I say. "Come have tacos. Play a game or have a good talk." And they do.

All of this is a matter of convenience, I realize. But it has been a beneficial convenience. I've seen life spring up here and there like the surprise lilies are just now pushing up in the back yard. Lots of friendships deepened over "Come on over." I am going to miss the convenience of living "right there."

But it's more than just an amazing location. This is where we had Jill's balloon party, when the balloons came down the next day, and wandered around the house like they had minds of their own. The doorway to our bedroom is where I last saw some friends of mine happy in their relationship before it went sour, talking about the election with another couple, two players on a debate team. This is the home of "The Noodle Game." This is the house I thought we'd only get pushed out of by our first kid. This is the bathroom I get allergic to in the spring, and the closet you get your clothes out of pre-shower in the winter, believe me. This is the basement we cleaned two trash bags of dust out of. This is the front porch we played late-summer-night Settlers on. I hid under one set of stairs and on another set in a game of sardines over Christmas. This is the house I came home to when I got laid off, and the house I couldn't get to sleep in when I didn't get that youth job I wanted so much. This is the house I've felt more at home in than any other.

Yeah, I am excited about the new place, new opportunities, new location, new layout, new roommates, 9/14ths rent, where the hangings will go up, etc, etc, amen. Really, really, I am. But I'll you all about that some other time.

For now, I'm going to miss this place. Really, really, I am.

Bigger than a The Beatles reunion, tour, I kid you not.

I watched the first, say, 30 episodes of Rosie O'Donnell's daytime TV show. Weird, I know. But it was funny and fresh back in the day, and she shot koosh balls at the audience, and koosh balls rule. I thought to myself at the time, "If I'm ever famous, when I'm doing the talk show circuit, I will go on Rosie's show, and be like, I saw all the first episodes of your show. I am not a poser, or whatever. Also, can I have a Koosh?"

Around the same time, watching a lot of talk shows, I noticed that people with a thing to plug had a very clear path ahead of them. Laid out by publicists and their ilk. You had to go on all these shows, and some had good interviewers (Letterman (we didher show like Jonathon Ross; it'll be HUGE)) and some had terrible interviewers (Has any guest ever gotten a full interesting sentence out in the presense of Regis Philbin?). You'd see someone on a popular morning show on Monday, and by Friday they'd pop up after midnight. I remember thinking to myself, "If I'm ever famous, I will go on the best shows first, rather than save them for last. So, for example, Leno and Letterman and especially the Today Show could wait, Imo goin' on Conan day one."

All that to say, omygosh you guys, Andy Richter's gonna be on the Tonight Show with Conan. Squee!

Rhetorical question, short hand for same rheotrical question, rhetorical answer, tell a friend.

First posts back from long blog hiatuses are supposed to be about the events of the interim, supposed to apologize for it being so long since the last post, tell you stories about how the author thought a lot about writing, but life got in the way at first, and then the habit fell away, and you, dear readers, should be grateful that the blog has continued at all.

Whatever.

Besides one justifiable dalliance on my birthday, this blog has, I admit, lain dormant since the day I got waylaid on the way out of the cubicle row with lunch on my mind and sent to a meeting where we were told by a man with a creepily thick neck whose position in the power-structure of my brain is still "company stooge whose unintentional Simon Pegg movie quotations asked me to shill our now terminal Previa out for the company" that everyone in the room was getting laid off. Among these fine people were the company party planning committee (one woman), the only man I've ever seen actually enjoying long conversations with real estate agents mid-tech-support-call, and the guy who took more calls on average than any other tech, and who once spent 20 minutes chewing out an AOL technician who refused to allow a user the basic email functionality to receive emails that they themselves were sending from another email account because it "might be spam" (SIR, this woman is sending the email, please do your job as an email provider and allow her to get emails that she herself is sending! She is telling you that she wants to get a particular email, there is no more basic function of your job than to let her do this!), among plenty of other fine people. So, the creepy neck guy who had just waltzed in to say his little speech about the importance doing his dead wife proud by winning Village of the Year again, or whatever it was, I wasn't really paying attention, waltzed right back out to go lean over a desk in a glass-doored office next door and look important with the new execs. That morning they'd also just laid off the entire executive team, which was a nice gesture to the rest of us, I'll admit, but I'm not sure what good it actually did. Then again, I don't really care how the company does anymore. Surpisring, I know.

