Warm Evenings

One day you will be taller.  Taller than the sky.

Many months ago I had a random dream.  Unlike most dreams, however, I seem incapable of losing it.  The power and imagery have stuck with me.  I can’t shake it.

There was some sort of brawl or fracas with another team on a baseball diamond.  It started some sort of war.  There was a lot of pomp, a lot of bravado circulating throughout the dream.  I remember coming home with the knowledge that I was about to be a father.  I was in a large kitchen when a nurse brought in my child.

She couldn’t have been more than a few hours old, but she had a full head of wavy hair and a precocious look about her.  We knew each other with that first look.  The connection was palpable and beyond all words.  I cried.  We knew each other and I cried without end.

But the day, the birth, the dream even…it was all jubilant.  It was a warrior’s celebration.  There was a great knot of cheering and verve for the birth.  Perhaps it was a sign of good fortune for our war with this other team. Perhaps the portents foretold her as the savior of her people.  Perhaps she personified a hidden wellspring of my own internal emotion.  The scenarios are endless, but I felt the awesome power of offspring in my dream and with the opening of my eyes, that emotional power should have been swept aside like a pile of old magazines.

Yet, it can’t be shook.  The potency of that dream calls to me like a long lost friend.  Both past and future it casts my decisions in stark relief, forcing me to question the path I’ve chosen for this life and my continued attempts to quiet my mind.  For I am most certainly still trying to fix my mind.

xo

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Promotional considerations provided by:

Boobar – Tindersticks

I’m Hurting Inside – Bob Marley

Cloudy Shoes – Damien Jurado

Shuffle to the left.

I read the funnies everyday.  It’s an obsession.  Like many comic readers, I wandered in the desert for awhile after Bill Waterson ceased making Calvin & Hobbes.  I’d fine strips that I enjoyed, but they inevitably grew old.  Becoming staid and boring in ways that C&H never were.

At one point or another, I found Darby Conley’s strip Get Fuzzy.  Over the past few years, it has offered the best approximation to what I received from reading Calvin & Hobbes.  It’s funny, of course.  But the humor is quirky and intelligent.  Like any relationship, it’s not perfect.  There are plot lines that I don’t get into or find repetitive.  It’s silly to expect sustained greatness through each strip.  Even Watterson failed to deliver on occasion.

Certainly there are many other strips in my life.  I adore Cul De Sac and find myself continually snorting at the one-paneled F Minus.  Lio is a great reprieve from tradition.  Pooch Cafe has its moments and One Big Happy always provides my adorable quota for the day.

But I always come back to Get Fuzzy.  And today, the normally irascible Bucky Kat one-upped hundreds of years of philosophy in a few short sentences.  The great comics give that sort of insight with their humor.  Conley hits that more than any other cartoonist around.

 My little sister was married the other day.  I was asked to speak at the service.  While honored, I was also nervous.  I wanted things to be perfect.  I wanted my words to say more than I have ever been to say in person.  I wanted her to know that I loved her more than life itself, that by extension I loved Grant just the same.  I wanted them to know I was always going to revel in their goodness, that I was always going to be there for them.

Words are never perfect.  But I hope that some approximation of that sentiment was captured in my own words on Saturday, the 19th day of November.

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I would like to begin by saying that I am honored to be up here celebrating this moment with Sarah and Grant.

For those that don’t know, the charge is about reminding a couple about their duties and role in a marriage. It’s supposed to serve as a sort preparation through rhetoric.

To be frank though, I’m not certain there is much I can impart. Most all of you know either Grant or Sarah, so you should also know how grounded they are, both as individuals and as a couple.

I met Grant through a friend just over seven years ago. So it was, I thought, a bit odd that they met each other and begun dating when Sarah moved to Houston in 2008. As surprising as it was, however, I was happy they met each other. For even in my brief encounters with Grant over the years, it was evident how special he was. There is no one I’ve met in this world that is as warm and kind as Grant. Apart from my little sister, that is.

This warmth and kindness speaks to and, I believe, springs from a pureness of spirit. It’s reminiscent of Paul’s boast in the first chapter of 2^nd Corinthians. In the 12^th verse, he speaks of a conduct characterized by integrity and a godly sincerity. It’s this earnest spirit that not only allows the warm acceptance of life’s inherent joys, but blesses them with the understanding that the harder moments they face won’t last.

I have never seen anyone smile more frequently or with more ease than the couple up here with me. So my charge for them isn’t a list of dos or don’ts to follow. It’s not an ode to the majesty of love.

Instead, I would like to charge you both with a simple reminder: maintain your openness to the world and cultivate the joy you feel for life and for each other.

In short, continue being yourselves. As long as you hold on to that, love and happiness will bedeck your united path.

Every now and again, I find myself lucky enough to be somewhere else.  When I find myself in this other place, I try to understand it, to possess it like I might thorough knowledge or a mastered skill.

There is depth and nuance everywhere we look on this globe.  Places are always more than we make of them, so it’s overly simplistic to boil a place down and define it by just one aspect.

But still, I can’t help but over simplify Barbados by declaring that the soul of the island is manifest in the horn of its vehicles.  These sweet, sing-song toots are heard without fail across the whole island.  While certainly pleasant, even amusing, they belie something deeper and more intrinsic to the island.  These ubiquitous horns speak to an overriding friendliness and courtesy upon the island–a mutual and lasting respect for their brethren.

It’s more than the island cliche of good vibes and easy living though.  The Bajan (bay-juhn) life speaks to what’s good within each of us and what’s possible here on this sprawling planet.  Things aren’t perfect in Barbados, it’s readily evident.  There’s obesity and crime.  There’s trash on the streets.  There’s economic stratification.  But things can never be perfect.  Utopia is a boring myth.

And those horns, more than anything else, call notice to this.  After a day or two, the novelty wears thin.  Yet, their use is no artifice.  It’s a language in its own right: agreeable arias of salutation, indication, action and, at times, even amusingly accordant anger.  They are proof of an inherent dynamism, rarely perfect but ever present.

Change is always around the bend.  And no one, least of all Barbados, is immune to these evolutions.  With any luck, however, the generous courtesies of the Bajan roadways will persevere all the same.  If one was slightly more hopeful, one might wish the train of tourism continues and that these masses depart Grantley Adams Airport with a bit more appreciation of the goodness available on this planet.  And perhaps with a bit of a sunburn too.

I certainly had the latter.