CHRONICLES: Burr

It has been raining hard all day. I remember, living in Colorado, I always looked forward to a good hard rain, especially when it acompanied huge claps of thunder and the occasional very close strike of a lightening bolt. I even remember one evening stroll when I lived on Capitol Hill, about this time of year if I can remember correctly, when it was snowng hard. It was that snow that keeps the sky pink and lit up for hours after the sun has gone down. Walking through this snow, this evening, I saw the clouds above me light up with lightning. When the thunder came seconds later, the muffled sound it made was different than anything I'd ever heard.

Anyway, I digress. Here, it rains. And the wind blows. Hard. It's shaking our double-paned picture window. I can hear more rain hitting our wall than I can our ceiling. It's pretty amazing! I love the wind!

Tomorrow, I have a glass install to do with Mr. Craig. The weather shouldn't be too tough to negotiate. It's an interior piece of glass, a fixture for a shower. I'm looking forward to changing my pace from graphics and printing. I'm much better organized when I feel mental clarity. The last blog I wrote really helped that, though.

I'm looking forward to dozing off to the sound of this incredible rain storm, and I'm looking forward to seeing what a southeast Alaskan winter really looks like.

THOUGHTS: Experiencing Forgiveness

I have done some shitty things in my life.

Seriously, I know it's odd to start a blog like this, but let's be honest with each other. I've surfed the internet while on the clock at work. I've petended to be sleeping to avoided talking to someone. When I was in eighth grade, I watched two of my friends break into a house and didn't say anything about it. I once tried to fake a dislocated shoulder for sympathy. I killed a duck once with a rock.

I've lied. I've stolen. I've blown off really good friends, and forced myself into the lives of others. I've taken advantage of people.

Every once in a while, after a big come-to-Jesus with myself or somebody else, after the following days/weeks/months/years/decades even of awkward silence or weirdness, something will come out of the woodwork and remind me of what a selfish bastard I've been... and how far I've come. I've used the word "forgiveness" liberally in the past, usually to describe how someone's forgiven me, and how that's a huge and inspiring thing... for a while. I rarely feel the need to forgive others as I eventually and self-depracatingly figure that karma owes me a kick in the butt, that they were probably decent before we got involved in whatever capacity.

The part nature of the word "forgiveness", the real essence of it, is something that continued to elude me for the longest time, until recently, when I was reading an article called "A Pattern So Vast" by Kate Tucker, the Associate Minister of First Unitarian Universalist Church of Minneapolis. In this article, she talks about forgivness, and the healing power of being able to forgive one's SELF. I think for some, it's too easy and not as deeply considered as it has to be. For the dark places some people go, a simple self-forgiving usually translates into justification, and the pattern continues.

However, I was thinking about the concept. I mean, REALLY trying to wrap my head around the idea that the only person who needs your forgiveness is yourself, and, conversely, you're the only person you need it from. I looked up after reading this article and saw this Buddhist quotation I had put up on the board for my wife and I to read every once in a while. "You, yourself, as much as anyone in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection."... and forgiveness.

I've gotten on my soap box about how God (or whatever you choose to call the light behind all things) practices infinite forgiveness with all of us, God's children. Whether we stole a candy bar once when we were six or murdered millions of Jewish people when we were competent adults, God would see whatever good there is in us all, celebrate that, and wrap us in that warm and secure love for eternity. That's forgiveness.

But that's forgiveness from God. That's easy to talk about, and almost as easy to believe when you're here in a very real earth, in a time where there are many challenges. And even with an unwavering belief in this, it's still hard to find the courage or justification or even, simply, the reasons to forgive yourself.

Then, as if a warm sip of coffee warmed my stomach after hours in the cold, something hit me. I remembered three words I had written in a phrase below the quotation on the dry-erase board in our kitchen. Three words that the main character in Robert Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" says so often in the book:

"Thou art God."

I felt as if somebody was in the room saying it to me, and for the first time, I believed it.  Not in the sense that I'm God as I believe it. I believed it in the sense that I finally realized that, having an essense of God within me, as we all do, I had the power to forgive myself.

I felt more content than I have in a long time. It was a beautiful moment.

I hope, if you're reading this, that you know you're loved. Loved by yourself. Truly loved. This person that loves you, when they forgive you, it's the key to unlocking the happiness you never thought attainable before.

Thou art God.

THOUGHTS: One Big Non-Sequitor

You may be thinking, because of the title, that I'm going to whine about things in my life that I haven't accomplished. Well, I was thinking more along the lines of simply talking about how I keep forgetting my dreams, that usually they're vivid and I can at least remember a big chunk of them and how I felt about them. Lately, though, I only remember bits and peices, scenes, and don't even have a feel for the context. Maybe it's just because my sleep patterns have been slightly altered. I don't really know.

It's cool in Ketchikan this morning. Forty-five degrees and rainy. Fall is settling in, and bringing along its honesty, a toolkit of autumn weather, and with those tools, will engineer a way to keep people inside with their families and good food, or, tragically, cold and wet and hungry before the gluttonous holiday season.

