After my work is done I am going to start a blog about the need for peace in the middle east. It will be uncapitalized in solidarity with all those who ask, “east of what?” East of the Center of the Universe in Europe? Or maybe it will be a blog about the need for peace in Southwestern Asia. Or not. Maybe that implies an acceptance of war in nearby Western Asia, in places like Afghanistan, which need peace also, and maybe even more desperately right now.
Maybe my blog will be about the need for peace between humanity. Maybe it will talk about the need for an end to all fighting between people over the age of about five. We could leave a little bit of fighting in Kindergarten, so that kids learn why fighting is bad, and what it is that we need to maintain our precious grown-up peace for. Of course, if we made an international law against fighting between anyone six years or older, we’d only end up with five and a half year old professional boxers suing their parents for emancipation so can have ice cream for dinner and all the candy they want. And that's before someone at Fox or ESPN starts "letting" emancipated kids fight to the death.
So maybe instead my blog will call for peace between nations as an organic product of peace within nations. Speaking of organic, it will have a weekly column on better organic farming processes. It will talk about how much easier it is to grow healthy food when we do not cover it in poisons first, and it will refuse to call these upstart pesticide pushers “traditional farmers” as the military-industrial-journalistic establishment so willingly euphemizes their only-decades-old euthanization of the natural, traditional pollinators of so many of the best foods on earth.
It made headlines all over the world when half of our bees died. It made headlines again when someone thought cel phones might interfere with their navigation techniques. Cel phones still cause brain cancer and pesticides still kill insects without regard to whether they are necessary for the sex lives of the plants that we live on, but as these stories are not new, they are not news. They are just one more example of a number of sets of problems that we will not solve as long as we are more concerned with small green pieces of paper than with happiness, security or sustainability of life on earth.
Sustainability of life begins when we stop killing each other. That will be the central thesis of my journal on the need for peace in the middle east and wherever else there is war. Of course, as Bob Marley once quoted an even more famous person, “Until the philosophy that holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war.”
The situation in Israel and Palestine is an example of two different groups of people believing themselves to be of different, each-superior “races.” It is, of course, a scientifically unsupportable proposition, not only that they are each superior, but that they are separate in the first place, given the number of successful “interracial” couples.
In biology, a species is defined as a group of organisms that can interbreed and produce childbearing young. Jefferson’s children are still with us today as a testament to the absurdity of any attempt to separate humanity, stop its migrations or control the interaction of its various populations.
As long as Israelis and Palestinians insist on their fundamental difference from one another, they remain at war. As long as you or I believe that we are not Israeli or that we are not Palestinian, we are at war with ourselves. Mankind is one of the more intelligent and articulate forms of life on this planet. We have shown our ability to conquer this planet, to pick and choose those species we will share it with, to change the very nature of the creatures we consider our friends and supporters, using dangerous viruses to add a little extra protein to rice, all in the name of those small green pieces of paper.
With great power comes great responsibility. We cannot seek personal gain when human life is at stake. We cannot allow ourselves to fragment into factions, for any fraction of humanity is less powerful, less capable, less educable than the whole. When we find ourselves chasing pieces of paper, prices of eggs in China, large tracts of land—focusing on power and control—we are in a hole.
How do I propose we establish peace in the middle east? Obviously since I brought it up it is my job to solve it. Well, I don’t think we can resolve it by moving borders, by launching missiles or by killing off low-level paramilitary officials. I don’t think we can solve it by switching sides, changing partners, backing off of our commitments to back new attackers. I don’t think we can fix it by military action at all.
Actually, I can think of two reasonable solutions. The most obvious is to simply get every State in the region to sit down together and agree never to hurt each other’s people again. After that, they could set up a court of unbiased outsiders to resolve whatever other inconsequential property disputes these countries find so important that they have all joined together to break what they allegedly agree is God’s commandment to respect human life.
The more radical solution, and this will shock a lot of my more conservative friends in that it involves spending money together on something that doesn’t kill anybody, is to just move the two sides apart and build them all a bunch of new houses and monuments. The biggest could be a monument to peace between nations. Hopefully truly conservative people will be persuaded to adopt this approach when they realize that it saves money and saves lives compared to our current means of solving foreign political problems by developing trillion-dollar weapons systems, training trillion dollar armies and sending our children to places they've never heard of to become permanently traumatized mass murderers or else just to go die.
