Start wearing purple for me now. You look good in royal tones.

I got one C over the course my entire college career that stretched from my Junior year of high school College Now classes all the way through graduation back in ought two. Whippersnapper. Here's a fancy list from the unofficial transcript of the classes I took that semester. See if you can guess which one it was:

EC 101C BASIC ECONOMICS

SP 101F PUBLIC SPEAKING

EG 365 AMERICAN ETHNIC LITERATURE

R EG 380 FICTION WRITING

GE 101MZ WORLD REGIONAL GEOGRAPHY

Econ? With its dulleasy math, its middling political slant, and boring, far-too-skippable lectures? No. How about public speaking with its stringent quality standards beating against my mumbling too-fast speaking? Not that either. Either of the Junior level English classes? Again, you'd guess wrong. Did you guess the OTHER 101 class. The Geography one? Point for you, sir or madam. My one in the whole domain and freaking range of my collegiate experience was Dr. Ellen Hansen's World. Regional. Geography. 101. How, you might ask, did I fail such an grease-easy class as World Regional Geography? (And I do mean fail. If you don't get at least a B in a 101 class, you failed it. Boo-yah.) Geography! When I play Trivial Pursuit: Genus I, it's blue, blue, blue, all the way to the pie pieces, and then to the center for supreme victory. The answer is simple. I disappointed my professor's sense of my own personal nobilityon my final project for the class.

Notice I didn't say that I did poorly on my final assignment. I mean, I did. It was a horrible performance. Nor did I not turn it in, or not follow the directions. I got in all the requirements. Problem was, Ellen thought I possessed the capacity for more socially conscious final project, so she failed me. Now mind you, World Regional Geography was a total blow-off class. Mostly memorization of world capitals and a' that, papers graded by skimming for key words, etc. And given my penchant for blowing off things I find boring, I was really depending on my final project to keep me up in the B/B- range. The assignment wasn't hard. A C would have coasted me through the end gates of the B. All I had to do was 'plan a detailed itinerary and budget for a two week, out of country trip' that I would take myself. The assignment sheet and the class conversation gave the impression she was expecting a trip to Ireland or the Maldives or something.

Given the busyness of the semester, I took the lazy route and went for satire. (For those you you not yet in college, believe me, satire is WAY easier than actual work. Keep that in mind. Tip #1 for college students: Satire = less work.) Anyway, I spent $35,000 in Vancouver. And it wasn't like I was simply having an extravagant time, I wasted money on this trip for the laugh. I had a limo sit outside the hotel twenty-four hours a day while I drove a rented Ferrari around town. I trashed hotel rooms, gave expensive champagne to winos, bought more dinner than I needed and then left it at the restaurants, that kind of thing. Watched a lot of PPV movies in the hotel room. In hindsight, I could have easily spent a lot more, gotten the total up to a few million for the 14 days, but I was young, and poor, and didn't think about how many other take-home trinkets I could have bought along the way, cars and diamonds. and the like. Maybe a house to live in for each weekend. Really blinged the thing out. But it was still pretty amusing.

But when it came down to it, I didn't work very hard on the project. Some trip days were repeats of others. I estimated some things that I should have been able to look up, etc. So I expected a C on the assignment. B if I was lucky. Like I said, it was a 101 class, and I thought it was pretty funny. I had I put it off until the last minute because I had other stuff to do, like getting a B in Holcomb's American Ethnic Literature class, which I pulled off in some miraculous whirlwind of paper writing which should knock me halfway to sainthood after I die. (You can testify, you read it here. I speak the truth.) But that was a real class. 100 points a semester. One thing wrong on a quiz? 1% point less for the semester. Bad grammar in a paper? Mispelling? 1% off for the semester. His class was hardcore. And I 'B'ed that sucker like a champ. No, two champs.