And that day set in motion an over-3-month ordeal of trying to collect unemployment benefits while emptying what paltry savings we had, and relying quite heavily on the kindness of strangers and friends (Thanks, friends and anonymous donors . . . theinds and thanonymous donors.) to be able to do basic things like eat food and not get kicked out of our apartment for failure to pay the rent.

This morning, we drove to the credit union and used our fancy new state-mandated-financial-institution-I-don't-really-trust-issued debit card to deposit the daily maximum in our checking account, the rest to follow via electronic transfer in "up to three business days".

So, although it was not intentional, ala my eight-month, post-teaching job search sabbatical from Halo 2, the day of bloody finally depositing the first money from the unemployment office I've been paying into for, say, 13 years, seems like a good day to get back to this blogging business. I can't promise it'll be as frequent, as I used to blog almost exclusively during the work day (while still resolving more calls on average than any other technician, I might add) but it's back.

Oh, and now I TOTALLY wish I had taken that license plate cover for the Previa. The back bumper is falling off, the front right blinker cover is shattered, and the rear end screams like a dying animal with a really high pitched, whining, moaning scream whenever you drive more than 30 MPH. Its going to just die on us someday soon unless we shell out a couple grand. Nothing signifies my confidence and belief in the fidelity of that real estate software company I used to work for than that mini-van.

Birthday Party Preparations LIVEBLOG

5:30. I am setting up the computer in the new location so the photo booth thing will work. Also downloaded a bunch of speed runs to show on the other monitor. Then to pick up around the house a tad and then jump full into playing with bread dough.

4:07. To-do list:

• Make Middle-Eastern-style hearty lentil soup for the veggies and anti-glutenites. Should be done around 7. So, with prep time, 40 minutes to cook until soft, and then a good 20 minutes after that, start around 5:45.
• Stuff and cook runzas. Also should be done cooking around 7. So, to cook 25 minutes, rise 15 minutes before cooking, and be able to be stuffed, start around 6.
• Fry wontons. To be ready at 7, and fry all of them, should take a good half hour to 45 minutes. Start at 6:15.
• Remember to get 2 extra selves.
• Open bags of chips for cheese dip stuff.
• Remember to tell everyone who can't make it to go to my new flickr feed starting at 7 to be able to see live picture updates every 30 seconds.
  
• Bring in noise and funk.
  

3:16. Has beef kind and doesn't has beef kind are go.





















2:52. Actually, it's time to get the cheese dip ready. Respite is off the table for now. (The saurkraut is long gone and in the runza mix, no need to freak out, cabbage-haters)















2:40. Other batch done. Eddie Izzard on the monitor. Dishes in the wash. Might have a bit of respite before I prep the lentil soup, and run the home stretch on the runzas dough.

2:05. Wonton! That's the word I was looking for. I'm making fried rice wontons. So, refrigerating the rice didn't work as well as I'd hoped; it's more mushy than I wanted, but I think it'll work out just fine as a filling. The chicken kind is wrapped and egg whited in the fridge, and the kind without any chicken awaits. Back to it, friends.









1:18. A quick peek at the two refrigerators. The first one is the downstairs. That's Jones Soda Cane Cola in the bottom left. Comes in cans now, apparently, and I know some people love cane sugar over corn syrup (and the non-fattening chemicals that sweeten, whatever those are: yikes, and wow I'm not as fat as I could be) to a degree that five years ago I could not fathom in a sweetener choice, so there those are. The Boulevard Wheat is from a few weeks ago, when a good friend of mine got good and fired for something not so much his fault, and we didn't drink any when he came over and we spent the day like eight-year-old versions of ourselves we played Mike Tyson's Punch-Out for 4 hours, but a few have trickled out over the weeks.






