But Not in Despair

La gloire, la gloire, c’est de la merde

I was sure for so many years I was going to marry Susan, although most of the time she wouldn't even speak to me. I finally gave up on her, but later found out that if I had hung in a little longer and tried a few more times it might have happened. When Liz came along I wanted her and gave up on Susan. Susan gave up on me when I married Liz. Then I remained married to Liz. through hell on earth until finally I was enticed by Sandra and I set down the road to divorce, meanwhile Sandra disappeared off the face of the earth. Now I wonder if there will ever be anyone suited for me; Liz certainly wasn't, probably not Sandra, although she did not stick around long enough for me to find out, maybe Susan, but she's happily married now. It has been a lifetime of waiting for the right woman and always, always, always without one. I don’t know of anyone else who waits so long before giving up on someone and yet it seems I never wait long enough. God help me! Although I am sure he has a hand in all this.

Sheng Dan Kuai Le

Christ climbed down
From His bare Tree
This year
And softly stole away
Into some anonymous Mary’s womb again

Last night, Christmas Eve Scott and I went to the service at the church. There was a small group there mostly old and good friends celebrating Christ. It was for me the best part of Christmas. When we went home we finished decorating the tree and wrapping the presents for the next day.

Today, after opening the presents under the tree, Scott, John and I went to the Cannata’s for our traditional Christmas breakfast with Becky, Eddie, Emily and Nathan. Emily had a new dance machine that she danced on in coordination with the tv display. After breakfast, Scott and I headed up to Watertown to visit with my Dad. My sister Cynthia came over with her kids Caty and Jeff and my sister Judy came with her son Rick. We visited until about sundown and then headed home. The kids are all grown now they’re all as tall as the adults, Caty is a beautiful young woman. Dad gave me the gift he gives me every year, a bottle of Jack Daniels Tennessee whiskey that I have to remember is not wine. Then we went down the street to see Rick and Lane Tulipano and their young son Gabriel. Rick’s parents were there, his mother home from the nursing home. And Louis was there, the handicapped man that Rick has befriended for years and always brings to the family holidays. Finally Scott and I went to Liz’z for dinner and to open presents. Liz’s Mom and Stepdad were there and Joe and Rocky and Penny Liz’s dog. We are home now recovering from all the traveling.

I am working on a new house in Duxbury and working with an excavator approaching retirement age who has lived and worked in town all his life. His name is F. He has been telling me stories of Duxbury before it became Yuppyville. He used to plow the field where we are building the house back in the fifties before there were any houses here. His grandfather was George Loring who had an ice business where he used to deliver ice to all the surrounding towns by horse drawn cart until the invention of the refrigerator put him out of business. Loring also used to bring his oxen over the Powder Point bridge and out to Saquish and walk them across to Clark’s Island at low tide where they would spend the summer. F told me he built the house the Hogans have just moved out of at the bottom of Tremont street when he was in his twenties, and he told me a lot of other stories about builders and developers around town. The field where we are now working ended up belonging to Bud Goodrich as compensation for unpaid bills to his feed and grain store, (Goodrich Lumber), Bud gave it to his daughter Nina and Nina sold it to the present owners.

It seems to me that it is better to live working outside, and with your muscles and your brains in a smalltown society rather than to work in an anonymous commuter-computer, bedroom community. Think of the advantages: You work with your body, physically, everyday, you work in the elements and close to nature and you work where you live. I think we have lost so much that was a part of the New England experience for 3 centuries. Now commuters want to re-create a fantasy of rural life but without the essential elements. Frank is moving to Maine when he retires and I think he is moving closer to home than farther away. He has 7 children of his own and his wife has four from a previous marriage. He went through a bad divorce in the seventies and ended up losing all he owned and owing thousands but he has managed to put himself financially on a high road for retirement, mostly because of the land he has owned for thirty years, now worth over a million dollars

The Roots of War

I worked upon a farm in Illinois.
The squad appeared; I marched away.
Somewhere in France, amid the trenches gray
I met grim death with many other boys.
I gave my life for freedom—this I know.
For he who bade me fight had told me so.

Saddam Hussein was captured this morning. He was hiding in a hole, he must have known his days were numbered. He will now either be tried and executed or tried and imprisoned for life. I think, if it was me, I would rather have been killed, and I would rather not have been captured hiding in a hole. It is a political victory for Bush and for supporters of the war. Of whom, I am not one.
If Bush is able to bring peace and democracy to Iraq it will truly be a great accomplishment in spite of the lives lost and the dollars spent. Time will tell if it can be done and if the US government truly is willing to see that come to pass. The danger in success is that it will set a precedent and we will have to re-write our constitution to allow the president free reign to re-engineer the world in our image. As for me, I still believe we were lied to about the real reasons for the war and that the conduct of and the rhetoric of the war is based on hypocrisy, a willingness to use the same means of violence and subjugation we claim we are overthrowing. War fever siezed America and her government and propelled us into yet another war that really did not need to be fought. But now with Saddam as a public prize and a reminder of the evil we defeated, Bush may be able to claim victory and go home to the applause of history.
War is evil on evil. My biggest problem with the war is the almost unanimous backing it has among the evangelical community. To me, it is associating the name of Jesus with evil. I am puzzled and confused. I hope someday to resolve this issue. But now I do not see good coming of this other than the creation of another heroic-American myth. And a crudely created one at that.

Day of Infamy


What could be more beautiful than these heroic happy dead who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter

As I in horror watch this war in Iraq unfold, I wonder if all our wars were not birthed in like fashion. What I see in sequence is a nation, prosperous, and powerful and at relative peace called to war by its leaders for reasons that seem false and unsound. The nation, convinced, responds with fervor, the thrill of battle overtakes us. The people are enticed into war by the lust for glory, power and righteousness, for purpose, for solidarity, for entertainment. We love war, at least we love the idea of a glorious struggle against evil. We love the myths of our warrior heroes. And our leaders steer us, not way from war, but into it.

