January 30th, a Super Sunny Saturday.

I put an Olympic medal on someone today.

I'd always pictured a somber, disciplined athlete standing straight, bowing slightly to receive the Prize of all Prizes, misty-eyed as the national anthem played in the background, the medal falling proudly on his strong chest representing years and years of pain and grit and early morning swim practices.

It was kind of like that. Only the man I honored was jumping up and down, out of his mind excited, forgetting the beer in his hand for a few glorious moments. He had a goatee and a fisherman's hat on so the ribbon didn't fit over the brim. The medal just kind of dangled a few inches from his face like those pine-tree fresheners in a taxi cab rearview mirror. I don't think he noticed, too busy hanging high fives with his co-workers and newfound pharmaceutical conference best friends 2010, baby! yeah!!! He recovered eventually from that childlike state of rapture one gets lost in when one wins something AWESOME and ceremoniously took the remains of his beer in a victorious chug.

Meanwhile, the lady who borrowed my [new] shoes told me to pretend like we were sisters because one of her co-workers thought I was cute, and she was playing a joke on him. Would I play along? She slurred the words out and put an arm around my shoulder. Really I just wanted to give her back the shiny leopard Dansko's she'd traded me for my Merrels. Instead I stood there and smiled and asked how Mom was. And the girls? Do they still have the dogs? How's Don's job? And on and on. I stood there pretending to be Carrie's sister amidst the madness and revelry of The Olympics at Camelback Inn, the crescendo of a week chockobock full of "meetings" (which I learned no one attends sober) for these hardworking, mostly married, nose-to-the-grindstoners who were milking the cutting loose part of the "business" trip to the last lime wedge the resort would squeeze out. Even after the event was over I saw a guy hurry over to the booze table and ask for just one more beer.

Beer. That's what the other Joy I met today offered to buy me if I wanted a ride home. She had a little Toyota pickup so I threw my bike in the back and we headed to Four Peaks Brewery, reminiscent of any ski town happy hour bar, a well-scripted scene the West over. SO TYPICAL. Also typical, Joy locked her keys in the car. So we waited while her soon-to-be ex-husband as of tomorrow (she moves across town in the morning) brought the extra set. He also had a goatee but didn't wear a fisherman's hat; just a very long, sad face.

Divorce stinks. Leopard clogs stink. Beer helps, but stinks in the end, too. Not much remains except a redemptive word of encouragement that God longs to pull us out of the stink. Come to think of it, do I receive That Gift respectably? I'd be that guy jumping up and down: unabashed excitement, a leisurely kind of joy that comes as a result of undeserved merit. Then I hope I'd turn my life into the stoic athlete, beat my body like Paul and run with commitment for The Prize.

Barley wine, in case you were wondering, is what I discovered tonight. Excellent.

January 29th, a Full Moon Friday.

It started with a shower. A quick prayer as I pull out of the driveway in Old Reliable, my trusty Four-Runner turned gray overnight. The axle is bent, so heading West on the 101 was a bit unnerving. No coffee. Just an apple, keeping in mind that one should NEVER skip breakfast.

Destination: Thunderbird School of Global Management (Campus Tour 9:45 am - 1:30 pm)

I don't want a masters in business today. I don't want to live abroad. I don't want to take the GRE. And I definitely do not want $50,000 of debt piled on top of the chip on my shoulder. The chip, that is, of growing up.

So I left at the lunch break part of the campus tour. Thanked the Three Guides: the Asian, the Italian-to-be, and the Redhead; that's how I'll remember them at least. I left, and I drove on my broken axle to the end of 40th Street. I tied the laces of my super slick new kicks: my First Ever Nikes. Elite. Light. Blue AND pink. Love, that's what this is. I set out for one of the peaks of Phoenix Mountain Reserve, a very big park in the middle of this metropolis.

I spoke with a recruiter from Wells Fargo, the third step in my application process to become a Teller. Sure wish it was the third step in my application process to become a Story Teller.