If we compared the economic and human costs of maintaining standing armies in every country, it must be astronomically higher than the cost of everybody working together to build some comfortable houses for each other. And while we’re at it, let’s give everybody a computer, a video camera and a fiber optic connection. One of the first tricks a parent or a pet owner learns to curb bad behavior is distraction. Plus, with enough communication, current adversaries may discover more common ground and more mutual attraction.
Mankind has already proven that we like to act “en loco parente” to serve as God of the vegetables, God of the honeybee, God of the polar bear and gun-toting God of the sad-eyed wolf puppy. We judge constantly. What we find pleasing, we allow to thrive. What any one of us finds displeasing, regardless of scientific evidence of its necessity to our planet or our livelihoods, we destroy. But this is not all that the God of our great stories does. We're doing only the painful half of the job. As little impersonators of Gods, is it not our responsibility to shower the lost people of the world with love and to feed them manna from above? How is it that instead we sell them guns?
Today, lost in the desert for so many more than forty years, it appears frustration, hatred and previous land claims are impossible for two wise peoples to forget. But let’s see if these drives are really so powerful that they can withstand YouTube, pornography and ChatRoulette.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
My Work
After my work is done I'm going to start a blog about working and trying to do what's right. Maybe that means it's a blog about metaphysics, but very few metaphysicians get past how things affect each other to really view the way that things ought to be. Perhaps, then, my blog will be pataphysical.
Perhaps it will be nothing but an endless series of violations of client confidentiality and unprofessional disclosures.
Perhaps it will be a look at the beauty of any fleeting moment when any two human beings accept each other, regardless of whether that acceptance is rooted in understanding each other's differences or mythologizing similarities to gloss them over.
Perhaps it will be about forgetting you're supposed to work overnight on a Friday night and getting text messages from your girlfrend about what she should wear for the evening, and writing back to say how much you want to see her. It will be about counting the minutes until the next shift arrives, and checking the schedule to see who is coming and what is taking them so long.
It will be about asking the new trainee, who has just asked a third time why you don't change your name to Ali, whether he can stay late to cover for you while you go buy groceries, so you can lay in enough sugar and caffeine to stay awake until eight in the morning.
It will be about teaching children and feeling responsible for their futures, and the future of the world. It will be about the lessons children have taught me, not just about teaching, but about life and about myself.
It will be about learning not to push kids' buttons. It will be about seeing that somtimes a nine year old can be the bigger man. It will be about the fine line between teaching and parenting, and the difficulty of telling a kid you cannot cross that line even after you've invested so much that the question makes you step outside in the rain, ostensibly to take out the trash.
It will be about helpig kids learn math. And Spanish, English, physics, civics, u.s. history and the mysteries of life. It will be about never again signing up to substitute teach a class on the mysteries of life.
My blog will be about raising up communities. It will be about Booker T. Washington's philosophies. The belief in freedom through education continues in my mind unbated, whatever anyone might have recently told my relatives would make them free. I'm starting with fresh bucket.
It will be about quick showers and even quicker shirt and tie choices to make it through the traffic light timers and the rush hour and the Sunday drivers to be on time for even four hour shifts. It will be about the lifts we get when we feel like we're making a diference and the pain of wondering if maybe we're not.
It will be about shoveling snow off the tops of fragile gas-powered compressors and dingy, rat-infested dumpsters and walking through blizzard conditions to answer a phone and try to be a part of things.
It will be about security checks at four in the morning that never reveal a thing out of place but give one a chance, at a liesurely pace, to pass by all the survelance cameras and show that one is still awake, still doing something, still not still.
It will be about the boring things on cable overnight, and the decision between red eyes from too much ligh and the fear of losing consciousness without it. It will be about reconnecting with friends on the west coast and across the word over instant messages at times when only they are awake.
It will be about the pleasure we all get from this beautiful world, where we get to share so much time together, and even though it's never enough, occasionally talk soccer, or talk music and realize that we are all the same.
It will be about the invention of a new board game.
Perhaps it will be nothing but an endless series of violations of client confidentiality and unprofessional disclosures.