God Is Love
I wonder, reading about an illegal round used to kill an Iraqi insurgent,
Just what kind of ammo would Jesus use?

I wonder looking at the evangelical Christian Bush responsible for some sixteen thousand Iraqi deaths and some 400 Americans, if Christians are not less concerned about the consequences of death or is it just that Bush is not a Christian except culturally. The Puritans were men who risked their lives for their faith, who dared the unknown, who acted much as my own church does, yet their war against the Pequots was excessively brutal, (though outnumbered they wiped out a whole village). And so many of the Christians I know, whose faith I do not doubt and in many cases consider superior to my own, support this war. And they lend the name of Christ to a war that the world sees as motivated by greed for power and money.

Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented; and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways . It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance but a certainty . Let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things ”praying, working, teaching, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts”not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (any microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
C.S. Lewis

Lost and Found

Una vez Noe
A la selva fue
Metio los animales
Y empezo a llover

Lord
Have
Mercy
On
Me
A
Sinner

Rain is falling and drops of rain are splattering their selves against the house.
I have spent the evening doing nothing, going nowhere.

Toikey Day

For everthing that God created is good , and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.
1 Timothy 4:4-5

The seals have returned to the mouth of the North river. I could see them yesterday leaping out of the water chasing fish in the incoming tide.

Economy

Nothing that is complex is useful,
And everything that is useful is simple.
Kalashnikov


Simplicity is the first element of beauty: economy of force in war, economy of words in writing, economy of parts in machines, economy of ideas in theory. I firmly believe that experience in a craft teaches above all else, that the shortest and simplest route to a desired end is the best. As I became more adept at carpentry over the years, it became clear to me, and remains a rule when I am building something, that if the solution to a mechanical problem starts to become too complex and too difficult, you can be sure that you are on the wrong path. There is always a solution that is beautiful in its simplicity; the inexperienced workman is easily led down the wrong path, piling piece upon piece unable to discern the danger inherent in complexity, and not having in his possession the faith to wait for the certain appearance, with time and thought, of an elegantly simple answer both in its performance and in its result.

In the same vein, when faced with an intractable problem, the skilled man or woman knows instinctively not to fight with it or struggle in frustration, like the martial arts master he looks carefully to discern the weak point, the plane of cleavage where an easy blow will accomplish the desired task. This is a combination of patience and of confidence in his mastery of the material world.

Having learned that in carpentry and believed in it in writing I hope I might also apply the same principle to some of the other intractable problems of my life. I hope I don’t bore you, dear reader if, for my own sake, I list them that I think of: The problem I have with making enough money, or shall I say the fear that I have about it, the problem of being totally unable to find a girlfriend most of my adult life, and the problem I have finding,still, a course for my life now perhaps more than half over.

Celestial Guidance

Two gods guides me, the ane of them is blin,
Yea, and a bairn brocht up in vanitie,
The next a wife ingenrit of the sea
And lichter nor a dauphin with her fin.

I have been having long conversations with two women in their early forties, younger than me, who both seem to share much in common with me. This is remarkable because I have a history of long years of being ignored by women but, now in my declining years, (said only half in jest), here are two attractive and intelligent women who seem to be interested in me, although they are married and, I hope not interested in anything more than friendly talking. And both these women have interests and intellects compatible with mine, when, so often with everyone, man and woman, my perceptions are radically different. But now here suddenly are two who are capable of connecting with me intellectually and they seem to enjoy talking to me. They both said something similar about religion. They both are Episcopalian but do not fully agree with the theology and seem to be searching. It is odd that the Lord has brought these two at the same time into my life.

Baghdad George

With a multitude of counselors, go to war.

Now that we are in Iraq it may be in our national interest to stay there and stabilise the country. This does not mean I support George Bush’s Iraq policies; I firmly believe that this war was not in our interest and that we were lied to and manipulated to support the invasion. But I absolutely want to see the president defeated in the next election; He deserves to go down for leading us into this mess.

Mass Architecture

I walked behind the Middle School last night for the first time since they began to build the new performing arts center., I used to go out there every night to run around the track. At first in the seventies there was only the track, some exercise bars, and a swing set in the grass. Then they built a play ground, now they have torn down the play ground and built a performing arts center that looms over the track filling the grassy area where the swings were. For all the money they must have spent on that building, they should have designed something with some visual interest. Obviously it is a very clever design but its appearance is monstrous. It looks like a misshapen, out of proportion brick wall without symmetry or balance or any sort of visual order, or any 3 dimensional detail, not even windows.

Hemingway Not Yet

Until I labor, I in labor lie.

I am really too darn tired to write anything or even to care about writing anything. I am still on last weeks clock and I worked all day roofing. I need to write. I need to transform my sleepy brain into an instrument that can play words and ideas like music. And to do that I must write every day, tired or not, in a deliberate way. Everything else I do for someone else, to pay the bills to satisfy a customer, to provide for my family, to minster to others. Writing is an indulgence, at least at this point; at my age and in my situation and without much really to say it is merely an indulgence and a vain ambition.

D-I-V-O-R-C-E

Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you and I sigh.

WB Yeats

Liz and I went together to Brockton Probate Court for the Pre-Trial hearing on our divorce. I agreed to give her physical custody of Scott and to make her child support payments of $250.00 per week. She was represented by Dympna Moore, an attorney who volunteered through the Catholic Church to work for her. We signed the agreements, we appeared before Judge Steinberger, and all is done.

It was a cold, frosty morning with a bright sky and a warm sun. On the way back we stopped to eat at DaddyO's diner in Kingston. She was wearing a blue sweater, blue jeans, and a blue barrette in her hair. Her eyes still are clear blue. So many memories of our early days together came flooding back. My only consolation is that I know that all things are lost in this life except for love; and I do love her in spite of all the horrible things that happened between us. I hate divorce like death, but I need to remember that Jesus Christ has promised us eternal life in paradise and I do believe that Liz will be there although she herself does not yet know it.

