on switched

made the move: http://joeley.wordpress.com/

on contemplating a few things

let's go for a list of contemplations, because it's quicker, easier, prettier than I could ever be in paragraphs:

1. switching over to WordPress, because everybody else who is using it seems to make things look a lot nicer than Blogger.

2. entering the blogospheric static concerning this year's hotly contested election by wagging a lyrical finger at the opposition and accusing barack obama of soullessness or sarah palin of lipstickery or john mccain of jowlyness or finding a reason not to care instead of hinging emotional well-being on something to which I only contribute one vote.

3. riding my red, red bicycle to work.

4. talking to the gorgeous barista at my favorite coffeeshop, but still thinking of people in faraway places

5. wondering for how many people number four has applied to in the last twenty minutes. probably me and the man staring longingly out the window, hand to his chin for the last thirty minutes. no one can sit so still, without contemplating the beauty of a barista!

6. moving out this weekend and how many trips I'll have to take in my car to get my crap from my folks' place to a new place.

7. seven, it has always been seven.

on awaiting arrivals and departures

a plane (though not this one), flying so low and loudly that impact felt imminent, passed over our office this morning.

it reminded me then, and rarely this happens in the moment, of being much younger underneath colossal noises such as that. the mystical qualities of flight, then, when we were young enough to know nothing of mechanics like lift, dominated our imaginations; airplanes were so much bigger than we could ever be and did things we could never do, like stretch out wings and war against gravity successfully—the things we dreamed of doing as we leapt from top bunks with umbrellas and blankets hoping to win for a moment such as the ongoing war of airplane versus ground.

occasionally, it grips me like fingers on an armrest, the rush and shudder of liftoff when thinking of youth. being so young that flight felt like the natural outgrowth of being older, staying up as late as possible until after hours flight would reveal itself. it wasn't simple, though, as we are often prone to say. no, it was magical, the whole world sewn together by inconceivable threads that if seen could illuminate life and all its mysteries. and, growing up was the key that gave us vision to see.

then, we found out, slowly by that very act of growing up, that the vision to see was science, physics that explained aerodynamics and propulsion, and were unimpressed over time by the logical sequences that governed it all, thus did modernity wipe us clean of all imagination. now, airplanes and flights provide us sometimes-long threads of inactivity, spaces to read books instead of time to marvel at the air between us and the ground and our successful war against gravity.

then, while reading or watching a dvd on a laptop, the imagination returns, the ground is so far away! and all the ability of physics to explain wonder away disappears in the distance between you and the earth. and we are reabsorbed into the atmosphere, among clouds and other low-flying planes.

(photo, Jim Weidman, 2008)

on a tremendous rain

and, the streets will run like rivers. when they do, we'll trade our cars for makeshift rafts made out of responsibilities and couch cushions; we'll name first mates and captains and pirates where we used to name First and Main. Instead, we'll put oars in until they hit asphalt and traverse passes once reserved for horsepower and hisses, shouting at stoplights instead of easing to a stop. There will be some who don't make it, who can't swim, and they will be lost. We have already lost so many who couldn't fashion rafts out of imagination and what surrounded them in a room, washed away.
But, you and me, we're dreamers; we've seen the flood as our open door and walked boldly out into an inhospitable world to men and women on foot. And, in putting in, we're already saying that there is a river, we are captains, and we'll get to wear hats.

on no tongue

sometimes, it takes awhile for me to find something to say, but when it comes, it comes and i hope you read it (o reader).

i've had hymns running over and over in my head recently. i've been humming them as i walk into Dunkin' Donuts with blatant disregard for what humming does to distract other patrons. they're big things, hymns. they're not meant to be hummed alone; they're choral things. they want to be sung by groups of people, all of whom sing different lines, some alto, some bass and so on. when it's just a melody, it seems bare. humming a single melody with a sweating cup of iced coffee in your hand is nothing like a thunderous sanctuary filled with song, melody and harmonies layered on top of each other.

it helps us reassert that we are not individuals. we are layered lines, one on top of another, one below, supporting, accenting, completing, fulfilling. otherwise, we're fragments.

when my host father drove me to work in Uganda, he had a wonderful knack to sing the lines to a hymn and not always the melody. trodding down the road that bisects Kalerwe Market, he would sing, "When peace like a river, attendeth my way" in a trembling voice, nothing like a boom. his thick accent llaced into every line, he would change the tempo, occasionally lose the key, change sections from melody to tenor, from bass to melody. eventually, though, i learned to chime in, to begin singing the parts he wasn't singing. until, without much deliberate collaboration, we sang all the way through a traffic jam, and wished each other well for the workday as i exited the car.

they weren't elegant songs, and it wasn't an elegant sanctuary. we flubbed lyrics; the inside of a Nissan pales in comparison to the vaulted ceilings of a church. it was sloppy and beautiful.

i'm humming out sloppy and beautiful moments, with every iced coffee and car ride. they are all around me, and they are full of memories.

