Vesuvius

After leaving Pompeii, the tour bus drove us up Mount Vesuvius.  The bus has to make dozens of hairpin turns on a narrow road going up the side of the mountain.  When you are approaching the turn you do not imagine that it would be possible for such a long bus to make it around, but it does every time, occasionally having to force other vehicles to back up out of its way. 

     The buses let the tourists out at a base station where a rocky trail begins which goes up to the rim of the volcano.  It is a hot, dry and pretty steep  trail that goes up in three stages.  At the end of each stage there is a little refreshment stand and some shade.  Looking down one can see the city and the Bay of Naples and , off in the distance the Amalfi peninsula.  On the flank of the present volcano a great ring of lava fields spreads out from the volcano.  The remnants of the old base of the much larger volcano that exploded in 79 A.D.are still are visible. 

     The crater is about a half mile wide, hundreds of feet deep and almost perfectly cone shaped with a floor that looks like you could build a house on it or plant a garden.  Flowering plants and grasses grow around the rim and down inside.  It is said that steaming vents can often be seen but we did not see any the day we were there.  The trail follows the rim about half way around the lower side.  The higher side looks extremely dangerous without a trail or safety railing.  The sides drop straight down and there are places where you can see material has broken off and fallen.  I do not know what geo-physical dynamic creates the perfectly cylindrical shape or the flat plug at the bottom.  And I do not know what it would look like to see that enormous shape fill up with lava before it broke through one of the sides and poured down the mountain.  Evidence of such lava flows are all around.    

Pompeii

                                                      The Amphitheatre in Pompeii

Before we left for Italy, we arranged online for two all day bus tours through a website called Viator.com.  Two days after arriving in Rome we took the metro from our apartment to Piazza del Popolo where several groups waiting for bus tours were gathered under the Egyptian obelisk in the center of the Piazza.  After we had assembled we walked out of the main gate to the roadway and boarded a bus for Pompeii.

     Driving south from Rome the mountains on either side of the highway become noticeably drier, trees giving way to bushes.  The towns seem grafted onto the mountainsides while the broad central valley where the highway is is empty except for industrial buildings and farmland.  We stop for coffee in Cassino at a café with the famed Abbey in view above us.  Our tour guide tells us that the Americans destroyed the Abbey in WWII because they thought the Germans were there, but that it was full of war refugees. 

     We drove on until we got to the ruins of Pompeii.  It is bigger than I expected, acres and acres of buildings and roads, and people that had been buried in ash by the volcano Vesuvius which stands dramatically over the city.  The buildings, according to our guide, exhibit a mix of Greek and Roman construction, as it was initially a Greek ruled area then a Roman city.  You walk the streets from house to house, shop to shop.  There is an area where gladiators were trained, an amphitheater and a great rectangular town commons ringed with collonaded buildings.  The streets are paved with basalt blocks with raised sidewalks also of basalt on either side.  There are crossing areas of basalt stepping stones with the grooves of chariot wheels worn between them.  There are even white reflective stones woven into the pavement designed to reflect the light from torches attached to the walls of the buildings and light the way for night travel.  They had underground sewage, running water in lead pipes, heated floors, and bathhouses.  It is truly like stepping into a city that has been abruptly abandoned and being able to walk into the houses of even the most wealthy and powerful.  You can picture the hustle and bustle of a city, all the business of life taking place on these streets and within these walls, because so much of it is still here including the bones of the dead and the empty jugs once filled with wine or oil.  

Rome

The first thing I noticed about Italy flying into Rome’s Fiumicino airport, (I first tried to remember this as Foo Man Chu airport, but now know it means little river in Italian),   were the umbrella pines and the wheat fields below.  The airport is well outside the city center.  One remarkable thing about Italy is that the cities are densely packed very often within ancient walls and in between the cities is open countryside with no suburban sprawl. 

