If My Wings Should Fail Me, Lord, Please Meet Me With Another Pair

I feel that nature should be more thematically appropriate.

I know, of course, that most people like sunny days, blue skies, and all that other happy go lucky nonsense. But there are some occasions I feel that those weather conditions are just not appropriate.

A while back my wife and I were driving home from the store. We had bought some ribs and we were going to have a cookout with some friends. We were excited and happy, and were just discussing the usual nonsense that happily married couples talk about when they're alone. You know, music, food, terrible social mistakes other people are making, that kind of thing.

Then we came across a funeral procession.

I know there are some places in America that do not practice this, but it's practically a law in the Southeast, which is where I (unfortunately) live. All cars that are not part of the funeral procession turn down their radios and stop driving, so as to show respect for the passing dead. On a two lane road both lanes stop, and on a divided highway only the lane on the same side as the procession stops. So naturally we stopped, we turned down the music, and I took off my hat and wondered idly who had passed. After the procession had passed we picked up in the conversation right where we had left off.

A few minutes later I thought about that, and it occurred to me that outside of that person's family and friends, no one really cared that that person had died. Everyone on the road just kept going; to us it was just another day.

I understand that we can't stop and weep over every person that dies. If we did so, we'd never get anything done. But I can't help but feel that there should be some indicator that someone has left this world, just to help out the family. Logically thinking, this is what the funeral service is for. But despite the fact that I pride myself on logical thinking, I'm not always the best at it. This is about the time that I decided that weather should be more thematically appropriate.

When there's a funeral in the area, it seems unfair that sun goes on shining and the sky is blue. It should be overcast at least, if not pouring rain and storming, and it should be cold, especially if the person was taken before their time, if they were younger. Perhaps fair weather would be appropriate for someone who died in their nineties, sort of indicative of a good long life, but for younger than say, sixty-five or so, the weather should be more appropriate.

I remember the day of my dad's funeral. Do you know I actually prayed the night before that it would be storming the next morning when I woke up? I felt honestly that entire world should darken, and freeze, and that hail should pour out of the skies, and that the ground should shake and that everyone in the world should know that a great man had died, and the Earth was the lesser for his passing. Of course, I didn't get that. I didn't even get a cloud. It was blue skies, sun shining, birds singing, and ninety bloody degrees outside at ten in the morning. So I went and delivered the eulogy at my father's funeral, to the accompaniment of birdsong and whispers of "It's a good day for it at least." And thinking now I am sure that that's what my father would have wanted in the first place. He loved good weather. Well, actually he loved both, he always said that there were few pleasures in life as good as standing out in the rain while blaring Pink Floyd out of a boombox. But he wanted his funeral to be a celebration of his life, not a mourning of his death.

It didn't help me any, knowing that. The funeral is more for the ones left behind anyway. And because of that I feel that if it is a sad death, that there should at least be clouds in the sky.

That way those left behind will feel that at least whatever force controls the weather actually cares, even if no one else does.

I Fought For You, Fought On Your Side, Long Before You Were Born.

It has been quite a while since I posted anything. In excuse for that, my life has been incredibly busy lately. We've been moving and working a lot. And above all that we found out about four months ago that we are expecting.

I was not ready for that. Honestly prior to the actual discovery I wasn't sure that I even wanted kids. At the least maybe someday, but not anytime soon. But that changed almost immediately.

The first thing that affected me was how excited my wife was. After the initial freak out phase, she got excited and began to be proactive about everything, setting up appointments, getting help, studying. It started to rub off on me somewhat, and I made it even more because of how much I love my wife.

We got set up with the local Pregnancy Resource Center, and they soon scheduled an ultrasound, so that they could measure exactly how old the child was. That is when the world turned for me.

I looked on that little computer screen and saw a tiny heart beating. Something that the love of my wife and I had called into existence. It was truly a life changing experience. I teared up right there in the room, and immediately felt elation and excitement about the entire prospect of parenthood.

Don't get me wrong. I don't like kids. Even when I was a kid, I didn't like kids. But there's something so much different about it when it's yours. I felt an intense amount of love for that little graphic on the screen immediately.

This was followed by a panic.  Not about the prospect of parenthood. But about the fact that my life is not "together" yet. My finances are wrecked, I work in a job I hate for barely above minimum wage, and I have at least a year left in college still. For God's sake I was still living in my mother's house, although that at least I have fixed, (and also, my mother didn't live there and I paid her rent).

But I am not well off enough, I feel, to be a father. I worry that I will be struggling to provide even the barest modicums of existence to my child. That my child will have to grow up with a loser as her father. That's right, by the way, it is a girl.