At Emporia State there was a group of liberal/progressive/radical/whatever professors who formed an anti-war group that had some clever name not clever enough for me to remember off the top of my head seven years after. They liked to set up booths, and make statements in the school paper denouncing things. You know, things that really affect change. Comfortably radical, I'd call it. I mean, they professored at Emporia State University. I love that place, but can you really expect to be taken seriously as a progressive when you're in the upper 10% of the incomes in your city? Some of the members included the above-mentioned Dr. Holcomb, the Gamer's Guild sponsor Dr. Toadvine, and Dr. Ellen Hansen herself. Oh! And the professor that influenced Jill to quit French. Which led to her getting another major. Which led to her going to Avila. Which led to, let's say, rough waters in the marriage, among other unpleasantries.

So, when I my assignment came back with the fattest red F I've ever seen, I shouldn't have been surprised that I didn't get the F for the poor proofreading, or the lack of research, or the lousy formatting, or the copied days in week two. Though those obviously contributed. The note on the last page of the project said I got an F because I was wasting my vacations, she thought higher of me, could have joined the peace corp or something. That's right. I got an F on a final project at an accredited university because my hypothetical assignment self didn't join the Peace Corp.

But, like I said, the real reason I got that F was that I didn't devote enough attention or work to it because I was working on my 30 point (re: 30% of the grade) final paper for Holcomb's American Ethnic Literature class. This is the class where the professor told me during the first week that he'd make a radical out of me by the end of the semester. I don't think there's any better way of entrenching a young, college conservative than telling him that he's going to be a radical in three months. I told Dr. Holcomb that I already was a radical. See what I did there? Turned it all around like he didn't expect. Clever, no? Hmm?

The statistics say that going to college turns you more liberal (and more spiritual, for that matter). I got more conservative. The team of obnoxious professors prompted it. Listening to Rush Limbaugh fed it. Reading National Review Online solidified it. More pro war, more anti-tax, more small government. And as I got more 'conservative,' I got more Republican. I've voted for Dubya twice, and I don't regret it. I'm still registered Republican. I have a hard time trusting any Democrat politicians, and I tend to trust a Republican one more. Thats where I come from.

Which brings us to New Hampshire and Iowa and Michigan and politics in general. And how I'm not that into politics anymore. Jill and I did give fifty bucks to the Ron Paul campaign on the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party in December. First time either of us had ever donated to any political campaign ever. I might donate again. I think his ideas are the best direction to take our presidency. He's been consistent for a long time in politics as a constitutionalist. He's principled, which almost makes him not a politician.

But as much as I want Paul to win the nomination, and then want him to win the whole thing, I'm getting to the point where I almost hope he doesn't. I'm not interested in voting for any of the other candidates. I care about Paul; I could care less about the others. (Well, I like Fred Thompson, but that's as an actor that makes Sam Jackson's manliness look like Pauly Shore's.) And with the Pauline exception I just mentioned, I just don't care that much about politics anymore. With Paul out of the way, I could pay attention to all the more important things than how our country is run.

I think part of the reason that I've classified myself as a conservative, and later a libertarian is that I have faith in Jesus. Which sounds cheesy I know, but it comes from that fact that that Jesus got executed, and he wanted to stop it so much beforehand that he dropped into a serious physiological freak out. But then, he went through with the whole ordeal anyway because he thought it was the right thing to do. Even if it meant him getting the crap kicked out of him and then him dying. All of which, I think means that as a person who tries to follow him, I should do what I think is right, even if I don't know if the ends will turn out ok. Even if I think the ends look pretty bleak.

I read a great post on Digg once where a guy said that the main difference between rightists and leftists is that rightists are system-oriented, and leftists are results-oriented. A hardcore rightist doesn't really care what the results are if the system is set up the way it 'should be.' And a leftist doesn't really care what system there is as long as it gets the results that there 'should be.' I think I'm in that first camp in my thinking. I'm not saying it's the right answer or anything, or that Christians have to follow it for sure. It's just where I am.

