the shot clock resets

our minds forget another

round of twenty four

turn to face the strange

try as i may, change is difficult for me. i know intellectually that much of it is good and proper for a healthy life, and for living things it is necessary, but as i live out the change it is often a great adjustment. certainly so much of what we are adapting to is so subtle it is nearly unnoticeable. we wake and continue to breathe, and go about our days. we grow older and continue to gaze back at ourselves in the mirror. and sometimes we get locked into a rhythm, that left undisturbed lulls us into a feeling that either everything is just fine or gradually depleting us.

and then there are the times of major life adjustments; marriage, the birth of a child, the death of a loved one and the move for a new job. it is the latter i have been adjusting to for a little over 2 months now, and although the landscape is familiar to me, my thoughts keep drifting back to what i've left behind. good friends, my old job and even the apartment where we used to live now seem like a long gone far away and simpler time. sure, these are good times too. don't get me wrong. it's just different now. my birthday and this time of year always serve to remind me that time keeps moving on. who knows, maybe someday i'll look back on this time and feel that it too was a much simpler time. nothing stays the same.

hopes and forgotten
eternal glimpses all stuffed
securely away

my rest

today sort of a grab bag day. woke up late after a long day defending myself against allergy. sneezing and runny nose. i will need to figure out how to manage it better. a day of allergy attack wrecks me into the next day. spent this morning taking it easy and watching everyone decorate the Christmas tree. thumbed through an old u.s. camera book i bought years ago on the streets of berkeley in route to breakfast with my wife.


i was inspired and so went looking for something right outside my door to photograph. our neighborhood is already rich with layers of historic texture, so it didn't take long to find a few willing subjects. back inside now and it is quiet. i need quiet more regularly than i have been getting, and so will look for ways to engage it. there is though, always compromise it seems. life is an unending rhythm, a dance that often makes me feel out of step. then it's time to slow it down, feel the down beat count, and begin again.

we open our hands
to let things be taken and
new ones take their place

lubiam

this matchbox is my very favorite one out of our new collection. very similiar in scale and design to the lausanne/cerino, i love the graphic design of this little packaging. the 3 color red, black and white and the bold typography. the illustration of the boy behind the lubiam "L". a little web research could not find another like it, and the "lubiam" name also a mystery. there is an italian clothing manufacturer by that name and they have been around for decades, so it is possible i suppose.
i think what i love most about these is the thought that it was someone's job to create this. that somebody got paid for their creative efforts to produce a matchbox graphic. and the fact that as so many others race around today searching for something to spend their hard earned money on, sometimes the simplest things we hold in our hands are worth the most.

"it is curious how often you humans manage to obtain that which you do not want"
-spock

thankful

we lay up for our
selves treasures that will not rust
in God we trust

penny saver

i saw this today while getting gas. i used to see them all the time, but they have since become rare. it's the old take a penny tray for folks who are paying exact change in cash and find they have come up a little short. it's also there for you to add to the "kitty" when you get change back. and sometimes they used to sport this little phrase as well - "have a penny, leave a penny, need a penny take a penny", which if you say out loud a few times, will really get stuck in your head.
i don't know why, but i like this simple idea very much. i suppose with less people using cash these days, it isn't as cool as it used to be, but i do very much like the idea of a kind of shared currency. kind of like do-gooders who feed parking meters when they see the meter maid rolling up. or the original idea of the white bicycle movement in the netherlands. although shared transportation gets a bit messier than free pennies. anyway, i like to add to the trough whenever i can.

spirit's prison walls

not made of stone or bars but

of iniquity

waiting at the doors of perception today, before i consider turning the handle.

time lights cigarettes
puts them in your mouth
and smokes them all down

swiss matches

time now to share a matchbook, or in this case a matchbox. this is one of my two favorites from our recent acquisition from grandpa. thanks grandpa! it is a beautiful little box featuring an image of the city of lausanne on one side, and on the other, a rail car descending the alps with monte cervino or as we better know it, "the matterhorn" in the background.
i stopped and stared at this one for a long time when i first picked it up. there is something that draws me in. the lausanne image reminds me of a story book place like on the french riviera where cary grant and grace kelly played in "to catch a thief". and the matterhorn picture again is so filmic, as if it too were a character or setting in another hitchcock film.
i'm also amazed at the small level of color and print detail here. it is art on a mass scale for the time, put in the hands of the masses. i imagine ordinary working folks who couldn't afford a trip to these beautiful locales who were perhaps transported here for a few moments as i was, while standing on a street corner somewhere dragging on a cigarette. in our moments of pause we may fly away here.

