"Easy Like Sunday Morning"

Bloggy-

It's been a short night. I went to bed at midnight (hacking and coughing and whatnot) and I slept pretty well (I made have had a little help) until about 3:00 am when I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep. For the most part, the coughing has subsided, but I got some quality time in with God about things. That probably took up less than an hour though. So here it is, 5:46 in the morning, and I'm left writing to you.

As part of said conversation with the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth and a lot of reflection after, I had a moment of clarity or two. I guess the big one surrounds this whole singleness issues. Maybe not that, more like my issue with commitment and me and everything that's involved with that. I've come to realize that I am so very afraid of rejection that I only think about asking out gals who if they were to reject me (which they won't since I won't actually ask them out), it's of no real consequence. I know where this comes from and it's weird for me to own up to what could be mildy labled as my my 'mother wound' and my 'Melissa wound.' I'm generally terrified of women - my mom today that all of my friends love is not the same woman who was my mother for the first 20 years of my life. There's...well...there's a lot there. She's a good person now (I'm not going to lie, I was going to put woman there, but in a post that's headed down the road of dating, I really don't want to refer to my my mom as a woman...weird, I know), but she wasn't always. And then there's the Melissa incident. Oh, I could talk about that for hours, but to keep it short, honestly, she was the first woman (see) I was ever in love with. I don't mean like, hey, I'm in High School and really like you, but in the realest possible sense that I could love someone. I remember the day that I realized, hey, this is freaking Melissa and telling a couple of my friends - they all gave me this look like I was an idiot and one of them even said "You didn't know? How the hell could you not know? We all knew that you loved her!" Anyway, I also remember the worst night of my life, where, oddly enough, it was a one-two combination of the infulences of these two women that put in front of me the option to really shut down that part of my life for almost five years (oh, by the way, I took that option and here I am!).

So why all of this meandering? Why all of this talk? Because 1) that's all I talk about on here and 2) things about my choices are starting to make sense to me. Like the whole eHarmony thing - all of those women could (and eventually did) say no and reject me for a variety of reasons (let's be honest, I'm 23, have a huge beard, am not the thinnest man, am slightly arrogant, watch cartoons made for children, am only a technical virgin -which is no virgin at all - and am a youth pastor - who's all that surprised?) and there wouldn't be much of an emotional toll. I'd actually've been really wondering what to do if someone had been interested in me. I put myself in a place to be rejected (I'll show you a soon to happen example shortly) because, in a really self-destructive and sick way, I'm the most comfortable there...it's an additiction really.

I remember the three times that I made a move out of this towards something better. I'll give you a single guess as to how those attempts worked out. The first gal got five or six months in and let it all go (and to be honest, as I was still recovering from the night I probably wasn't helping any). The second gal, well, I'm not sure at what moment she decided that she wasn't in to me, but I got a letter on a Tuesday that casually mentioned that she didn't want to date me. And the third gal was the last one where I put the idea of commitment out there, which she flatly rejected. All three of them - married. (By the way, every girl I've ever dated is married, this even includes most of the girls I 'went out' with in middle school!)

Anyway, even now as I think back on my last few months of posting, I shoot low or for people I can easily escape from or from whom if they did say no, not much is lost. Because, in this whole post-Melissa landscape (by the way, I love Melissa. No longer in the hand holding hugging kissing sort of way, but I dearly love her as my friend. We talk all the time and I'm not bitter towards her - she's just a landmark person in my life), there's only really one gal who I can say without a doubt would knock Melissa off her pedastool. Hmmmm...we'll call her...Diana (not her real name...I don't know that I know any Diana's right now anyhow!).