You may have to click on the second one to see all the pre-prepared dish ingredients sitting around in there, waiting expectantly for me to fish them out and toss them on the counter, ready to be mixed or kneaded, or cut, or drizzled, or stuffed, or sampled.





















12:47. Two batches mixed and set to chill for a couple hours. (my mixing bowl didn't seem to want to hold 12-13 cups of flour). Now on to the wraps (or, I suppose, egg rolls with fried rice instead of veggies, depending on your point of view): chicken kind, and there isn't any chicken kind.























































12:00.

























































Oh, my, yes. Food processors RULE.



11:48. So, it's cold today, and heating bills and leaky windows being what they are, the thermostat is set to 62 during the day, which is up from 58 last week, when we realized even with the both of us sitting in front of space heaters all day, it wasn't enough. But with the cooking, and the space heater at the edge of the kitchen, it's been just fine today.













11:46. Ugh, that was, like 4 hand washes. So gross looking, so delicious! The mixtures are saran wrapped (ok, off-brand plastic wrapped, which never, I mean NEVER, wants to come off the roll in a clean break) and away in the fridge. The chicken breast is cooked and ready to be shredded, which means my forearms are going to hurt tonight. WAIT! We have a wee food processor down here. Imona try that.











11:11. This batch of hamburger is done, and I've separated the three pounds into two bowls: one for the regular runzas, one for the pizza runzas. After looking at it, the bread recipie I'm making from scratch will require more fine fine timing than I thought to get the runzas out hot and on time, so I really want the stuff going inside to be standing at the ready. Stupid real life food preparation. How did The Ancients (also, most of the world alive today) do it?! Now to get all that set up and ready as the chicken for the wraps finishes cooking.

The dishwasher has been emptied, the dishes next to the sink stowed. Thanks be to Jill for getting all of that done last night while I was out carousing and living it up, er, I mean . . . at prayer group.




10:48. If you are one of the "privileged" few who have had opportunity to visit me in my job-search dungeon, you'll be familiar with the computer set up I've arranged on the kitchen counter. The orange-tinged book is the aforementioned cookbook. But, what, you may ask, is the second monitor for, recipes that require such complex machinations that you much see two pages of text simultaneously, and such? No, no, nothing so urbane. Throughout the day, I'm going to be watching various videos, DVDs, and internet phenomenon such as Look Around You: Maths.









10:25. The rice is done and off to the fridge to cool so the fried result is less gooey. The beef for the runzas (or bierrocks, as they're known in some circles) is cooking in the pan now. Although I'll be making the bread for that from scratch this afternoon, I want as much to be ready beforehand as possible.











10:12. The rice for the chicken, and not-chicken rice wraps is in the pot and boiling as dictated by our excellent Mennonite cookbook More-With-Less, an excellent gift for those of you either still tied into the consumerist Christmas lifestyle, or with relatives for whom not providing such a still-culturally-appropriate gesture of economic goodwill would cause your relationship to be otherwise strained. I will chill be pre-wrapping the rice, this morning in order to make the just-before-the-party- preparations less hectic.

9:58. I'd been thinking for a while about having a birthday party. In these latter days, with the military-birthday complex in such full stride, and the pressure on every front to celebrate in the most elaborate fashions with the most and modern methods, who doesn't wish for a most excellent celebration of his or her anniversary of emergence? And so, in the spirit of such a broad cultural phenomenon (but, may I say, not the particulars) I prepare. And all day, you, most careful RSS feed reader, and Facebook status minder, shall be kept abreast.

I know, I know, I know.

It's been a while since I've been here. Looking for work and writing fiction, mostly, should you wonder what I've been up to. And I'm not sure how long it'll be until I get back. The other things are more important right now. If I can find a way to do all three, then I'll be here a lot. I like it, and I miss it.