I know I need to give myself permission to love another woman. Although, at the moment I feel like I never will. I cannot take responsibility for Liz, she has, in great measure, brought this upon herself and made it impossible for me to take any other course. God will take care of Liz. If I cannot trust Him to do that in life, how can I trust Him to do that in death?

T'ched in the Head

The woman we are working for is worth describing. Please, dear readers, forgive my fascination with the female form and figure. But her eyes are flashing green, her hair red. And her smile brighter and warmer than the October sun.

School Daze

The inexperienced teacher, fearing his own ignorance, is afraid to admit it. Perhaps that courage only comes when one knows to what extent ingorance is almost universal. Attempts to camouflage it are simply a waste, in the long run, of time.
Ezra Pound

S and I went into Boston today to look at schools he might apply to. We went to BostonUniversity first, and then to the New England Conservatory, then Northeastern and the Massachusetts School of Art and finally we went to Berklee School of Music.
On the way home, we stopped at my dad’s.

Some observations: BU was basically closed for the holiday, there was not even an information office available, but we did look at some of the exhibits in the Mugar Library. The New England Conservatory was also completely closed although a female security guard did try to help. Northeastern had a student admissions guide outside the main building but he was largely clueless about customer service; I could not get his attention. Finally, inside, a woman who appeared to be in charge of the campus tours got us a catalog. We walked to MassArt where they were giving tours. I wanted to see what they had but Scott was not interested so we walked back all the way to Berkelee which was also closed. There was a nice young woman at the desk to the dorm in the performance center who was kind enough to tell us what she thought about the school. She was very informative and changed my mind about the school.

P T called Saturday and talked for a long time, turning to the subject of Christianity, asking me many questions. I kept urging her to get a bible and read the gospel of John. She had trouble with the assertion that we are all sinners and I had trouble explaining it to her because she felt she spent most of her days trying to help other people. Which is true from what I have seen. I tried to tell her that you had to be aware of God before you could realize how far short we have fallen from Him. I know she needs to be aware of her own need for a savior before she will consider Jesus.
Somehow she tacked onto the end of the conversation that she kinda had a crush on me. I didn’t know what to say but I did not want to encourage her because she is currently living with someone and she is not a Christian. If I could talk to her freely, I’d tell her that if she was single, which she is not, I would like to have her for a girl friend.
On a similar note, there is an attractive, married woman who is searching for meaning but is left cold by the church she is going to. She has asked me questions, she is well read and very intelligent, and interesting to talk to. She does not have a crush on me, at least I hope not, I think she is too intelligent for that and her husband is intellectually interesting and a good provider. She left a copy of a recent best-selling Christian book for me to give an opinion on. I hope she will be open to the Holy Spirit who must be at work in her life. It will be interesting to see where this leads and I hope she will remain a friend.

Yesterday we did a mall scavanger hunt with the Junior High. The kids had fun. It was a rainy day, Melinda and Christiana came with us.

Peggoty Beach

S'ils n'aiment fors que pour l'argent,
On ne les aime que pour l'heure.

T and I went to Peggoty Beach in Scituate today at lunch time. It is a sandy little cove off Scituate harbor in the nook of the cliff. I dreamed about it once before I had ever seen it when I was enamored of a girl from Scituate. She was in the dream, and the same beach and the large house to the left of the beach. In the dream it was made of glass and was smashed by a wave. The girl cried out in alarm, but I, being seized with fear for a moment, saw that the house smashed by the waves represented the material world and its inevitable end. This beach was the one in the dream, I am sure.

I met with L and her attorney yesterday and agreed to give L physical custody of S. It is the only way for her to keep her SS and her two bedroom apartment. My payments to her will become child suppport and increase by about 30 percent. But the divorce will go through without a trial. I am still sick over this divorce. I wish I could get out of it.

T told me today that he broke up with his girlfriend. This was the one who he had been so excited about the last time he worked with us. He is in his early twenties but I have to commend him for his wisdom in this matter. The girl, and I am speculating as to the details, had been living with someone in the recent past and had not told T about the relationship. He said he would not have gone out with her if he had known because that was not a behavior he could accept from a life partner. He was clearly broken hearted but he had taken the difficult step of breaking off the relationship. If I had such wisdom, I would not have gotten involved with L. Although I do not regret it in spite of the turmoil of the marriage. I love L and always will, but I could no longer countenance her easy ability to get into bed with other men. Divorce seems wrong to me and I hate it. But perhaps T's testimony was the Lord's way of telling me that I am doing the right thing in spite of how wrong it feels.

LP has lent me the book The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. I told her I would read it and tell her what I thought.

Cold evening, after church I rested, and slept, did nothing. Finally walking down to the cove in the moonlight. Half moon, high tide at 8 pm.

Paint Day

Even now
My thought is all of this gold-tinted king's daughter
With garlands tissue and golden buds,

My life is very intense these days and not in any particular crisis, the divorce notwithstanding. That’s my way of saying life is good right now though swiftly passing away.

Tonight the Junior High youth group painted the rooms designated as theirs. The younger youth leaders picked some wild colors, lime green and red.. And the kids painted. There were 18 kids in two small rooms with paint and brushes and sandpaper and spackle. 18 Jr. high kids is a lot of concentrated energy. But I think the evening went well, with only one small incident. B hit one of us youth leaders in the head with a paint roller covered in lime green paint. He understandably became angry at her and she was disciplined. J was hiding out from senior high and I had a long talk with her. She is very nice. She is talented and works hard to achieve. She was telling me she won a beauty contest at the mall, three trophies she said. Some of the other things she told me about her health problems made me think she might be anorexic.

