For a Church Mother

You're too young to remember it the way I do, but you're so full of love.    It's odd, seeing it this way.  Your energy comes through, innocence and all -- the hope for connection and making things happy because that's just a better way to be.  I'm struggling with you; you make me conscious that the time when I would have considered meeting you to be natural.  It's not natural now; I think to myself, "you could be the daughter of your mother, whom I might have known" -- and I would still be attracted to her the way I'm attracted to you because you look just like her, and I remember.  Even the way you fidget, the nervous gestures, they are almost identical to the way it was.  The haircut, the depth in the brow, the fingers, although the fingers are so youthful to me now.  I look at my own hands and I know how much closer I am to old age than I used to be.  My hands are getting sun worn.  The veins are starting to bulge out, age trying to protect skin.  Your skin is so fresh.  It's not that your mother's hands didn't age, if I was seeing them, it's that they drew lines and hardened a little, and it was like you just added the youth back over the lines, and they are the same.  Maybe you've struggled with aspects of yourself, I'm not sure.  I can think that you did, but that you came to the conclusion that love overcomes the things that might scare us about ourselves.  When you first spoke, you had a tone in your voice, wonderful, seeking, still vulnerable yet willing.  Inside, you decided that it was too much, that I wouldn't notice what you think is extra weight that you carry in your stomach, that makes you not a teenager while you're still not a mother.  You haven't seen your hips widen and struggled with your ten pound add on, and the drama of the child, so you still think in terms of when you fit into blue jeans that were tight like skin; now the blue jeans have that little draping shirt over the top, so that you don't expose your fear.  You are not fat.  You are in between youth and age.  You are determined to be who you decide to be.  That means that you are open and closed. You don't know yet how to be a older woman, or even how to love an older man, but you aren't really all that happy with the young men your age because to you they are still boys.  Boys only want one thing; you want someone who loves the way that you do, only you still want in from someone who can't give it to you because they haven't figured it out yet.  So there I am, in your memory, what you wanted but what you did not want.  We never even got into the questions.  What about your faith?  Do you have any?  When the liberals were talking next to you, were you thinking "they're so wrong" or "right on" -- is that even what someone your age thinks these days?  "Right on"?  "Hey, brother can you spare a quarter?"  We never went beyond the body issues, how sweet you taste, how caring you are, the things before the taste turns bitter and the caring seems needy.  Do I need to reassure you?  You're still beautiful.  That's the only memory I'll have of you.  You stand up, deciding not to look me in the eyes as you go; I have an appointment at Church ....

Baggage Claim Story*

Miranda said to Blake, "I'm a woman, and you're a man".
Blake, who often liked to call others air head, or something of the like which would not be publishable in the Church journal, said, "I know that".
Miranda took a deep breath, and sighed, "you're sure"?
The quick reply came, "I am sure".
"Then tell me this" she said with a quickening pace, "why do you keep wantin' to get into the girls club?"
  ....

*any similarities to known persons or incidents is strictly a coincidence

Too Much Hash Tagging

The drummer thought I was crazy.  “You don’t want in laws”, he said.  And he was probably right. 

I’d spent too much time broke, and wasn’t about to start making money on the strength of my communications skills.  I’m a college drop out, but not of my own choosing.  Heck, I liked college, what I could get out of it.  It wasn’t anything like the schools I’d been going through before, but then again, I couldn’t remember much of those either.  I’d been mostly independent study, and when I went to college, I caught next to nothing of the point that the tenured Professors were trying to make.  The only thing I noticed for sure was that the reading lists added up to more words than hours available.  That was what broke me.

I started seeking tricks to get around the doubling down that the Professors’ Grad Assistants used to slam the students who made it through phase one.  Economics was great as a dialogue on sex, sexual attraction, and figuring out the language of the possible “economy” of supply and demand.  It helped, I think, that there was a pretty girl sitting next to me; then again, maybe it didn’t help, because by the time the class ended, I had zero memory of any of it – just notes.

It was economics that led me to computers – well that’s not entirely true, not being able to afford the schooling and being stuck in a system that only had one speed for learning led me to “the outside”, where Microsoft led me to computers; I’ve never liked the Apple Computer culture, ever since the Mac II didn’t connect to any networks, and then, well when the Apple people grew so snitty about everything not Apple.  Meeting up with Microsoft’s computer universe changed the way I thought, even if Microsoft didn’t exactly lead me into any of it.  It was a language that became available.  Economics – the sexual innuendo engine economics – and Electricity incorporated into human readable code!  It was like waking up and wanting to go to school again. 

The “web programming people” weren’t as snitty as the Apple people, not at first anyway.  It isn’t until you start taking away “their money” by using the systems they designed in ways they didn’t imagine that they become like Grad students looking for a classroom to abuse.  They won’t tell you this, but there’s a reason why the engineers don’t like the English majors, and the English majors don’t know what the engineers are talking about.  The reason grew up when a few musicians decided they were going to expand their English major background into engineering; the journeymen electricians did not like that development at all.  The drummers didn’t much care, understanding when the beat is up.

One of my favorite musicians who I studied outside of the school systems because there were no formal music study systems in school for me after the 4th grade – except for whatever happened to be published by Musicians Institute or Berklee College of Music & Hal Leonard – once said prominently that one of the key sounds in music is the note that is not heard or played.  Well, I’m here to tell you that the engineers want to keep their trick in the silent bin, that’s for sure.  It’ll all be too much work; it’d be kind of like getting a message through to the farmer’s daughter, or electricity to the last train to Clarksville.

That’s all beside the point.  What good does it do if you understand a language that isn’t written yet because it’s hidden inside the language that’s written? 

I thought about what the drummer said, about in laws, and said, “There are probably too many hash tags at the grocery anyway”.  I have no idea if he knew what I meant.

I picked up my iPad and wrote a Tweet:  “There was plenty of electricity at the hotel; I saw it at the cafe.”