But I'm back just for a moment to tell you about something just read over on a blog I read sometimes. My mouth hung open for a good ten seconds thinking about it, and then I covered it with both hands like you do when you open the wrong door in the wrong kind of movie. And while it's an interesting point the author is making, this one thing stood out above and beyond, so far above, that I can't believe the entire article wasn't just two lines:

The federal bailout we gave the other day to people who got filthy rich by giving bad mortgages to people who couldn't afford them, and then selling the mortgages to people who would never get their money back: $700 billion (850, really)
The total amount of aid the world has sent to Africa since 1960: $600 billion.

As you might expect.

I had planned on spending the afternoon working on a blog about how the modern American capitalist system/corporate culture is really a voluntary opt-in feudalism, using specific examples from the company I work for. Instead, they laid me off. So, I'll have to get to that entry later. Such is the life of an artiste.

You know everybody sees it. Except you; you don't believe it.

I don't think I need much commentary on this. It speaks for itself. I mean, even The Onion sees it.

http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/im_not_one_of_those_love_thy?utm_source=onion_rss_daily

The Shift.

We had a mid-week weekend of reprieve, but autumn is back, nipping and cozying us down into blankets and scarves, but his eyes have gone steel having been so inviting. Is it even the same one? The time shift felt weighty this year, again, as late as it comes, an hour substantial. Morning feels like mornings used to, in grade school, a bright sidewalk straight up and onto the hill on Walker, where the alien walnut eggs slowly hatched day by day, and I waited for Billy (my first memorized phone number not mine, 782 not 764) and his mom at the T so we could walk together. Evenings start more sinister, and drop away winkaflash, leaving night to stalk in the wake.

Found peaking.

I've been lost in a corn maze twice now this year. The first time was back in late September. The maze hadn't been open very long, and the corn was a good ten feet tall, maybe twelve, deep green leaves filling out right through the middle of some of the narrower paths. A machete would have been a useful accessory. It had rained earlier that day, and every now and again there was a wet intersection. But the paths were mostly firm and dry, and as yet unspoiled by people cutting through the walls. Jackets only needed to protect arms from the fresh leaf scratching.

We flat-out raced through the first maze, my second guessing costing me the win. Then we took turns being the guide for the group in the second maze, the odd configuration taking us much further than we would have needed to if we'd been willing to cheat ourselves and do checkpoints out of order. For the third, we did a team race, starting at different ends, where you had to hit all the checkpoints as a team. It felt like the sun stayed up late just for us, and the sky kept its shaded colors over the hills surrounding the valley, horizon to horizon, for what seemed like hours.

For the fourth and longest maze, we decided to just strike out on our own, winding through the two miles of paths alone. Sam dove in without consulting his map, forging ahead with the intent of getting lost and finding God out in the sea of corn. Jill went in through the exit, head down, eyes on the map, determined to find her own way. I was in a weird headspace, caught up between wanting to get lost, but not really being in the mood for it. I felt detached, the world unreal there in the long-waning light and the tall corn. Unable to concentrate hard enough to notice God, unable to ignore his presence. So I just went to do it efficiently, but breezily. Enjoy the evening. Work my way through quickly, but not worry about it. Find what I found, and let it be.

But less than 5 minutes from the entrance, I suddenly had to use the restroom, and took the shortest path back to the starting point for the mazes I could find, cutting through the end of our maze on my way. But as I came back, I got confused, and started tracing the exit path I took out on the map instead of the entrance one I took back in. And I got lost.

Not hopelessly lost, though. I kept moving away from the exit, my sense of direction was good enough for that. But where on the map I was, I had no idea. None of the intersections looked right. I kept seeing Sam from time to time, wandering steadily, but he wasn't using a map at all, so he couldn't help my find where I was exactly. And if there's one word I'd use to describe the whole experience, I'd say "relaxing."

To have no other responsibilities than to some time find my way through a maze that I know had a path that I could find. Nothing else to worry about, nothing else to think about. A single, doable, pleasant task right in front of my face. A purpose, but not a hard one. Untaxing work. That's relaxing.

