Hail to the King

It's truly an amazing phenomenon. I would not believe it were I not witness to it on a daily business.

My boss is the Immortal Lee County Killer. The man and I work together in the land of Supernova at one of the great arms of the mighty American Military Industrial Complex (AMIC). We have done so for nigh on to four months now, and I must say, I have never met anyone like my boss.

The ILCK, a.k.a. Logan doesn't shower every day. I haven't seen his chin since I met him, because a thick red beard covers his cheeks and lower face Brigham-Young Style. By his own admission, the man used to play with barbies, listen to New Kids on the Block and read Mormon Fluff-Pop books by the dozen.

He's not what you would call a "hunk," traditional-style. And yet, strangely enough, young women seem to flock to him. Everyone here at work is painfully aware of how much stronger this man's track record is when it comes to the opposite sex compared to the rest of us. And what makes it even more powerful of a paradox is HE DOESN'T SEEM TO CARE!

Now, when I say not caring that doesn't mean he is gay or bi or even fruity (altho... nevermind). It just means that he is a ladies man without trying. I am convinced this is at the heart of his powers. I am also convinced the man has tapped into some sacred reservoir of power that all men seek and most do in vain throughout their lives. For not only in the world of women does this man seem to succeed and not care. He is a jack of all trades whose powers and charms seem to extend to the length of his domain, which is all he surveys.

I must say that gratefully I am not jealous. I am content to bask in his glow (staying far enough away not to catch all the B.O.) and appreciate his glory. But in the end, I must concede and say "Hail to the King!"

How Do You Do It?

It's been a week since I last saw her...

"I can't do this any more," I said. "This just isn't working."

We were both standing in her sister’s front room after dinner.

"What? What are you talking about?" She asked, a look of frustration on her face.

"This... Us, it's just not working. You can't do this to me any more," I said zipping up my jacket.

"Let's go outside," she said and started to put on her shoes.

“No!” I said almost shouting. “There’s no point.”

“Are you determined to humiliate me?” she asked, her eyes taking on a glazed look. Her sister and brother-in-law were in the next room. They exited only seconds before when the tension built so high in the room you could have run a stereo on it.

“No…” I answered. There was an almost imperceptible pause. “I’m determined to leave.”

I walked over to the door. She looked at me incredulously, her body frozen in place.

“Good-bye,” I said, opening the door. “I love you.”

Even as I write this, she is boarding a plane to head back home. I will probably never see her again. After 15 months, over 10,000 miles of travel and what seems a lifetime of love, tears, happiness and hearthache, our relationship has come to an end.

Meanwhile, I am sitting here at work, trying to pick up the pieces of my life and put them in some sort of order that will let me go on with my life… a life without her.

It was only the night before we broke up that we were sitting at a little café in Old Towne, sipping on drinks and talking of what we would name our children, where we would live, where our careers would take us. Hours passed and neither of us noticed. We were so caught up in each other that the outside world didn’t exist. Now, that outside world is all I have left to fill the void that rests in the spaces between her memory.

We traveled the world together. Paris, Oslo, Bergen, Salt Lake City, Washington DC. We talked of going this year to London, San Diego, Ghana. We both loved to see the world and we both loved to see our relationship grow in new places. It seemed there was nothing that could ever bring us apart. Until it did.

I’m not going to go into details. It would betray who we were. Sufficient to say that at the end of the day, I can sleep at night knowing that I gave everything I was to make that relationship work, and in the end, it just didn’t work.

Some friends of mine have been surprised how I have taken this. They comment to me about seeing a stoic face whose actions have been unchanged since the breakup. I didn’t even mention the breakup until several days after it happened, and then only when people asked why I wasn’t with her. In part, this was in part due to not wanting to deal with all the wankers who would offer false condolences and then try and push their way into what is none of their fucking business, but I realize it also kept out people who really cared.

For those who really are concerned and aren’t just the vampiric types, I don’t think I could act any differently if I wanted to. The grief is real and tremendous, but it’s internal. To share it would open a floodgate that I have to keep at a steady silent stream. I hope this is the right way to deal with it.