Perhaps it will be a look at the beauty of any fleeting moment when any two human beings accept each other, regardless of whether that acceptance is rooted in understanding each other's differences or mythologizing similarities to gloss them over.
Perhaps it will be about forgetting you're supposed to work overnight on a Friday night and getting text messages from your girlfrend about what she should wear for the evening, and writing back to say how much you want to see her. It will be about counting the minutes until the next shift arrives, and checking the schedule to see who is coming and what is taking them so long.
It will be about asking the new trainee, who has just asked a third time why you don't change your name to Ali, whether he can stay late to cover for you while you go buy groceries, so you can lay in enough sugar and caffeine to stay awake until eight in the morning.
It will be about teaching children and feeling responsible for their futures, and the future of the world. It will be about the lessons children have taught me, not just about teaching, but about life and about myself.
It will be about learning not to push kids' buttons. It will be about seeing that somtimes a nine year old can be the bigger man. It will be about the fine line between teaching and parenting, and the difficulty of telling a kid you cannot cross that line even after you've invested so much that the question makes you step outside in the rain, ostensibly to take out the trash.
It will be about helpig kids learn math. And Spanish, English, physics, civics, u.s. history and the mysteries of life. It will be about never again signing up to substitute teach a class on the mysteries of life.
My blog will be about raising up communities. It will be about Booker T. Washington's philosophies. The belief in freedom through education continues in my mind unbated, whatever anyone might have recently told my relatives would make them free. I'm starting with fresh bucket.
It will be about quick showers and even quicker shirt and tie choices to make it through the traffic light timers and the rush hour and the Sunday drivers to be on time for even four hour shifts. It will be about the lifts we get when we feel like we're making a diference and the pain of wondering if maybe we're not.
It will be about shoveling snow off the tops of fragile gas-powered compressors and dingy, rat-infested dumpsters and walking through blizzard conditions to answer a phone and try to be a part of things.
It will be about security checks at four in the morning that never reveal a thing out of place but give one a chance, at a liesurely pace, to pass by all the survelance cameras and show that one is still awake, still doing something, still not still.
It will be about the boring things on cable overnight, and the decision between red eyes from too much ligh and the fear of losing consciousness without it. It will be about reconnecting with friends on the west coast and across the word over instant messages at times when only they are awake.
It will be about the pleasure we all get from this beautiful world, where we get to share so much time together, and even though it's never enough, occasionally talk soccer, or talk music and realize that we are all the same.
It will be about the invention of a new board game.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
The Choices We Make
After my work is done I'm going to write a blog about all the times people say that life is about the choices we make. I'm going to describe the ways that it really is about that, and the ways that it isn't.
I'm going to talk about the gradual deconstruction of this idea and the grip that it has held on our society, from the middle ages on down past the present age.
In the middle ages, madmen were thought to have chosen a path of iniquitous action, which would surely lead them to eternal damnation unless their souls could be saved.
Today we believe instead that people suffer from mental disorders which cause them to interpret stimulus differently from the way the rest of us do.
Who are the rest of us, anyway? Do you understand this page the same way that I do? Does every atom that belong to me really as good belong to you? We are dust of the same proto-stellar explosions, but I argue that this, my middle finger, as it hits this letter, "I," is mIne. This my Idea is mIne.
The argument is ludicrous, of course. The endless debate on the authorship of the Shakespeare plays and poems has shown us nothing if no that an author is more of scribe of a milieu or zeitgeist than an autonomous creator of new cultures. Well, a successful author, anyway. I coudl write a hundred novels without any plot, theme, narration, characterization, point of view or language. You might not want to read, them, though.
You'd be more interested, probably, in the Walts; Cronkite, Whitman or Disney. It's not that an author has to write down simply what's happening at a certain time and sign off at the end of the day's news. There's a placefor people who write about what they're feeling, and what they would like to do. Then there's a place for people who put together our everyday lives in absurd ways, mixing together the ideas of mice and men until we better see each from each side.
There are traditions to follow through even new genres. New dances and new romances are old stories with new characters. Movie remakes where the next new thing takes wing in the flight of the old great kings of storytelling. You meet me and audition me for the part of him. I am typecast before we begin and every step is somehow a test of our ability to dim the image of the archetype until we find the right light to make ourselves believe we've invented a new dance.