Our Airbnb host sent a friend to pick us up and bring us into Rome.  The driver’s name was Danielle.  He spoke almost no English but he was friendly and we tried to converse in my broken Italian and his broken English.  It was about a 45 minute ride on fairly conventional, open highways until we reached the city where the streets are narrow and confusing, at least to us.  We drove down a street, paved with stone that ran along a massive wall that ran as far as we could see.  Our apartment was half a block off this street. 

The Mura Aureliane, or Aurelian’s wall gave us our first impression of Rome.  It is massive, maybe 50 feet tall with stone houses and towers on top, and trees and bushes growing out of the cracks.  The entrances to the city through the wall are worthy of an empire in its glory.  The wall completely encircles the old city. 

The Termini station was a ten minute walk along the wall from where we were.  From here you could take a train to another city or get on the subway system to go anywhere inside Rome. 

 Our first full day we used the Metro to explore the city.  We first went to the Colosseum where there were hundreds of tourists waiting in line and many guide businesses who would sign you up to cut the line and give a guided tour of both the Colosseum and the Forum.  We paid them maybe forty Euros for each of us.  Our first guide spoke pretty good English and she  brought  us into the Arena explaining many things as we walked along listening to her on little disposable earphones.  These tours are useful if you have no idea at all where you are or what you’re looking at, which essentially, at least I, did not.  If I went back, I would first read about these places, make notes about what I wanted to  see, buy the tickets in advance and then explore on my own.   But, all in all, the tours were not bad. 

The Colosseum itself is of course, an impressive work of engineering and design.  It is however dark.  And I say this in both senses of the word.  The old stone, except where it has been cleaned, is blackened, and inside between the outer wall of arches and the inner wall of arches it is also dark and dreary.  The viewing areas look out onto the maze of rooms that had been the staging area for the spectacles that took place above on a wooden floor which had been covered with sand to absorb the blood, (thus the word arena, its first meaning is sand).  Here the crowds could watch gladiators fight to the death or see criminals being fed alive to starving lions and tigers.  It is thus perhaps the world’s largest monument to the brutality of mankind.

The Colosseum is within site of the Palatine hill and the Roman Forum.   These are the ruins of the heart of the Roman empire that date from 600 BC to 700 AD.  The Forum is hard to describe.  It is as if someone had taken the buildings of a thousand years of imperial Rome and dumped them together in a junkyard.   

Using Uber

Positano

We used Uber for the first time in Rome when we were leaving the  train station to go to our next scheduled stop in Positano.  It was a hot day, and, although the station wasn’t far from our apartment, we had some heavy luggage to carry so we decided to try it.  I didn’t know the difference between Uber Black and the other choice, Lux?  So I chose Uber Black.  A few minutes later a polite and helpful driver showed up named Massimo in a black BMW with air conditioning.  It was definitely a comfortable ride and  not too expensive. 

In Positano we tried to call another Uber car but none were available.  I am not sure if some cities don’t ban them.  We ended up taking the bus.

On our way home from Boston’s Logan airport we again called for an Uber to take us back to the South Shore.  This time only Uber Black was available, again the ride was comfortable and the driver arrived in a fairly short time.  But the charge to my credit card was over $137 for a 35  minute ride. A taxi would have been cheaper.

We had mixed success with taxis.  We had just dragged our luggage up several hundred steps from the waterfront in Positano to where cars were and were walking down the street somewhat lost when a taxi stopped and picked us up.  He took us up to Montepertuso, he knew exactly where it was from one word from me.  He spoke no English.  The charge, as he took care to show me on his meter, was 37 Euros for a 15 minute ride which he and I both knew was highway robbery, but we had no choice and paid it. 

We used taxis twice in Florence with pretty good results.

The key to using either taxis or Uber is to have an alternative and also to have an idea of what they will charge before you get in.  One tour driver advised us to always put the charge on the meter if it was a taxi because if you ask how much to get to a place the driver is likely to high ball it.  This did happen to us once in Rome when we took a taxi home one night and I readily paid what he said it would be.  Another night, we did the same thing on the meter and it was much lower.  That however did not hold true in Positano.

