Actually, I don't love Winnie Cooper, but I thought the writing of this post on the New Yorker was so good that I had to share. The bitter sugar of nostalgia mixed with a longing. What Winnie represented is possibility in the promise of the future. We all grew up with our own Winnie Coopers.
From the post:
Winnie Cooper, the object of Kevin Arnold’s affection, was the paragon
of innocent boyish yearning. Her brown hair was long and straight, and
always managed, when she shook it out, to improbably catch the best
light. And her bright smile, made charming by her buckish front teeth,
finely complimented her olive complexion. But the looks were really just
the manifestation of her disposition, which was sweet and polite, with a
hint of fragility behind her big doe eyes. It didn’t suggest she could
go to pieces at any moment, like a damsel in distress, but rather that
she had absorbed some blows—her parents were at odds—and was, as a
result, a tad older and smarter than her actual years. Yet the
smartness, thankfully, wasn’t expressed in absurdly pithy quips, which
always draw attention to the artifice of adolescent dialogue. Instead,
she had what my grandfather would have called “dignity,” as if she were
waiting patiently for all those silly boys to grow up. Winnie Cooper was
too good for Kevin Arnold, but she gave him attention anyway, and
provided hope for the rest of us in the process.
My Infant Tito's battle with NF1
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Monday, March 11, 2013
Charles Bukowski, Poet of the Loveless
His name materialized out of the breath of a Christian who I respect
and love. It caught me by surprise, as I had not heard this poet's name in a
long time. Charles Bukowski, what a
strange name to come from such a committed Christian. My friend, a
bother in Christ, said someone mentioned Bukowski to him and he had
never heard of the poet. He knew I was a poet, and asked if I knew him.
Bukowski, mailman, poet, short story writer, novelist, self-proclaimed unrecognized genius, chronicler of the underside of American life and reprobate; what writer coming of age in the 1980s did not know Bukowski? None of our teachers taught him, rather he was the dark secret that we striving poets and writers passed around. A writer who also shared how he got free pizza introduced me to that darkness. It seems that if you go to Pizza Hut after the lunch rush, people leave left over pieces on their plates and the staff is too busy cleaning up to notice you chowing down; A perfect gross starving artist story, even this friend could afford to buy the pizza. Was it the titillation of doing the forbidden and getting meat lovers pizza to boot? I never asked and I did not take the writer’s pizza advice, but I did read Bukowski.
Bukowski is an effective writer. You don’t get to have Mickey Rourke play you in a Hollywood movie, Barfly, without moving people. When I read him, his elicit scenes were honey to the lost soul I was. He feed in me the feeling that the world did not understand. My feeling that I was unrecognized genius and his frankness about his own physical ugliness appealed to my vanity. I was blind in one eye and permanently crossed eyed, ugly to the world. But then the overall mode of his writing started to appear and harden. When it did, all appeal of his writing vaporized and was replace by a deep sadness. His writing documents the despair that a loveless life can bring. Eric Jong, Michel Houellebecq, Henry Miller and so many others follow this road to this truth: a life led through titillation will eventually dry out the spirit into the cracked ground of a long dead river.
Between the curses, booze and the crazy adventures, imagined or real, Bukowski never found a home. He remained lost. When the alcohol wore off, the sunlight only brought pain to his eyes and the dust of room couldn’t cover the stench on his loveless existence. His writing moved more and more into a curse at life with each new hangover. While I never bowed to the Goddess of Booze like Charles, I went looking something to fill my emptiness.
When Jesus found me in my desperation a decade later after another failed romantic love, all I could feel for Bukowski is a sense of deep sadness and compassion. There is love in the world. It had found me. He chronicled how life had become Hell for him without love, but I was found and never looked back for fear of the pillar of salt I once was. My only regret was not being better at pointing out where to find this living water.
*A version of this first appeared on Spokanefavs.com
Bukowski, mailman, poet, short story writer, novelist, self-proclaimed unrecognized genius, chronicler of the underside of American life and reprobate; what writer coming of age in the 1980s did not know Bukowski? None of our teachers taught him, rather he was the dark secret that we striving poets and writers passed around. A writer who also shared how he got free pizza introduced me to that darkness. It seems that if you go to Pizza Hut after the lunch rush, people leave left over pieces on their plates and the staff is too busy cleaning up to notice you chowing down; A perfect gross starving artist story, even this friend could afford to buy the pizza. Was it the titillation of doing the forbidden and getting meat lovers pizza to boot? I never asked and I did not take the writer’s pizza advice, but I did read Bukowski.
Bukowski is an effective writer. You don’t get to have Mickey Rourke play you in a Hollywood movie, Barfly, without moving people. When I read him, his elicit scenes were honey to the lost soul I was. He feed in me the feeling that the world did not understand. My feeling that I was unrecognized genius and his frankness about his own physical ugliness appealed to my vanity. I was blind in one eye and permanently crossed eyed, ugly to the world. But then the overall mode of his writing started to appear and harden. When it did, all appeal of his writing vaporized and was replace by a deep sadness. His writing documents the despair that a loveless life can bring. Eric Jong, Michel Houellebecq, Henry Miller and so many others follow this road to this truth: a life led through titillation will eventually dry out the spirit into the cracked ground of a long dead river.