Also at work today L reached out to me as a friend. I really appreciate when someone does that and I hope I respond in kind. But I also hope she means it just as a friend.

I like L. P.

How much of a man does it take to see his whole life go down,
To look up at the world from a whole in the ground. R. Zimmmerman

My life is very busy now with work. There are so many jobs to do and to price. This is good, the Lord, I believe will help me to organize so that I will prosper. I am beginning to wonder though if I will ever have a wife besides Liz, who I can’t live with or sleep with or talk to about much, but who I still love. God always has loved her and knows her heart. I do not know her heart.

Tomorrow the Junior High Kids are going to paint the downstairs of the Lighthouse.

India Ink

I have been one acquainted with the night,
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

Another long busy day at work. I had to make myself walk after being on the phone for 2 hours. There will not be many more trips to the beach now that it is dark so soon after I get home. Instead I walk down Saint George street and Cove street and back on Lover’s lane, stopping by the landing off of Cove Street to look East across the Back river to the Beach. Tonight was a dark moonless night with the Milky Way clearly visible, Mars the brightest object in the sky, the Pleiades rising, a bird sounded a ghostly trilling by the edge of the marsh. I wonder what other, more silent creatures are lurking. One evening on this route I passed close to a large coyote walking in the other direction about twenty feet off the road. I looked right at him, he looked back and calmly walked on.

Entrapment

Last night I watched a movie I got from the Library called Entrapment that stars Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones. It was an entertaining movie with pretty good action and suspense. The most remarkable thing about this movie is Catherine Zeta-Jones. My thought on watching her was, “God you created the sun and the moon and the heavens, but she is your masterpiece”. She is something to see and see and see. The plot is decent, the character development is non-existent; there is no realistic psychology to either of the main characters Sean Connery or Catherine Zeta-Jones. It is not a great movie but it is good entertainment.

Routine Day of Rest

There was a sliver of a new moon in the western sky last night. Today the tide is one of the highest I’ve ever seen, it is within inches of the road and over the road in places on King Caesar and below the Bluefish River bridge. It was up beyond the access ramp on the main beach. Long fingers of fog drifted over the bay and the marshes. There was a cormorant by the middle of the bridge. I got a close look at it. They are odd birds that fly low, float half submerged and swim better than fish.

City of Angels

Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?

I had an interesting conversation today with the woman who has hired me to put new windows in her house. She told me how she met her husband. He was 35 she was 22, I estimate from some of the facts she gave; he had been married at 26 for several years, then divorced in a situation much like mine, then he was alone for 6 years. She said she kept dropping hints that she was interested in him but he did not respond. Exasperated, she finally had to ask him out. It is interesting to me to see that an interesting and attractive woman pursued a relationship with an older man. Isn’t that how it was in the beginning, God brought the woman to the man? He didn’t have to go in pursuit of a wife; in fact, the bible says not to seek a wife. He had a bad marriage and then a good marriage. From what I can tell it is a good marriage, they have been married long enough to have 3 daughters, two of them college age, one in high school. She doesn’t work but she has been able to make quite a bit of money by remodeling the homes they owned, his career has required quite a few moves and each time they have profited on the sale of their house. I should say that this woman is quite beautiful. (Like Mrs. H who is also married to an older man and has daughters). The daughters are like their Mom, tall, long-haired and beautiful. We talked for almost an hour when I stopped for coffee. She is intelligent, sensual and married, with an underline on the married part. I think she must be a little lonely.

Unresolved Issues

El tiempo descubridor de todas las cosas.


Hell does not seem fair to me in the sense that a person is punished for eternity for crimes that were finite, no matter how bad. Can one perhaps be saved after death? I know that Hell is in the bible but there is more in the bible than can be reduced to up and down theology. There will be a judgment day and there are people who willfully reject God and those who earnestly seek him.

People believe strange things, some of which result in mass suffering. The social group defines its own reality. I do not believe however, that truth or right and wrong are relative to the social group, I believe that they are absolute.

My world view is distinctly different from anyone else’s. I am anti-materialistic, and anti-war, but not anti-self defense. I have become cynical about big government, big media and big business. I am anti-authoritarian even though the bible says to obey the authorities, “they are God’s ministers to you for good”. The reality that I see is that the government is an ass, that we are drowning in a sea of lies, and that many godly men and women believe those lies.

I believe the bible, although I do not claim to understand or be able to interpret it all, and I believe in Jesus Christ; he is the ultimate and ultimately the only reality.

I believe that God is love and that men are sinners turned away from God.

I believe in eternal life, but it was not why I came to Christ. I came to Christ because I had a revelation that there was perfect love and that only God could be capable of perfect and unconditional love.

I believe that God exists and that he is involved in the intimate details of my life, that he is all good and that he cares for me and has a plan for me. But when things go bad, I am discouraged and have no joy in my faith, but then it is my faith that has failed.

Sunday

A cool wind, hot sun, low tide in the early afternoon. It’s the first day of Autumn and it feels it. I passed by K on the way through the parking lot, she was in a hurry to get to the porta-potty so I didn’t get to talk to her.

Tomorrow is L’s fiftieth birthday but she is celebrating it today by making a roast beef dinner with S and me and her parents invited.

I enjoyed Sunday school today teaching the junior high class.

The sermon was by Dr. Gary Morris and was about Noah and his three sons, about Noah’s lapse of character and one son’s delight in the scandal while the other two tried to cover him up. Dr. Morris is a PhD. who is well versed in the creation-evolution controversy. He is an young earth creationist, in other words he believes that the world is only 6000 years old, taking the book of Genesis literally concerning the flood and its affects on the earth and the history of mankind.
I lean toward the old earth creationist view point. I find the 4 billion year age of the earth to be plausible and perhaps indicated by the evidence. I also find the scientific evidence for a world wide flood to be rather thin or non-existent. But what do we do with all those lost generations and civilizations if man has really been around for one million years? 6000 years is a number that I can conceive of in my own terms, one million years is beyond my perspective and, from that standpoint, it is troubling. Evolution, however, I reject on a scientific and a biblical basis. In the final analysis, the bible, God’s word, and science, the study of God’s creation will be found to agree.

