4.17.2022 – story starts at inn

story starts at inn
with no vacancy, story
ends with vacant tomb

First there is no room.

Then there is lots of room.

Symmetry.

Bookends.

The Christmas Story and the Easter Story.

Works for me.

I never thought I would end up in a Southern Baptist Church.

For 10 years in Atlanta, not only did we attend an SBC Church but one pastored by a one time President of the SBC.

And I liked the Pastor.

The style of the SBC is to welcome visitors each and every Sunday and to invite visitors to stick around and meet the Pastor.

We had been looking for a church for a couple of years down here and on most visits we took the time to meet the Pastor of the church.

One Sunday we attended a fairly large church.

It was big and it was SBC and visitors were invited to stick around after church and meet the Pastor.

We got in line, and pretty soon it was a long line, to meet Dr. James Merritt at CrossPointe Church in Duluth, Ga.

He greeted us and asked us a couple of questions and when he learned we were new to the area he looked us in the eye and said, “Would you please consider me your Pastor, would you let me be your Pastor. If you need a Pastor for prayer or anything, would you consider me your Pastor.”

That made me feel think.

I have met a lot of Pastors and Preachers and I think this was the first time anyone had said anything like that.

Pastor Merritt liked to say that there were a lot of religions in the world and a lot of religious figures in the world that had developed a deep and committed following.

For himself, Dr. Merritt would say, “I am going with the guy who came back from the dead.”

I liked that.

I like that.

As Sheriff Taylor of Mayberry might say, “I’ll hold with Pastor Merritt.”

And the story continues …

3.19.2022 -saudade, long lost

saudade, long lost
irretrievable but
the dream of it

” … there is a word in Portuguese called saudade that appeared to represent the farm and our lives, a homesickness or longing for something vital that had been irretrievably lost and only the dream of it could be recovered.”

From “The Road Home” by Jim Harrison.

The online dictionary defines saudade (saa·daydz) as a feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia that is supposedly characteristic of the Portuguese or Brazilian temperament.

Wikipedia says, “Saudade is a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for something or someone that one cares for and/or loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never be had again.”

Then Wikipedia adds this.

Saudade is a word in Portuguese and Galician that claims no direct translation in English.

However, a close translation in English would be “desiderium.”

Desiderium is defined as an ardent desire or longing, especially a feeling of loss or grief for something lost.

Desiderium.

Not a bad word.

Desiderium.

But it smacks of things other than the heart some how.

Desiderium.

No, I will take saudade.

I keep saudade in my head for those moments when there are no words.

Somewhere along the line of my life I came across the singing of Cesaria Evora.

Her song Sodade is a saudade put to music.

I am not sure what it is called when a feeling, an outlook, a word and a song all combine the same way.

Jenny Lawson writes in ‘Furiously Happy” that when there are no words, she has license to make one up.

For me then, when a feeling, an outlook, a word and a song all combine the same way I call in omniaonomatopoeia.

In Portuguese it comes out as saudade.

In English, there is no translation.

2.14.2022 – place where love begins

place where love begins
a touch of two hands that foils
all dictionaries

For Valentine’s Day, 2022 from Carl Sandbug.

Explanations of Love
Carl Sandburg

There is a place where love begins and a place
where love ends.

There is a touch of two hands that foils all dictionaries.

There is a look of eyes fierce as a big Bethlehem open hearth
furnace or a little green-fire acetylene torch.

There are single careless bywords portentous as a
big bend in the Mississippi River.

Hands, eyes, bywords–out of these love makes
battlegrounds and workshops.

There is a pair of shoes love wears and the coming
is a mystery.

There is a warning love sends and the cost of it
is never written till long afterward.

There are explanations of love in all languages
and not one found wiser than this:

There is a place where love begins and a place
where love ends—and love asks nothing.

And, BTW, this is the poem that Leslie agreed to have printed on the back our the program guides that were passed out at our wedding.

12.10.2021 – ideal place, right place

ideal place, right place
known or unknown, actual
or visionary

This is the most beautiful place on earth.

So reads the first line of Edward Abbey’s book, Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness.

Mr. Abbey is writing about the Utah desert.

Mr. Abbey goes on, “There are many such places.“

The first paragraph of Desert Solitaire reads,

This is the most beautiful place on earth.

There are many such places.

Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary.