But as I've said before on this blog, I believe in improving your station by hard work in life. So that is what I will attempt to do from now on, to practice what I preach, so that my daughter won't have to want for necessities, as I did many times, growing up.

Ending note, her name is to be Cambria Jade Wester. I love it already.

Nothing Left to Lose

Freedom. It's one of those words that gets thrown around more than is necessary.

People talk about it all the time. All the pundits, the talking heads, seem to worship the concept, regardless of what side they are on. And the conservatives reading this will say that the liberals hate freedom, and vice versa.

Because you see, when they talk about freedom, they do not mean freedom for everyone. They simply mean freedom for those who agree with their views. Take into account the southern Fundamentalist, patriotic as they come, who, along with God and the military, worships the Founding Fathers as his idols. The man will stand and preach about freedom, say over and over again that he believes in a free America, but if you are gay, or athiest, or agnostic, or Catholic, or Muslim, or anything that disagrees with him, he believes that you should be locked up. That views opposing his should be made illegal.

And what about the flip side of that record? What of the tolerant new-ager, who believes that the whole world should coexist, believes that war is unnecessary, believes that prejudice is the worst evil our country faces? Well, nine times out of ten, that person will want the Fundamentalist silenced. There are so many times that I have heard peace loving tree hugger types say that the people from Westboro Baptist Church should be put to death. Hardly the tolerant people you would expect them to be eh? I mean, I of course agree, but I also think that everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

You see, freedom is the natural state of man, yes, just as the pundits like to claim. You know, the whole unalienable rights thing and all that. And yes it is the way things were originally. But so is sitting in a tree, naked, eating your meat raw, and raping whatever you wanted.

We changed that. Humans decided it was better to have less freedom in order to have more protection. Very few true anarchists exist. Oh, a lot of people my age claim to be anarchists, but are completely unable to use a weapon, fix a car, grow their own food, hunt, kill, skin, cook, handle indoor plumbing. They're a bit useless really. What they really want, is for people older and richer than them to stop making rules they have to follow. The world system they want is not truly anarchy. They do not want to live in some sort of Mad Max-esque world, where they have to fight for every scrap they get. They want true socialism, where the people have no real leader and everyone works together for the common good. They equate this with anarchy, because they know that this form of socialism has never taken place. Whatever or whoever created humans left in one major flaw: the tendency to bend at the knees.

See, they don't want true anarchy. Because true anarchy would cause their deaths. They have too high an opinion of humanity. I love humanity, as anyone who reads this can attest. However, I am aware of our shortcomings. If it comes to me going without food so that you do not starve, then forget it. As a matter of fact, if we lived in a lawless society, and you had food and I did not, I would most certainly be willing to end your life to get it. Maybe that makes me a sociopath. I believe it makes me human. I believe that deep down, every human has that animal inside, just waiting to claw its out when necessity calls.

People do not realize this. This is why we created government. This is what the social contact is. To protect ourselves, from ourselves. Without laws, and more importantly, consequences, what little freedom we retain would be taken from us by those stronger than us. And well it should! If one is talking about the natural order of things, then one should realize that in nature, the strongest survives. There is no room for sharing or charity among animals that are similar to humans. The most that we, or any other mammalian animal are willing to share is with our families. Think about it. If something were to happen to you, to your job, or your house, if tomorrow you had to move onto the street with no food, no car, no job, no house, you would do anything to ensure that you had food and shelter. Maybe not at first, but the longer you live in a truly natural state, the more animal you become.

This is why true freedom does not exist. Most of us would not survive true freedom.

Will You Heed the Master's Call?

I went looking for quotes about music, because it is something I feel strongly about. I thought I could find something interesting to say about it, to write about it, something true that had not been said.

I was wrong. Greater individuals than me have said so much more than I could ever say on the subject, and I have no doubt that their feelings on the subject are every bit as potent and deep as mine are.

I feel that the only way I can show how I feel about music is how I play my music. Whether I'm playing bass in the Christian rock band I'm in, or relaxing on one of my keyboards or a piano, or just simply playing in someone's basement, playing back-up on a simple blues jam for hours, I feel that that is when my feelings for that beautiful thing called music really show through.

I was raised with great music. The first song I remember hearing as a child is "To Cry You A Song" by Jethro Tull, off of their phenomenal album Benefit. My father played in bands since the late 70s, and loved the music he played and listened to. He always of course claimed that Christianity was his religion, but I'll say this: I knew times when he lost his faith in God, but I cannot remember a moment when he lost his faith in music.