The Ferries

Montepertuso

At the Naples waterfront, I felt like such a tourist, we bought tickets for the next ferry in an hour, but the vendor said if we ran we could catch the one leaving now which was just leaving.  Pam ran ahead.  I pulled the luggage scrambling after her.  She just managed to stop them from pulling up the gang plank without us.  This ferry was going to Sorrento which was on the way to our destination at Positano.  We were inside and it was hot, the windows barely opened.  It was not what I expected but it got us to Sorrento where we caught another ferry for Capri.  Capri was an unanticipated stop for us.  We had to leave the ferry and wait on the dock for the ferry to Positano.  There were a lot of wealthy tourists and young tourists.  There were pleasure boats in the harbor, hotels clinging to the hillside above the docks and farther up on the white cliffs there were villas precariously perched on the edges of the rock.  The tip of the island that we passed on the way out heading to Positano, had a monument high on the peak of the cliff.   I learned later that it is a statue of the Virgin Mary which is part of a church built on old Roman ruins. 

Passing along the Amalfi coast was one of the best parts of our trip.  The sea is beautiful and feels deep and massive, more so than I thought an arm of the Mediterranean possibly could.  White cliffs ring the whole Amalfi peninsula and built along the waters edge on are stone fortress-like towers.  We wondered if they were from Roman times or from the days when Amalfi was an important trading center. We sailed into Positano at the end of the day when the entire town is in the shadow of the mountains.

We left Positano several days later.  Our Airbnb house was in Montepertuso, right next to the Catholic church.  When we left we waited with our luggage for the bus down the mountain to the beach.  It came and we could barely fit it was crowded with so many people but the driver urged us to get on. We did. 

On the beach we bought tickets for the ferry to Salerno.  This ferry skirted the southern coast of the mountainous peninsula, stopping at the town of Amalfi.  In the middle ages Amalfi was a major trading port.  Today it is a major tourist destination.  It too is built on the sides of the mountains which soar overhead.  From there to Salerno, the land flattens and commercial ships begin to appear outside the port.  We walked with our luggage from the docks about a block into the city to find the train station to catch a train to Venice.

Love Songs of Asia

Do not believe that ink is always black,
     or lime white, or lemon sour;
You cannot ring one bell from two pagodas,
You cannot have two governors for the city of Lang Son.

I found you binding an orange spray
     of flowers with white flowers; 
I never noticed the flower gathering
     of other village ladies.
Would you like me to go and see your father and mother?

                                                      Song of Annam

This is one of my favorite books of poetry.  It is a book of sensuous, passionate love songs and poems from Afghanistan, Persia, Vietnam translated, I believe,  by a young British official posted in Afghanistan during World War I.  His name was E Powys Mathers.  I found this book in the Duxbury library years ago.  I recently remembered it and ordered it online.

Love Songs of Asia

Do not believe that ink is always black,
     or lime white, or lemon sour;
You cannot ring one bell from two pagodas,
You cannot have two governors for the city of Lang Son.

I found you binding an orange spray
     of flowers with white flowers; 
I never noticed the flower gathering
     of other village ladies.
Would you like me to go and see your father and mother?

                                                      Song of Annam

This is one of my favorite books of poetry.  It is a book of sensuous, passionate love songs and poems from Afghanistan, Persia, Vietnam translated, I believe,  by a young British official posted in Afghanistan during World War I.  His name was E Powys Mathers.  I found this book in the Duxbury library years ago.  I recently remembered it and ordered it online.

Juan Rulfo is so Strange

I was squatting on a rock, not doing anything,
only sitting there with my pants down 
so they would see me like that and wouldn't come near me.