And we could invet a new dance. Every day we have the chance, as long as we can feel ourselves drivenby the rhythm in our own stuttering, splutterig, splitting, spitting pulse. We could walk new steps and face new consequences. See our own eyes through different lenses, doesn't that sound bright?
But it wouldn't be right. There's a way things are done and a way things are fun, and surprising evryone is only one aesthetic. It doesn't have to be athletic, this search for a new earth or a bold, new way of looking at the old. It doesn't have to get us hot and cold. It's not really a choice, either, to speak in this voice. It's a condensation of time and nation.
The doctrine of self-determination can be overdeteministic even as it is simply ritualistic. But it sticks at the point that we try to believe taht what we are deoing, in the inaction of an aesthetic requirement for newness is new. It sticks and sometimes it stops and we are not at all ironic when we crave retro. The tradition of innovation works in harmony with our tradition of tradition, itself.
I could teach you a new dance called the nuclear fission, a dance that's hard to do and exposes all our faults, and you'd try to learn it, to try to understand my perspective and my thoughts. You'd be more interested, probably, in the waltz.
I'm going to talk about the gradual deconstruction of this idea and the grip that it has held on our society, from the middle ages on down past the present age.
In the middle ages, madmen were thought to have chosen a path of iniquitous action, which would surely lead them to eternal damnation unless their souls could be saved.
Today we believe instead that people suffer from mental disorders which cause them to interpret stimulus differently from the way the rest of us do.
Who are the rest of us, anyway? Do you understand this page the same way that I do? Does every atom that belong to me really as good belong to you? We are dust of the same proto-stellar explosions, but I argue that this, my middle finger, as it hits this letter, "I," is mIne. This my Idea is mIne.
The argument is ludicrous, of course. The endless debate on the authorship of the Shakespeare plays and poems has shown us nothing if no that an author is more of scribe of a milieu or zeitgeist than an autonomous creator of new cultures. Well, a successful author, anyway. I coudl write a hundred novels without any plot, theme, narration, characterization, point of view or language. You might not want to read, them, though.
You'd be more interested, probably, in the Walts; Cronkite, Whitman or Disney. It's not that an author has to write down simply what's happening at a certain time and sign off at the end of the day's news. There's a placefor people who write about what they're feeling, and what they would like to do. Then there's a place for people who put together our everyday lives in absurd ways, mixing together the ideas of mice and men until we better see each from each side.
There are traditions to follow through even new genres. New dances and new romances are old stories with new characters. Movie remakes where the next new thing takes wing in the flight of the old great kings of storytelling. You meet me and audition me for the part of him. I am typecast before we begin and every step is somehow a test of our ability to dim the image of the archetype until we find the right light to make ourselves believe we've invented a new dance.
And we could invet a new dance. Every day we have the chance, as long as we can feel ourselves drivenby the rhythm in our own stuttering, splutterig, splitting, spitting pulse. We could walk new steps and face new consequences. See our own eyes through different lenses, doesn't that sound bright?
But it wouldn't be right. There's a way things are done and a way things are fun, and surprising evryone is only one aesthetic. It doesn't have to be athletic, this search for a new earth or a bold, new way of looking at the old. It doesn't have to get us hot and cold. It's not really a choice, either, to speak in this voice. It's a condensation of time and nation.
The doctrine of self-determination can be overdeteministic even as it is simply ritualistic. But it sticks at the point that we try to believe taht what we are deoing, in the inaction of an aesthetic requirement for newness is new. It sticks and sometimes it stops and we are not at all ironic when we crave retro. The tradition of innovation works in harmony with our tradition of tradition, itself.
I could teach you a new dance called the nuclear fission, a dance that's hard to do and exposes all our faults, and you'd try to learn it, to try to understand my perspective and my thoughts. You'd be more interested, probably, in the waltz.
Fixing My Car
After my work is done I'm going to start a blog about how I don't know how to fix my car. It's going to wax metaphysical and poetic about sparkplugs, wrenches and fuses. It's going to feign ignorance and then delve into genuine ignorance. It's going to revisit basic principles of combustion and then marvel, blankly at the mystery of fire, the primal terror every driver feels at the existence of such a process as "explosion," regardless of how well we feel we can harness it behind any given radiator.