Pleasant dinner with L and family in spite of divorce in process.

Immanuel

Yo no digo esta cancion
Sino a quien conmigo va.

We worked at S’s house today shingling the roof. It was a beautiful, clear, sunny day to work outside. We started to clean up early about 3:30 when S invited us in to coffee. She loves to sit down and talk with us, Tim P, Mike B and me. Her husband D was working on the computer in the next room. She brought out her old family pictures which she kept loose in a box and began to show them to us. I have known most of her family since I first met her in 1978, meeting her brothers and sisters each almost independently. There is a strange relationship between her and I which I do not completely understand. She seems affectionate towards me and open about herself in a way she was not in the past.

The beach after work was glorious and breathtaking. The wind was off shore and driving the surf into the broad flat sand beach, it was dead low tide. I could see the tower in Provincetown. The clouds were spectacular whisps of white like abstract strokes of the most gleeful and majestic artist. I saw Cathy C head down the beach in her pink shorts and baseball cap; she runs every evening to Green Harbor and back. Another jogger, came towards me on the beach. She also was glorious and breathtaking; she stopped about where I was standing looking out to sea and turned up towards the parking lot.


Some more of my favorite websites are:

Information Clearing House

Naughty Bits

Riding with the Moon
Men and women towards each other are for the eyes, and for the heart, and not only for the bed. Tuareg proverb
-from Nine Parts of Desire by Geraldine Brooks

I went to prayer meeting tonight on my bicycle. My son had taken my truck for the day so I had an excuse to ride my bike wherever I went just like the old days when I disdained automobiles and rode for miles. Coming back in the near dark, the moon was shining on my right as I came up Bay Road to Halls Corner. It is like flying, to ride propelled by muscle power and gravity alone out in the open wind with the moon floating next to you. In the old days when I was young I would ride at night by the light of the sky and the shadows of the trees over my head, I could not see the road itself unless a car came from behind illuminating everything below my wheels so that I could see to pull over out of the way.

Baghdad Burning

Greetings

No one has ever seen God, but God, the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known. John 1:18

I hope you will understand that although many things happened today, I have little to say about any of it.

Work, Peace and War

That is the story of how I became a Christian. It is basically in three parts, and, to this day, my faith rest on these three immutable legs: One, that God is perfect love; because human love is mixed with fear, we fail to love our brother and we fail the ones we love. Two, God calls us to follow him by his Holy Spirit; he calls us to live by faith, believing in God and acting as if he is always present without seeing him. Three; Jesus Christ is God incarnate; his death pays for our sin and his resurrection destroys the power of death for those who believe.

I continue to work each day starting early on paper work, and then off to one of many carpentry jobs in progress. Then home where I make dinner and eat with my son. He is the greatest blessing of my life. Then a little time reading on the internet, then phone calls, job journals, estimates, proposals etc. Generally all is well, I have my health, my bills paid, my son at home, a roof over my head. I'd like to have a home of my own and a wife, but I can't complain. I've learned not to expect too much from this life. The future remains entirely a mystery, the past an enigma. I have my hopes, my dreams, my hobbies, I'd like to write a book, perhaps I will, perhaps I will find another wife. I feel that God has called me, at least to know the message of the Gospel, a treasure in an earthen vessel, for the moment on the shelf.

I am beginning to believe that Bush is not competent to be president. He failed to take measures to stop the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. He failed to find Bin Laden. He failed to establish a stable government in Afghanistan. He has run the federal deficit further into the red than it has ever been. He failed to anticipate the consequences of going to war in Iraq. His policies have cost American lives and treasure without any clear objectives.

The beach was beautiful just after sunset, after a cool, cloudy day. There was a steady, warm wind from the southeast and a bright, perfect half moon.

Labor Day

Emprenate del aire y pariras el viento

At the beach about sunset, cloudy, spitting rain, I talked to DC and his Mom. She was out jogging. About a quarter mile off shore there was a flack of small birds milling about. They looked like terns. There have been almost no terns on this beach in three years. Previously it was common to see them fishing in flocks all around the bay and out to the ocean. Their departure was blamed on foxes; but I think it may have been the increase in SUV permits that put a small army of 4 wheelers along the edge of their nesting ground.

I picked up two movies from the library to watch as DJ is away and I can use his video machine. The first one I watched was called The Beach and starred Leonardo DiCaprio.
It has a beautiful girl and a beautiful beach. It is about a community of travelers hidden on a remote Thai beach, but, like all utopian communities, it fails due to the dark side of human nature, and the exigencies of survival. It is pretty but not very intense or very deep or even that entertaining.

The other movie was Une Conte d’Hiver. This is a typical French film that is 99 percent conversation and most of that about love. The protagoniste is a lovely young woman who has an affair one summer on the coast of France with a man she falls in love with but, after the vacation, loses touch with. Later she bears his child but is unable to find him having mistakenly given him the wrong address. Five years later she is involved with two other men whom she tells outright that she still loves and hopes to find the father of her child, but that, since she has not much hope of doing so, is agreeable to taking up with one or the other of them. She actually rejects them both while simultaneously carrying on with them both. This movie deals in a unique way with sex before marriage and living together, not so much by condemning them but by revealing the flaw inherent in such relationships; you are giving yourself, for the sake the immediate, to someone who does not love you and will not ever love you. I am speaking of the men here who put up with her maddening indecision and rejection closely coupled with affection. In the end she is re-united with her lover and cries tears of joy. This movie was somewhat dull, the female character was lovely, sexy and maddening, the men pathetique.

