The Friction of Grains

On the consenting, injured tip
Of a madly colored though feeble crayon,
We began a game of chance
And the final days are upon us.
The cell doors are sprung,
the backs of the public buses all turned to beds
Each buzzing with the activity of honeysuckles and orchids and prickly pear
blossoms-
Beside streets paved with rancid butter and bean husks
Smaller than those that nourished us during winters and springs in not long past;
Our gardens plowed and gutted, roots and vines displayed as trophies for inspection
by arts councils, tallied by crooked pens.
And though the number of eggs hatched
Naturally corresponds with the number of those fertilized,
I keep my heart-sleeves fully extended despite the promises of absentee neighbors and
my eyes on the sweeping hand of father time.

The roof is, for the winter at least, finished.
It's a deeply satisfying realization that we don't have to worry about the drippy leaks or amount of heat pouring out into the dark nights.
It wasn't a simple labor, nor was the price in work, stress or money easy to take in the moment. If it weren't for friends and family who helped, it wouldn't be even a project finished, or for that matter, a thing began. Seriously. And that makes it even more gratifying. Besides, it's so nice to be warm and dry.
'Twas a cold morning. It got down to nine degrees Fahrenheit as the sun came up, so I thought I'd go out and reacquaint myself with the temperature of things to come. Moshe was happy about the turn of events; then again, he's always happy when I take him out and about.










He's been part of our family for almost ten years now. Just a big, half-blind old puppy, really.

I went to a nutriceutical presentation at the behest of a friend last night. It looks to me a good product with, perhaps, a huge potential for health and curative benefits. The friendly people who were there to present the product and ideas were certainly sold on the product, and while I was aware of the (in Utah) inevitability of some connection to multi-level marketing, I went to the presentation to find out a little more about the contents of the wee can. Again, I came away duly impressed with the quality and potential of the product, but I was surprisingly fascinated with watching the salespeople switch between heartfelt and amazing testimonials about the merchandise and ‘the tremendous and ground-level opportunity for growth and income potential in this group’.
In this case, it’s hard to not come away with some amount of interest in distributing the stuff, if for nothing else the ingredients and quality thereof. I’ll probably give it a try even though it’s fairly expensive to see if it can help a few of the things I’m trying to fix or stave off in the future. But Get Out There and Hustle It? Nah.
I have a deep and abiding desire to not sell things. I know all of the arguments of the salesman: “You sell yourself to your boss every day!” or “You might as well sell something you believe in to people you care about rather than being poor and miserable the rest of your life, think about the number of people you could help if you just had some more money from selling (insert product or service here).” Then there’re those more personally directed, “You sell yourself and English to your students every day!” EVERYONE’S a salesman, no? It doesn’t really work for me.
The money from this fine medicine will circulate many times over after the sale is completed. The financial pyramid will ascend to the sky (or at least to the peak of the mansion on the roof of some numbers-oriented person in Utah Valley) and the money will swirl and work its transformative magic, but I really don’t see much in the way of real benefit in it for me. We have what we have and will rely on my own lame ability to provide a teacher’s service or product to those who can see the merits of my person or manner in exchange for paltry sums and lame excuses for the lack of more offered. If I have something that I’ve specifically done or made, I might sell that, but something that seventy other people ‘above’ me have sold and will profit from through a well-oiled, slippery multi-level hype machine? I just can’t bring myself to get enthusiastic about it, no matter how truly quality the people making the pitch are.
Perhaps I’ll miss the boat on this again. I’ve done that many times over for varying reasons. At least I’ll survive a little longer with my ideals and principals intact, and I’ll live another day to search out that little thing that might connect me more closely with God and others who might be willing to cooperate in making my family and the community more livable and perhaps more happy from day to day.