The day ended at a hole-in-the-wall Italian place with Dad and Nancy and Diane (Nancy's sister) over pasta and wine, under a T-shirt reading "I have the biggest [meat] balls in town." Classic.

Learned how to play Rummikub. Left after one round. Talked to Johnny. Took a spiritual gifts test online that told me I should be a pastor. And now I'm pretending to write.

All of this under a full moon.

It's What You Bring To The World

Gifts. We all have them. Find yours and pursue it with all your might and there you go: your life's purpose. God gave "it" to you. Don't neglect it. Don't waste your time on anything that isn't going to build on nurturing this Gift. 

But what if...

(You know what the question is)

I don't know my Gift. I know that I really really want to know what "it" is so I can start living already. I mean, look at this mess and mosaic of experiences and seasons and characters and stories I've collected; the strange diet I've picked up; the clothes I've worn basically through all of it, that is the post-college years... the years when I should know but am excused, thank goodness, because no one really knows; they're just good fakers. But I can't buy clothes when I don't know what climate or hemisphere I'll be living in, can I?

And here I am, blistered feet from rocky ground run over one too many days and a tired pair of tennis shoes that should have been re-tired this time last year. Bloody. Sore. Older. Back at home, or in a home (the one in Arizona this time. I've never lived here so I don't know if it counts as 'home' but it's where Dad is. and my new family, bless them. It's home. I know it. You just know it, right? Or is that place supposed to be the compass' foot? Lake Forest Ranch, for instance. Or is it the person you wish was with you because they need you? Hannah, for instance. Or (and this is where I'm stuck) is it where you're heading? Johnny, for instance. Katy, Texas, for zip code.  

I just don't know. I do know perseverance through suffering, if you could call this "suffering" in light of something as tragic as two earthquakes in Haiti. 

So this is my post of gratitude. My "Hallelujah!" and "May It Be" of all the things I store up and ponder in my heart. Maybe I should keep them there. But Anne of Green Gables profoundly offered up a philosophy that sank into my dreams last night (yes, I've been watching The Collection. It was a Christmas present..): "..it's what you bring to the world." Not what the world has to give you. Not the Taj Mahal, which I've never seen, or Macchu Piccu, or Antarctica, which I didn't even think I cared if I ever saw, but now I don't know. Dang Geography. Dang you, Globe, for being so round and wonderful and non-linear. 

All to say, today, it is my duty, my deed, to shout out to The Void that if you, dear void, know what you should be doing and aren't doing it, you're sinning. Show me your faith without deeds...

I'm feeling a little worthless.  Probably why I dreamed also last night that Aunt Linda and Uncle Steve were asking Dad if they could hire me to make them happy.  Dad let me in on a deal that Uncle Jon had stumbled across: you can make money by making people happy! Brilliant! Sign me up! 

Sigh. I miss the Hundred Acre Wood. Even a half acre in the Hundred Acre would do. 

What Would Jesus Eat? and other questions

I spent some time in a used bookstore today.  Found a book about Questions, specifically questions to ask "before the ring". Yep. The Ring. not the one Frodo finds; those days are long gone. This would be in relation to what some would count as 'the proposal' I might have received over the phone this morning. Good thing I don't count it. 

(Funny. Said Person just sent me a text about True Friendship: 

1. When you are sad, I will jump on the person who made you sad like a spider monkey jacked up on Mountain Dew

2. When you are blue, I will try to dislodge whatever is choking you

3. When you smile, I will know you are plotting something that I must be involved in

4. When you are scared, we will high tail it out of here

5. When you are worried, I will tell you horrible stories about how much worse it could be until you quit whining

6. When you are confused, I will use little words

7. When you are sick, stay away from me until you are well again. I don't want whatever you have

8. When you fall, I'll pick you up and dust you off - after I laugh my butt off

sigh. true love? leave a comment. )

Anyways, back to what matters. Right now, it's the weather, which I check like an old man who can't talk about anything else because he knows it's the one thing that might bring surprise. 

http://www.weather.com/weather/alerts/localalerts/USAZ0207?phenomena=TSL&significance=S&areaid=AZZ023&office=KPSR&etn=d7e99214c1fd9d04adc21d8be41352273cff6def

Pessimistic that that'll show up as a link in my post, but it's basically a doomsday alert for the desert: predicted rain for Monday is threatening the desert-ness of the region. I hope for once they're right. 