In an attempt to forestall another car bombing -- Friday's was the third in less than a month -- U.S. forces will begin patrolling the grounds of the Imam Ali shrine

"go close that barn door, they've taken the horses."

We went into this war with our eyes wide open and our heads up our ass

Expecting rain there were not many people at the beach. I went at noon and walked a ways in both directions. Seagulls and sandpipers among the stones. High tide, hot sun. Waved to CS in parking lot, back to house,talked to S,. went to look at a small repair job, Scott off to Boston with his Mom. Later, reluctant dinner with the group.

Red Star Rising

No big crowds at the beach after sunset. Just a few scattered groups of people, most of them with an eye on the red planet coming up out of the sea. Today it is its closest to us in almost sixty thousand years. The mosquitos were out too.

Dympna Moore cancelled the hearing tomorrow because of its proximity to the pretrial hearing. So, I’m off the hook for the moment.

Dirty Laundry

"Faites votre deposition, " repeta le Roi en colere; "ou bien je vous fais executer, que vous soyez trouble ou non!"

This weekend I need to prepare to argue against Dympna Moore in regards to my divorce from Liz.
She has filed a motion for :
1) Counsel fees of $2,500.00 as Defendant is without funds.
2) Temporary legal custody of Scott, temporary physical custody of Scott,
3) Temporary child support
4) That I be ordered to pay reasonable, uninsured medical and dental expenses of Liz and Scott
5) That I pay the defendant a reasonable amount of spousal support.

There are several other items that seem to be irrelevant to an argument.

Before I go to court on Thursday, I need to:
1) list, here on this page, all possible arguments against the proposed orders.
2) Outline a story, the story of this marriage so that it becomes a focus for the judge to make his decision.
3) Construct an outline of the most pertinent arguments
4) Write out in full sentences and in orderly, speakable paragraphs each argument in such a way that it could be read aloud in the court as my answer to Ms Moore’s motions.
5) Read it aloud.
6) Pray


I have 5 days to do this.

First thoughts

1)

My wife’s attorney indicated to me that she is taking this case on a pro bono basis and that she would even write the agreement for no fee if I agreed to her demands. If I did not agree, then I she said she would file a motion for attorney’s fees. Because she has indicated she is doing this pro bono my wife will be represented whether or not I pay her attorney’s fees.

If I could have afforded a lawyer I would have been divorced 10 years ago when the court ordered us to proceed directly to a pre-trial hearing. We were scheduled for the hearing but the court dropped the date and never gave us a new date. An attorney would not have let tbat happen.

$2,500. Would be a hardship for me to pay, I would have to put most of it onto credit cards or fall that much further behind on my taxes.

The money could better be spent elsewhere, medical insurance, Liz’s teeth, Scott’s college etc.

2)

Scott has lived with me for ten years, why suddenly change his household now?
Scott participates in the swim team, the wind ensemble, the jazz band, takes and gives trumpet lessons and all his classes are right next door to where we live now.
Scott has given me no indication that he wants to live with his mother although he knows he is free to do so whenever he chooses.

4)

Scott has always had had access to medical care; he has been to the doctor whenever he needed to, he has had regular dental check ups all his life, he has had an orthodontist and an optometrist.
I know I could not have afforded health insurance for myself or Scott over the last ten years. My wife has Mass Health coverage.

My Story

We have not lived together for over ten years.
Scott has lived with me for that entire ten years.
We do not have the best living situation, but he preferred to live with me then and he prefers to live with me now.
I have been supporting my wife faithfully for that entire time although it has been a burden to me and Scott. We have not been able to afford health insurance or a house of our own and some years I was not always able to pay my taxes on time but I always faithfully paid my wife every month and always helped her out whenever I could however I could.

Sunday

Pensaran vuestras mercedes ahora que es poco trabajo hinchar un perro?
Cervantes

I went up to see my Dad and reinforce his back deck which was about to collapse. He had a book with pictures of old Watertown. One of them was of Lewandos dye workers around 1900. His German born grandfather was probably in that picture. There was also a picture of The Saint Patrick's High School class of 1922. His brother Tom was in that picture. There were many old buildings that I do not remember that he remembers such as the Grant building in Saltonstall park and the old town hall at the corner of Church and Main street. He also remembers some of the oldest Civil War Veterans marching in the Memorial Day parades, probably around 1930.

A Donde Vamos?

Last night my kisses drowned in the softness of black hair,
And my kisses like bees went plundering the softness of black hair.
Last night my hands were thrust into the mystery of black hair,
And my kisses like bees went plundering the sweetness of pomegranates
And among the scents of the harvest above my queen’s neck,
the harvest of black hair;
And my teeth played with the golden skin of her two ears.
Last night my kisses drowned in the softness of black hair,
And my kisses like bees went plundering the softness of black hair.
--From the Afghan of Muhamadji, 19th century

I took the above excerpt from a beautiful little book I found at the library called Love Songs of Asia, published by Knopf in 1946.


I believe that life has a purpose, but at times it seems that life has no purpose.

Next week I will have to appear before a judge where my long estranged wife and her lawyer will try to extract from me a laundry list of financial commitments and also to take away custody from me of my son. I believe I have offered her a fair settlement but she will not settle for anything less than all she can get.

Wanted: Woman to walk the beach with me, must be in good physical condition, age not important. Intellectual, physical, sexual vitality desired; nothing but walking and talking required.

Puppies

The young woman at the checkout counter at Grand Union was not wearing a bra. What a wonderful, thrilling thing to see the outline of her breasts and nipples through her thin cotton pullover.

Heaven and Earth

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges thatJesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.
( 1John 4, 1-3).

I have finished reading Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven. Krakauer tells good stories and he uses the stories to probe some interesting philisophical questions about society and human nature. This book tells simultaneously the history of the Mormon church and several sub-stories that are actually spinoffs from the main story.