on good morning, monday

this week, i decided to start listening to the songs wrapped in memories of different times and places so as to fashion a congruent line between my lives. it'll make me believe in everything again, that the day is opening up for its own possibilities, that the beach is only a bike ride away will be as magical as it was when i first heard this song!!

if this were xanga, i could say what i was currently listening to as effortlessly as pressing a button; instead, you have to imagine the soundtrack to my memories. trust me; it's delightful.

on the whole

everything, if it could breathe, would exhale a gigantic sigh as though the whole earth being porous could squeeze and release all the air pent up inside itself. and, what a tremendous sigh–like a wind that could blow off your hat. all the kids on swingsets and the pushers of kids on swingsets across the world could do underdoggies beneath each other without the peril of hands pressed on plastic seats and ferocious sprinting from behind to below to in front.

it was simpler then, i'll say. life should always be as simple as this. the most terrifying thing in the world should be a gust of wind and the sensation of a friend passing underneath you on the swingset.  or, the most complex thing in the world should be the monkeybars, i could say that, too. the biggest thing we ever do should be climb to the crest of a slide and slip down, courageously, into the mulch below.

instead, i can feel the world breathing beneath my feet.  there was nothing more sure than that the ground would be there at the end of a slide, underneath the monkeybars, at the bottom of a long jump (on the count of 3-2-1) from a swing. but, the ground sags and heaves, rumbles and groans under the weight of ambitious feet–boys who have outgrown the playground but refuse to leap from swing to floor and land as adults on uneven earth.

but, there will be touchdown. one day, we may look like the men in ties and cleanly pressed shirts in coffeeshops on lunchbreaks, talking on blackberry cellphones and saying things like, i look forward to it!! sounds like a winner!! until our neatly-styled hair recedes and we make phone calls like these, to confirm meetings, to talk business over lunch, we'll look at it flabbergasted, how could we become this?!? what will we be looking on at boys in coffeeshops, thinking of ourselves when we were this young, disheveled and lost??

but, we're lost. both of us, me in my tattered jeans, him in his pleated khakis. and you're lost, fingers on a keyboard, eyes to the screen.

the man who just left the bathroom, he looks like Lorne Michaels, except chubbier; he's also taking a handful of free cinnamon bagel samples and stuffing them into his pockets. he knows what he wants. i'll be him and wear my hawaiian shirt in suburban ohio, take free samples without any regard for how much taking would qualify as theft.

on stacking everything I own

most of it fits in boxes–books, clothes, kitchen knives, dvds. and, it will all be on the road soon, headed across states and states. i'll be the one on the road, listening to podcasts with the seats folded away, boxes meticulously tucked away. setting the cruise-control, i'm going to sweep across this country, starting here in the midwest and ending up in the northeast.

because when there's nowhere you're supposed to be, there's everywhere you're gonna go. i'm going to chase God through city blocks in Chicago, to the North Woods of Wisconsin, to Indianapolis, through Ohio, until God hits the sunrise on the Atlantic in Rye, New Hampshire. when that sun breaks across the horizon and the air heats up, the sea sprays against the rocky coast and we're all there. we were all wrapped up in it; now, we're being unfolded with each wave. then, we'll eddy behind neglected sandcastles until another wave takes us out to sea.

we're drifters on an endless sea–try that for a cliché. put words like that on a roadtrip; see how the mixing of road and sea suits entire days spent in cars. an endless sea, that suits the whole of what it is right now.

graduated without much place else to go but drift–i should build a raft out of fallen trees, rope and other island-survivor miscellanea.

on what stands in the way

Roadblocks are big, and they look like sociology papers, portfolios and professors.

on hope

It all comes to a point. As Fr. Richard Rohr says, "Cynicism comes far too easy. Cynicism is the easiest thing. It doesn't take surrender, love, kindness, patience, virtue to be a cynic ... We're not called to cynicism; we're called to faith, to living in the threshold, to living with our feet in both places, to trusting and respecting both worlds–the world as it is and the world as we believe it could be or should be."

It's not sustainable, emotionally or physically, to despair. But, it is at the precise moments of despair that the end of human possibilities are clear. We are simply not capable.


One morning, months ago in Kampala, I awoke at Bishop Zac Niringiye's home and began taking a cup of tea; he was in the frontyard, doing a morning round of exercises with a jump rope. Eventually, he came inside, slightly winded, and greeted me. Apparently engrossed in a thought, he heaved a sigh and gave me these words:

Oh, Jo-el, he said. You are entitled to nothing. You deserve nothing. Nothing that you have you have earned.

He smiled with as broad a smile as I've ever known, the corners of his mouth curled upward and his eyebrows raised. Everything, he said and paused. Everything is a gift of grace. At that, he tossed his jumprope over his shoulder and continued, Jo-el, you are single.

I hummed in agreement. He indicated that Moses, too, was single–Moses, being his nephew whom lived in his home. Moses, sitting in the living room, affirmed it and came into the dining room. Zac said, Don't live life wanting just to be married. Don't live life always anticipating the next moment. The best preparation for the next step is to live fully in this given moment.

