The Beating of a Heart

3 weeks ago, I learned that I might be a father.

Might.

Based on a $10 test that- pardon the details of the mechanics- required someone to pee onto a swab of cotton.

I am not one that requires flow charts, diagrams, confirmations from experts and an army of lawyers to write a brief before I'll believe something. But I would like a soupcon of empiricism and a dash of research before I buy into something entirely. I've bought several used cars in the past, and have completely learned from those experiences. Particularly one where you never buy a used car from a guy who insists you call him 'Dutch'.

I digress.

Further testing (and the indignity it engenders) was required before I would even allow myself to start to hope, let alone believe. 5 tests and 24 hours later, I started to believe.

This was further augmented by:

a) Salome phoning the clinic and describing the situation, an appointment (LONG in the future- what the hell is the matter with these doctors? This is my CHILD we're talking about here) set, and a nurse practitioner telling my wife 'congratulations'.

'You mean...?'

'Honey, those tests are designed to look for one single thing. It found it. 5 times. You are.'

b) A terrifying moment when my wife had to go into the clinic for an ultrasound to make certain everything was okay. I skipped work and broke traffic laws to get to that appointment, but was 5 minutes too late to observe the ultrasound. DAMN YOU, SEATTLE!!! DAMN YOU AND YOUR SHITTY PARKING!!!

At this point, there was no plausible denial of what was growing in my wife's belly, but still... I still felt a bit... reluctant to fully rejoice. At 6 weeks and 6 days, it's still an 'embryo': it hasn't even graduated to a 'fetus' (which occurs at week 10, according to the books I'm reading, as if there's some sort of cap and gown celebration where someone shakes the new fetus's hand and slips them a diploma), and this seemed to me to be a somewhat precarious, could-go-either-way sort of situation, and I didn't want to get too hopeful.

But oh.

Oh.

Salome calls me today at work, after her appointment, and tells me the news. My baby has a heartbeat.

My baby has a heartbeat.

It's beating, it's alive, pulsing and throbbing with new life. Sorting out 23 chromosomes from mom, and 23 from dad to decide what it wants to be (hint: choose more from your mom's side). It's growing, and healthy, with the steady quick thrumming of 115 beats per minute. It's drawing strength, it's in the process of becoming itself.

And in some inexplicable way, despite a lifetime of fumbles, failures and befuddlement, I did something right.

I gave my baby a heartbeat. And now I am a believer.

I love you. Come soon.

Song Lyrics That Are Just... LAME

Hey, I've got artistic roots.

I appreciate that creative spark. That muse. Whatever your medium, baby, spill your soul to the world. Paint it, sing it, interpretive-dance it (well...), write it, yodel it. I don't care. I will not, in any way, stifle it.

Unless it's absolute crap.

Lately, there have been song lyrics bouncing around in my head. I can't get them out. I can't. Can't, can't, can't CAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNN'T. Unless I purge them into this blog, pass this curse onto you and make all of you suffer.

And what makes these songs echo and reverberate in my head is NOT because they're catchy, have a good beat, and you can dance to them. It's because whether it be a simple line or an entire refrain, they're just freakin' stupid.

So, in no particular order since they all equally suck, the winners are:

Artist (term used loosely): Plain White T's
Song: Hey There, Delilah
Lyric: Hey there Delilah,
I've got so much left to say,
If every simple song I wrote to you
Would take your breath away
I'd write it all...

Okay, no problems here. Actually quite beautiful. Simple, adoring love song. THAT SUDDENLY SLIPS INTO VICTORIAN ENGLISH in the last line:

Even more in love with me you'd fall
We'd have it all.

Comment: Try saying this in plain, everyday language, and you'll get your ass kicked for being 'Poncey'. Thanks, Plain White Dickens. Talk about desperate for a rhyme.

Artist: Fergie
Song: Big Girls Don't Cry
Lyric: And I'm gonna miss youuuuu like a child misses its blanket.......

Comment: Can we say... 'searching for a simile'? It's a stretch, a dumb stretch, and it conjures images of you as a grown up wearing 'Little Mermaid' body pajamas with feet and carrying a teddy bear, but- oh the strength of you!!!!- you're going to grow up now and leave the little pink blankee at home. However, at least it marginally beats your next lyric, which is:

Artist: Fergie
Song: My Humps
Lyric: My hump, my hump, my hump, (Ha) my lovely lady lumps (Check it out).

Comment: Um.... given the obvious regression into the 'women are meat' mentality, I'm not sure how she got away with it. Could you imagine P. Diddy coming out with a song that goes:
My sac, my sac, my sac, (Ha), my hairy scrotum sac (Check it out)...?

Artist: Justin Timberlake
Song: Sexyback
Lyric: Get your sexy on, go 'head and be gone with it.

Comment: Apart from the whole thing not making a lick of sense, I do have to say this in response to the first phrase: Hey Justin, I don't know about you, but I always have my sexy on.
I am currently wearing red panties as I write this.