I had little knowledge of the Mormon history other than that they settled Utah so it was fascinating to find out the details of their founding by Joseph Smith, their emigration to Missouri and then to Illinois where they built the town of Nauvoo, and then to Utah while it was still a part of Mexico and to find out of the persecution, hardships they endured and the violent practices and bizarre beliefs that they have. We learn of Joseph Smith, his avenging angel Porter Rockwell, Brigham Young, the massacre of the Fancher wagon train by Mormons, and the murder of two of Powell’s men possibley by Mormons. And we are brought into the modern stories of polygamous families, the kidnapping of Pamela Smart, and, central to the book, the horrific murder of Brenda Lafferty and her baby by her two brother’s in law who believed that God had commanded them to kill her.

I believe that there is a spiritual dynamic at work and that there is behind Mormonism a spiritual, anti-christian intelligence, the spirit of the Anti-Christ. These religions arise in response to the spread of vital christianity into a region; they are characterized by a stringent moral code, a firm belief in salvation by works, a propensity to justify violence to defend the faith, and a propensity for their men in leadership to justify the taking of teenage brides. In other words, full opportunity is given for the flesh for the rulers while strict control is exercised over the faithful. I believe Islam is like this, having arisen in response to the early spread of christianity. Another example is the Heaven and Earth Society which arose in the 1850s in China, it also had the outward trappings of christianity, a strict moral code and a propensity for violence which resulted in one of the worst wars in human history, the Hong Xiuquan rebellion.

The book takes a hard look at fundamentalism, the nature of faith and the function and nature of religion in society. The author makes no conclusions of his own but the implication of the book is that religion in general demands conformity and can lead to tragedy. At the end of the book he makes a remark that indicates that he has not found the answers to the big questions of life and he suspects he will not know them in this life, but he does acknowledge yearning to know that he is loved by his creator. I pray that he will come to know that he is.

Dog Days

Era ese tiempo de la canicula, cuando el aire de agosto sopla caliente, envenenado por el olor podrido de las saponarias. (Juan Rolfo)

My son and Mike worked with me today. S cut his hand on a piece of copper. It is still hot, even this evening I sit typing, not so uncomfortable but noticeably uncool.

We went to dinner with my sister Janice, her husband Jim, their daughter Kerry and Kerry’s friend Jessie. My sister comes down to the trailor park in Brant Rock every year and we usually go out to dinner at the Compass Rose, which we did last night. It was Kerry’s eleventh birthday. Jim is very sick, his liver is failing and he probably will not be approved for a transplant which is his only hope to live. A few months ago he almost died in the hospital, he did die in the sense that only the machines kept him alive that night. He told me flat out he did not have much time to live, I didn’t know what to say to him; he asked me to pray for him, that’s not like him. I felt that anything I could say would be pathetically insignificant. He wants to live to see his daughter grow up. My first thought was to pray that he would have peace, because I did not see much hope that he can find a liver. But on second thought I know that, if it was me, I would want people to pray that I would live.

Kerry and her friend Jessie were playing gymnastics on the grass by the trailer, we went back there after dinner and watched the moon and Mars rise over the ocean; I always have more fun when there are kids around. Scotty has always got on well with Jim and usually goes to stay with them in the summer.

La Gloria y El Misterio

Y por mi, a fin de que al abrir mi boca me sea dada palabra para dar a conocer con denuedo el misterio del evangelio, por el cual soy embajador en cadenas; que con denuedo hable de el, como debo hablar. Efesios 5:19-20

I was caught in another drenching downpour on the way home today. When the rain broke, I took my bike out to the beach. It was low tide and I walked along the sand flats in the icy water. The sun set about 7:30; Fall is not upon us yet but I know it will be soon. I walked the bike back across the bridge, it was too nice to hurry home.

AC Daycee

“Voila enfin ma tete libre,” dit Alice.

It was a hot and humid day, certainly not the worst I’ve ever worked in but uncomfortable nevertheless.

After work I again biked to the beach and walked. The breeze at dusk this time of year is a little touch of heaven. There are so many young women jogging to and from and at the beach. I remember when I was in my twenties and used to walk the beach or run or bike and I distinctly remember there were no women doing the same. I would have died to have a woman who did the things I liked to do. Now things have completely changed. Women are running and biking and kayaking in groups and alone everywhere I go and they far outnumber the men doing the same thing. I can only speculate on why: in part it may be fear of being fat but I suspect it is the great increase in girls doing sports, almost all the teenage girls I know are involved in some type of sport. But where are the men?

On The Seventh Day

"Comment savez vous que je suis folle?" dit Alice.
"Vous devez l'etre", dit le Chat, "sans cela vous ne seriez pas venue ici."

It is a beautiful summer morning, the wind is showing the silver side of the poplar leaves; rain coming. I don't feel like going to church this morning. I am reading of the Lafferty brothers "lead by the Lord" to murder their sister in law and her baby. "test the spirits to see whether they be of God", dicelo El Sabidor. Wouldn't it be wonderful to know what God's will is, his good pleasing and perfect will, but our sinful nature blurs our understanding. Is there any hope then to find his righteousness?

Imagine That

Now, it is easy to show that Darwinism, one of the pillars of modern biology, is nothing but a kind of cult, a cult religion. I am not exaggerating. It has no scientific validity whatsoever. Darwin's so-called theory of evolution is based on absurdly irrational propositions, which did not come from scientific observations, but were artificially introduced from the outside, for political-ideological reasons (Tennenbaum).

I went to the beach as usual after work and stood on the wooden footpath that crosses over the dunes and looked down the green ribbon of grass and rose bushes, the blades and flowers catching the light from the setting sun. It was like a little swatch of rolling prairie one hundred feet wide and four miles long and it is hardly ever looked at. On the beach, the little waves left lines on the sand like threads each thread the limit of the waves life, the threads overlap and form patterns, again hardly ever looked at. Nature is not a work of chance forces acting on blind matter, nature is a work of imagination; it is the work of a creative mind, a creator God. Even the form of a single tree, never noticed in the forest or by the roadside, is a work of art and imagination.