The man had over 5000 songs on his computer, mainly from the 50s through the 80s, and mostly in the rock and alternative genres. I had a backing in those songs my whole life. My father bonded with my younger brother while they rode his motorcycle together, and he bonded with my sister in the way that a father bonds with a daughter, but with me, it was all about the music. Not a day goes by since he passed that I don't hear a song he introduced me to and think "Man, I completely forgot about this song," or that I don't hear a song he would like and think "It'd be awesome to tell my dad about this song." I can't, of course, but that's how deeply our relationship revolved around music.

For my 6th Christmas, I came out into the living room to find a cheap Yamaha 61-key electric keyboard. I've still got it gathering dust in a corner in my house. Along with the keyboard was the starter set of Alfred's Piano Lesson books. I was hooked. I worked my way through those books in less that a month. After that, my parents got me lessons. Sort of traditional piano lessons, you know, the kind that make people hate playing piano. I loved it.

When I was 15, a couple friends and I got together and formed what we called a Christian punk band. It wasn't really anything of the sort, just a jam band in a friend's basement, but we all started somewhere. It went from being a Christian punk band, to a Christian rock band, to a Christian metal band, to just a metal band, to breaking up when I was 18. I learned so much from those experiences. What sounded good and what didn't. What people liked at shows and how much practice was enough. Even more important stuff, like how to stand up for myself and how to talk to women.

I became what a lot of people would think is a goth. I loved, and still do love, the color black. I wore everything black back then. Some people at my church started calling me Johnny Cash. The others weren't so good-natured about it, thinking I was becoming a heathen, especially considering the kind of music that I rode around listening to. I thought I was something else honestly. But I never lost my faith. I would sit and debate Scripture, while blaring Highway to Hell out of my stereo, and if any of my more Christian friends said anything about it, I would shrug and say, "God never said anything against good music."

But I'm getting off topic. I fell from the music for awhile. I quit playing, got interested in other things. But my music is more apart of me than almost anything else is.

I'll tell you this. You have never experienced a drug that can give a high comparable to playing a live show for people. The feeling of walking off a stage knowing you did what you came to do. The untouchable feeling of adrenaline you catch when you're on stage and every instrument hits just right and it all comes together to create a wall of sound that moves everyone in the building and gets not just their bodies moving but their spirits moving as well. The joy of hearing someone humming the songs you wrote as you're loading up equipment. And yes, even the crappy diner food you devour after a show, because the club's owner stiffed you on the payment and that's all you could afford. It's all beautiful, and addictive.

A lot of people will tell you that it's out of character for me to join a purely Christian band now, and they're right. But I did it because I spent too long without that beautiful feeling of the music coursing through my veins, shooting out of my fingertips, me becoming one with my instrument, and with the other instruments and musicians around me, and with the audience and the very sound waves that our brains arrange into coherent beauty, and producing music, no matter what the lyrics say.

The music itself is what's important to me, and if I have to perform songs about my other, less popular beliefs in order to get that feeling I will. It's everything to me, and I couldn't give it up if I wanted to. It's an addiction, just like any other, one that I have no problem with never breaking.

There's nothing more I can really say about it. The best thing I can leave you with is to just listen. Go listen to some decent music. Maybe listen to The Rain Song, by Led Zeppelin. Or Across the Universe by the Beatles. Or Love Reign O'er Me by the Who. There are so many great ones out there, too many to name. And I can promise you, you haven't heard nearly enough of them.

Fascimile

Don't worry, it's misspelled for a reason.

So many Americans spend time talking about how wonderful our country is and how we stand for freedom and liberty and all that stuff. But those same people will turn around and embody the exact opposite of those terms they throw around so easily.

See, when you attempt to force someone, by law, to believe the same way you do, there's a word for it. Fascism. And supposedly America has tried to fight against that. And yet somehow, the ones who claim to be the most patriotic, the ones who supposedly believe truly in America, or claim to, (the far right), have turned into fascists.

Listen, I'm absolutely fine with something that is voted in democratically. If you want to ban gay marriage in your state, and you can get the votes for it, then so be it. I don't agree with you on it, and I think that the government has no business going around enforcing people's religion for them, but hey, that's democracy. But if your state votes it in, democratically, and it's not actually affecting your freedom in the slightest, then you can't expect the government to change its mind, simply because it makes you uncomfortable.

Because here's the thing. Gay marriage does nothing to affect those who don't agree with it. It's not like gun rights or environmental laws. Gay rights doesn't make you have to marry someone of your own gender. It doesn't make preachers have to agree to marry gay couples. All it does is make you a little uncomfortable, which is no reason to act like an idiot over it. You know what else made people a little uncomfortable? When they ended slavery. And one hundred years later, everyone's fine with that.