A houseboat in Kashmir, a view down Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, a gray gothic farmhouse two stories high at the end of a red dog road in the Allegheny Mountains, a cabin on the shore of a blue lake in spruce and fir country, a greasy alley near the Hoboken waterfront, or even, possibly, for those of a less demanding sensibility, the world to be seen from a comfortable apartment high in the tender, velvety smog of Manhattan, Chicago, Paris, Tokyo, Rio, or Rome – there’s no limit to the human capacity for the homing sentiment.

I do not want to get into nor do I intend to get into a debate about Mr. Abbey and the person that he was.

Suffice it say that ANYONE whose first line of their Wikipedia Bio states, “American author, essayist, and anarchist” will be a person about whom, other people have strong opinions.

For me today, let me focus on the line, “Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, the ideal place, the right place, actual or visionary.”

If you ask me about where I live I would respond that I live in the most beautiful place on earth.

If you ask me about where I live I would respond that I live in the ideal place, the right place.

I would like to say this is where I always wanted to live but, until a year ago, I did not know this place existed apart from a name on map.

Known or unknown.

Actual or visionary.

Maybe the best part is I know this works for me and I know that every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place.

It is not the same place.

The book, Lost Horizon, by James Hilton, the story of a man looking for his ideal place, the right place, the last line is, “Do you think he will ever find it?“

The Frank Capra movie of the same title with the same story ends with, “Here is my hope, that we all find our Shangri-La.”

There are many such places.

10.26.2021 – is temporary

is temporary
continued postponement still
necessary … what?

I admit it.

My faith in the Government of the United States has been, well, shaken, stirred, somewhat less that it might have been?

Yes yes yes, I told all the jokes.

Quoted Ronald Reagan, “The scariest words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the Government and I am hear to help.'”

Mark Twain’s, “Suppose I was insane and suppose I ran for Congress. But, wait, I repeat myself.”

And not to forget Mr. Jefferson’s, “The Government that governs least, governs best.”

STILL.

I like my country.

I like my government.

All its faults, it is what it is.

But of late I worry about it.

It is just not the same.

Then along comes a document and some of that old buddy-buddy goofy gotcha feeling was little bit restored.

Did you see it?

It was a document released by the White House as an official “Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies” dated October 22, 2021.

In part it stated:

Temporary continued postponement is necessary to protect against identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure.

This is such a wonderful collection of words of multi syllables hammered together in such a wonderful way that it, in part, restored my faith in my government to respond like a government.

It could have been said by Humphrey Appleby.

Sir Humphrey Appleby:
I foresee all sorts of of unforeseen problems.

Jim Hacker:
Such as?

Sir Humphrey Appleby:
If I could foresee them, they wouldn’t be unforeseen.

My old Government!

It can still sling out the verbiage with the best of them.

Temporary continued postponement is necessary.

Just say that out loud.

It’s … it’s … Shakespearean!

Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the harm to military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations.

I am not talking about names or personalities here, but the monolithic double speak that is written by the body of government, the all inclusive, corporate beast that mandates or tries to mandate things like Fair Labor, Un-American Activities, Interstate Commerce and the Services of Internal Revenue through the use of the English language.

I don’t know.

Harm that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure.

See that all inclusive, military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations!

The use of OR here is magnificent.

Somehow restores my faith in Government you know?

Lets not leave out what the memorandum is about.

The full title is, in all its’ governmentalease glory, “Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies on the Temporary Certification Regarding Disclosure of Information in Certain Records Related to the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy.”

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated back in 1963.

More than 60 years ago.

Lee Harvey Oswald was one of the youngest people in the story,

Oswald would be 84.

Anyone in else involved the conspiracy, planning and or coverup is most likely … dead.

Yet our Government is telling us that they HAVE documents about the conspiracy, planning and or coverup, that if released would cause identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure.

The mind boggles.

Did LBJ do it?

Did Lady Bird do it?

Are we at a point that I have to explain who LBJ and Lady Bird were?

Are they now as obscure as Babushka Lady, Umbrella Man and the Three Tramps?

I have to interject, those are all real personages in the JFK assassination story.

Good ahead and do the Google if you have to.

But come on.

Identifiable harm of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest?

Oh I don’t know.

Somehow it was reassuring that the government had not lost its touch.

As Mr. Twain writes in The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg, “There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practiced in the tricks and delusions of oratory.”

I won’t hold my breath but maybe the next time we can get, permanent temporary continued postponement.