SO she doesn't live around here anymore, which generally makes me suspect of the whole thing because, as mentioned above, it's easy to escape from. But that notwithstanding, here we go. I knew of her for about a year of college and knew her my junior and legitimate senior year. We still talk at least two or three times a month - and she's still single. Which is really hard to believe. Like really hard. Moving along, I have admitted to a friend or two in confidence that I would move to...well...wherever she is east of the ole miss (1. I know where she lives and 2. I say ole' miss cause I can't spell...that state/river) with little hesitation if she were slightly interested in me (after my eventual graduation from college which should happen this august) and not think twice about it. That's where my first big tip off came. Anyhow, she's a poet, funny, a little nutty, and probably a bit smarter than me. So I was thinking about how one would mention these feelings because I think it's time for me to finally grow up and take a risk because, heck, things aren't working for me as they are (by the way, this is all 6:20 am bluster - by this afternoon, I'll have sobered my judgements earnestly and heavily reconsidered and realized that this all foolishiness, but play along with me bloggy!). So imagined (as any good person with an overactive imagination that can't sleep would) how the conversation would go. I wrote earlier that I would demonstrate how I put myself in place to be rejected, and here we go! Imagine, if you will, this all midconversation and generally light hearted and hahahaha(and by the way, she doesn't even know I have a blog, so this isn't a half hearted tounge in cheek thing):

Me: So, here's the question we have to get to as Taylorites, Ms. Diana, are you married yet?
Her: Oh you know, John...sooo many options that I haven't really picked one yet
Me: For sure, for sure. But seriously?
Her: No, not married. Not really dating anyone. It's been kind of hard getting to know people here and I just think I'm going to wait until after I'm back from teaching [ESL overseas]
Me: You always say that!
Her: I always mean it! There's just no point, you know, in starting something when I'm just going to move off to Taiwan or Indonesia or Swaziland. You know?
Me: I guess...I see that...[and this is where the conversation will realistically break off, but let's pretend for a moment that I grew a pair of testicles in the next few days]...but, can I be fer serious for a second?
Her: Oh no! Serious! Why would you do such a thing? And yes.
Me: Diana, you're a friend of mine. Probably one of the top tier friends, so feel honored and whatnot, so take this however you will [see the avoidance and escape language? Brilliant!]. You're beautiful and you're wonderful. I've known you, what, five years? I think you're...well...there've been one too many lines written by one too many song writers in the past few generations to describe how pretty you are, so I'll let that one be. But you're beautiful through and through and through [insert all thos positive emotional, spritiual and other qualities blah blah blah]...if you were interested in me, and I'm not saying that I think you are or should be or whatever, [again, see the hypothetical nature of the langauge? See how clumsily it comes close to flirting and sending a message, but it really doesn't?] but if you were I know that there'd be no question in my getting a passport and going to Beijing to...well...do whatever while you pass on some mad english skills [see the Hollywood and New York and Ontario influenced romance language from the chick flick genre? But back off, this is my imaginiative conversaton!]. I'm just your friend, and I can't imagine that there aren't a few guys who would jump at the opportunity. I guess...I guess I'm rambling and not making a whole lot of sense, but I think that you're using a silly excuse not to look around and not to date. But hey, what do I know? I'm still in the extended adolescence of college.
Her: Oh. Hmm. Well. Thanks? Hey, you know that project I was talking about earlier, I think I'm going to go work on that now. It was great talking to you and all, but I'll talk to you later, yeah?
Me: Yeah! Swell! It's awesome that we're friends!
Her: Yep. Friends. Good solid friends. By friend!

So there you go...my lame imagination ends with me being rejected - it's like I can't even see a world where that doesn't happen! Anyway, it's 6:41, which means that I've been thinking about this way too long. And I've already talked myself out of having that lameo convo with her, but here's the point; I now know that I'm intentionally setting my sights low and trying to settle but trying to fail at settling, so doesn't that balance itself all out? The answer? Not at all. But now that I know I'm sick and really looked at how it's affected me, shouldn't that help me fix it? Probably not. Not until I'm thin and pretty. That'll pretty much fix everything (he says not being all that sarcastic). Seriously though, (and I was being more than a little serious in that last comment) I know what I need to work on. If I ever want to get married, have kids, and experience marital style intimacy, I've got to fix this. May Grace cover this.

"What the world needs now..."