Eventually, I noticed that I may have been in a particular section (the kanagroo?) a good way south from where I thought I thought I was, but it looked like if this path was that path, and that one was that, a turn here would bring me to a checkpoint. And it did.

With by bearings found, worked my way to a bridge where two paths crossed and climbed up to look around. A couple of teenagers, and a younger kid were hanging around. I thought the older ones might have been dating in that early teenage way, unsure of what to do with your bodies when you're together, somehow still living off the friendship you started the whole thing with. Attached and detached, but together.

Thunderheads lumbered along east and south of us. I felt small, like a blank face in a crowd. There were big things happening around me, great and wonderful, and all I could do was watch them happen.

I traced my way out from there, stopping once to watch the sun drop below the corn right down the center of a long straight path, finally weary of our wanderings, ready to kick us out to get to bed. As the darkness settled, a couple of buses pulled in, and kids spread through the maze, cutting between the paths, and shouting, boys stealing girls cell phones, as they do (how else at that age to be chased when you want to be?), jumping out to scare, laughing and yelling.

It was a definite foreshadowing of what it would be like when we come back, late October, the corn tired of living, ready to finally sleep. By then, the paths were wide, the leaves pushed back by so many explorers, the walls between rows thinned, sometimes so far as to be doors.

We came back with our own teenagers from church, bundled in stocking caps from our personal stash, intended to let our earlier foray inform this one. We ran the same race in the first maze, this time, the worn down corn making it hard enough to stay on the path that the first 5 people came out the wrong one maze. 4 out the wrong exit, 1 out the wrong entrance. I sent them off in teams to race the next one, but teenagers are less loyal in these situations, and some of them ended up separated, in far corners of the field, going edge to edge without finding their checkpoints, the first group coming back long after the third had done so, the sun leaving much quicker this time.

Now what? Send the kids out to get in the long maze lost themselves? No. Not a good idea. The paths were too fluid. We decided to play Sardines in the big maze. I was the first runner, so I decided to head out to the cross bridge, sit down at the bottom the stairs to one side and wait.

I had the count of 500, so I dove right in the exit, cutting through the corn to get myself hidden as quickly as possible. I knew that after a certain point southwards, I was guaranteed to be in the right maze, so I knew they could find me. But as I made my way along in the dark, through that section I'd thought I was in the previous time, I missed the bridge, and near the south edge of the field, found a crossroads to stand it, and with no idea where I was, really, other than, "south-easterly-ish," waited in the dark to be found.

So now I was lost, but not at all trying to get unlost. Only waiting for someone to find me. Trying not to scare random people as I stood there alone in the dark. The corn dry like over-bleached hair. It was less relaxing to wait, and I wasted the thinking time I had by busying my mind. Keeping it from thinking usefully. On all the subjects but the deep ones. I do that far too often: calm, relaxed, my head not engaged. I don't know why.

I waited for quite a while, walked in a circle, stepping over fallen corn stalks, kernals ground into the earth. Standing, waiting, lost but not wandering. Every now and then, the sounds of distant groups working their way through the maze. And after long enough, I decided to whistle loudly, and the main group of the guys showed up soon after, the one other crashing through the corn from the opposite direction. We waited for a while for the ladies to show up, but they eventually called and said they had quit the search So we made our way out as we could, singing Vader's theme from Empire Strikes Back, piled in the vans, drove past vast orange halogen-lit asphalt and steel industrial complexes, and had ice cream at Dairy Queen on the way home.

By-the-by, the pumpkin pie blizzard is especially good.

Remember 'remember;' it rhymes with 'November.'

Whew. That's over.

I hope.

For the last month or so, I've felt strangely detached from the hopes and yearnings and fears of a lot of the people around me. According to the news, a lot of the people in the world, that is. Crammed into a binary situation by circumstance, I took a third way and voted for a man whose name I could not even remember as I waited in line for the two and a half hours it took for the election commission to get the right voter registration books to my polling place. Who I wasn't sure I'd vote for until I'd been in that line for an hour. And I voted for that candidate mainly because another man who I respected more than any of the candidates endorsed him. A candidate who, in Jackson County, got less than twice the number of votes as there were write-ins. A candidate whom I literally know nothing about besides his name, his running mate's name, and his party. And I'm fine with that. But I was able to not vote out of fear or hope. And I'm fine with that, too. Happy even.