And guess what. In another one hundred years, the homophobes who stood against gay rights are going to be remembered in the same light as the people who supported slavery. You won't be remembered as some big champion of the faith. I'm not even sure that homosexuality is a sin. Jesus never mentioned it at all. Paul did, but Paul was also a sexist who said women were too stupid to talk in church. He also hated marriage and carnal relationships of any form. The only other place it's talked about as a sin is in the Old Testament, where it also says that if a woman gets raped, the guy who raped her just has to pay her father the money she's worth and it's cool. Oh, unless she's a servant, in which case it's her fault for tempting the man and she should be put to death.

My point is, is that you cannot expect the government to enforce your moral laws for you. It's not their job. If you want to make your beliefs the backbone of the country, then rally your churches and your people and get them to the box on voting day. Elect representatives that line up with your beliefs. What you don't do, is throw a temper tantrum, saying that the government should fix everything simply because you want them to.

I believe in this country. I don't believe in some past romanticized vision of our founding fathers, nor do I have much hope for our current state of affairs. But I see the way our country could be, if our ideals were carried to their logical conclusion. Freedom for all, as long as it didn't interfere with someone else's well-being. I believe that's what makes a patriot. Not a dedication to the right or the left. Not a need to return to the policies of the past. But a striving to make the country everything that it is able to be.

To make the country of the United States of America, great.

Scorched Earth

Heat is one of those complicated words. It means so many different things depending on the context in which it is mentioned.

At the moment, I'm typing this in my bedroom, which is running at roughly 80 degrees. See, we can't actually afford propane for the central heat, so we use extremely powerful space heaters. They are very effective when it is cold outside. However, they are much more effective when it's been 70 degrees and humid outside all day. I prefer the temperature at about 65 degrees with an overcast sky. Needless to say, being in my room is like being locked in a sauna. I've turned the heater off and the fans on, but it's going to be about an hour before it cools in here.

So, heat. Obviously there is the context in which I am resenting it now. I, of course, love it when it's actually cold in my house. Heat is what keeps many of us alive in the winter (those of us who don't simply drink a bottle of brandy and give a gentlemanly harrumph). Yet in the summer, we resent it. We bloody well hate the heat in the summer,

Some places have a context for heat that I can't even comprehend. Deserts and such. I should probably stop complaining, but I am American after all. The heat in those places makes 80 degrees look like a joke. Heat isn't just a word for them, it's a way of life, a force to be reckoned with.

Then again, heat isn't always just about the temperature. In the right context, it means passion, love, lust, desire. That's a wonderful context for it. One of the most amazing sensations on the planet. Not the sexual part, although that's great too, but the rising temperature when you are attracted to someone in every conceivable way. That flame burning inside that cannot be ignored. It's incredibly powerful.

Of course, heat is also the name of several crappy colognes.

There's heat in physics, essentially one of the most important and complicated forces in the universe. It's incredible. Measurable change in our world, simply marked by the changing of temperature. Oh, to have been there when the laws of thermodynamics were made.

I've looked back at this entry and realize that the heat may have addled my brain. I have jumped around a ridiculous amount, and I apologize.

Ugh. Heat.

These Are the Good Old Days

Anticipation...

It's a mockery almost, that emotion. Or feeling, or whatever it is. You look forward to something for ages, thinking about how great it will be, excited about the prospect of change. And then the day comes, and it's never quite as good as you expect it to be.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not entirely let down. But somehow it's not quite as exciting as I thought.

I find myself going through life this way. I look forward to things and then they slightly let me down. Not in a major way. Just kind of. Like a sort of hollow feeling deep inside. It's wrong of course. I have a fairly good life. I love my family, my home. Love my wife more than anything. Only thing I really have a problem with is my job and my finances. But somehow, every time something comes along that is supposed to make me happy, it comes up short.

I think it's indicative of the human condition. Always journeying, never arriving, and all that. It seems like we go through life so intent on getting something more that we never enjoy it when we get it, we just look to the next thing.

But I believe that's what makes humanity so great. Always searching, never satisfied. It leads us to invent new things, go new places, think new ideas. All of course in the name of filling that gaping hole in our chest. Sad but true.

I found someone that fills at least the romantic and physical side of things for me. My wife is the most wonderful woman I could hope for. She makes me happy in ways that I could never imagine. She is the one thing that never truly lets me down, beyond simple husband/wife things. But I'm always happy to see her, always excited to talk to her, and always inspired by the sight of her. She's amazing.

Maybe that's the key. Drive and reach and explore and never be satisfied, but hold on to one solid thing, one pure reason to do what you do, and never neglect it.