God's artistry

went for a walk with my wife last evening. a heavy afternoon rain had just passed and finally the heat was beaten back. but the clouds still held on. there were low dark clouds that were breaking up, but high above them was an overcast that covered nearly the whole sky. nearly, because off to the west a break in the clouds let some late afernoon azure sky show through. the edges of the opening were painted with yellow, pink and orange, highlighted by the sun. to the southeast, a double rainbow. my wife noticed that in the major bow the colors went blue-green-yellow-red, and in the minor bow they were reversed.

i wished i had brought my camera. so much beauty to behold. maybe the camera would not have captured enough to convey it, but i knew my words never could either. so i just admired it all, let it sink into my memory. it will fade, i'm sure. but maybe my soul will absorb it somehow and make something good grow inside me.

i once heard a man remark that art is not a 'luxury', that even primitive people decorated the earthenware they made for daily use. a decorated bowl does not hold meal any better than an unadorned one, but it makes it more appealing somehow. a setting of flowers on a dining table doesn't make the food taste any better. the colors we paint our homes doesn't make them keep out the storms any better. but still, they make the difference between living and simply existing.

so the rain we have had too little of was welcome relief. everything that suffered the endless days of scorching heat breathed fresh at last, greened, grew, and blossomed. God didn't have to make creation so beautiful, but it seems to have been his pleasure to do so. i am in awe.

in vain

sorry, God. i got mad and cursed, used your name. i would ask you to forgive me, but you know there's other things i need to take care of before i come to you with that.

just so you know, i've really been trying. trying to be the right man, right husband, right father. even though i know it doesn't 'fix' anything that's come before, maybe getting on the right path now will make things better in the end.

but today i got a reality check. got reminded that i was not enough before, am not enough today, and can never be enough ever. when she said that i could stay and she would leave, secretly i hoped she would. i hoped she would go, find happiness, or at least find that i wasn't really the cause of her unhappiness. like the farsightedness that comes with age...maybe if she could get far enough away she might see me more clearly.

anyway, that's how i feel. i'm not giving up, not rolling over and quitting. but still, not hopeful right now. promised a year, but almost reneged on that today. you know what will happen, i don't. maybe you could give me a hint?

tells

my father-in-law built the house that my wife grew up in. he built the basement first, and the family lived in it until, with four daughters, it was bursting at the seams. then he finished the upstairs and things were better, but as a little girl my wife still liked sneaking down to the basement to have her own space away from the crowd. occassionally one of her older sisters would come downstairs, and to discourage her from staying my wife would feign sleep. one day her sister came down and after a minute announced "i can tell when you're not really asleep because your mouth isn't open." busted. but not to be deterred, she tucked that piece of information away and from then on when she heard her sister's footfalls, she remembered to close her eyes and slack her jaw.

my daughter made the same mistake when she bragged that she could always tell when i was lying to her because my chin would bulge as i tried to keep myself from laughing. with a little conscious effort, i managed to keep from giving myself away. now she hits me when she finds out that tell didn't work.

i had other tells too. the frequency of my swear words were a good measure of my level of frustration or dissatisfaction. you could tell if i liked a person by finding out if i had a nickname for them. if i seemed to need time with my 12-string, it meant i was depressed.

not that playing the guitar made me less depressed. on the contrary, it seemed to reinforce it. but it gave the melancholy an expression, and out of it came something that at least had some beauty. even if it was only me and God and the four walls that heard, it was comfort to know that even the misery had a use in this world. some days the strings seemed to find perfect resonance, and the vibrations plumbed the depth and breadth of emotions that words could not describe. other days the sound seemed off, and i could only sigh and give up, wait for another day.

but it's been weeks since i spent as much as ten minutes playing. i just haven't felt the need. and i mostly stopped swearing. it is even uncharacteristic that when i do let a word slip, i don't say the streak is broken so might as well give it up. now i just admit i tripped, get up and go on.

so who am i? it feels like i'm shallow, and empty. even numb, i find myself thinking "you'd be crazy to want that back." so i don't want it back. but still it nags me...who am i? if my tells don't tell about me anymore, am i still me? have i changed to the point where i am someone else, someone i don't even know? i didn't like me before, but i at least had some...appreciation. will i like me now, this new me that hasn't shown me anything yet? or do i have to build this me from scratch?

i wish i had tells, i wish i had feelings.

i wish i was real.

[post removed]

[okay, this little poem has been removed on the urging of the pahlawan. somehow she thinks it has a shot. so if i am going to risk rejection, i will risk being rejected by the very best. sometime within the next three months i should find out whether the poetry editor at the new yorker magazine likes it or not. once they find out i've never purchased so much as a single copy of their fine publication, they will probably reject my work expeditiously. but hey, invention & technology doesn't print poetry, so what else can i do? anyway, thanks for the encouragement and wish me luck. happy national day tomorrow, hope you have fun.]

fate laughed

another one has slipped away. no good-bye. just gone. held on as much as i could. any more would have been improper. but in the end it was not enough, not that i ever thought it was. i thought i was done with past mistakes, but they don't seem to be done with me. "reap what you sow, do unto others, what goes around comes around." the slap stings more now.

i fear the inevitable. i'm sure fate just laughs when we use words like "always" and "forever". what could we possibly know about such things? the very same current that brought us together will surely someday pull us apart, and no human strength can resist it.

but resist it anyway. maybe fate will remember us for trying.