But, how do you move on from someone you thought you would spend your life with? How do you re-construct your life without what you thought was the most precious component? How can you ever have someone else fill that spot? That’s all I have to say on it right now.

So Shoot Me

I have to apologize to my huge three- or four-person occasional audience. I haven't written for over a week. Several factors have contributed to the dearth of my writings: a new discussion group (the wonderful Smithsonians), my girlfriend visiting from Norway, just flat out laziness and a lack of any true brilliance. I am sure I will have a dam-bursting flood here in just a few days (maybe a week or so, more likely), but for now, please accept my apologies.

I stumbled upon a website that outlines blogs in the DC metro area by metro stop. I honestly had no idea how many people blogged, nor did I realize how comprehensive a blog could be. Some of these people have been writing for years. So, if you are a voyeur or blog-surfer, or you're just plain bored, have a look.

I, however, will now go back to doing the endless stack of paperwork on my desk, listening to Pink Floyd, and looking forward to the time when all people will recognize my brilliance.

Can't Get Around It

All, let's do it. Let's get into it. I've been reading on this topic much in the papers, in books and all my friends are just going off on it. We can't avoid it. We can't pretend it doesn't exist. We can't throw a simple answer at it and hope it goes away nor can we hide in a coccoon of ignorance or indifference. We have to face the fact.

God is out to get us.

All right. Now that I have your attention, I want to address a few topics. I don't flatter myself in believing that this entry is going to be the end-all be-all when it comes to these topics. Rather, I hope it lays a foundation for future discussion, discussion of people who are trying to articulate their own thoughts and beliefs through dialogue with others. In other words, fools and instigators, piss off.

The first thing I want to say is that there is NO FINE LINE between religion and culture. You CANNOT draw a line in the sand and say this is religion on one side and culture on the other. It just doesn't work that way. Religion and culture are two huge spheres of influence that overlap in most respects. There are some things in MY LIFE or YOUR LIFE that can be strictly said to come from my religious beliefs and others that are strictly cultural norms. But the vast majority of things we are talking about are BOTH. They are culture and religion. They are religion AND culture.

The argument that "Oh that isn't the religion, it's only the culture" is inherently flawed. The religion has spawned the culture and is therefore directly responsible for it. You can't say "Oh, but the Church is good, it's just the people and culture." I'm sorry, you cannot completely separate the two.

I am going to take the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because that seems to be a good example and because I know a lot of people who can identify with it. But the same principles apply with most any religion. Many people I know try and distinguish and say that somehow that the Church is not responsible for the actions of its members and the culture of, say, Utah is not really the Church but is simply and outgrowth of people. (One could argue the same thing about Muslims in the Middle East and the groups of people, both terrorist and peaceful, who worship according to its precepts).

The problem with that argument is that the culture would have never existed without the religion and the religion would have never have survived had the culture not been there to support it. Much of what the LDS Church is in Utah is an outgrowth of 150 years of people living its doctrine and doing so in the company of an evergrowing minority of unbelievers.

The truth is that much of what is called "Doctrine" in the church is very culturally specific. I'm not claiming that its right or wrong, but I am claiming that it must be understood and taken within the sphere in which it exists. Do you think God worries about alcohol, tobacco and Rated R movies in his sphere? No, because they are so culturally and era specific that they are prohibitions and edicts proscribed in our time and our time only. Christ drank wine (don't give the specious argument about "new" and "old" wine, THE SON OF GOD DRANK ALCOHOL.), so did Moses, Abraham and Lot. Yeah, Latter-day Saints claim now to be very chaste and virtuous but you have some of its founding members being married to dozens of wives including women who were married to other men AT THE SAME TIME (read: Brigham Young-- check your history books if you don't believe me).