first you learn the notes
as play becomes internal
the rhythm is jazz

for love of the game

even as the hoops hopeful watch helplessly from the sidelines, and see an ever darkening cloud moving in to wipe out this nba season, the game goes on. it goes on in countless pick up games in church and school gyms. it goes on at outdoor recesses and in driveway games of horse, 21 and around the world. and it goes on every tuesday night for me as i step into the role of a coach for my oldest boys in our local church basketball league.

i love watching these young men and women learning how to play together. although they are right at the end of it, they are still playing with the joy and enthusiasm of children. for the love. and one day for most of them, that love will probably be gone. the intense ratcheting up of competition will force many of them out, and some of them up, although it will carry with it an increasing expectation of performance. and that pressure combined with the sole aim to win.

and these are not bad things in themselves. but when the love is shed in this trade, it is a great loss. and so as i shake my head and watch grown men dig in with the sole aim to win on their side of a labor dispute, i have to wonder what happened to the love?

still spinning

taking time today to unwind from weekend's activities and slowly spin my wheels.

participation
with the Master Creator
is transformation

favorite things 16

one of my favorite things on a saturday morning without commitments is cooking breakfast. now breakfast itself is my favorite meal, and saturday is the pinnacle breakfast day. today was the first time i'd done one in the new place and as i stood here putting it all together it occurred to me. although i have my routines and have whipped it all up in many locales this one felt different. the new kitchen, the light coming through the windows. i was re-orienting myself. i immediately wondered how many breakfasts lay ahead here.
one of my most favorite parts of this whole ritual is the quiet time i spend here preparing the food. sometimes i'll rise before everyone else and start stirring quietly. i prepare the coffee first. and once everything is on the stove i like to pull out my old church hymnal. in between flipping the sausages and french toast i'll work my way through a few of the old familiar numbers. and this is very good. it reinforces all that is good in serving and creating, drawing me closer to the Master Creator and Servant. time spent here compared to the rest is very short. but sweet, like the french toast. today we don the beret.

we struck a deal long
ago to keep fires burning
and light our way home

match game

funny thing happened on the way back from my last trip to my father in law's house. after dropping off his old washer/dryer dad sent me home with his parent's fantastic matchbook collection. he snuck me out before grandpa was the wiser. i brought them home in the ash can they had been stored in and then poured them out on the living room floor.
as i began to sift through the enormous pile i was struck by 2 things. first, the commitment. i don't know when the folks started this collection, but i'm guessing it goes pretty far back. a lot of the covers still list the old two letter prefix at the beginning of a phone number - like EL7-1137. and they range from that point on into at least the 1980's. that's a long stretch. second, they are from all over the world! i knew my wife's grandparents were travelers but sheesh, i had no idea. from the local pancake and burger place around the corner from where we now live, to a yurt in ecuador or a far east inn.
each of these tells a story that the storytellers can no longer relate. and yet as i am now in possession of them, i shall do my best to act as a kind of post-modern archaeologist and dig deeper into the best of these finds. perhaps they can still tell us something.

you showed up to make
us laugh to forget and now
belong to angels

the tale of alfie

a few weeks ago i was finishing up lunch when i heard some commotion coming from the shop. one of the guys had seen something moving around under one of the work benches. as it was october he thought perhaps someone was playing a little pre-halloween joke on him. you know, like one of those displays people put in front of their house that move as you approach. turns out it was not a joke, but in fact a real live white mouse in our very own shop! a brown mouse may not have caused as much interest i think, but his color combined with a seeming devil may care attitude as we watched him run back and forth through the shop raised our interest.
in fact he seemed to not be bothered by us humans as we edged ever closer to him. we began to speculate on his origins. there are apartments near the auto shop, and perhaps he had been someones pet and gotten away from his home. the other theory, which stretched the imagination, but gave him greater credential was that he was an escapee from the nearby reptile emporium that stocks "feeder mice" for large snakes and reptiles. although connie's was only about a tenth of a mile away, this certainly seemed to me at least a difficult distance for our intrepid little traveler.
wherever he came from, he provided increasing entertainment over the next several days. even as we speculated where he had come from, we all began to devise a way to capture our new house guest. i bought a live mouse trap that was basically a teeter-totter tunnel which would close a door when the little guy moved past the center fulcrum. he didn't seem interested. we left out peanut butter for him each night to make sure he stayed around. and i even cut the bottom of a paper cup and placed water inside for him. we attached a large funnel to a broom stick to try and trap him in the open but he escaped. i placed peanut butter in a cardboard box turned sideways outside my office window and waited until he was inside and then tipped the box right side up, but the little guy jumped out as i did so. we were all beginning to feel this mouse had outsmarted us all.