I know that was a non-sequitor, but that's my mood this morning.

THOUGHTS: Moving Beyond The Past

When I was in high school, I had several odd jobs. I washed dishes at a Chinese restaurant. I pulled weeds at an outdoor lab school. I sold popcorn and ran ancient projectors at an ancient movie theater. Everyone in my generation knew that theater, too.

The Unique was, well, unique. Built as the Salida Opera House in 1890, the theatre had dressing rooms, room for an orchestra, and, with the balcony, seated over six hundred people. As the place changed hands and went through various incarnations over the years, it found itself in the hands of the Groy family. When I worked there, John Groy owned it. He also owned a small theater in nearby Buena Vista called "The Pearl", and the only drive-in for almost 100 miles around, "The Commanche".

The Unique was a magnificent place. The ceiling was huge, and a sound system which featured "surround sound" didn't really do it justice. There was no heating system, other than the huge propane "jet engines" that John would put in the very front, just in front of the old stage. The running joke was that you always had to go in the winter with sleeping bags and blankets.

At some point, after I left Salida, the Unique was shut down by the people who eforced fire codes. I don't know details of what happened next, except that it was sold by John to a gentleman who couldn't pay the city for it (how the city of Salida came about it is a mystery to me, although an old friend and co-worker said it was practically robbery). Well, as opposed to trying to procure funds to save the building, the practical solution, unfortunately, was to tear the auditorium down.

A few days ago, my dad sent me a picture of the pile of rubble. As saddening as it is, I've found myself involved here in Ketchikan with a theatre company diligently raising money to build a performing arts complex. It's a circle, and it shows me that the past is past for a reason, that it was a tremendous experience, full of fond memories and happiness associated with my teenage years. Kind of an obvious metaphor, I suppose, but at least I'm writing about it instead of just thinking to myself, "wow, how weird is that?"

CHRONICLE: A Quick Walk Across the Street

I live off a road locally referred to as "Tongass". It's actually Alaska State Highway 7, which is ridiculous because it doesn't go anywhere. It's also officially called Tongass Highway in honor of the surrounding rainforest and marine channels.

At any rate, I crossed Tongass and walked up the hill in Refuge Court, where they're developing land for houses. At the very top was a lot for over $67,000, almost 20,000 square feet. The view was petty neat.

THOUGHTS: The Other Side

Malcolm has a strange gift, it seems. Maybe it's not a gift as much as it's an awareness that all children have, that we lose as we get older through sociological growth and regression.

In our front hall, we have a large, framed picture of Malcolm's brother Tiberius. Tibbs would have been five years old next month, yet he didn't see his first birthday. The other day, Lyss was getting ready to leave the house and Malcolm saw the picture. He looked at it, and his perception was very plain. "Bye," he said. "Bye," like he knew that he wasn't going to see Tibbs again.

A day or two later, we went to a gathering at a friends house. On her wall were vintage pictures from a collection her grandparents had. Malcolm looked at one of these pictures, one with three men and a toy airplane. His response was the same. "Bye."

What is it about children that we don't understand as adults? Obviously, we must have understood it at some point when we were children ourselves. Somehow we get programmd to believe that these things aren't possible.

I've heard and read stories where children have been able to see ghosts, to pedict their own deaths, to predict the deaths of others. In a way, I'm envious, but I choose to be more blissfully ignorant of such things, maybe it's because life is simpler without such paranormal and taboo things in it. Still, I remain in awe of the concept, and I will continue looking on with a reverene and fascination.

CHRONICLES: A Dark and Rainy Evening

Ketchikan is a very unique place. The other day, through my job, I had to do a walk-through of the local Trident Seafoods cannery. The place is a powerhouse. They have the capabilities of canning one and a half million cans of salmon every week. I can't remember all of the statistics the guy giving me the tour was rattling off, but it was pretty amazing. It putsinto perspective how much of the local economy is based on fishing.

The days have been getting shorter. In Colorado, they seemed to lose a minute or two every day. Here, because of our latitude, it seems as though we lose five or ten minutes a day. It's almost as if you ca actually feel the tilt of the Earth swinging away from the sun. (Yes, I know that the angle stays relative to itself and the position of Earth changes as I circumnavigates the sun...) Still, it's a little unsettling that it feels like a month ago, it was light an hour or two later than it is now, and it's been dark for an hour or two already. We haven't even fallen back into standard time yet.

Last month, Ketchikan received almost thirty inches of rain. When I spoke with my dad on the phone, he made the point that we had three or four years worth of the rain they receive in his part of Colorado. It would be interesting to see what would happen if our precipitation switched places for a year. They would have floods and mudslides and overgrowth of grass and no fires. We would have dirty clothes, empty salmon spawning streams, lots of fires, and lots of shipping water up here.

Still, it's very calming being so near the ocean. Every day I spend here helps me understand the attraction the ocean has to so many people. As we're on the Inside Passage, we don't really hear the constant breaking of waves and the like. Still, it's quaint to see the gentle rise and fall of tides as your day slowly moves on, as the Alaskan worker keeps on task diligently.