Does that make these things right or wrong? The purpose of this discussion for the moment is not to say if they were right or wrong (I have strong opinions on some of this, but that would only muddy the waters at this point) but to point out that what many look at as tried and true unchanging principles upon which to judge and attack others are actually culturally mandated norms proscribed by men who claim to be inspired of God. If you believe them, great. But make sure that you're not saying that these things have been and always will be thus, because history and factual research tends to make a fool out of many absolutists.

The same is true on the other side of things. Some people hold up a banner of "tolerance" and "free-thinking" as if they were the only two true virtues in the world and everything else was relative. They condemn any judgment by any person and laugh at people who hold anything as sacred. Then, when these people have "tolerated" everything and everyone to the utmost degree, they find their feet cut out from under them as groups they have tolerated turn and rend them limb from limb. In other words, you have to take a stand. You have to believe in something, in somethings. "Tolerance" in and of itself really has no value unless you have virtues of your own as a point of reference.

I guess the end point of this all is that we need to continue to learn. We need to continue to listen. We need to read and write and argue and yell and then go back and consider it all. Not only does no one culture and religion have a monopoly on truth but no one culture can consider itself the one legitimate outgrowth of truth or religion. We can grab on to truths and make them hard and fast in our lives, but we should be ready to defend them and exchange them out if they prove to be a shaky foundation. Don't mistake culture for religion, but don't make the mistake that you can completely untwine the two either.

And There She Was -- A Call to the Those Who Need To Work It

My friends and I were at a jazz joint downtown this last weekend. This place was a literal hole in the wall. A hole in the wall with a warm cozy environment, candles on the tables, cheap drinks and nachos, broken down old couches and the best live jazz I have heard in years. You wouldn't know what you were getting into until you walked in the door and paid ten bucks. Sure the outside declared that it was a jazz club, but who reads signs in a crappy neighborhood? Makes me hopeful for more hidden treasures throughout this capital city I live in.

It was our last night to hang out before the new year really took off. Kermit was heading back to New York, Moses' school called to him from across the country, and Logan and I both had work the following Monday. Kermit was sitting on a wooden chair in front of me his legs stretched out and his thin fingers curled around a Sam Adams beer. Moses sat on the couch next to me, hunched forward in his attentive yet relaxed metrosexual style. Logan sat across from me on the couch, resplendent in his pink button-up shirt, the only straight man east of Mississippi who could pull off such a daring fashion move.

I meanwhile, enjoined in the conversation, let my eyes flitter up for a moment and that's when I saw her. Now I want to make clear early that I am a man already in a relationship, one I am very happy to be in and have no desire to remove myself from it. But what I saw across the room made my eyes grow wide in surprise.

Sitting at a table for two was a party of one, a young lady in a brown leather jacket and white shirt, short black curly hair pushed back from her face and eyes that would knock a man over. Thin yet sensuous lips, a color of life in her ebony-colored cheeks, she sipped at a drink and looked straight ahead at the band on the stage. The closest I've ever seen to someone looking like her was Selena on the film 28 Days Later. But even Selena couldn't keep it together like this girl could.

At first I believed that whoever she was with had gone to get a drink or was in the bathroom or doing something equally ridiculous that would keep him away from this nubian beauty. But as the hour passed and no one came to join her, my amazement grew. Then as mysteriously as she appeared, she was gone. I didn't see her get up and leave. She was simply gone. Could she have been a streak in my imagination? I could have well believed it but when I mentioned her existence to Logan, who was facing her most of the night (tho from a distance), his words and sentiments echoed my own.

Who was this woman, and why was she alone? If she had been with the band, why was she sitting in the back, and left two hours before the end of the performance? Had some idiot stood her up? Or had she simply come to enjoy the jazz music and participate in the passion of being alone?

Whatever the case, this entry goes out as a call to men everywhere. A woman so beautiful has no business being alone (unless of course that was her desire). Somebody out there, somebodies undoubtedly, are failing miserably if this creature has to spend a Saturday night alone. Now as I am involved with a breathless beauty who completes my life and happily so, an attempt to change her life will not come from me. However, to those single men out there who are whining about not finding the right woman, my answer is you need to get off your rears and find this woman and others like her. They aren't going to wait around forever.