Bloggy-

So today I have a final. Guess who hasn't studied? That's right, me. And what am I doing? Blogging (something I've done with regular inconsistency since September), so we know where I stand on the whole studying issue. Anyway, I've got an ethical issue that I'm sorting out. And it's this kind of ethical dilemma (?) that will bar me from hiring a single youth pastor if, God forbid, I become a real pastor. I'm not attracted to a student or former student (just to clear that up for everyone), so it's nothing like that. I just - what's the wisdom of asking out one of your adult sponsors? Probably not very. Especially if she seems the type who doesn't date all that much. She's much quieter than I am - that's for sure. I'm not even positive why (by the way, I am studying right now as I blog...yay...) I'm attracted to her. She's very sweet, very kind, she connects well with students - - - I think she's funny. But heck, I think this about a ton of people. And to prove my shallowness as a man, yes, she is very pretty. I don't know. The best way to solve this quandary is by dating lot's of women who aren't her and aren't volunteers in my youth group. First, that'll prove my manly prowess and virility (right?) and show that I shouldn't date someone who is much quieter than I am because I would just dominate them in conversation and everything else. Okay, so in that last sentence, I just ran the course of the 'what if' and it seems like a good decision to not ever date for any reason. Awesome.

Okay, maybe that was a bit over the top. But seriously. I won't be asking her out. Yes. That realization came to me as I typed. Why won't I? Basic reasoning - it would be amazingly awkward if she said no. Second, that would totally be an abuse of authority for me to do so. Third, it'd raise (unwarranted) suspicions as to why I ask any woman to help out with the youth group. Fourth, I fear rejection. Fifth, she's way younger than I am (did I mention she's a freshman?). Sixth, if she says yes and then we do date and things click really well, then the other women (and possibly men) would feel threatened by her continued presence. Seventh, picking up on the last point, my relationship past is dotted with breakups (hence singless now...logic! It's so wonderful!), so if that trend continues (and someday I hope it'll break) what happens to the students when we break up? You see how smart I am? Very. Eighth, asking her out would be a tactic admission of either a)laziness b) lack of options or c) lack of creativity, because I mean, seriously, she's one of only six or seven collegiate women I see on a regular basis.

Wow. I'm amazing. I didn't even need you bloggy. Okay, so I did, but only to process. For a long string of one's and zero's you're a great listener. I'm the man. That's right, I Da Man!

"Why Can't We All Just Get Along"

Bloggy-

I was stopped by the cops last night. Yeah. That's right. the 5-0. I was minding my own business as a law abiding citizen who was walking his dog and out of nowhere there's a cop a following me. It's true, I did just walk two of my students back to one of their homes (it was cold and dark and Hartford is a dangerous town). So that might have been sketch for someone who didn't know me. So he stops me. Asks me what I'm doing (it was a little obvious...walking my dog). He asks for I.D.. Tells me why he stopped me (Blacks aren't allowed in this part of town...j.k.! 'someone' was 'walking their dog' and messed with some 'boxes'.). My name gets radioed in. Great. And then he lets me go. He was nice enough. He didn't beat me. Or taser me. Or mace me. He feared Josiah.

Dr. J.

Bloggy-

So it's been forever since I checked in last and let you know what was going on in my life and we did a little processing, so this may be short, it may be long or it just may be...itself. We'll see.

Anyhow, on the relationship front, I finished the fight in Halo 3. I know - sounds ridiculous, but seriously, it's freaking Halo 3! And what gamer doesn't fall a little in love with Cortona? Or at least want to make sure she's okay? If you don't, then I don't think you deserve to play the game. So I went over to John C. Wengatz and played with a bunch of the guys on the floor for about a total of seven hours and I was amazed at the graphics, the game play, and most importantly, the story. Halo the series, as much of an action game as it is, actually has a very compelling narrative before - I don't think it'll go down in the annuls of history as on par with "The Great Gadsby", "The Divine Comedy" or "The Song of Roland", but it's better than most video games that I've heard of or played. Anyway, I could go on about the Master Chief for awhile, but I won't. Let's just say that the game is amazing.

In other news, well...let's see...I don't have a lot of other news. Let me assure that my life has been pretty boring. Youth group is going pretty well for High School and Middle School and that's kept me pretty busy. Hmmm...that about covers it yo.

Alright, I'm out.

Dr. J

Bloggy-

I don't even have time to blog today! But it's been so long. Updates - in class, single, working long hours and another cancelled event. Okay - whew! I need to slow things down a mite!

Dr. J

"Shiny"

Bloggy-

I'm stoked - a friend of mine is going to let me learn some youth min stuff from her, and that's pretty awesome. Beyond that, I think after talking with the boss man, I've got a rough idea of a plan for the semester. Hopefully. Okay. Work.