My blog will list tools and components I have purchased and left in my trunk for years, afraid to enter that holy temple where the past is sacrificed to the present Gods of the 9am time-punch and the scentless armpit. My blog will list repairs I have competently and confidently performed on my bicycle, only to realize that such a vehicle doesn't actually transport me to places I can use any skills above the level of stuffing envelopes for lefty causes or carrying boxes off trucks under stripmalls.
There are certain places you can only get in a car. My blog will talk about places I've driven with a car: The Mexican Border, The Outer Banks, Vancouver Island, Rhode Island, down dirt and gravel tracks to fly-swarmed barns in Virginia, along rivers to minor league hockey games outside Boston, a hundred twenty miles an hour across the square chimney of Texas, a hundred miles an hour down mountains in western New York, sixty miles an hour in the school zone shortcut to the airport and twenty miles an hour between folding tables and tents, through an open-air market in the stone parking lot on the edge of the Little Colorado River Gorge where all but one, I learned, of the shopkeepers had packed up for the evening, almost leaving the place free for me to move up just in time and catch the best possible view of the falling sun before the horizon rose up and swallowed its flame in a single gulp.
I'll write about how hard it can be to find parts you didn't plan on needing, like windshield wipers, touch-up paint, new windows and windshields. I'll write about how scary it is to install your own parts even if you know that you never plan on selling your car, just becuase in the last thirty years doing your own repairs has gone from a right of passage to an obscure, blue-collar, rural cult activity. How the myth of resale value holds its thrall even over those who crave the thrill of driving an old beater until its pistons beat the ground.
After my work is done I'm going to start a meticulously researched, poetically rich, culturally chameleonic blog about DIY car repair. But for today I'm just going to stop by the parts shop after I see the guy about my taxes. I'm gonna pick up some fuses and see if one of them makes the lighter start working again, so I can plug things into it.
My blog will list tools and components I have purchased and left in my trunk for years, afraid to enter that holy temple where the past is sacrificed to the present Gods of the 9am time-punch and the scentless armpit. My blog will list repairs I have competently and confidently performed on my bicycle, only to realize that such a vehicle doesn't actually transport me to places I can use any skills above the level of stuffing envelopes for lefty causes or carrying boxes off trucks under stripmalls.
There are certain places you can only get in a car. My blog will talk about places I've driven with a car: The Mexican Border, The Outer Banks, Vancouver Island, Rhode Island, down dirt and gravel tracks to fly-swarmed barns in Virginia, along rivers to minor league hockey games outside Boston, a hundred twenty miles an hour across the square chimney of Texas, a hundred miles an hour down mountains in western New York, sixty miles an hour in the school zone shortcut to the airport and twenty miles an hour between folding tables and tents, through an open-air market in the stone parking lot on the edge of the Little Colorado River Gorge where all but one, I learned, of the shopkeepers had packed up for the evening, almost leaving the place free for me to move up just in time and catch the best possible view of the falling sun before the horizon rose up and swallowed its flame in a single gulp.
I'll write about how hard it can be to find parts you didn't plan on needing, like windshield wipers, touch-up paint, new windows and windshields. I'll write about how scary it is to install your own parts even if you know that you never plan on selling your car, just becuase in the last thirty years doing your own repairs has gone from a right of passage to an obscure, blue-collar, rural cult activity. How the myth of resale value holds its thrall even over those who crave the thrill of driving an old beater until its pistons beat the ground.
After my work is done I'm going to start a meticulously researched, poetically rich, culturally chameleonic blog about DIY car repair. But for today I'm just going to stop by the parts shop after I see the guy about my taxes. I'm gonna pick up some fuses and see if one of them makes the lighter start working again, so I can plug things into it.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
After my work is done I'm going to start a blog about the bands I'm going to start.
Hundreds of bands. The entirety of my human, American, Washingtonian experience divided into a hudnred brands. Some for commerce. Some for art.
I'll write for a few weeks about how I'm going to start a hip hop group. My name will be Rob Banks. I'll rap about fuel efficiency over collages of traffic sounds. The traffic sounds will be edited by my DJ Collective, The Roman Year. The two members of The Roman Year are named J. Jason and DJ FM/AM. I saw their names in a graph at the bottom of a Washington Post article about the recession.