(I would have voted for Jesus, but I figured he's gonna take office no matter what the vote. But I came close to doing that anyway. Maybe I should have. (Thought I'd address that.))

So, last night felt weird, detached, out of body. I've voted in two presidential elections before this, and I really thought those elections mattered at the time. So, this time, to see election numbers flashing on the screen (annoyingly, and prematurely) and to not really care which way they fell was weird. I felt like a sociopath, not able to feel.

My culture says I'm supposed to care. I'm supposed to think voting is the big deal. Get out and vote. Vote vote vote. Get a coffee. Get a doughnut. Get accolades. Wear a sticker; show your patriotism. If you haven't voted, you can't complain. But voting is just one wee thing in a whole big sphere of possible political action, and while my vote didn't count anyway, I went ahead. It felt right, but I don't know if it was right or wrong. It felt good, a little subversive, but I don't know if it was worth my time. Maybe I would have been better served staying home and sleeping an extra hour and a half, been able to be more present for the youth guys I hung out with on Tuesday night. As it was, I was exhausted.

I kind of wonder if the Baldwin/Castle ticket in Jackson County had 664 votes instead of 665, what it would have changed. Maybe I could have gotten all worked up and plunked my vote into a 90k-drop bucket (either way). And then, as I always do, I wondered if I had changed my one vote, how many people also would also have changed theirs. Would me changing mine been enough to affect the cosmic unconsciousness so that others would have too? I doubt it. Same thing with economics. If I create my own little demand or supply of something, does that even have an effect? I don't know. But again, I doubt it. Is that nihilism or realism?

As far as winning goes, I kind of wanted McCain win in order to to spite the really smarmy pundits on TV, and everyone like the self-important people standing around the line at the election place yesterday, the kind of person who likes standing to the side at events, letting other people see them at the thing, but not willing to stand among the 'unwashed.' The kind of person who took running for 6th grade class president as an opportunity to make things happen. The kind of person who strongly believes in the power of volunteering to serve on boards of organizations. Also, you always get a garishly colored t-shirt, apparently. I kind of wanted Obama to win because I like when people have hope, and like when young black guys have good role models. I kind of wanted McCain to win because I think he's got a better sense of humor than Obama. I kind of wanted Obama to win because I think he would have a more policitally interesting administration. I kind of wanted McCain to win because because because. But in the end I really didn't care for most of the policies of either of the candidates. I kind of liked Mccain's more. But only just. Not enough to cast a vote.

So, I watched the Daily Show/Colbert report, saw how hard it is to be funny with short notice. Saw them call New York with 0% reporting. Saw them call the Obama win, hope in Jon Stewart's eyes, like it all finally meant something. Got ready to sleep, saw a generous and well-spoken concession, saw a triumph, cared less about Oprah, as usual. Went to sleep. Woke up.

And all that's different today is that I feel more like writing. More than I have in a month or so. Maybe longer. Like I've been under a cardboard box for a while, and now someone moved it, I can't figure how I got under there, or why I never left earlier. So, there you go. Maybe there'll be more writing. That's the impact of the election in these parts; it's over.

Now that I've chimed in on these two things, maybe the news can FINALLY talk about something else.