Yo estaba acuclillado en una piedra, sin hacer nada, 
solamente sentado alli con los pantalones caidos 
para que ellas me vieran asi y no se me arrimaran.
                                                
                            Juan Rulfo, Anacleto Morones

I just finished reading El Llano en Llamas by the Mexican writer Juan Rulfo.  These stories are fascinating, very Mexican, creepy, Poe-like.  He only wrote two books, the other was Pedro Paramo a short novel with strange distortions of memory and mixing of the real and the supernatural.  Always grim, fatalistic, morbid, but these are stories with characters, motives, plots and mood that transcend common writing.

Using the Trains in Italia

The Trains

On our recent trip to Italy we traveled by between cities by train, going from Rome to Naples, then by ferry around the Amalfi coast, stopping for three days in Positano and then another ferry to Salerno where we trucked our luggage 3 blocks to the train station and tried to figure out how the system worked. There were two train companies with ticket offices in the Salerno station.  One was Trenitalia, the government owned system and the other was Italo Treno a supposedly private company.  We started in the Italo-treno office but could not get a good schedule to get to Venice by nightfall where we had an Airbnb room waiting for us.  We ended up going to the Trenitalia station, at first standing in a long, non-moving line, until a woman asked us if we needed help.  She took us into a private office and arranged our trip.  I am not sure why we were treated differently but it was a big help and we got our tickets on a good schedule, although not cheap.  We got off the water bus in Venice about dark and our host met us to take us to our apartment.

We only stayed one night in Venice, eating at a small Osteria in a medieval alleyway late at night and the next day having breakfast in Saint Mark’s square.  When we left, we took the water bus back to the train station and took our place in a long line again to get tickets.  Again, the line was hardly moving, but I had searched online the previous night to find the train we wanted to take, including the price, departure time, and train number.  So I left Pam in line and went around to one of the ticket machines where I found it was easy to buy the tickets I wanted for the train I wanted, although only first class was still available.  The ticket machine easily switched to English and took my credit card, printing out our two first class tickets.  Then all we had to do was watch for the track number on the board, check our coach and seat numbers and be ready to get on board at the right place.  Our first train ride from Rome to Naples we had randomly boarded and sat unknowingly in first class with coach tickets.  We were summarily asked to leave and go to our appropriate coach and class. Once we had learned the ropes the trains were a lot easier to use. 

     My advice on using the trains in Italy:  Know which train company and line you are going to use, there are different companies and some lines stop at every stop, and others go city center to city center.   Know ahead of time the train you want and get your tickets early, they do sell out.  Find the right track on the board, find your car, usually there are numbers on the track so you know where to stand when the train comes in, your seat number seems to matter, but most people are flexible so you can move to sit next to your traveling companions.  The machine bought tickets did not always print out with proximate seats.  On one trip, a woman realized that she had got on the wrong train and was in tears.  She probably had spent a good amount of money on the ticket and would miss whatever appointment she had had, and would have to spend the day returning and re-buying tickets to get to her original destination.  This was always my fear in the early confusion we had finding our way.

     The Trenitalia trips were pleasant enough.  We found ourselves rocketing through the Italian countryside.  As we moved south the rolling hills and mountains got drier and drier.  There are forests, farms and fields in Tuscany, (Just like the Illinois Central),  more farms, less forests and vegetation on the mountainsides south of Rome.  The trains are air conditioned.  Italians do not use air conditioning as much as Americans do.  One bookstore at the train station was oppressively hot and miserable to be in.  When there was AC it was generally turned lower than at home.   The seats on the trains were comfortable although economy class could get crowded.  First class had leather seats, more room and an attendant served drinks and snacks from a mobile cart.  The train information along with news and weather was displayed on Monitors at intervals along each car.  The speed of the train was usually about 240 kilometers per hour.  But it did not feel that we were going that fast.  While we were in Florence, there was a bad train crash in the south, but it was not Trenitalia.

We did try to take the Circumvesuvio railroad from Naples to Sorrento but the train was so hot and crowded that we had to get off, especially after people kept jamming into the already overloaded car.  We forfeited our tickets but they were cheap enough and dragged our luggage onto the Metro to get to the waterfront where we found the ferries.