That was years ago, under Bush. I haven't started the band. I still remember all the words to Rob Banks' first rap. Yesterday I wrote the chorus. I still haven't learned how to make sound-collages, although I have a feeling I could do it in Garage Band if I gave myself a week without distractions.
What I woudln't give for a week without distractions. I wish I could take back every time I've ever thought I was bored. But then I wouldn't have daydreamed up a handful of bands to start.
I made a myspace pace once for Trivet Hegemony. I never had any idea what that was going to lead to. What kind of music would a band called Trivet Hegemony play, anyway?
I'm going to start a blues project called The Hurt. A folk group that sings socio-political songs in the tradition of Ani DiFranco, Pete Seeger or Bob Dylan. A lullaby group that sings about snakes, monsters and the pros and cons of world domination.
I'm going to try to play all the instruments and lay down some vocals for all of these groups and put them out on the web when they're ready or not. If anybody likes them, great. If not, at least I can stop daydreaming about it so much.
And after my work is done I'm going to head out to the open mic with my six string and play a few of my favorite covers. Maybe a little John Prine to start things off. Some Bill Withers to warm it up. A little Chris Smither for some rootsier blues in the mix. I've got to learn some Aretha Franklin before I get too old for new tricks. Brush up my Lucinda Williams. Of course I'm not going home without playing Poison. Because every cowboy sings a sad, sad song.
Hundreds of bands. The entirety of my human, American, Washingtonian experience divided into a hudnred brands. Some for commerce. Some for art.
I'll write for a few weeks about how I'm going to start a hip hop group. My name will be Rob Banks. I'll rap about fuel efficiency over collages of traffic sounds. The traffic sounds will be edited by my DJ Collective, The Roman Year. The two members of The Roman Year are named J. Jason and DJ FM/AM. I saw their names in a graph at the bottom of a Washington Post article about the recession.
That was years ago, under Bush. I haven't started the band. I still remember all the words to Rob Banks' first rap. Yesterday I wrote the chorus. I still haven't learned how to make sound-collages, although I have a feeling I could do it in Garage Band if I gave myself a week without distractions.
What I woudln't give for a week without distractions. I wish I could take back every time I've ever thought I was bored. But then I wouldn't have daydreamed up a handful of bands to start.
I made a myspace pace once for Trivet Hegemony. I never had any idea what that was going to lead to. What kind of music would a band called Trivet Hegemony play, anyway?
I'm going to start a blues project called The Hurt. A folk group that sings socio-political songs in the tradition of Ani DiFranco, Pete Seeger or Bob Dylan. A lullaby group that sings about snakes, monsters and the pros and cons of world domination.
I'm going to try to play all the instruments and lay down some vocals for all of these groups and put them out on the web when they're ready or not. If anybody likes them, great. If not, at least I can stop daydreaming about it so much.
And after my work is done I'm going to head out to the open mic with my six string and play a few of my favorite covers. Maybe a little John Prine to start things off. Some Bill Withers to warm it up. A little Chris Smither for some rootsier blues in the mix. I've got to learn some Aretha Franklin before I get too old for new tricks. Brush up my Lucinda Williams. Of course I'm not going home without playing Poison. Because every cowboy sings a sad, sad song.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Christian Blog
After my work is done I'm going to start a blog about Christianity.
My blog about Christianity will be somewhat different from the typical Christian blog (if such a thing exists, and my good friends seem convinced that it does) in that it will not feature any reflections on how to be a better Christian or how Christianity helped me through my day when I was convinced everything was going to fall apart at the seams.
My Christian blog will not contain any reflections on how the coming of a Jewish boy named Joshua, two thousand and ten years ago, and his excruciatingly brutal torture and death at the hands of a democratically elected governor slightly more liberal than the one in Virginia today only one thousand, nine hundred and eighty eight years ago inspired me to let somebody into my lane in traffic this morning.
It won't feature any inspirations about how Joshua's brilliant arguments for minimalism in theology, or for theology's rightful place as a vehicle toward ethics, which have since radically changed the way in which all religions judge themselves and each other, encouraged me to argue with people I don't like or am different from.
