has anyone invented this word yet?

Listening to music is one of the most important things for me. I like it in the background when I’m at home. We usually keep on the local Christian Radio station or the oldies station.
I like it when I’m working but I usually only have one earpiece in when I listen to my MP3 player. In the past when I had both ears in and was deaf to the world someone was trying to call me and I didn’t hear the phone. Now I listen mostly to audio books at work. I do listen to music sometimes and try to tolerate not hearing the left stereo channel. When I’m vacuuming I put both ears in since I’m not going to hear anyway.
Having music in my vehicle while driving perhaps the biggest deal to me. I have dozens of CD’s in my truck and plan accordingly. There are all kinds of driving conditions and the music can match them. I made a mixed CD for my drive out to the desert two weeks ago. The blessing of living so close to work means that I can pick out something that will last most of the week.
If this has been a dull blog I apologize. (Maybe one could call a blah blog a blahg.) But I’ve been getting up an hour and a half earlier for a week now and have not begun any writing of short stories or novels. But if I sit ant the laptop and drink coffee I must keep the wheels turning or they will rust up. Truthfully they have rusted up and are very slowly squeaking back to life.

this day in '01

On September 11th 2001 I woke up for work. Prajna was in Los Angeles with Naomi at Children’s Hospital LA. Naomi was hospitalized for an infection and had recently been not hearing anything very well. There turned out to be fluid in her ears so that day she was getting surgery to have tubes put in her ears. My parents came over to look after the three younger children while I went to work and they told me some planes had flown into the World Trade Center. We turned on the TV and I saw the footage of smoke coming out of one of the towers. To me it didn’t look too bad.
Driving to work I listened to the news on the radio. Just before I got to work one of the reporters live in New York said:
“Oh my God,” and I heard a roar in the background. When I got in to work a TV was on and one tower was gone. The next one fell soon after.
I was teaching at the time at a placement facility for juvenile offenders. They were more subdued that day and delighted when we canceled classes so they could watch the news. I think the most disturbing image that morning was people dancing in the streets of Palestine. Children were cheering into the camera. The boys asked me why the Arabs hated us. I explained about Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and that it was a turf war among other things. The school principal heard me explaining and later had me teaching a current events class.
I drove to Los Angeles the next day to be with Prajna for her birthday. The sky was blatantly empty of planes and it was disturbing. Naomi could hear again and Prajna was showing her six month pregnancy with Jamie.

big wheel keeps turning

The first day of school for our family that involves classroom instruction. It is damp and overcast. This is the kind of morning that I think is best for staying in bed watching cartoons and eating cereal straight from the box. The problems with that notion are as follows:
There are no good cartoons on any day of the week any more at least with the broadcast TV that we have. If we had cable that would bring in a whole new plethora of distractions.
I can eat sugary breakfast cereal the way I used to. I begin to feel ill after a bit and the best thing to accompany it is beer and it’s been years and years since I had a beer in the morning.
Finally I have committed myself to being a responsible father. That means being the parent which means overcoming distractions in the way of homeschooling. If I sent the kids to government school they would all be up right now getting ready or on their way. Then I could plop down and watch The View or what Prajna really wants: go tot the gym.
I could even sit all morning and write my novel. That’s productive. But it’s also selfish. The time to write is before they get up which is now. I’m not authoring a novel right now, I’m blogging. But I’m writing and that to me is good enough for now because the wheels are turning and not rusting closed.
In a few minutes I will prompt Benjamin to start breakfast and get the big wheel of the day turning. That one is more like a carousel and never rusts up.

Summer is done

School officially starts today for our family. Prajna made up a schedule for our homeschooling and Tuesdays have Piano which is part of it. Wednesday through Saturday is our classroom instruction. Tomorrow morning I will start math with the older children.
Harrison has been taking piano for several years now and plays with our church’s worship team. He is composing music and has two homemade CD’s produced. Sarah is starting piano today. Jamie wants to take piano but we are waiting a year for his maturity to develop.
I have never learned a musical instrument. I won’t count drums in 7th through 9th grade as I didn’t play the snare very well and mostly played the bass drum with took little instruction or musical ability. Musicians in the mainstream media make piano look easy and sometimes I wish I had learned to play anything. (Yes I do play harmonica but it’s self taught and not well.)
So I’m up early this morning. Early for me at least and the kids don’t need to be up for a little while still. With school starting up again I want to write again. I want to write more than just a blog. I want to get back into writing stories again. My two main options are to revise Icarus or begin a memoir about Naomi. Neither one sounds particularly appealing. But laziness is why I don’t play a musical instrument.