For we, being many, are one bread and one body, for we are all partakers of that one Bread.

                                           1 Corinthians 10:17

We went to church today.  Our church is a Congregational church in an upscale, all-white town.  It is a welcoming place.  I try to understand what element is missing, for it always seems to me that something is missing.  I cannot fault the people for being white or upscale.  They are merely who they are, gathered together to worship God in the town where they live.  I am one of them, or almost one of them.  I am white, I am not upscale, but always trying to keep up appearances of being so in order to fit in and meet the social expectations of community and family.  I have dropped out of the Catholic church, my childhood religion, and the Baptist church, where I raised my son.  I had major problems with both of those churches either theological or political, in fact more problems than I have with the congregationalists.  But I think they had some things that the Congregationalists lack.  

     The Catholic church had a sense of the sacred.  You could not cross the altar without genuflecting or say the name of Jesus without bowing your head.  The host was said to be the actual body of Christ, and people prayed to Saints embodied in pious statues at the front of the church.  I do not think this was always right and good but I just mean to mention that this provided something the people needed, something sacred, holy awe-inspiring and inviolable.  

       The Baptist church had less of this.  The one thing they had that was inviolable was the Bible.  The Word of God as inerrant, ‘living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword”  provided a sacred center to the service.  Compared to the Baptist church, the Congregationalists lack a sense of urgency.  For them it really doesn’t matter what you do or whether you come to Christ or not.  All are welcome, no attempt is made to make one conform to rules.  There are no expectations of a conversion experience.  There is no heaven or hell mentioned in the sermons.  I did think this was overdone and distorted in the Baptist church, but without it what is the point of believing in Jesus?  Why do we need to spread the Gospel, why bother with any of it?  I have my own understanding of these things, not entirely reflected in any of these churches, and I know that with these compromised positions, some things left unexplainable, some denied, and others interpreted to my own understanding,  I could not well be a minister.  A minister must have a theology, a guiding principle, a set of absolutes that he or she stands for so that the congregation knows what he stands for and where they stand. 

     However, I must give the Congregationalists credit for their efforts to reach out into the community, for their welcoming atmosphere, and especially for their Christ-centered theology.  The communion service is done with great reverence and it was what Jesus commanded his church to do.  

2/15/16

      Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the hater, and this was an immutable law.

                                                            James Baldwin,  from Notes of a Native Son

     We like to see the bad guy get his due when we go to the movies.  This has driven the popularity of many hit films.  The drive for justice is mixed with a desire to destroy and it is that unexamined murderousness which inevitably destroys us.  I think that for many readers it is not easy to understand the pent up, personal, distorting, and crippling anger that he talks about and even less easy to resolve that anger rationally as he does in this essay, concluding that it will destroy him as it destroyed his father and is destroying his community.  And then making the decision to amputate it rather than die from its poison.  How many of us can let go a legitimate injustice, to forgive a real, and unacknowledged wrong?   

Quien a hierro mata, a hierro muere

Acabo de leer la autobiografia de Pancho Villa por Paco Ignacio Taibo II.  I will have more to say about this later, I just wanted to comment on this day which must be one of the most beautiful in the history of time.
aqui en Norwell.

Danville High, Walk to Kentucky 1913-1914

My grandmother, Alice Hickman O'Keefe walked from Danville Illinois to Mammoth Caves Kentucky in the winter of 1913-1914 with members of her high school class.  According to Google Maps it is a distance of 164 miles.  She was born in Danville in 1896 but raised her family in Massachusetts.  She died in 1986. 

Mud

Soon as it was night out we shoved; when we got her out to about the middle we let her alone, and let her float wherever the current wanted her to; then we lit the pipes, and dangled our legs in the water, and talked about all kinds of things—we was always naked, day and night, whenever the mosquitoes would let us—the new clothes Buck's folks made for me was too good to be comfortable, and besides I didn't go much on clothes, nohow.