It won't have any absurd revelations of unprovable, empty truisms to live your life by, as though the Bible weren't enough.
My blog about Christianity won't even really mention religion at all.
It will just be about how beautiful your women are, how intelligent and teachable your children, and how much I love your traditional music and food.
My blog about Christianity will be somewhat different from the typical Christian blog (if such a thing exists, and my good friends seem convinced that it does) in that it will not feature any reflections on how to be a better Christian or how Christianity helped me through my day when I was convinced everything was going to fall apart at the seams.
My Christian blog will not contain any reflections on how the coming of a Jewish boy named Joshua, two thousand and ten years ago, and his excruciatingly brutal torture and death at the hands of a democratically elected governor slightly more liberal than the one in Virginia today only one thousand, nine hundred and eighty eight years ago inspired me to let somebody into my lane in traffic this morning.
It won't feature any inspirations about how Joshua's brilliant arguments for minimalism in theology, or for theology's rightful place as a vehicle toward ethics, which have since radically changed the way in which all religions judge themselves and each other, encouraged me to argue with people I don't like or am different from.
It won't have any absurd revelations of unprovable, empty truisms to live your life by, as though the Bible weren't enough.
My blog about Christianity won't even really mention religion at all.
It will just be about how beautiful your women are, how intelligent and teachable your children, and how much I love your traditional music and food.
After My Work Is Done
After my work is done I'm going to start a blog about all the blogs I'm going to start after my work is done. After my work is done I'm going to write about how I'm going to write about all the things I think about all the time. I'm going to write about how to clean up all the sand and grime around my work, after my work is done. I'm going to write about the time I climbed on top of the dumpsters and swept off all the snow, to throw away all the trash that had piled up around the dumpsters when the dumpsters were too piled with snow for anyone to throw away anything, after my work is done.
After my work is done I'm going to write a blog about how I want to become famous for writing a blog about how I want to become famous for writing a little bit more in my blog each night, after my work is done. After my work is done I'm going to write a blog about how I want to write a blog about the joys of picking through the clearance rack in the used cd store, judging albums by their cover and taking them home to listen for weeks, together, alone with my new two dollar lover, after my work is done.
After my work is done I'm going to write a blog about how to slog your way through anything to fortune and joy and happiness, and I'm going to try to claim, all the way, that the work is the real happiness, and it'll be so genuine you'll know I'm not just doing it to be a pest, or to fill the time and the empty space inside my mind that's left open, hoping for some new impulse to push through, after my work is done.
After my work is done I will buy a hundred flowers and volunteer a hundred hours helping kids plant them down at the shelter. Then we'll sit out in the summer sun and watch their little petals swelter out all the water we've can pour them, until it hurts too much and we turn and ignore them, walk back to our cars across hot parking lots, snapping chewing gum against our blood red gums, after my work is done.
After my work is done I will kiss you deeply and discretely, hiding behind curtains from the sun and everyone who watches it run its course in terranian resorts and even those playing aerial sports and we'll court alone. I'll gently pull the battery out of your phone after my work is done.
After my work is done I'm going to write a blog about how I want to become famous for writing a blog about how I want to become famous for writing a little bit more in my blog each night, after my work is done. After my work is done I'm going to write a blog about how I want to write a blog about the joys of picking through the clearance rack in the used cd store, judging albums by their cover and taking them home to listen for weeks, together, alone with my new two dollar lover, after my work is done.
After my work is done I'm going to write a blog about how to slog your way through anything to fortune and joy and happiness, and I'm going to try to claim, all the way, that the work is the real happiness, and it'll be so genuine you'll know I'm not just doing it to be a pest, or to fill the time and the empty space inside my mind that's left open, hoping for some new impulse to push through, after my work is done.
After my work is done I will buy a hundred flowers and volunteer a hundred hours helping kids plant them down at the shelter. Then we'll sit out in the summer sun and watch their little petals swelter out all the water we've can pour them, until it hurts too much and we turn and ignore them, walk back to our cars across hot parking lots, snapping chewing gum against our blood red gums, after my work is done.
After my work is done I will kiss you deeply and discretely, hiding behind curtains from the sun and everyone who watches it run its course in terranian resorts and even those playing aerial sports and we'll court alone. I'll gently pull the battery out of your phone after my work is done.
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