Between the curses, booze and the crazy adventures, imagined or real, Bukowski never found a home. He remained lost. When the alcohol wore off, the sunlight only brought pain to his eyes and the dust of room couldn’t cover the stench on his loveless existence. His writing moved more and more into a curse at life with each new hangover. While I never bowed to the Goddess of Booze like Charles, I went looking something to fill my emptiness.
When Jesus found me in my desperation a decade later after another failed romantic love, all I could feel for Bukowski is a sense of deep sadness and compassion. There is love in the world. It had found me. He chronicled how life had become Hell for him without love, but I was found and never looked back for fear of the pillar of salt I once was. My only regret was not being better at pointing out where to find this living water.
*A version of this first appeared on Spokanefavs.com
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Shaping Love beyond Legalism
Her eyes clouded ash gray as she told her story. A deep sadness would invade her spirit; a melancholy could command her for days. She was a mother and a wife of a successful doctor. All her needs were met, but some days the darkness descended upon her. Her church, one of the Spokane’s prominent warehouse church known for their great music and topical sermons, offered little help. Lost in midst of numbers, she did share her struggles with her small group only to find questions about what part of her life was not right with God. How was she the cause of her own suffering? For them, lacking in theological reflection or a developed awareness of Job or New Testament, her suffering must come from her failure to follow God completely.
Of course her pastor, a good and respected man of the Gospel, would have told her differently, but he was buried in building new and larger churches. She quickly found that what was demanded of her was smiling all the time, spirituality as pretense. She stop speaking of the darkness that showered upon her as she knew few could walk with her. I met her at a birthday party of mutual friend, and as my wife and I heard her story, we wanted to tell her that Jesus was with her even in her darkest hour for that is the Gospel. Jesus does not leave us alone in our darkness.
Follow the rules; get the goodies. And if ones does have the goodies, they must be defective. Such is many of the seductive promises of society. St Paul knew this was not the Gospel and through most of his letter to the Romans, he argued that the Gospel was accepting that nothing--not sadness, not other’s indifference, not anything in all of creation could separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. We, Christians, say in principle that is correct. Yet, while few openly embrace works earning love, the subtext of many ministries is practically: follow the rules get the love.
Many Christians find that they can’t be open within their church for fear of what others might say, creating a double face, one for the mirror and a sunday best face we put on church. Neither face the full face of humanity that Jesus promises. I have another friend who love Jesus, but accept some of modern science. He has been told that they no longer belong. While it would be easy to blame the church, I started to look at it from a wider lens. Low and behold this idea of following the rules to get the goodies goes beyond the church. Secular business, academia, law, this is the legalism that humans build their world on. Follow the rules and get the goodies.
If you don't have the goodies, the problem is you. If my new friend suffering from depression admitted this to her secular friends about her struggles with depression, she would get similar responses: What was she doing to cause the depression. Go to the doctor and get a pill to fix it.
Again, she would find it hard to find someone to walk with her and say to her she was not alone. She would go the same route of two faces, one for home and one for going out in public. Neither the fully humanity she needs. Follow the rules, get the goodies leas to life as pretense. Nothing I say here is particularly new.
It does show how radical the Gospel truly is. Rather than trusting the rules, God first trusts love. God will walk with us, being with us through all of our lives. This love being so powerful as to shape us. Following Jesus is not about getting the right answers, but simply about being loved and letting that love teach us how to love.. Jesus, God incarnate, shapes us into real living beyond follow the rules and get the goodies.
Of course her pastor, a good and respected man of the Gospel, would have told her differently, but he was buried in building new and larger churches. She quickly found that what was demanded of her was smiling all the time, spirituality as pretense. She stop speaking of the darkness that showered upon her as she knew few could walk with her. I met her at a birthday party of mutual friend, and as my wife and I heard her story, we wanted to tell her that Jesus was with her even in her darkest hour for that is the Gospel. Jesus does not leave us alone in our darkness.
Follow the rules; get the goodies. And if ones does have the goodies, they must be defective. Such is many of the seductive promises of society. St Paul knew this was not the Gospel and through most of his letter to the Romans, he argued that the Gospel was accepting that nothing--not sadness, not other’s indifference, not anything in all of creation could separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. We, Christians, say in principle that is correct. Yet, while few openly embrace works earning love, the subtext of many ministries is practically: follow the rules get the love.