                                                                                                                                          Huck Finn

     We watched the movie Mud the other night.  It is the story of two boys who live in house boats moored by the  Mississippi river in southern Arkansas who befriend a fugitive hiding on a nearby island.    The boys live in a world of romance and idealism and freedom to roam the wilds of the river.  While back in town their parents wrestle with reality: domestic strife, boredom, and regulation,  (if someone moves out of the houses on the river, the river authority dismantles it),  strip malls with Piggly Wiggly stores and motels line the highway.  But there is no sign of civilization out on the river and on the island with the exception of an old boat stuck in a tree, left behind in some flood that must have been of apocalyptic proportions.  The boys do not have helmets for their motorcycle or lifejackets for their boat.  They take risks, deal with responsibility and honor and right and wrong, but not with rules, regulations or authority.  They are young boys becoming men in an unfettered, elemental environment, free to love and dream, to fight, to swear, to make deals, to desire women.  They agree to get the boat out of the tree for the fugitive to use to escape in exchange for the 45 caliber pistol he carries in his belt.    It is Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer and Nigger Jim come back to life.

立秋

Why make so much of fragmentary blue
In here and there a bird or butterfly
or flower or wearing stone or open eye
when heaven presents in sheets the solid hue.

R. Frost

I sit here, a Sunday morning, observing the blue morning sky and wall of green in sunlight around the yard, sensing just the slightest change of season, from heat to comfortable and cool. 
I will be leaving Duxbury soon after 35 years.  35 years of life with everything of life tempered by the presence of the sea.  Where my greatest pleasure was to walk to the sea or by the sea.  My grandmother once told me that the woods were her church.  But for me there is no place closer to
God and paradise than at the water's edge toes in the sand, terns circling and diving, a late summer warmth and peace, far from the tumult and pressure of everyday existence.  If there was nothing else to put in this blog there was always the tone of grey in the sky as I walked over the bridge, the single duck floating in the fog, the jogger here and there, and in the past the fog horn from Bug Light, and always in the winter the sound of surf.  God has blessed me with this little place, but more and more my observations come from slightly inland and slightly to the north.   

Terminus

last scene of all
that ends this strange eventful history
is second childishness and mere oblivion,
sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste and sans everything.

I am watching the demise of a once proud life
personal dignity stripped from him
nothing remains but to wait for death
but he is loved and cared for.

La Villa Real

Estoy leyendo la biografía de Pancho Villa escrito por Paco Ignacio Taibo II.  Empieza con una advertencia de la incertidumbre de todas historias. Por ejemplo, no dirá cual versión de los acontecimientos del inicio de la vida cuatrera de Villa es la verdadera.   La leyenda es que el joven Doroteo Durango defendía el honor de su hermana contra uno de los Terrazas, la familia latifundera de Chihuahua y tuvo que huir.  Pero todos que relatan la historia incluyendo Villa si mismo varían en los datos, aún en la veracidad de lo todo,  según el autor. 

Ya alcancé la punta media del libro.  Es precisamente escrita, trayendo el lector a los espacios íntimos de Villa y sus generales, y aún al campo de batalla.  Las fotos encontradas en las notas al fin de cada capítulo se refieren atrás a la narración. 

Por mí, un aficionado de las biografías desde mi niñez, hay cuatro aspectos de una biografía que son importantes.  Uno, y el principal que tiene esta, es en las detalles de la acción, de los eventos, las personas, las conversaciones.  Este libro tiene esta calidad en abundancia.  El segundo es en su análisis del personaje de la persona.  Quiero saber cuales eran las calidades de este hombre o esta mujer que lo hizo lo que era,  que le dio éxito o que resultó en la tragedia de su derrota.  Tercero, yo quiero saber el ambiente cultural y histórica.  En este libro poco  se dice de la historia de México, o aún de Chihuahua, su pasado, su economía, su sociedad.  Tengo muchas preguntas, quiero leer de Villa con un retrato preciso de su mundo, de su ambiente, de su motivación.  Quiero tener alguna medida de interpretación del hombre y de los eventos y consecuencias de la revolución.  Yo no tengo de estar de acuerdo con esta interpretación sino que me de algún orientación y algo mas allá de los datos de contemplar.