• The question I would have asked at last night's "town hall meeting": "Mr. Obama has said that he 'still believe[s] America is the last, best hope of Earth.' Ms. Palin has recently been quoted in saying in no uncertain terms that Mr. McCain believes, and all Americans should believe, that 'America is the greatest force for good in the world,' and has also said in the VP debate that that America is to be a 'shining city on a hill' for the world. A two-part question, then: First, do you agree or disagree with these statements now? If you disagree, how do you now see America's role in the world; and why the change? If you agree, each of you have made public claims of being Christians, why do you see America, respectively, as either a better hope for the world, or a greater force for good in the world than Jesus?"
• I like capitalism, that people can ask other people for money to invest in the capital for their business, and if the business does well, that person gets some of the profit, and if it doesn't, they don't. That lets people start businesses when they otherwise couldn't. Which is good for the community at large. I like free markets for buying and selling things, letting the demand and the supply for a good set the price, and I like there being as little regulation from an outside entity on this process as possible. So, for example, if in your part of the country, there isn't much gas, I think people should be able to set a high price for it, since there's little supply. People will deal, and they'll be fine. Of course, gas is an obvious example that doesn't work that way, because the local supply and the demand are artificially controlled by several non-local outside entities. If everyone in my neighborhood decides to stop buying gas from the Quicktrip on 43rd, and goes to the 7-11 on Linwood, it's very unlikely the price will drop significantly at that Quicktrip. Not more than 10 cents, even. That's because someone up the chain is creating a different kind of demand than I and my neighbors can: a person who is buying and selling futures and options on oil to be delivered, shorting and going long. Same thing with coffee, gold, frozen orange juice conentrate (haha, but it's true), and debt even. In fact, a HUGE part of this whole "crisis" we're in right now is that people bought and sold debt. Which is weird to me. I don't know if I would ban it, but I certainly don't like it. If you make a bad investment, you should have to pay for it, says I. And let's not even get into the ability to buy and sell money itself. But this article does, much better than I could. So you should read that sometime.

All your sanity and wits, they will all vanish. I promise!

First they took Fortunate Son, and cut out all the "it ain't me"s. Which is asinine, I agree. The exact opposite of what the song originally said. When I first saw that commercial, I laughed out loud.

Now, today, as I was watching Tuesday's Daily Show full episode online, I found another example of the same edited song absurdity. The interspersed commercial was a new ad campaign that uses this song:



to promote a web search engine. So, an angry/silly song about a guy's girlfriend starting to act senile 60 years early, loses all references to losing one's mind, and now is just a silly viral jingle for a search engine I stopped using the minute another search engine stopped providing it more detailed results.

And now a song I liked to sing at random, partially for the absurdity, and partially because I happen to like gypsy punk, has now been co-opted into commercialism and consumerism. I'm not sure if I'm angrier at the company for slaughtering the song, or the band for letting it be slaughtered. At least John Fogerty didn't have any say in his song being used.

I'd say more here, but I don't want my prose to slip into purple.

A proposal. Decide for yourself how modest.

My friend Julie mentioned to me last night an idea that she came up with for solving the current global financial crisis.

Jubilee.

That's right, follow in the ritual footsteps of ancient Israel and forgive everybody's debt. Maybe just mortgage debt. Maybe all the debt. Either way.

It's probably a really foolish thing to do. But then again, so is basing the strength of your currency entirely on debt.

Trying to be ordinary, trying to be radical.

As you can see from this picture that I cribbed from the website, Jill and I took some of the middle school guys from church to see the third showing (total!) of the documentary The Ordinary Radicals on Tuesday night. Ben and Jake are also there, just off camera to the left.

The film uses this last summer's Jesus for President book tour as a structure for telling the larger story of the changing face of evangelicalism, frequently manifested politically. How by trying to follow Jesus, and by reading the Bible, what used to be a primarily politically right group of people is moving out of general American conservatism, but not necessarily into general American liberalism, per se, moving into a kind of third political sphere. There's more than the political stuff, but that's the easiest place to see the change. Apparently, I'm part of that shift.

For me, the film was just more encouragement to live more radically, to live more simply, to love people more, to listen to people more, to really live a whole life that tells the story of God. I hope it had the same impact on the youths I brought with me. Since we're also reading The Irresistible Revolution together, I think it might. It also had some really beautiful stories about particular people who God is using to love people. I was inspired; the people in this movie are the kinds of people I want to be.