Jesus said that the realm under his control isn't even in the paradigms of the world around us. It's something else entirely. The poor sit at the head of the economic table, and the uncool win the popularity contests, and the ugly smelly girl gets to marry the king. Most people I know don't swing that way. I don't most of the time. I just get glimpses of that realm now and then. If it were up to my instinct, Darwin would get his fingers down into sociology and relationships, and the strong would kick the weak down to where they look like they belong. But down deeper than that, I've got a deeper instinct, like a legend that's become myth, that tells me that the story isn't the strong kicking the weak, but the weak giving themselves up to save the undeserving strong who kicked them

Which is why I kind of hope the election goes sour for my favorite candidate. Because even though he seems like a guy who wants to do less with the power of government, I want to live a life where the power structure is all backwards and looks awkward. And I think that if Ron Paul stays in, I'm going to care too much about him fixing my problems then me doing something about the problems I see around me. Like people hurting who I can't figure out how to breech the subject with. And how I want to pray more but I'm too self-absorbed. And how I can't seem to keep from getting drunk and silly off my extrovertedness at parties. And the fact that it's almost three in the morning and I need to go to sleep but I'm still not sleepy but I'm tired. Guess who drank 84 oz of Diet Mountain Dew today. F- for that choice. Seriously.

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.

Where the name comes from

Supposedly, I'm a writer. Or, I guess, I used to be a writer. I wrote a lot in high school and college. I won an award in high school for a poem with mixed metaphors that talked about feeling put down on by people. I even won an award in college that had an attached scholarship for a short story I wrote about being a waiter at Zio's, the place where you get to write on the table with crayons. It was autobiographical from when I worked at Zio's myself. All the details were real, but the situations were made up. It was a long juxtaposition between waiting on tables in this enclosed place, and waiting at a cold bus stop in Belarus. I think the line that won it for me was when the protagonist says, "And they frosted the windows, and you can't even see it rain." But it was a good story overall, even without that line. I'm sure I've got it around somewhere if you want to read it.

Part of the reason I was never a good waiter (they call it 'server' in the industry) was that I'm not a very good liar. I couldn't pretend to be happy when I wasn't. And when I was tired, it was hard not to act tired. Sometimes I succeeded, and I got better tips, and sometime I didn't and I still got decent tips because I looked so haggard, maybe. I wonder, then, how it is that I like to write stories. I think that all the best storytellers are the ones who tell lies so the reader can see the truth, and I don't lie very well. Maybe I'm not a storyteller, then, just a writer.

Anyway, I've started a blog here so I'll write more. Every writer's supposed to write every day, at least, that's what Strunk and White and Stephen King say. So, I want to write every day to get better, and maybe get published, and maybe get rich. I think this is the dream of every writer, deep down. Even the ones who just write maudlin stories in notebooks where they are the main character and Seven of Nine loves them, and they never share the story it with anyone else. But I really haven't written as much as I'd like of late. I've got a couple of toe-in-the-water-started novels, and a kids story about an elephant and a little brown mouse going with my sister Amanda, but I'm pretty lazy, and out of practice

This certainly isn't the first time I've tried blogging. Diaryland, Xanga, Myspace. Been there, dallied with those games for a while. And failed. I mean, some of it was really good, and some of the posts that I wrote those places was really, really important to me and to the people who read them. The one about how I'm not a teacher is really good, I think. But I was never very consistent. Maybe a Google-searchable blog will be better. Like a real bloggeur. Or maybe just a fresh start will work this time. I hope so.

I've named the blog Cloudthreads after a line in a poem that I wrote recently. It's the first poem that I've written in a real long time and I think it's good. Let me tell you the story of how I ended up writing a real poem for the first time in years. After church on Sundays, we're totally inspired by Tim Keel's latest message, and my group of friends usually gets together for food. Eric will say, "Tacos," or I'll say, "Spaghetti" or something, and we'll all be inspired by this food suggestion, and then we'll find the ingredients at the store, and make the food, and eat it. We sit around in our house on the couches, and at the counter, and on the floor. We should have a table, but my wife Jill and I like hosting, and we're never motivated enough to get a big enough place for a table. We need to, though, as often as we host things. But we're not moving until we have kids. So if you hear that we're moving. That's probably the reason.

