God's country

When one of my good friends told me that South Carolina (Clemson in Particular) was god’s country, I dismissed his statement as the embellishments of a local who always seemed to extol the virtues of South Carolina over just about any other place on this earth. When you live in a place like Williston, South Dakota or Gary, Indiana or even Williston, Florida making such high statements may have sound bearing and justification, but when you find yourself living in Yellowstone National Park, giving such high praise as “God’s country” to any place other than the one you’re currently in seems a bit like overstepping the boundaries of good sense and taste.

However, I must extend my apologies to my dear friend. I now understand what he meant when he called South Carolina God’s country. It truly is astounding. I am no expert on Clemson University, or the upcountry for that matter, but my lovely wife keeps showing me the wonders of this fine area of our country. She keeps introducing me to wondrous waterfalls that slide, cascade or crash into grand rocky bases. We’ve looked out over Vistas stretching as far as the eye can see of nothing but lush blue green mountains surrounded by hazy clouds. Beautiful, old mansions that tell of an era long since passed are on street corners all over town, some within walking distance of home. She has also been so very intentional about taking me to local events (mostly free) that introduce me to very few of Greenville’s fine denizens, but none the less keep me astounded at the scope of the cities beauty.

Tonight we went to Music by the Lake. It’s a free concert that Furman University puts on every Thursday night and she’d been requesting that we go for at least two weeks now. What a wonderful time we had. We listened to Blue grass music for the couple of hours just before the world turned to show the sun beginning a descent beneath the treeline across the lake. As the music played and the sun was setting, there were two swans effortlessly floating on the lake – their stark white bodies contrasted so richly with the deep blue of the lake water. Ripples radiated from their elegant bodies, with every graceful movement circles of neon orange and yellow broke up the monotonous blue of the lake as each sunward ripple grabbed at the dying light as if they were desert blossoms soaking in the last bits of the morning dew before the heat of the day left them parched and dry.

The sky was a light royal blue, with clouds meandering around; stringy and barely connected. My wife and I sipped on our smuggled Italian wine, ate extra sharp cheese on baguette chips, occasionally plucking off a juicy grape, or dipping the bread in her homemade hummus and we delighted with the crowd as the music played.

The evening was perfect. It was paradise – who knows maybe even a 2 hour glimpse of what God’s country really is.

To Be a domesticated man

Tonight (07-05-07) I bought two tomato plants. Such thin little things, soon to be so full of delectable orbs as succulent and juicy as they are shimmering red, that I hopefully won’t know what to do with them. Misti got a sweet basil bush and as a result we are surely on our way to a summer full of tomato and basil sandwiches, homemade pesto, all the Caprese salad one man could ever hope to consume.

After we bought our little plants we proceeded to the library where we checked out some books on gardening. Misti has long since gone to bed, but while she slept I read, and filled my mind with images of our future/present home together. I was reading and reading about these back porch plants, envisioning my green back yard speckled with colors that span the whole spectrum from yellow, to purple, blue and white. I see vines crawling up trellises and beans sprouting in pods, pots full of herbs and lettuce, and I like what I see.

Maybe planting a garden isn’t as masculine as hunting, but I like animals too much to shoot them. Don’t get me wrong, I sure do love eatin’ me some venison, but I don’t think I could bear to shoot the deer to get it (that’s what my in-laws provide for me - who as fate would have it don’t even like venison). Gardening isn’t planting 40 acres, it’s just gardening - it’s planting a small crop for the shear enjoyment of the bounty they produce and the great (or small) work it took to get them that way. I think I’m going to be good at it too. I think I’m going to be good at it like my granny and granddaddy were good at it – I think it’s in my blood.

I don’t know if that really makes me a domesticated man, maybe it just makes me industrious, full of the spirit that made this country great. Maybe it makes me a glutton for the fruitta di terra, maybe I just want to reconnect with my grandparents in a way that I was never able to before granddaddy died. Either way, I can’t wait to get my hands dirty with the tomatoes and basil and watch my garden grow in the red Greenville clay.

the stickiness of forgiveness

As of right now, this blog finds me without a job, but with a place to sleep. A week ago, I was without both a job and a place to sleep, so I guess things are improving some. On Wednesday of last week I was driving to sign the contracts for our new place when a song came of the radio that reminded me of a good summer years ago. The memory made me smile as I think fondly of that summer. But as it inevitably does my mind progressed through winter into the spring when the lusts of my body overcame the sensibilities of purity. I have long since forgiven myself for those days and sins, and I know the Lord has forgiven me as well. What I have come to find out though is that sin has stickiness to it. It’s like some sort of snail, as the creature retreats he leaves his gooey trail to show the world his direction and his intention.