Dr. J.

"I Saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness..."

Bloggy-

My heart comes to you heavy...Allen Ginsberg once wrote "I'm with you in Rockland where you scream in a straightjacket that you're losing the game of the actual pingpong of the abyss" - I guess it makes more sense if you've read more Ginsberg. But here's the thing...I'm with her in Rockland where she screams in an open room void of meaning and banging demanding an answer to a question that shouldn't be asked. The world is an evil place - beauty is often destroyed in her fragility because of the violence of the human fingerprint.

God, do something!
Justice. JUSTICE.
That's what You promised,
now show up please!
It's a sure thing that Your faithful,
and that's we go on.
When we're down, when we're out,
You'll show up, Glory bound King-of-Angel-Armies.
So God, Justice.
Compassion.
Mercy.
That's what we beg for.

For the moment, I'm without words, so Bloggy, let me leave you with Allen's Poem Howl (from http://members.tripod.com/~Sprayberry/poems/howl.txt):::

HOWL

For Carl Solomon

I

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
ery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene-
ment roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
publishing obscene odes on the windows of the
skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burn-
ing their money in wastebaskets and listening
to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through
Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in
Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their
torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, al-
cohol and cock and endless balls,
incomparable blind; streets of shuddering cloud and
lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of
Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the mo-
tionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery
dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops,
storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon
blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree
vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brook-
lyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,
who chained themselves to subways for the endless
ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine
until the noise of wheels and children brought
them down shuddering mouth-wracked and
battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance
in the drear light of Zoo,
who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's
floated out and sat through the stale beer after
noon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack
of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to
pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brook-
lyn Bridge,
lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping
down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills
off Empire State out of the moon,
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts
and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks
and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,
whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days
and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the
Synagogue cast on the pavement,
who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a
trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic
City Hall,
suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grind-
ings and migraines of China under junk-with-
drawal in Newark's bleak furnished room,
who wandered around and around at midnight in the
railroad yard wondering where to go, and went,
leaving no broken hearts,
who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing
through snow toward lonesome farms in grand-
father night,
who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telep-
athy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos in-
stinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,
who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking vis-
ionary indian angels who were visionary indian
angels,
who thought they were only mad when Baltimore
gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,
who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Okla-
homa on the impulse of winter midnight street
light smalltown rain,
who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston
seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the
brilliant Spaniard to converse about America
and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship
to Africa,
who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving
behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees
and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fire
place Chicago,
who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the
F.B.I. in beards and shorts with big pacifist
eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incom-
prehensible leaflets,
who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting
the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism,
who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union
Square weeping and undressing while the sirens
of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed
down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also
wailed,
who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked
and trembling before the machinery of other
skeletons,
who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight
in policecars for committing no crime but their
own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication,
who howled on their knees in the subway and were
dragged off the roof waving genitals and manu-
scripts,
who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly
motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,
who blew and were blown by those human seraphim,
the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean
love,
who balled in the morning in the evenings in rose
gardens and the grass of public parks and
cemeteries scattering their semen freely to
whomever come who may,
who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up
with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath
when the blond & naked angel came to pierce
them with a sword,
who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate
the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar
the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb
and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but
sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden
threads of the craftsman's loom,
who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of
beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a can-
dle and fell off the bed, and continued along
the floor and down the hall and ended fainting
on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and
come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,
who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling
in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning
but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sun
rise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked
in the lake,
who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad
stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these
poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver-joy
to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls
in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses'
rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with
gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely pet-
ticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station
solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,
who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in
dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and
picked themselves up out of basements hung
over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third
Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemploy-
ment offices,
who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on
the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the
East River to open to a room full of steamheat
and opium,
who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment
cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime
blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall
be crowned with laurel in oblivion,
who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested
the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of
Bowery,
who wept at the romance of the streets with their
pushcarts full of onions and bad music,
who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the
bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in
their lofts,
who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned
with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded
by orange crates of theology,
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty
incantations which in the yellow morning were
stanzas of gibberish,
who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht
& tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable
kingdom,
who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for
an egg,
who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot
for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks
fell on their heads every day for the next decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccess-
fully, gave up and were forced to open antique
stores where they thought they were growing
old and cried,
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits
on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse
& the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments
of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the
fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinis-
ter intelligent editors, or were run down by the
drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually hap-
pened and walked away unknown and forgotten
into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alley
ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,
who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of
the subway window, jumped in the filthy Pas-
saic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street,
danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed
phonograph records of nostalgic European
1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and
threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans
in their ears and the blast of colossal steam
whistles,
who barreled down the highways of the past journeying
to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude
watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation,
who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out
if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had
a vision to find out Eternity,
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who
came back to Denver & waited in vain, who
watched over Denver & brooded & loned in
Denver and finally went away to find out the
Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,
who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying
for each other's salvation and light and breasts,
until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,
who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for
impossible criminals with golden heads and the
charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet
blues to Alcatraz,
who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky
Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys
or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or
Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the
daisychain or grave,
who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hyp
notism & were left with their insanity & their
hands & a hung jury,
who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism
and subsequently presented themselves on the
granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads
and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding in-
stantaneous lobotomy,
and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin
Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psycho-
therapy occupational therapy pingpong &
amnesia,
who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic
pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia,
returning years later truly bald except for a wig of
blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible mad
man doom of the wards of the madtowns of the
East,
Pilgrim State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid
halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rock-
ing and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench
dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a night-
mare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the
moon,
with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book
flung out of the tenement window, and the last
door closed at 4. A.M. and the last telephone
slammed at the wall in reply and the last fur-
nished room emptied down to the last piece of
mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted
on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that
imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of
hallucination
ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and
now you're really in the total animal soup of
time
and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed
with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use
of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrat-
ing plane,
who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space
through images juxtaposed, and trapped the
archangel of the soul between 2 visual images
and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun
and dash of consciousness together jumping
with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna
Deus
to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human
prose and stand before you speechless and intel-
ligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet con-
fessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm
of thought in his naked and endless head,
the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown,
yet putting down here what might be left to say
in time come after death,
and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in
the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the
suffering of America's naked mind for love into
an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone
cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio
with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered
out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand
years.