“Le fait est que vous ne savez pas grand’chose,” dit la Duchesse.

Another Day

I had a conversation with Mike today. He is going to Wentworth nights to get his Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. He has a professor who expounds to the class on the death of Christianity, claiming that science, in particular the science of evolution, has made Christianity obsolete. It is amazing how little the educated understand.

I went to the beach after work and walked with the sandpipers.

I have begun to read Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven, about Mormon fundamentalism. I really enjoyed his book Into the Wild, and I am interested in the sociology of religion. I am a Christian, in other words I believe in Jesus Christ as personal Lord, Savior, Friend, Creator, God; the man from in Nazareth of Galilee, born 2000 years ago, crucified, raised from the dead and seated at the right hand of God the Father. Sometimes, within my own church, I cannot discern the work of the Spirit of God from the work of the spirit of the world. God willing I will write a book about this, perhaps looking at the schism in the Baptist church over slavery.

I keep asking God for a girlfriend, but perhaps it’s not Him but me. Perhaps I need to give myself permission to let Liz go and have what so many other men have, a woman I can be intimate with.

Another Saturday Night

The bare, brown midriff of the house cleaner and the warm sunshine awoke in me a long absent sensuality. I was in the screened-in area off the living room; she was inside. She must have been in her mid thirties, but she had the body of a twenty year old. She wore a loose shirt cut short to show her belly and tight dungaree shorts. Her legs and stomach were tanned brown. We spoke briefly before she left. I stayed working in the shade by the pool.

Last night I was alone as S went to his mother’s. I watched a video, Le Genou de Claire. It is about a man who toys with the idea of having an affair with a teenage girl who he knows is attracted to him. He later becomes fascinated with the girl’s step sister Claire; especially with a particular part of her anatomy, her knee. The knee, I guess, is just sensuous enough to express the type of attraction he has for her, and just removed enough from being sexual so he is not portrayed as a sexual predator. He does end up taking the opportunity to warmly caress her knee when he is caught alone with her in a gazebo in the pouring rain, but after that there is nothing more. The movie is interesting because of its unique characters, especially the women; the plot however is thin.

The Lord has given me this day; the weather is beautiful, work was good, Scott is out with his friends, I slept well last night for the first time since the notice from Liz’s lawyer.
A red tailed hawk flew right close over my head this afternoon and a red fox crossed the road in front of the truck on the way home from work. And, speaking of things of the color red, when I went to the beach just before sundown there was a large red barge being towed toward the Cape Cod canal and, on shore in line with it, from my vantage point crossing over the dunes, was a little boy in a bright red shirt.

Transition
Yesterday I got a letter from Liz’s attorney saying that she has scheduled a motion for alimony, custody, child support and attorney’s fees to be heard on August 8. Scotty worked with us today and we ate dinner together and went for an ice cream. I am really thankful I have him and have had him. I was awake most of last night with the court controversy on my mind.

I had a stressfull day and I am too tired to do estimates or prepare papers for my impending divorce. I met with the attorney who is advising me. I think I am going to have to go ahead and contest the terms Liz and her attorney offered me, that could prove expensive and time-consuming. My son Scott worked with me putting in two large doors in a house in Duxbury. At the end of the day I bicycled to the beach.

I have neglected the fine art of doing nothing but today I tried to re-sharpen my doing-nothing skills. I did have to get up at 6:30 to give Nathan a ride to work but I went back to sleep when I returned, and I skipped church. In the afternoon, I read the paper until Scott called for a ride home from his mother’s. Then I bicycled to the beach and walked along the shore for an hour or more. The water was very cold today, it made my feet hurt. Last summer it was warm all summer, warmer than it has ever been in my experience, but the currents must have shifted a little. The summer is beautiful here and it is easy to walk in the sand at low tide. I have to admit I spend a lot of time looking at the girls. In the evening, I bicycled to the church for the prayer meeting.

It is hot and muggy as I sit writing at the computer. Liz called and said her lawyer will be sending notice of a motion for temporary orders. I happened to open up a journal from the last round of court battles in 1995 and saw what a powerful piece of evidence was there. I wonder if I can use it in court? I am to meet with Attorney RH tomorrow to get his advice, although I do not intend to hire a lawyer for the trial.

Another hot, humid day doing the finish work in Pam's upstairs. I had a couple of interesting conversations with Pam. I worked late and cleaned out all the tools and swept the floor for the guy coming to lay the hardwood floor. When I got home, Scott helped me to empty the truck which he took to CueTime to play pool. I asked him what he did all day. He said, "being lazy."

I ate alone and then took my bike to the beach. This time of year it is light enough and warm enough to go to the beach in the evening. For a few months of the year it is an earthly paradise. The beach is about two miles away. to get to the outer beach there is a long wooden bridge across part of Duxbury Bay. People are usually fishing from the side of the bridge and couples walking, and of course joggers and bicyclists. Yesterday there was a man on a small surfboard with a parachute-like wing pulling him around the bay. Occasionally he would leap up and let the wing pull him into the air. He is not nearly as gracefull as the seagulls that ride the aircurrents effortlessly. I went out to the outer beach and stood looking out to sea. Flocks of sand pipers were flying just off the surface of the water their wings flapping furiosly. A few terns flew over. I have always thought these to be the most graceful birds, but the flocks of them are gone, the nesting area was over-run with SUVs.

It's my birthday, July 23. It was hot and humid today and I am too tired to do anything but this at the moment. Pam Taylor gave me a birthday cake, My sister Nancy called from Richland, Washington, Scott borrowed the truck to go play billiards, my soon to be ex-wife has not called; I have not been talking to her since she got a lawyer.