It’s sad that forgiveness doesn’t mean purity regained. It only means repair. I’m sad that I’ll never be able to look on that summer with the eyes of June, July and August. From this day to that my eyes are be-speckled with the haze of December, January, and March, and there is nothing that I can do to make that haze disappear. Unlike the snail slime, sin’s sludge does not retreat easily; it does not shrivel with the application of salt or pesticides rather it just sits – its remnant dissipating slowly, never totally cleaned or removed until the day we die and meet our maker in heaven.

How strange that I can forgive and be forgiven but never fully be washed of its effects. What’s done is done and there’s no taking it back. The Lord must grieve over that fact. I’m sure he must every time he thinks of the good mingling amid the bad, it must make him so sad that all that was once beautiful, pure and right has decayed even ever slightly into shades of less than perfect. I grieve with you lord, and I wait with baited anticipation the day when the colors of this world will no longer be muddied and yellowed by the sin. Only the brilliance and purity of your glory will shine, and then I will once again be happy.

“Call me?!?!?”

I still have poison Ivy, and for those of you who didn't know that... I got poison Ivy and it sucks. It is no good being itchy and gross (I promise those adjectives are no exaggeration.) My new source of enjoyment while misti sleeps and I itch is movie time. Tonight I just finished watching Doctor Zhivago (I really think I want to read it soon, but it’s not top priority on my list of things to do.) The movie was 4 hours long, and once I got past all the actors having british accents yet being distinctly Russian I was able to see how very beautiful it was. It was touching and brilliant but it was so sad. It’s almost bitter in its approach to love, but bitter in the way of a blind man receiving sight, feeling the heat of the sun on his new eyes… seeing for the first time the light filter in red through the eyelids and half a millisecond before opening them for the first time and the world suddenly and eternally goes to pitch blackness.

(SPOILER WARNING)
I am convinced Zhivago is the Russian Sisyphus who comes so close to love but in the end the boulder rolls back on him crushing him at once. This movie (probably book as well) is one big oxymoron after another – its hopeful bitterness in its finest form, Boris Pasternack is truly a master of heartbreak. Poor Zhivago, his heart was too big for his own good (metaphorically speaking) and as a result he could never truly love for he loved too much. Just when you think he’s going to get the girl or die in a drunken heap lost and alone, ol’ Boris turns the screws just a little more, bringing our man Zhivago within inches of one last resolution of love, one touch, one embrace, just one more “ADRIENNNE!!” before he dies, but no. Zhivago wants so desperately to connect, to scream for his love, to break through the walls as his love passes by but all he can do is slowly, mutely stagger to his demise bound and gagged by his failing body as his love passes by on the other side of the glass.

(SPOILER WARNING)
In the end, Zhivago knows love only too well, and is brought to his knees by it - killed by it. I feel no shame in giving away this ending because it is so tragically perfect. In a truly Russian twist of fate, it is the very shock of seeing his lost love on the other side of the glass that finally pushes him into a heart attack where he dies!


(SPOILER WARNING WITH BROKE BACK MOUNTAIN REFERRENCE)
What is wrong with these Russians…? What is wrong with me!!! Why do I torture my poor heart like this? I follow this fool and feel for him even when he is doing utterly contemptible things “for love.” He commits adultery, abandons his wife, abandons his father in law, abandons his Child for his adulterous love, and all I can say is, “I can’t quit you.” I am such a sucker because I want to him to reach his resolution and I watch further in the slim hope that maybe just maybe this is the Russian great who will resolve in some miniscule way this wealth of emotion that he has given… BUT NO!!! He never does and so I’m left feeling dirty and unsatisfied, yet disturbingly pleased with myself like I just got the raw end of a one night stand.

I need to take a shower.

plop plop fizz fizz oh what suprise he was...

In a bathroom stall at the London airport I came across a most interesting situation… actually it wasn’t really all that interesting at all just strange. I sat in one of the cleanest public restrooms I’ve ever been in (I guess that’s what happens when you refer to bathrooms as Loo’s.) when I heard a sound that could only be described as a locomotive screaming by, followed by a belly flop of a splash – it sounded like a massive cliff-side tree had been felled into a lake! It was an absolute explosion.

Often, I find it unfortunate that in such circumstances as these I am detained by the dirty business of my bowels, and go on wondering for minutes sometimes hours the make up of a gent who would unload such an odious mess. Fortunately, I would not be so detained in this instant as is per usual the case. I had just finished whatever business I had to attend to in my own stall and was growing curiouser and curiouser as to what kind of beached whale could create such a monstrous plop in a toilet. Surely, he must be some highly trained bear or Head of state, or maybe even a construction worker on a bit of a break. Oh how wrong I was.

Exuding with confidence, I opened the door of my stall fully expecting to see this behemoth in all his splendor, spent and satisfied after such a wonderful release, only to see in his stead a boy no bigger than 4 foot tall, skinny as a rail, stretching on his tip toes just to reach the sink. “My, my, my” I thought to, “I have no idea of what to make of what I just heard and what I am now seeing.”

the blog flood is on it's way.

Enjoy the coming flood of blogs and the newly reenergized stories from a small country.