II

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open
their skulls and ate up their brains and imagi-
nation?
Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unob
tainable dollars! Children screaming under the
stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men
weeping in the parks!
Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the
loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy
judger of men!
Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the
crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of
sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment!
Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stun-
ned governments!
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose
blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers
are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a canni-
bal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking
tomb!
Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows!
Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long
streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose fac-
tories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose
smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!
Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch
whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch
whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch
whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen!
Moloch whose name is the Mind!
Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream
Angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in
Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!
Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom
I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch
who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy!
Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch!
Light streaming out of the sky!
Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs!
skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic
industries! spectral nations! invincible mad
houses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!
They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pave-
ments, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to
Heaven which exists and is everywhere about
us!
Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies!
gone down the American river!
Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole
boatload of sensitive bullshit!
Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions!
gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! De-
spairs! Ten years' animal screams and suicides!
Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on
the rocks of Time!
Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the
wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell!
They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving!
carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the
street!

III

Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland
where you're madder than I am
I'm with you in Rockland
where you must feel very strange
I'm with you in Rockland
where you imitate the shade of my mother
I'm with you in Rockland
where you've murdered your twelve secretaries
I'm with you in Rockland
where you laugh at this invisible humor
I'm with you in Rockland
where we are great writers on the same dreadful
typewriter
I'm with you in Rockland
where your condition has become serious and
is reported on the radio
I'm with you in Rockland
where the faculties of the skull no longer admit
the worms of the senses
I'm with you in Rockland
where you drink the tea of the breasts of the
spinsters of Utica
I'm with you in Rockland
where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the
harpies of the Bronx
I'm with you in Rockland
where you scream in a straightjacket that you're
losing the game of the actual pingpong of the
abyss
I'm with you in Rockland
where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul
is innocent and immortal it should never die
ungodly in an armed madhouse
I'm with you in Rockland
where fifty more shocks will never return your
soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a
cross in the void
I'm with you in Rockland
where you accuse your doctors of insanity and
plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the
fascist national Golgotha
I'm with you in Rockland
where you will split the heavens of Long Island
and resurrect your living human Jesus from the
superhuman tomb
I'm with you in Rockland
where there are twenty-five-thousand mad com-
rades all together singing the final stanzas of the Internationale
I'm with you in Rockland
where we hug and kiss the United States under
our bedsheets the United States that coughs all
night and won't let us sleep
I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls col-
lapse O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're
free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night
***End***
I'm with Her in Rockland,
I'm with Her in Rockland

"Rescue is comming..."