One of the difficulties in communicating what's going on to people who are still entrenched in general American conservatism is that this new political face finds a lot of common ground of praxis with anarchists and progressives (and hippies), which can very easily look like a shift to the left. Maybe it is, some, but I think that maybe it's just shooting off in a new direction, and in our country anything that's not right looks left, and vice versa.

Zack Exley is interviewed in the film, and Jamie Moffet, the director, had him stand up to help lead the Q&A afterward. Zack said something at the end that I've been trying to think through for quite a while, actually, and finally had something to say about it. He talked about how this film helps him start bridging the gap between secular progressives and the new breed of evangelicals, that both groups have a lot of similar goals. How Creation Care, for example, has a lot of the same goals as typical secular environmental groups.

I think these kinds of partnerships can be good for everyone involved, and I would also hope that this film would also help people bridge the gap between the traditional evangelicals and the new evangelicals. I'm sad, though, because I think that this latter bridge may be a very long conversation with some people, late into the night at the kitchen table, where the traditional evangelicals are like a father hearing his daughter wants to elope with her boyfriend, and he's so angered by the mere mention of the topic, that very little actual communication will take place.

But what I wanted to say at the talkback in response to Zack, but didn't, because it was awfully late for a school night, and we had to leave, is that I don't think the goals of the new evangelicals and the secular progressives are the same. It's the praxis that's similar. Not that that's neccessarily a proble, but that distinction can be confusing for everyone involved. Maybe with the secular progressives, taking care of the poor, and resisting the consumerist empire, and non-violence, taking care of nature, & etc., are the goals. Which is why you see the progressives willing to go to pretty significant lengths to accomplish these things, put aside the US constitution, or flat-out take money from people that have more to give to those with less. For them, since these other things are the goal, nothing should get in the way.

And it's not that Christians should ignore the poor, or believe the narrative of redemptive consumerism and progress, or kill people, or destroy nature in pursuit of progress, but that these aren't the goals. God is the goal. As Zack said on Tuesday, for example, the progressives don't have anything fueling their desire for equality, no underlying reason for it, other than that it seems right. The new evangelicals think everyone is made in the image of God.

And so, as one woman named Rachel was saying at the talkback, there comes a particular tension when trying to live socially just and consumerisictly ethical as a new evangelical. She talked about how much morality was overtaking her thoughts lately, and how we can do all these good works, and without morality, we're still going to be judged by God. I wasn't sure what she meant by morality. What I wanted to say, but again, didn't have time for, was that morality is way more than sex, which is what it sounded like she might have been talking about (and something we've become completely obsessed with on all fronts as Americans/American Christians). But taking care of the poor is a moral issue. Not perpetuating slavery by buying things made by slaves is a moral decision. Loving people who hate you is a moral struggle. All through the prophets, God uses sexual morality imagery to call attention to immoral uses of power and abdication of the responsibility to care for the poor (also, idolatry).

So, when I recycle, it's because I think God's story about him loving creation is true. When I hang out with people who live on the streets, it's becaue I think that God's story about his image being in them is true. When I say I'm against war, it's because I believe God's stories about beating swords into plowshards, and not pulling up the weeds with the wheat, and turning the other cheek. But for me, God's the point, not the thing that I'm doing.

Some pictures of Minsk.

Some places feel like home, even if you've only been there a short time. Even though I was only there for a couple years, Minsk will always be one of those places for me. I'll try not to over-romanticize it. Not tell you know green it is in the spring. How there is a park where every turn is just flowers and trees so you can get lost there. How the tramvi stops in Yanka Kupala square and you used to be able to walk to the Komarovski Market and there was Pengvin ice cream in kiwi and strawberry and mango.

Anyway, here are some pictures of home I found on English Russia today: http://englishrussia.com/?p=2052

I realize the irony.

Dear GreedyMortgage-Obsessed AmericanGovernment-FinancialSystem complex,

A failure to plan on your part does not constitute a crisis on mine.

I don't usually do this, but,

I don't care who you are, that's funny.