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Monday, November 29, 2004

New poet laureate

Filed under: Life — cody @ 11:03 am

We have a new poet laurate from the Hearland: Ted Kooser. He reads like a poet that this President, or more likely his wife, would pick.

Selecting A Reader

First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
“For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned.” And she will.

– Ted Kooser

i have found what you are like

Filed under: Poetry — cody @ 10:52 am

I don’t have time to write a proper entry, so I blog. This new biography of E.E. Cummings seems interesting. From the sound of it, I would have disliked the person that was Edward Estlin Cummings, but I do so love his poetry.

Thursday, November 18, 2004

What I want for Christmas.

Filed under: Spirit — cody @ 9:15 am

Last night we were riding in the car coming back from dinner and I was smiling inside listening to two year old Petunia improvise her way through “Mary Had A Little Lamb” from her car seat in the back of our battered minivan. She was weaving in her own extemporaneous editorials on Jesus, sunshine, and teachers’ rules, particularly the breaking thereof. Olivia was being cute and laughing, scatting her accompaniment to Petunia’s meandering tune.

And in my heart that moment was complete, sufficient, as if there was no past or future to lead away from it or detract from it. There was only the Now, the Suchness, the fullness of that second. The laughter and singing carried the wisdom of a thousand Sunday sermons. These children, this woman by my side, in this car on this road, was the best I know of heaven. For that moment I was completely and totally without desire of any kind, not even desire to preserve the feeling, so grateful was I for that instant that I was happy to let it pass.

So that’s what I want for Christmas – enough gratitude in my life, enough appreciation of the prosaic blessings in the everyday, to be free of want. I want to not want.

I don’t even necessarily want more “heaven” moments like the one I decribed above. I just want the mind that can access the ones already in front of my face. Now how do I put that on my Amazon wish list?

Monday, November 15, 2004

A response to a response to my response to this woman who keeps assuming I want to receive her right-wing emails

Filed under: Life — cody @ 5:57 pm

When you’re a Christian, people just assume that you are all for pushing your personal values as a public policy agenda. A typical hazard of the “Christian Left,” I guess. So I get all these emails, you see. And I try not to take the bait and answer, but it digs at me that I am on these lists on the basis of someone’s faulty assumption about what my faith says about my politics and that my silence when I receive these things is a tacit agreement with that assumption and so I answer when I should just keep my mouth shut. I figure that my testy replies might get me taken off these lists, but no such luck. The hits keep on coming.

As a result, more tilting at windmills:

Sorry, Cathy, to appear cynical. I am grumpy, yes. I am glad that you like what you see. It is mildly encouraging to see people in government with some of the same values on important issues as me. I’ll agree with you there.

But just because I agree with some of the values of the people in government doesn’t mean that I want to watch the government run roughshod over our democracy (and true Republican values to boot) to advance its “mandate.”

What I’m seeing is a bloated, debt-ridden lummox of a federal government with a penchant for meddling in its citizens’ lives and a growing appetite for foreign interventions that would make old-style Jimmy Carter liberals proud. I see a trend toward one party rule (i.e. Tom Delay calling for a “permanent Republican majority”) and a troubling appetite for empire-building. History shows what happens to empires and a government ruled permanently by one party is called a “dictatorship.”

I like checks and balances – government works better when the branches are in the hands of different parties. I like local government. I like due process. I like the Bill of Rights as whole, not selectively enforced. I like less centralized government. I like freedom of information and open government. I still think nations should try to cooperate and the Geneva Convention is a darn good idea. Damn the terrorists, we should continue to lead the world by behaving like a true democracy, not like a bunch of insecure ninnies.

I meant what I said about knowing at the end of eight years of Republican rule who was right and who was wrong. I certainly hope I turn out to be wrong. But you know, maybe this is a faith building exercise for me, because I’m seeing that the faith I used to place in our country’s leaders is better spent on God. You can only count on him, apparently. For everything else, render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.

Regards,

Cody

Friday, November 12, 2004

Poem: The Puppet

Filed under: Poetry — cody @ 9:22 am

The puppet thinks:
It’s not so much
what they make me do
as their hands inside me.

– Charles de Lint

Tuesday, November 9, 2004

Local Connections

Filed under: Art, Community — cody @ 8:52 am

Lorianne’s eloquent labyrinth entry over at Hoarded Ordinaries got me hankering to toe the line on one myself. And we have a rather nice one right here in the Clear Lake Area, as I recall. So that got me to wondering about the story behind the labyrinth at Sylvan Rodriguez Park and I came across the site for the local artist who created it. Turns out I had stood and stared at her haunting, ethereal sculpture before at a local art museum. I just didn’t know they were connected, the sculptures and the labyrinth. I love it when connections jump out at me.