Bloggy-

Okay, it's time to play some catch up because I've got a lot on my heart and mind and you just need to sit back and get ready to read kid! Anyway, we'll start with Tim's wedding - he's married! It was a great wedding, it was outside (and sooooooooo hot!) and Erin was beautiful. I didn't cry...well maybe I did, but the sweat covered it up pretty well (gross!). The wedding was in Ft. Wayne at a park - and that was just super. I got to see three of my best friends from High School, and that's always good. The best and weirdest part comes with one of the wedding guests in particular. Bloggy, think hard, back to the awkwardness of "Drinks with the ex-", now imagine that quadrupled and then add her husband into the mix. Okay, well, not put that at a wedding where I went by dateless. Okie dokie - but here's the deal, it was good to see them both. I enjoyed getting to catch up with Matt and here how his whole career is going; it was good (but really weird) to dance with Sara (her idea, not mine - okay, so that was REALLY STRANGE, but I learned something from Matt during that whole thing - once you're married, it becomes about trust. Jolly good job Matt). Anyway, so yeah. Weirdness, but weirdness that grows.

So I came home from the wedding the next day (Sunday) - I was supposed to be at church by 9:00 am to help downstairs, but had alarm problems and wound up leaving at 9:10 am or so and made it to the church by 9:47 am. Yeah. I'll let you do the math on that one, but let's just say if I'd gotten pulled over I was going to jail. So the afternoon at church went alright - hung out and went to a cookout. It was awkward. Really, really awkward. Not in the growing way, but in the awkward way. I don't even know where to begin there. But, moving right along, I met later that night in C-bus with a friend and we had coffee of sorts and talked and hung out and as I sat across from her, a conversation that two separate people on two separate occasions came to me - so I kept things in the happier realm where no one would have to think. That's the American Way!

Wow, let's just skip most of the week with this description: Meetings, stress, overworked, confused, blah. But bloggy, I've got a new friend that I've been worried about and haven't told her yet. I don't know her well, I don't see her often, and we don't talk on the phone ever, and we probably don't agree on an issue or two, but she's beautiful and wonderful and been an encouragement and a rescuer to me and she's sad now - I know that sounds very 1st grader, but sometimes that's the best way to express your soul. Oh bloggy - sorrow has overwhelmed her shores, and darkness hedges her in as though light were about to be extinguished and the ground she walks upon is ablaze in apathetic regard to her, but I pray that somehow, someway, she would see God.

Well, I need to work some more - I'm reading background material on...well...it's Thomas Aquinas and it's just good to read to be able to answer questions that my kiddies ask. Take her easy bloggy.

Dr. J

"I can't lie, I sometimes cry, when I think of how it used to be..."

Bloggy-

Recently, I've spent a lot of time thinking about relationships because my best friend is getting married this weekend, and I know how you love to hear my rants about relationships, but this one is going to be short(er)...I wonder, have I missed her? There've been one or two gals in the past few years that have had an interest in me, but for whatever reason (usually timing or some other dumb reason), I've said I'm not interested, and now I'm looking back and just thinking, man, whatif? What if I missed something really good? The two that spring to mind are beautiful women with great personalities and everything - so yeah...anyway...at this point, it's probably too late to even start talking about this with anyone about that, but that's what I've been thinking about. Okay, it's time to go back to work.