Everything is a gift of grace. He laughed heartily, not condescending in the least, on the contrary, affirming and assuring.

I still hear that laugh and remember the assurances of his presence. I long to be content with that presence; I think that cynicism is a sort of discontent improperly emphasized. Hope is discontent tempered in the belief that there will be a better day than this one and the practice of appreciation for the grace that this day holds. Surely, to hope must come after despair, under the feelings that nothing is happening, and that nothing will happen again.

But, despair is not a complete sentiment; it cannot be. To live fully in the moments of despair has to mean that we ultimately believe in hope, believe that the dynamic hope of Christ is real and bodily and here.

Seeing more fully and living more fully is an unfolding of that hope and the way in which it is woven into the grace of every given moment. I'm beginning to see again.

on what might have been lost

While I really, really want this video to speak for itself, I can't resist.

No nevermind; I'll resist.

* * * * *

Maybe, I'm not really cut out for blogging if I resist the urge to explain what I have posted. Bon Iver, alias for Justin Vernon, is a remarkable new act that ought to be shared. The story surrounding the album is remarkable enough This music has made a longer than comfortable winter into something more manageable; watching snowflakes fall on the windshield is more bearable with this soundtrack than without it– even in late March.

But, I am ready for some sunshine; at which point, I will blog about Van Halen "Jump" or Poison "Nothing but a Good Time."

on the public square

i've been debating, for what seems like years, whether or not to post poetry on this blog. i don't know if this is read, for one, so it might seem like a tree falling into uninhabited woods. But, if this happens to have readership; i'd like to know and might start the electronic foray into self-publication.

That might also be a principle, extroverted insecurity of my own, but i'm also unconvinced that this Internet thing is a legitimate avenue for poetry. it still seems distant and impersonal despite all the personified profiles of facebook and myspace. Maybe this is hung on the hope that we're not so distant from one another, just distinct from the other expressions in previous eras, where poetry was read in the public square, when poetry carried upon itself the duties of storytelling and prophecy, when poetry came out of community.

Perhaps, it is our concept of community that has been so expanded and digitized that i can't see the voice poetry has for that broad a place. Because, you don't see what i see–you don't walk past the anti-Semitic graffiti underneath the train station at College Avenue like i do, you're not where i am–i'm terrified that the exercise will be meaningless. It could all be another bookmark, another RSS on your Google reader, another stop along the on-demand-and-there-it-is. But, is that any different than walking up to your bookshelf, assuming you have a bookshelf, and pulling this from it, feeling the pages in between your fingers and smelling the glue in the binding with each flick and turn?

It is certainly different, and i'm waiting to make sense of the feeling of its difference.

on tom

maybe, it's the gravel in his voice that so many critics have described. something about his voice is real–imperfect, broken apart. i want that raspy voice to characterize what i say; i'm still listening closely, hoping to hear that from me–something like it at least.

i've got years to harden like that, to let them all ring out in the grit of my voice. then again, it might take a lot of cigarettes to get that bark; a lot more than i'm willing to smoke.

but, i'm wearing my years as it is; i'm tired of staying up all night to get a paper done for the morning. it all seems fleeting now, but i won't go into that. Got another paper to write before morning. i should expend my intellectual energy on it instead of entering another tribute into the pipeline about another songwriter.

on this being what we've waited for

i could be embittered, lonely, dissatisfied, or all of the above on this valentine's day. but, i've decided to take solace in this.

on exchanging my favor for something more like this

in the end, i'll take this:



because, this beats being indoors and hoping that a whole season will just pass us over, wearing hats and scarves, burning logs. i'd rather burn logs on the beach, tuck my feet into the sand and strum out my favorite Dylan song on a worn-out guitar.

eventually, i'll have to come back from california. but, for right now, it fits.

on not wanting to grow up, in favor of being a Toys'R'Us Kid

If I let the sky--because it needs my permission--open up and let loose on this place, it would look like it does today. It would slog the whole town down so much that we couldn't move, trapped inside our homes and forced to cook leftovers and light a fire and have conversation with our friends as we peer over the margins of secondhand novels. We'd listen to vinyl instead of turning on the TV, like real aesthetics, unafraid of the click and hiss of spinning records, and tell stories over the warble of a jazz standard.

i'd take that igloo of a lifestyle, as long as i had enough scarves and sweaters, firewood to last through the days, instead of the harshness of life outside–textbooks, exams, business suits, morning commutes. But, maybe it could snow so much that the trainyard is a great white sea of windswept snow dunes, engines rolling gradually, bumps underneath an outstretched linen sheet.

we could bury what we have to do after we're done here. we could let it ice over beneath the weight of lake effect snow and imagine the whole thing will stay frozen forever to the soundtrack of trumpet and fuzz and the crackle of a fireplace, okay?

on having found the democracy in myself

pure, unadulterated, completely inspirational propoganda. and, if it were a milkshake, i would drink it to the final slurp.

on it having been awhile

because of where i am, i don't know if i've got a lot to say.

maybe that will change, and i will someday re-enter the blogosphere,
fearlessly emboldened enough to believe in democracy.