James Lee was my friend

On Wednesday September 1st James Lee entered a building belonging to the Discovery Channel Television Network. James had a radical environmentalist manifesto that railed against human population among other things. A hostage standoff ensued and James was eventually shot to death by police.
I grew up with James Lee. I knew him from the 3rd grade and graduated from Lahainaluna High School with him in 1985. When I met him in 3rd grade I first noticed his voice was always a little lazy sounding as if he was half asleep. He and I hung out sometimes though because we were both socially awkward and we both liked Star Wars. Over the years we were sometimes friends, sometimes not. He often gave me comic books that he didn’t want any more and thought I would like. He became very good at drawing comic book characters and I still have a picture of The Punisher that he drew for me. I remember another time however when a friend and I tried to convince him that he had a lover’s crush on First Daughter, Amy Carter. He became so frustrated that he was beside himself with rage. He pointed a finger to my friend and me and rasped that we would pay. He sounded like a supervillan, but it actually frightened us.
I remember walking home from school with James at least once or twice. We talked about the next Star Wars film coming out soon. Then we went to our separate homes. I never visited James’s home. In a letter he wrote to a federal judge in 2003 he described himself as a miserable loner who spent his childhood alone in his room. I think that is an accurate picture.
I haven’t seen James Lee for 25 years but in some ways he did not change. He was always socially awkward and seemed cynical and angry. After graduation I guess he continued a lonely life and it must have really hurt. I won’t pretend to understand his motivation for a manifesto so hateful against human population. But the James Lee I knew wasn’t passionate about the environment; he just didn’t care for people.
I am shocked and sad by this event. It seems completely senseless and has nothing to edify me or anything I can write here. I am only sad that he is gone and in many ways was never here.

crumbling mofifs

When I was learning to drive on Maui there were only two sections of road where the speed limit went up to 55 miles per hour. I few years later there was only one. The Kuihelani Highway was probably the longest stretch of uninterrupted road on the island that I remember. Moving to the U.S. mainland in 1999 gave me a look at not only vast expanses of land but the straightest roads I had ever seen in my life.
I have always loved roads. This may have come from my childhood love of cars. I still remember watching a paving machine lay down new blacktop. I may have been 5 or six years old. It was the coolest thing in the world to see this huge truck lumbering along pouring out road. A day later I felt it and it was still soft.
I could get all poetic and say how that in the same way there is really one ocean there is really only one road. The pavement out in front of my house connects with 7th street and then interstate 10 which goes from Santa Monica to Jacksonville Florida. It’s all connected. (Except for cattle guards and drawbridges.)
Roads are something of a motif in my blogging and even writing. They symbolize life. Roadwalker is the handle I’ve used for a while and Roadwalker media is my idea of my own filmmaking production.
So walking on a road is the same as moving through life. On Maui the roads were curvy and you couldn’t pass snowbird tourists. Three days ago I was headed west on I-40 between Ludlow and Barstow. Some cars were going 90 mph. My little truck worked best at about 75. If I needed to pass a big rig I turned off the AC.
Mixed up somewhere in this is a whole metaphor for my life. I would explore it my my daughter Sarah is putting breakfast on the table.

love in the hand

I completed a movie and posted it on YouTube of my Desert getaway. I put Spaghetti Western Music behind it. My first version, however, had the theme music from Mad Max beyond Thunderdome. Tina Turner sings savage lyrics along with a war drums. But I changed it. I dressed very practically for the desert in light colored loose clothing. Like last year I had to overcome the desire to wear my long black coat, black clothes and of course my heavy leather boots. Maybe it’s a sign of maturity that I’m being realistic.
One thing I did take along was a Hot Wheels Car. Nathaniel seemed concerned about me and just as I was leaving he stuck himself out through the hole in the screen of his bedroom window. He offered me three of his Hot Wheels Cars. I didn’t know why at the time but he wanted me to be able to play with it if I got bored. It didn’t matter that I had book seven of the Dark Tower or that I can sit in a camp chair and stare at mountains for a long time and not be bored. It this case it really was the thought that moved me. I choose a red 1969 Dodge Coronet.
That night it got pretty creepy and lonely. Even with the moon it was very dark. The wind blew over the rocks and ground creating a discontinent uneasiness. I drifted off to sleep in the tent only to have the wind flap the tent and wake me up.
I had emptied my pockets and taken off my belt with my phone and knife and tools but I still felt something in my front pocket. There next to my lip balm was the car from Nathaniel. I turned over in my sleeping bag and held the car in my right hand.
‘What a loving gesture’, I thought.
And the night grew just a little less lonely.