Dr. J

"Came down like fire from heaven"

Bloggy-

I wonder if anyone could identify all the random film/musical/literary quotes that I use to title you? Anyway, I gave the message at Grace and NCW today, and it went pretty well. We talked about Psalm 51 and 2 Corinthians 5 - I think the delivery was better at NCW (I was able to wear jeans with holes and my 1Life T-shirt) because I had time and didn't feel rushed by having to cram a bunch of stuff in. Anyhoo, I'm tired. My mom came up and we had lunch with two families from church, which leads to an interesting conversation I had with interesting consequences. One of hte families that came over for lunch works with kids at Riley Hospital who have cancer, and one of the families that they help has a dying daughter. Long story short, she was getting better, then got worse, she will die in the next month and then her family goes back to Kenya without her in her body. So tommorow I'm going to go to Indy and counsel this family on matters of death, talk to this little girl and prep her for eternity. Let me say, Bloggy, if you were ever considering stopping being a cyber entity and move into youth ministry, remember you'll tell a little girl she's going to die because she asked to see you. And then remember that you're going to tell her mom that her daughter is going to die and what that means. And remember, Bloggy, that death is always an enemy as much as we try to church it up - it sucks. Very much. Anyway, I'm sitting at Payne's realizing today would have been a glorious day to crawl up on a couch with my girlfriend and watch some chick flick that I secretly wanted to watch - and then I realized as I was reading the Zombie Survival Guide that she didn't exist. I hate rainy afternoons because I love them so much.

My room is almost clean. Almost. And I think that it's almost time for me to urinate. A lot. Like a drunk. Hmmm...a coffee drunk though. Anyway, have a great night kid.

Dr. J

"They have the most beautiful girls in Des Moines..."

So that quote is from On the Road by Jack Kerouac, and it fits with these videos taken when I was working at Ogilville - it's with some guys from my youth group when I took them to Taylor for a college visit. Enjoy...

"Thanks for the memories, even if they weren't so great..."

Dear Bloggy-

I write you a sad note today - at least the beginning of it will be. I went camping with students this weekend and it didn't go so well. In fact, I brought them home early because of their behaviour. It hurts and pisses me off and saddens me and all sorts of things that I had to do this, but I didn't have many other options. Here's the low down - I spent last week running around trying to get everything together for this trip and the students were pretty excited about it and I was busting balls to get everything ready and right. It was going to be sweet - one night at my 'rents house, two days, one night camping (switched from camping and canoeing do to storm predictions), then party two nights with a youth group (for awhile at SpringHill South). Pretty awesome, right? Well, my kiddies got here, got in the van and were fine until Friday around 10:00 am when they started fighting. Not normal stuff, but fighting about EVERYTHING and being very rude and to each other and to the other adult and to myself. Then the rain started and we were stuck in a shelter house most of the evening - not the ideal, but I figure, hey, we can play some games, eat some food and just generally have a good time, right? How wrong was I - people often tell me I'm wrong when I make statements like "I'm the worst youth pastor ever"...and they're probably right, I don't assault students, but as far as being good at what I do, probably not true. Anyhow, my kids avoid me in a shelter house for a good couple of hours even when I try to get them to come over and do stuff (Jenga, would you rather, Ninja/Bono tag, big king monkey, etc.) with me and when I have to tell them to stop fighting. 'Round about 7:00 PM I told them they'd have to cut it out or we'd go back home, and they seemed to understand that this was a legitimate statement. Enter the next morning (after more fighting and arguing), we pack up and head back to the church. Yeah. No so sweet.

The personal aftermath for me leaves questions of whether or not this is a total indictment of my ability to be with students? If I've been here a year and I haven't been able to impact students thus far, what's the point? Is it really a wise choice in my spiritual journey to stay here much longer? Am I going to get fired? Have I lost whatever trust I had with parents, staff members and students? Should I leave? I've never heard of another youth pastor ever having to do something like this - so obviously of my circle of friends, there's something wrong with me, right? Listen Bloggy, I know you don't have the answers to this, and I don't expect you to, but there some of them are.

On other fronts, I went back to Ogilville this weekend and went to church there - that was good. I miss those people so very much. I hung out with some of the students I had there - in fact, I took them with me to Sprinhill because I wanted to still network with managers and whatnot there. It was a blast - I tried to bite my tongue off, but it was good...anyway...more on that later...I need to get to work.

Dr. J

"By the power vested in me by the state of Michigan and as Minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ..."