Many Christians find that they can’t be open within their church for fear of what others might say, creating a double face, one for the mirror and a sunday best face we put on church. Neither face the full face of humanity that Jesus promises. I have another friend who love Jesus, but accept some of modern science. He has been told that they no longer belong. While it would be easy to blame the church, I started to look at it from a wider lens. Low and behold this idea of following the rules to get the goodies goes beyond the church. Secular business, academia, law, this is the legalism that humans build their world on. Follow the rules and get the goodies.
If you don't have the goodies, the problem is you. If my new friend suffering from depression admitted this to her secular friends about her struggles with depression, she would get similar responses: What was she doing to cause the depression. Go to the doctor and get a pill to fix it.
Again, she would find it hard to find someone to walk with her and say to her she was not alone. She would go the same route of two faces, one for home and one for going out in public. Neither the fully humanity she needs. Follow the rules, get the goodies leas to life as pretense. Nothing I say here is particularly new.
It does show how radical the Gospel truly is. Rather than trusting the rules, God first trusts love. God will walk with us, being with us through all of our lives. This love being so powerful as to shape us. Following Jesus is not about getting the right answers, but simply about being loved and letting that love teach us how to love.. Jesus, God incarnate, shapes us into real living beyond follow the rules and get the goodies.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
God rides the Bus
The wiring vines of our bus routes unite Spokane. These are the branches by which our poor move through our town for their business. My eyesight and lack of depth perception has had me traveling through these vines for years in journeys from work to home.
Walking and riding a city’s mass transit system gives one a close view of a city and provides an MRI view of the spirit of our city. The fruit pluck from these trips, I spend over two hours on these buses, spans from ripe sweetness to bitter hard. Men rebuilding after jail time, commuters going to their downtown professional jobs, high achieving teenage students already attending Eastern Washington, mothers young and old struggling with strollers, car seats and little ones crying or excited to be on the bus.
Children are always animated on the bus, for the still have an eye for the preciousness of real life. I have wondered if this is the view of God in his presence throughout unfolding of the human condition. Lovers spats are surrounded by the music of tried indifferent professionals, while young men pretend tough to avoid admitting how terrified they really are. Throughout all of the drama, the dullness, the funny events, God love us, God is with us. Sad how little there is left of these places where we can see life as it goes by. We settle for the pale imitation on TV and the internet. The real thing seems unrecognizable when we encounter it.
Walking and riding a city’s mass transit system gives one a close view of a city and provides an MRI view of the spirit of our city. The fruit pluck from these trips, I spend over two hours on these buses, spans from ripe sweetness to bitter hard. Men rebuilding after jail time, commuters going to their downtown professional jobs, high achieving teenage students already attending Eastern Washington, mothers young and old struggling with strollers, car seats and little ones crying or excited to be on the bus.
Children are always animated on the bus, for the still have an eye for the preciousness of real life. I have wondered if this is the view of God in his presence throughout unfolding of the human condition. Lovers spats are surrounded by the music of tried indifferent professionals, while young men pretend tough to avoid admitting how terrified they really are. Throughout all of the drama, the dullness, the funny events, God love us, God is with us. Sad how little there is left of these places where we can see life as it goes by. We settle for the pale imitation on TV and the internet. The real thing seems unrecognizable when we encounter it.
Friday, September 14, 2012
The Ballad of Mitt
The Ballad of Mitt
Once their was a serious candidate for president.
Push by a bunch buffoons in the Primary,
he had to accept many political positions of silliness.
When finally bumped off the last fool, a Political hack from PA,
he though he could shake his crumpling image clean.
Etch-a-sketch, it was not to be. His numbers started to shrink.
So, he pick a man of reputed honesty to help shore up his base.
But the wonder boy revealed to be nothing the another political
hack that told whoppers sub-three hours long. Any bump
soon disappeared. His London gaff made him a joke to Englishmen
near and far, who call him Mitt the Twit for their chortles.
The states continue turning blue or pink, even Georgia.
Foxnews has done at it can. The teapot has warped,
left too long on the stove. The man, Matt must make
another road. His millions made it Bainful to watch.
The pressure is on. He needs to debate his way
back in. Yet, darn, no matter how hard he shakes,
the foot taste remains; the stupid thing does not clear.
Once their was a serious candidate for president.
Push by a bunch buffoons in the Primary,
he had to accept many political positions of silliness.
When finally bumped off the last fool, a Political hack from PA,
he though he could shake his crumpling image clean.
Etch-a-sketch, it was not to be. His numbers started to shrink.
So, he pick a man of reputed honesty to help shore up his base.
But the wonder boy revealed to be nothing the another political
hack that told whoppers sub-three hours long. Any bump
soon disappeared. His London gaff made him a joke to Englishmen
near and far, who call him Mitt the Twit for their chortles.
The states continue turning blue or pink, even Georgia.
Foxnews has done at it can. The teapot has warped,
left too long on the stove. The man, Matt must make
another road. His millions made it Bainful to watch.
The pressure is on. He needs to debate his way
back in. Yet, darn, no matter how hard he shakes,
the foot taste remains; the stupid thing does not clear.
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