Artist: Jordin Sparks
Song: Tattoo
Lyric: Just like a tattoo,
I'll always have you (even when I'm an 80 year old grandmother with upper arms the size of hams and a backside that you need a king-size bedspread to cover, and that tattoo is sagging and wrinkled and stuck in my waddles of fat...).

Ah, but then it gets worse:

Lyric: You're still a part of everything I do,
You're on my heart just like a tattoo.

Huh?

Comment: People normally don't put tattoos on their hearts, darlin'. It kind of defeats the purpose- while simultaneously being darned dangerous. And if my being 'a part of everything [you] do' means I'm the equivalent of blue-inked sketch of a lotus flower or some other tramp-stamp, I'm not entirely convinced I'm all that special to you.

Gotta song lyric you hate? Spread the venom. Leave a comment with the lyric.

ONE day, Seattle? Seriously... One Day?!?

People say I was lucky to have grown up in California.

I always reply, 'It depends upon what part of California you grew up in.'

While I spent most of my childhood in Placerville, it was close enough to Sacramento to endure the same weather patterns. In essence, there were two seasons in Sacramento: 'miserably hot', and 'tar-boiling, tennis shoe-melting, fry-an-egg-on-your-dashboard' kind of hot. Either way, it made me appreciate those occasional days when the sun was covered by clouds and rain fell in little droplets, and I decided that when I was old enough to be on my own, I would be moving to a climate that was not so relentlessly sunny; I actually pined for rainy days, for fog and sleet and occasionally the driving snow.

I'm about to change my mind on that now.

It's friggin' April- no, it's the end of April, with May speeding around the corner like a pollen-belching locomotive. Only thing is, this particular train is being pulled by 'The Little Engine That Couldn't', and each day we awake to that same, dismal grayness, where the clouds cover the sun with bellies full of rain.

Seriously, the last time Salome and I saw the sun for any extended period of time, it was when we took our belated honeymoon trip to Cancun last summer. And even then, we had a hurricane (Dean) bearing down on us. But even still, we were grateful.

In the last 30 days, we've had two- count 'em, two- days where the sun broke the back of the relentless clouds, and finally showed its face for all of 16 hours- the slutty little tease- and so now California is looking better and better.

True, the relentless sun that beats down upon that state puts you at an increased risk for melanoma, but no one (as far as I know) ever suffered from Seasonal Affective Disorder by living in sunshine.

Talk about only ever seeing things in shades of gray.

If This Doesn't Touch Your Heart...

We learn our lessons in the strangest of places.

I remember as a child in Sunday school class, sitting around in a circle and trying to sing a song about 'the fruits of the spirit'. Some poor, demented soul had actually tried to put music to the words 'peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control...'.

It seemed, in that hazy understanding children have of the world, that if something wasn't put into song, it wasn't real. So we mercilessly belted out this tune, not having a clue what 'self-control' was, but it was in the song, so we bravely clapped out of sync, and stumbled over the syllables we tried to sing.

As years have passed, it is rare to come across individuals who possess even a few of these 'fruits'.

Sometimes, then, the best examples of how to be human do not come from humans at all. Watch this video. Let it take the time to load. It's worth it.

PS- Please adopt from animal shelters

April 9th, 2008

It's your birthday, bro.

I don't know why I can remember that so easily: I am so bad with birthdays that I even forget my own. But I can always remember your birthday- it's locked in my head like a PIN code. But I cannot, for the life of me, remember the date that you died. Isn't that weird? I find that weird.

I'll be calling mom in a few minutes. It's something I do every day on this date. I play it off, of course: 'Hi mom, just calling to see what's new...'. She plays along, but we both know. I never talk to dad on these calls. He's never around- always indisposed. I always envision him in the shop, working on something. Or, lately, helping grandma around her house. She's 88, you know. Starting to slow down, feel her mortality. And either he's working and thinking of you, or working and trying very hard to NOT think about you. But either way, there's no doubt you're on his mind. But no, I've never talked to him on this date. He's always out. Unavailable. I don't blame him, and don't know what I'd say to him if I did get him on the phone. I think we'd both feel like we had a leaden ball in our bellies; our conversation would be short.

Thanks for this. I really enjoy it. I've enjoyed it every year for the last 14 years. Sort of a sick gift that keeps on giving. A bad Hallmark card.

Sorry. That was uncalled for. But the anger never really goes away, you know? It just... starts to lose its focus.

You would be 39 today, old man.

Happy birthday.

Feelin' Groovy

No doubt many of you were eagerly awaiting my next installment on the nature of evil.

Sorry to disappoint you.

This morning I was tenderized, brutalized, and rubbed down with camphor oil by a big brute named 'Ty', only he spells his name 'Tyghe', and I paid $90 dollars for 90 minutes of this.

Get yer mind out of the gutter. It was a legitimate transaction. It was a massage, and being blissfully married as I am, it didn't feel right to be massaged by a female. Besides, we talked about football the whole time. I swear.

Well, that and bartending, since we've both done that in the past.