Dearest Bloggy-

Okay, so I'm sitting in a Michigan Coffee shop doing some writing now. Anyway, yesterday...yesterday started pretty early by heading North to Michigan. I'm way up in Whitehall, MI, which is about an hour north and west of Grand Rapids right on the lake - it's absolutely beautiful here! Anyway, the drive was pretty uneventful, got here a little early (hey, there's a first time for everything!), so I drove around town which is exactly what you would expect from a small, tourist driven, lakeside Michigan town - so I'm pretty much in love. Anne showed up with Chad, gave me a call and I met back up with them at the lodge, saw where the wedding is going to be (hopefully I'll be able to get pictures!) put my stuff in my room and started reconnecting with people I hadn't seen forever or ever met.

The rehearsal went really well - it's a pretty simple wedding without communion, singing, candles, flower girls, etc., so yeah. The bride and groom had a great time with it and it only took about 30 minutes (just a note - rehearsals for weddings shouldn't take longer than 45 minutes usually). After that we went to dinner at this restaurant about 30 minutes away from the lodge and it was SPECTACULAR!!! They had an open bar for us and the food was great. And it had the mark of a truly great restaurant - Guinness on Tap! 3 sizes - 12, 22, and 33 ounces! Guess which Guinness I had...anyway, the blackened salmon was great and then the peanut butter pie was almost sinful!

We went back, to the lodge, I went and smoked a stog on the beach with Jared and Brett and watched the sunset over the lake (Dear God, thank you for being an artist!). Some regulars who come every year came down to the beach and started a fire, and I hung out with them for about three hours - good people, they gave out beer like it was candy at a parade (I kept it at one - Killian's Irish)! It was a good group and got a lot of interesting conversation out of it...I never want to be a "Christian" who is uncomfortable with just people - I had a good time, shared a little truth and heard their lives. And got free beer. All things Jesus would enjoy. I think.

Anyway, now it's breakfast, blogging, coffee and then back to the lodge to review stuff, write the names in the book (sometimes you forget things when you get nervous!) and then another night of chillin!

Oh, and I might stop by my friends Matt and Nathalie tomorrow to hang out with them post church - it'll be a ball! And I'm going to Mars Hill for Church in the morning! ROCK FREAKING ON!!!

Queen...

And another one bites the dust...So I have yet another girl i dated who's engaged now! Rock on John!

No Smoking Near the Fireworks of my Life...okay, maybe you should...

Hey Bloggy-

I'm sitting in Columbus at my parents house waiting for my Mom to get home so we can do dinner. Anyway, let's see what's new. Not really a whole lot. Yesterday was the 4th of July and that was a blast (I'm sure no other blogger has made that joke yet) - as is tradition, I tried to kill myself with fireworks and barely escaped myself. At the Fogler's, it wasn't so bad - a couple of mortars, a few roman candles - it was at C.'s that it got crazy. I went over there after an afternoon with he and his brother's girlfriend and probably instigating the break up of he and his girlfriend (oh what an afternoon). Anyway, abotu blowing things up, they had single, double and tripple break shells and well, there was a lot of drinking that had been a fire right prior to my arrival, so it was one heck of a show. So we're launching these mortars into the sky five or six at a time and towards the end, the shells are so big and the tubes are so charred and hot that the shells start getting hung up in the tubes and that caused for...well...low altitude/ground bursts that made for an exciting evening. Afterwards, drove back to my 'rents and went to bed t o wake up early this morning to take Samantha (my car) into the shop. That was fun - $250 for a sensor.

In news of myself, I'm getting bored with my life. I guess - well, I don't think that I'm happy. But I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter if I'm happy - lot's of people in lot's of places haven't been happy and lived long and semi-productive lives. I'm not sure what's causing this whole insightful thinking of mine - mostly because I've done a lot driving, which leads to lots of thinking. Hmm...I guess - well being single, my job is going alright I guess, and just not having a whole lot of friends in the area. We'll see.

In other news, I think I'm going to get the internet/home phone/and cable soon. That'll be awesome. Yep. Then I can...waste my life more effectivley I guess. I think that'll probably cover me for now. On a sweet note, I did have a pretty sweet convo with a friend from Cali. Okay, now I'm done.

Dr. J