Sometimes Adam prepares food ahead of time. When we're at his house, (called The Freak Show, because Adam is a freak, and his roommate Sam is a great show) we have tables, usually, because their place is bigger. Sometimes Adam makes meat (beef for tacos or whatever) or starts chili, and our inspiration comes from his preparation. I'm not much of a preparation person myself. But Adam's an engineer and he's good at getting things ready ahead of time. And planning.

There's another guy at church, and maybe you've heard of him. John Raux. He has a dot com of himself, and paints, and plays the bass, and skateboards, and hikes everywhere, and has got one thing that you haven't got: a great bushy beard. Ha ha. Anyway, we're sort of distant close friends. The kind who, I think, I would a grand and lifelong friends if I spent any real time with him. But that's just another part of my laziness, and we really don't know each other that well. John is the sort of person who paints fifty beautiful and tiny abstract paintings and then holds a show where the visitors name them on an adjacent note card.

A while back, John hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, which runs all the way from Mexico to Canada, or, I suppose, the other way around, if yo'd like. But he started that the Mexico end. But before that, he used to have a whole group of people who,on Sundays after church, ate at the house he was renting, and they'd have good conversation, from what I hear, and talk about Jesus, which is pretty much my favorite thing to do, even though I'm not very good at it.

My group of friends never went together, though. Partially, I think because John Raux is such a cool guy, and we, as a group, don't really want to be cool if we can help it, seeing as how Jesus wasn't very cool. Of course, that's hard to do, because the more you follow Jesus, the cooler you end up getting. that's irony for you, I think. And partially because I knew that he had a small place, that was already really full, and I didn't want to intrude. And when I make a choice on something, the group tens to follow me on it. That, I'm not sure about at all.

But then John went hiking, like I said, and the group couldn't meet at his place anymore because he was just renting it. But after he got back from his billion mile hike where he was so alone that he got out of practice talking and it felt weird to have to communicate out loud, his group was still going. Only instead of being a mostly talking and eating group, now they were a playing music and eating group. They liked to jam on the steps of the Nelson Atkins Museum, which is a great and free art museum here in Kansas City. They have the best Thomas Hart Benson collection anywhere. At least, until it got cold that is, and then they moved indoors.

John's a sly one, he is, and one time he invited me to go to join them at the place where they were playing. So I brought my whole group. He knew this, but he didn't tell anyone else, I think. They were meeting at this communal house over on 31st and almost Paseo. We were a bit late, but we brought sandwiches, which took a few minutes to acquire, so we thought that it would be a good peace offering for barging in like that. We got there, and it was kind of dark, but Steve had been there before, so I walked in, and through a vestibule, and into the living room where a bunch of people were sitting around and jamming. They let out a bit of a cheer, tiny, and warming. Like I was welcome. The group likes company, I guess. I knew some of the people, like John, and Rachel, who has this transcendent singing voice, like an angel locked in a cave for years and years. And as the next person come in behind me, the cheer got louder. And louder with the third person. I don't think they expected any more people to come, but by the time all ten of us piled in, they were roaring. What can you do, but cheer when you get ten more people in your living room than you expected?

Anyway, we hung out for a couple of hours while they played music together, and we had their soup, and they had our sandwiches (and hummus (thanks Steve)). And it was really beautiful. Steve even played the xylophone with a pen. Rachel's brother Kyle showed up, and we met this Tim guy, who's a real solid musician, and being with all of those cool people, and hearing them be so creative, I wanted to contribute something to the experience. But I'm not a musician, and I really can't sing, so I was at a loss.

Now, I'd started a poem in my journal back on Easter in the middle of the night at the vigil whie I writing in the balcony at church. I had about 10 lines. Some of the stuff you'll see in the first four or five stanzas. But, I'm a bad journaller, so I never got back to it, more than a line or two.