Heavan.
The closest I may ever come to that halcyon and much vaunted ideal is my wife, Drie. She is an angel; a person who sees the world through eyes that see well. Much of what she does is for higher purposes, and what she works for and achieves is designed expressly for durability and the soul's prosperity. She listens to other's dreams and contemplates distances, points and dimensions that might fulfill them.
I woke early this morning; perhaps I sensed the light of the yellowed gibbous moon as it sank toward the conglomerate range to the west of our high desert valley. I must have dreamed in the manner that I walked yesterday; my mood turbid and shifting between melancholy and choler. Yesterday morning,I received an invitation to join an online petition to impeach 'Barack Hussein Obama', with the usually unnecessary appellation 'Hussein' repeated within his name over and over in the piece like a depraved wizard's cursing incantation under the headings of angry looking, pixilated screengrabs from video of Obama. The website described the 'high crimes and misdemeanors' committed by the sitting president and other, as a vitriolic conservative pundit called, acts of "malevolence toward this country, which is unabated."
Malevolence. Synonyms would include hate, maliciousness, spite, spitefulness, grudge, and venom. Unabated. 'With undiminished force, power or vigor.' Them there are strong and fighting words, folks.
I would argue, and without much in the way of need to present empirical, specific evidence, that those words do not fit, in any way, the situation as it stands. Such words simply stir strong emotions, especially those of people who are frightened or experiencing hardship because of events and situations beyond their control or comprehensions. People who do love their country, right or wrong, hot or cold and have done much in their estimation to preserve or promote what they see as her freedoms or purposes.
That's the purpose of these manipulating and in my view, evil-purposed individuals.
Yeah. Evil. I said it. But did I say 'evil individuals'?
There is a difference between purpose and the individual. As human beings, We naturally seek an equilibrium where we are the center of the universe, where we feel the ground solidly beneath us, where we are solid, central and stable. I do not fault these people for promoting what they might rightfully see as a status quo or dare I say, political correctness? I do strongly condemn their tendency to twist words, situations and ideas to portray what they wish to project on the minds of those who want, in their minds, what's best for this nation.
I am no fan of Barack Obama. I was no fan of George W. Bush. I voted for neither of the two main candidates in last year's latest folly of an election. But what is happening right now is the continuation of a process that will tear this country to shreds when there are ravening beasts circling the fold of this country. Whether those who would destroy seek to do so politically, economically, socially or militarily, I do not know, but all are possible in the current global environment. These who sow such twisted propaganda and vitriol as are on this impeachment site are contributing to what they least desire.
The end of America.
I can go at length into what I see as distortions of fact or principal within the arguments I read on the site and have heard from the mouths of dear friends, but suffice to say, they are emotional distortions that have rational explanations. Even if I don't agree with execution or reason, I can see reasonable and political rationale for most anything presented by the conservative opposition.
I don't like the direction that this country is headed. I haven't liked the way the country is headed since I was a youth. I saw the inevitable end of each stock market gamble and real estate speculation that's come around the bend for some years now. Am I claiming some sort of occulted knowledge or metaphysical seership? Certainly not, I only know when people are getting gain to the determent of their neighbor, making money from nothing or building on a foundation of financial dust. I understand the basics of 'capitalism' and know that no value or principled service or product is being produced by the current American economy, and that most of us are grasping at worse than straws to find stability and security in the current financial market that has been handed to us as salvation both temporal and cultural.
If the situation is dire, or the enemies within, why is it so difficult to surmise that the threat might come from both sides of the political fence, and that threat might not be 'malevolent' necessarily, but simply terribly misguided, as I see this ridiculous impeachment movement is?
What will happen if we keep thinking and acting in this vein, where our neighbor is seen as the enemy or another to simply soak money from?
I have to surmise that this is one of the most influential ways that we have we turned this supposedly enlightened world's direction toward such an inhospitable political and social hell.
And one hell of a hell it will become, if we keep on like this.

“You ought to take Asher up to see the leaves,” Drie mentioned one day a couple of weeks ago, "the boy is really enjoying the transition and looking forward to winter. He knows his birthday can't be far behind." We were well into the project of putting a new roof on the house and the process of playing catch-up in getting ready for the winter that approaches. Yeah, the predictable happened. The colors came and went for the most part before I was able to take the youngest boy out to see a few of the leaves before the bulk came down in the last couple of storms that came through. I saw it coming, and I wasn’t able to prevent it.
Did I have some time to put into the deed? Yep. Could I have made it happen? Sure. I remember thinking about it a couple of times, once when I was out on a project to get some stupid errands finished and another when I decided to instead get some work done on the computer that could have waited until the evening. I remember the two instances and the errors in logic that developed, and I remember them clearly. The roof was too important and the worry it created, right or wrong, made it hard to carve out a place for some of the pleasures and duties that I usually carry out during this season.
Others, like a whirlwind trip to Yellowstone, followed its well-worn course almost out of a force of habit. Or perhaps it took priority out of the terror that I experience in facing the frozen and wintery near future at the doorstep. Even the (still) unfinished roof couldn't eclipse the (perceived) import of the Yellowstone trip.
Ah, habits, fear, and fleeting perspective. Let's not forget the allure of beauty, either.
I have many like situations in my life; as a teacher, a friend, a husband and as a father. So many needs and so many dependents counting on me or what I do; I sometimes don’t understand where the time, energy or ability to make conscious and considered decisions that will have the best effect on the most important people in my world. At other times I understand the line of thought well. The expediencies and immediate emotions carve deep ruts and reactions that far outweigh the lasting perspectives that endure.
The reasons and philosophies behind my actions would fill a book. A confusing and convoluted volume indeed, but a book nevertheless. Each of us have a novel inside of us, or so the philosophers and publishers say; I believe it as I watch my children and students wrestle with the ideas and information swirling about them. They are building the ramparts of their minds right now, carving doors and windows to the beauties and stimulants that surround them, and creating the keys that will give access to those openings. A person’s philosophies and prejudices become the defenses and bridges of the personality whether or not they are correct or good. This process would constitutes at least a book for each of us if recorded at a fraction of the time and thought it takes.
The world is a wide and wild place. The stories that live and lurk inside our hearts can only illuminate our world if we give them the air and breath of voice. And only with that voice can we understand ourselves, both our strengths and follies, and perhaps it can allow others to understand the reasons for our collective and individual ways.

Pulled out of the Spring City Council race. Maybe I'll give it another whirl in another four years.
Maybe not...

'Round Cooke, they have some odd perceptions of the tourists. Here, they're depicted as outsized hamburgers, betopped with white Stetsons while reclining on beds.
Lots of luck to be had here, as well.