Monday, November 8, 2004

Feeling Traitorous

Filed under: Poetry — cody @ 9:04 am

While I’m on Alan Dugan, having still open the book I impulse-bought at B&N last Thursday night, I’ll share a timely poem with you:

Crimes of Bernard

They were always arguing that we
were either the Devil’s puppets or
God’s marionettes, so when I said,
“What’s the difference? The latter
has us by the long hairs, the former
by the short, the best thing
about Commedia dell’ Arte is
improvisation.” They said, there
are only two sides to a question: to
propose a third is treason if true.
Traitors we snatch bald, we
cut off their bells, we set them out
naked on the road to nowheres
as two-bit Abelards, two-bit whores,
and go on arguing as before.”

Emphasis in the above poem is mine. And it is how I feel in the polarized wake of our recent election. I’m feeling a bit treasonous. I’m a Conservative Christian who doesn’t want to yield that title to the fundamentalists – who now run our government and, next up, our lives. Not wanting to fall in line, feeling a little seditious, as if I can use my dog-eared Christian membership card as a way to infiltrate ranks and plant some treasonous moderation bombs amongst the spiritual warfare weekend warriors. Would love to walk, white flag a-waving, over to the well-meaning secularist liberal schmucks and help them get a clue about staking their own claim in the values debate, the ersatz battlefield of the future.

So, you neither-Democrat-nor-Republican Christians out there and you well-meaning secularist liberal schmucks out there, feel like plotting an insurrection? Might not make make any difference, we being a few little Don Quixotes amongst the Windmills, but it’ll sure make us feel better.

The Daily Accident

Filed under: Poetry — cody @ 8:33 am

A new poet, for me at least: Alan Dugan.

Morning Song

Look, it’s morning, and a little water gurgles in the tap.
I wake up waiting, because it’s Sunday, and turn twice more
than usual in bed, before I rise to cereal and comic strips.
I have risen to the morning danger and feel proud,
and after shaving off the night’s disguises, after searching
close to the bone for blood and finding only a little,
I shall walk out bravely into the daily accident.

Thursday, November 4, 2004

Blame the parents

Filed under: Parenting — cody @ 8:48 am

So apparently Bush did not win on the economy or the war or even terrorism after all. He won on moral direction. America needs moral direction and President Bush is going to give it to us. A “Great Re-learning.” Let the culture wars begin. And seeing as how 11 states passed gay marriage bans, we’re gonna start with them homosexuals, apparently.

I was watching this reality show called Nanny 911 last night for the first time when it hit me. The whole nation missed out on parenting. We have a national Daddy (or Mommy) complex. Now we turn to our reality TV and, apparently, our government to establish the “moral direction,” which we have lost or missed somewhere along the line.

We have reality TV shows that show us “what not to wear”, shows that tell guys how not to be boorish slobs, shows that tell married people how not to be annoying spouses. And now we have one show that teaches parents the basics of parenting. Dr. Phil scolds us and we beg for more.

We missed out on role models for all of that stuff, apparently, and now we’ve gone to the polls and said “To hell with the economy and the war, I want someone to reestablish morals here in America.” The great conservative base has spoken and the pendulum has sped past the middle to the far right.

So you’d better straighten up and fly right out there, cause your sins are the ones they’ll try to ban next. Or put on TV for everyone to laugh at.
We’ve got surrogate parents, TV and the government, and daddy’s gonna teach us all a lesson.

I said all though the long and painful campaign season that we will get the president we deserve. I was right, unfortunately.

Wednesday, November 3, 2004

What, Me Worry?

Filed under: Life — cody @ 6:07 am

Four more years. Yeah, yeah, it’s not over yet. But it’s in the lawyers hands now and we all know who has the advantage there. But, like I did back in 2000, I’m looking on the bright side this November 3rd:

I’m a white male upper middle class Christian conservative who works for the aerospace industry. I should be freakin’ ecstatic. I’m working on it.

Republicans won!!! That means smaller government, states’ rights, less federal control over education, fiscal reponsibility, judicial restraint, a reluctance to engage in foreign interventionism…. Oh. Wait.

Hey, at least I don’t have to depend on civil rights and privacy laws. Yet.

So, when it comes right down to it, fear trumps logic every time. Good to know. I’ll put that one in my back pocket.

And being a Christian evangelical, I’m against abortion. Now, I’ve always thought that eliminating abortion and outlawing it are nowhere close to the same thing, but, hey, whatever. At least we’ll be able to prevent poor people from getting abortions. That’s gotta count for something, right?

If everything becomes faith-based in our government, I’m sitting pretty for a civil service job.

And as a foster parent, I predict a boom market.

I’m from Houston. Why shouldn’t the whole country have our air and water quality?

We have all those entertaining “Waaaaa. Bush stole the election again.” documentaries from whiny blowhards like Michael Moore to look forward to.

Maybe the Republicans who still remember what it was like to be truly conservative will get a spine and I’ll get that third party I’ve always been wanting.

Maybe the Democrats will finally get their shit together and give us an electable candidate.

And, last but not least, there’s no way Bush will be elected president in 2008.

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