But I really wanted to bring something as a gift to these people who were so welcoming, and so artistic and creative. We didn't get back with them for a few weeks, things came up as they do, but I worked hard on finishing the poem at work (I've got a kind of cushy job some days), and I finished it at a the Office watchign party at my sister's place. I shared it there, and after more revision (my favorite part of writing is revision), shared it with the musically inclined group later. When I did, John said he really liked the line about the cloud strings. It was cloudthreads, but close enough. I really appreciated that he liked it.

So, the poem inspired the name of this blog here that I'm going to try to write in every week day. And I'm going to try not to be one of those bloggeurs who just posts links to crap, nossir. I want to just write content. Like a writer, even.

I don't want to just tell you what 'cloudthreads' means, but I think you'll get it anyway. Unlike most poems that I write, I wrote it to be read aloud, in a group. So if you want to read it aloud to yourself, I think it would sound better. Anyway, here you go. Here's the poem:

Judgment

(Reflections on The Story We Find Ourselves In. Easter vigil, 2007)

Chapter I

In an oak's nook, reading, warm November

I catch glimpse of my faerie princess,

skin white as a throne,

parting thickets as easy as oceans.

The trees drop stained-glass cathedral shafts

as she pads, too holy for slippers, among them,

hair angel-lit gold.

And as the shafts moult
to grotto lights flickering,

wind remembering its business,

I see her face.

She's gathered meadowfresh us-upon-a-times

and together-whens,

plucked riverbank who-am-I-nows

and our-first-kisses,

then split and woven the petals

into cloudthreads that web her fingers.

They stream and flutter as she twirls

and loft and languish,

wisp and curl,

taut through her fingers

and trailing behind her.

She's harvested them from our spring planting,

and how do I tell her

the darkest of threads

come from my summer sowing?

I had forgotten her face

as she solitude sought in hills

and the mountains.

How long did she search for each lonesome petal,

and how fierce were the nettles that scratched

her hands and feet and sides?

Through the cloudthread web she smiles,

eyes purple fire like dragons, and so quick I'd miss

if I wasn't listening,

they winkaflash,

not closing, and

I lose sight of her;

no rustle betrays her scamper

as red leaves glide to rest in her wake.

This is our oftendays game

though long since we've played it

and I set my face like flint

to crook her waist in my arm, swing

her low to the heavens and

steal a kiss.

My book tumbles and dives beneath leaves
as I dodge trees after her,
a wolf with a bead on a doe;
or have I that backwards?
But her steps are not my steps
and a wispy curve of her back
(satin, even at distance)
is all I see before I've lost her.
The woods and everything in it are hers
so eye corner glances are all I am granted

for an hours long stretch

that seems as true as steps in a brook.

And while I think I am chasing, she

before me becomes she

behind me,

and as she

draws on me

I run as a doe.

Panting for a river,

I dive beneath a tree fattened by time,

a spring's storm bystander.

And just when I think

she passed me over,

she pounces, knees on my elbows

her lips to mine.

Chapter II

As quick as she planted, she leaves me bereft

with a laugh and a wiggle.

And now that she means it,
although I sojurn,

searches are fruitless.

Roughsmooth lips

loiter in memory.

So I find my book in its leavery grave,

(the oak distant and beckoning)

and take back to reading. Until,

(shafts stolen by long shadows)

a ram's horn note,

distant but thick in my ears,

calls me home. And like a blink,

in a clearing, her fire is blazing;

the haze of smoke is growing and fleeting;

she stretches the darkest of cloudthreads

over the fire

and opens

her palms.

I dive to save them;

I've spent so long forging,

alone

in the forest;

the darkest of

groves.

But her eyes whisper

she knows

as she brushes her fingers firm to my sternum

and waits for me.

The threads that I planted crumble and waver

I'd expected they'd keep,

though the fire is bursting and I feel

them burning

as wires woven in muscles.

I gnash my teeth.

But surely the threads waste away

like hot August grass

and I cannot remember

what it was burning

there in the fire.

Chapter First

Throne white neck,

she's parting my arms as easy as oceans

and the fire lights her hair angel gold

and as the grotto lights flicker

(from where come these scarscratches?)

our kiss lasts much longer.