Finalmente y mas importante es que una biografía tenga un aspecto de suspenso.  Quiero tener la experiencia de la lucha, el conflicto, las derrotas antes de la victoria.  Este se puede establecer en el principio del libro aún si ya conozca la conclusión.  El autor tiene que prometer algo que se vaya a revelar.

 

Flash Bang Whiz

Our dog Baylou has a strange behavior linked to thunderstorms.  He is absolutely terrified by them and tries to crawl into the deepest part of the cellar, and woe to the door that blocks his passage.  When the storm is yet in the distance,  he begins to tremble all over, literally quivering in his doggy boots.  Today I returned home after being away during a brief thunder shower to find the casings and door knobs torn off the doors in the basement apartment and part of the jamb and wall chewed away.  Upstairs their was a crazy pattern of pee around the hardwood floor in the living room.  His bladder completely lets go on the sound of thunder.  Once after  a rumble in the night,  we heard the flood gates open as he stood trembling in the middle of the bedroom floor.

It is a mystery to me why he reacts this way to what is just a noise and as far as I know not associated with anything actually bad happening to him.  It is a problem because he becomes so destructive.

Old Saws, Old Knowledge

I have of sorwe so grete a woon
that joye gete I never noon.


Four years into the recession, my tools are all old and beat.  The bills are mounting and it is harder and harder to make money.  I am, in the ways that count, rich beyond measure.  I have the things I really wanted in life,  a relationship with a good and beautiful woman, I have my son and my step-daughters who remain and are close to me.  If I was younger, it would be easier to believe better times are down the road, but at my age, although I have not given up hope, I know the possibility is there that I am all washed up.  I am highly skilled at what I do and fairly well educated and able, but I cannot seem to get business going again or to get an actual job even though I have spent the last 2 years and much money training to teach. I find my faith, which has sustained me throughout my adult life, is failing me. 

I say my faith is failing me in this sense.  I have reached the point in life when one would expect the bread cast upon the waters would have had time to come back to me.  While in many ways it has, far more than I deserve, there have been disappointments and dreams that remain unfulfilled, and still unanswered prayers after seemingly interminable knocking at the door, and I can scarcely say to others "take the path that I have taken, believe in miracles, risk everything to do what is right, Jesus is the Christ, you must know him".  It seems that most who lived practically, who sought material gain over all else, who put God on the back burner, live more comfortably and securely than I do and even often have more moral authority and respect.  There is no evidence of God, but it was never about evidence, it was always about faith.  What I, early on, believed had the most value: wisdom, knowledge, faith, insight, understanding, and sought with all my heart, I find, in my day to day existence to be almost irrelevant.  So it seems to be a two-pronged loss, I have neither worldly success or spiritual authority.  But I believe as absolutely as ever.

I have been working on a short story as part of a class I am taking to learn to teach writing to second language learners.  This is a paragraph from that story.

     Envolvió la mano con una camiseta de su mochila, y se tomó un trago largo del agua,  La  pena penetraba por su brazo y se sintió una ligereza envolverle. Su pulso se corría desenfrenado.  Sabía que tenía que alcanzar su coche estacionado al base de este colmo volcánico que él había decidido a subir hace unas semanas habiendo perdido su trabajo de los últimos quince años.  Desde su juventud quería regresar a esta región del desierto del Altar que por su gran dureza y soledad parecía ser el antídoto a la ansiedad y presión integrantes a la vida de la ciudad.  Mientras que pensaba en su hija Mara y como iba a castigarle por este nuevo más reciente aventura,  ahora, como las otras, fracasada.  Pero esta vez  sabía que ella tendría razón, sabía que estaba en verdadero peligro una hora del coche y al punto de desmayarse.