The Roundness of Life

I picked up a new book: WHEN THE LEGENDS DIE by Hal Borland. It's about "man, nature and courage" reads the back cover. It's a tattered copy, given to me by Bill, the manager of Triple Creek.  

Happy memories of his hard-thinking, lightness of wit, and sometimes pressing questions (such as "Why are you taking a writing workshop or reading a book about writing if you aren't going to write?"), insights and classic intellectual banter like our own mini-college course think tank around the big marble counter/stage of that five-star kitchen that guests always exclaimed "you could eat off this floor!" about. always. because you could probably. especially after Sierra mopped it. She was in the Navy for awhile...

Anyways, these flood my mind. 

Bill gave me two other gifts, actually both poems. And I'm putting here, to redeem my poetic efforts (in my defense birthed in the barren throat of western Texas, a hairball or tumbleweed of an attempt. I'll work on it.).

The first: ole' "Bobby" Burns To a Mouse, but this was indirect; Bill would just quote one stanza while putting up dishes and smiling while telling me about boyhood days in English class at boarding school.

              

              "The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men

                Gang aft a-gley,

                An' lea'e us nought but grief and pain,

        For promis'd joy."

He thought of it often because it has my name in it.

The second poem was more forward, even critical, a challenge to The Nexts of my ever-changing life.  It took me a bit to get the meaning, and if there was question in my mind, he cleared it up the last time we talked; he wanted to make sure I knew that I should be not what the poem describes. This one also by a Robert.  Robert W. Service taken from Best Tales of the Yukon.

The Men That Don't Fit In

There's a race of men that don't fit in,

A race that can't stay still;

So they break the hearts of kith and kin,

And they roam the world at will. 

They range the field and they rove the flood,

And they climb the mountain's crest.

Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,

And they don't know how to rest. 

If they just went straight, they might go far;

They are strong and brave and true;

But they're always tired of teh things that are,

And they want the strange and new!

They say, "Could I find my proper groove,

What a deep mark I would make!"

So they chop and change, and each fresh move

Is only a fresh mistake. 

And each forgets, as he strips and runs 

With a brilliant, fitful pace,

It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones

Who wine in the lifelong race.

And each forgets that his youth has fled,

Forgets that his prime is past,

Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead,

In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed;

he has missed his chance;

He has just done things by half.

Life's been a jolly good joke on him,

And now is the time to laugh.

Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;

He was never meant to win.

He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;

He's a man who won't fit in.  

                

                 

the caverns of sonora

The Caverns of Sonora

Just as the road turned boring,

I remembered I was touring...

down dusty highways of Middle America

Thinking of supper..pizza or lasagna?

Lonesome dove in a lonestar state...

it's no surprise the number of ex's had George Strait.

A land far from anything I'd ever known...

makes me so thankful I'm not alone.

that someday soon, I'll turn around,

and the road behind can be counted as covered ground.

My checklist of travels now complete:

passing the sign for the Caverns of Sonora is no small feat.

For Texas is Big! and Brown! and Bold!

and it's obvious I'm getting very very very old...

but time on the road can still be used wisely:

for instance, coming up with words that rhyme, like "sizely"...

It takes imagination (yes, it's true!)

to find the Beauty in such a view...

I've done my best (yes, it's sad!)

but creating these lines has made me glad.

A hundred miles to Stockton...I can't wait to see!

I'll stop sooner though because, of course, I have to pee.

I've changed my mind from pizza and lasagna...

(I just had the strangest memory come to mind of Rich singing "from Pascagoulaaaa!")

It's clear the desert is starting to get to me,

but not to fret! no one in my family's crazy...

This must be the last line otherwise we'll both die...

though hear my last request: in the Caverns of Sonora my bones will lie...