Following this was a greasy omelette with Salome in the thoroughly charming town of Normandy Park, and then a whirlwind tour of some pretty unappealing houses because our realtor (who is awesome, by the way) was bored and wanted to get out of the office. During this tour, I get a call from a doctor who wants to buy, so I am furiously scribbling down notes and credit card numbers in the living room of someone else's house.

After this, a trip to Costco, where I nearly lost my life due to Salome's driving (This will be frequently referred to in this blog from here on out, now that I have adequate ammunition) and we purchased a new vacuum cleaner. It's purple, and eats cat hair, from what I've been told. I'm ambivalent about the purple, but I can't wait to see it eat cat hair. Or maybe a cat. That would be funny.

We return home to a message from a realtor saying that they were a 20 minutes out from our place and would be there soon (they never showed), so we went pet shopping and bought a rather phallic looking cat toy stuffed with catnip that, so far, only Lucy has made friends with. But the price is worth it, given how adorable she is with it.

We change clothes, drive to downtown Seattle, and eat dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, and ply ourselves with a few powerful drinks. Once properly fed (and lubricated), we proceed to the 5th Avenue Theater to see 'Cabaret'. Not without its flaws, of course, but the more I see this particular musical, the more convinced I am that the problem lies within its script (Have I mentioned that in a previous incarnation I used to be a theater reviewer?) and the fact that two of its characters have become so iconic that each succeeding production must pull out every trick in the book to make them 'novel'. My advice? You can't beat Liza Minelli and Joel Gray, so don't even try. Do yourself a favor: dial it back, because you can't win. Still, nice singing, nice staging, and here I go again in 'reviewer mode'. Screw it. It was good. There. Done.

Now, I am at home and blogging, before I evaporate into sleep. I have the 'John Adams' HBO mini-series saved on Direct-TV (I was also a nerd in a previous life) and no firm plans tomorrow. I can't write about evil right now, because no matter what evil is afoot right now, I'm feeling pretty darn good. But I do have this offer in regards to thoughts on hell:

I believe that there is a hell. I believe it is a place where people get precisely what they want.

I also believe that they are forced to watch any sit-coms starring Tony Danza throughout all eternity.

Giving the Devil His Due

I've been thinking a lot about the nature of evil, lately.

Or to be more precise, the origin of it, since the nature of evil can best be termed as... well, evil.

Much of it has to do with an encounter I had at work recently; a conversation that has left me feeling somewhat discomfitted ever since. It was a conversation filled with good intention, based on the assumption that we were operating on the same wavelength. We were not.

I should say here that this is going to be more of series of essays over the next few days, rather than single blog encapsulating the major components and getting to the point quickly. That's because when I'm writing, I never get to the point quickly. In fact, to be more precise, I rarely have a point. But there are nuances to the experience that bear exploring as they bring a much richer depth to the conversation, for the sake of fostering dialogue about where, exactly, evil truly resides.

To begin, I think it would be fair to state that the very word, 'evil', has distinctly religious connotations. To term something as 'evil' implies a lack of gradations: evil is not 'bad', 'rotten', 'corrupted', though all of these things are certainly components of it. But just as we would not say that we have a car if, for example, we had before us a chassis with no motor, 3 wheels missing and the fourth lacking a tire. It is the sum of the compnents of the automobile coming together in a finished product that allows us to designate it as a singular item, a car, despite the fact that it is made up of many thousands of parts.

If we can accept that as a workable- if imperfect, analogy, then the word evil is a singular form of all that is wrong, stagnant, twisted and perverse. Evil is ultimate. One is not 'slightly evil', just as no woman can ever be 'a little bit pregnant'. Of course, the current administration and George W. Bush in particluar are coming very close to accomplishing just that (not the 'a little bit pregnant part'). But that's for another blog. It exists as nothing other than itself, and as such represents something greater than ourselves (by 'greater' I mean beyond what we could ever reach as human beings). That is why dialogue about it has tended to remain within the discussion quorums of religion, spirituality and theology- though this is not without exceptions that need not be mentioned here yet.

But if we have accepted the proposition that evil is both ultimate and singular, it brings up the question that started this blog: what is the origin of evil? Moreover, how is it embodied, and in what ways does it manifest itself?

Christians will be quick to answer 'Satan': evil personified, the very antithesis of Christ who, to his believers, is the ultimate goodness.

So here we bring the counterbalance to the question of evil: the ultimate in goodness. Fine. So if 'the devil made me do it' is a viable excuse, then by extension any good that we do allows us the boast 'Jesus made me do it'. I hear the former quite often. I hear the latter almost never.
Why? One is a convenient excuse, while the other does not let us take credit for our actions. But while that may prove true for some, I think something else lurks beneath the waters of this uncertain oceans, and I hope to plumb its depths a bit over the next few essays.

So I'll will leave this blog with what would be described by a high school english teacher as 'my thesis statement', which is: while evil may be an 'ultimate', it is by no means omnipotent. What we often ascribe to 'Satan', are merely the shortcomings of our own.

Blog Blurb

I know this is wildly inappropriate, but doesn't this cherub look like he's suckling a handful of testicles?

I just...

I'm sorry.