and still he kept up his game of hide and seek, showing up all over the shop, running along the ceiling and peeking out from under shelves and doorways. finally his daring got the best of him. we trapped him between cases of oil where we'd baited some of that irresistible peanut butter. the owner of the shop, mrs. b asked me if my kids would like to keep him as a pet. i thought of my wife's reaction and told her i'd think about it. meanwhile she picked up a really nice cage for him. by now he had become like a mascot around our shop. we put his new place together and got a kick out of watching him interact in his new home.


well, we did end up taking him home. although it was agreed that he would stay in the garage. my daughter named him "alfie" and they all took turns reading him a bedtime story that first night home. alfie turned out to be a tame little guy once he got used to his new apartment. although i always wondered how he would adjust to life back on the inside. the other morning barbara went outside to take the blanket off his cage and found him dead. i don't know if it was the cold, disease or if alfie just gave up as he had become a prisoner again.


my kids however, were also devastated. their new little pet, home less than a month was now gone. and so, we had ourselves a little funeral. i fashioned a suitable coffin for him out of the bottom of a pop secret box. (he loved popcorn and peanut butter) and we laid him to rest filling the box with flowers and notes. the kids all cried and i said a few words. we dug a hole at the base of one of our red apple trees and then laid a few more flowers on top. alfie, we hardly knew ye. and then just yesterday as my son aaron and i were playing catch in the backyard we watched as a white butterfly flew past us both, alighted right on the flowers above alfie's grave, paused there for a moment and then flew away again. so like alfie.

we left the bumper
to bumper behind in droves
and never looked back

feeling a little like this fellow today. no desire to move.

knowing that although
difficult days are ahead
we are not licked yet

the cream rises

one of the things i love about where we live now is the spontaneous urge to re-discover the familiar. a few weeks ago while entertaining my folks at our new home, we finished dinner and i realized we hadn't thought to get a dessert. "no problem" i said. "why don't we all go to fenton's?" mom clapped her hands. the kids all asked "what's fenton's?" and soon we were in the car and headed down the road to oakland. for those who still don't know, fenton's is a long standing east bay stop for some of the finest iced cream you will ever find. what a book could be written on the thousands of birthdays, first dates, after game celebrations, anniversaries and the like all shared here. in fact as we ordered and then waited patiently at the table making crayon masterpieces on our paper tablecloth, we joined in on no less than 3 rousing choruses of "happy birthday" for tables nearby. proving that the good times shared with complete strangers over ice cream is enough to momentarily satisfy our human longing for community. i guess some other folks know it too as evidenced here in the final scene of pete docter's last film "up". and now i see from our crayon box souvenir that they even have a location in the new nut tree plaza. good reason to stop the next time we travel up to sac to see our friends there too.

the boy learns his trade
in full view of a waiting
world he created

the artist and the man

the artist and the man are one. yet they are often divided. the man contains the artist. he nurtures him, grows and tends him. the artist needs the man. for it is from the man that he draws his inspiration. when this relationship is healthy they give and take. the man gives the artist what he needs to create. he offers him time. time to reflect and time to be free. the man and the artist may take long walks together regularly discussing the deep things that matter and searching for new ways to communicate them. the artist takes these thoughts and turns them into something new and gives it back to the man. the man is enriched and blessed by the artist's gift and seeks to reward him with more time.
but often times other things make demands of the man. he falls in love and starts a family and soon they too want more of the man's time. the man invites his artist to join in and give something back to the family as well. and at first the artist is happy to do it, but after some time he begins to pull back and grows selfish. he misses the time alone with the man and demands that he give him more time. the man is torn. he loves his artist. the two are one. but he also loves his family and is divided. the artist finds he is a second, and begins to pout. if the man will not come play with him alone he will go off and leave. perhaps never to come back.
and for a time he does just that. he leaves. at first the man misses him. he wonders if he made the wrong decision. maybe his artist was more important than his wife, his family. he grieves the loss. and after a time his mourning ends. although he aches as each day goes by and feels like a dismembered creature, he accepts the loss. he knows that he must be true to the man and his family first. time goes by. and one day the artist shows up again at his door. he is starving, hysterical and naked. he begs the man to take him back. he says he will do whatever he asks, only that the man would take care of him again. the man takes him in his arms and brings him in. he cleans and clothes him. begins to feed him slowly. and soon the grateful artist is well and healthy once more. like a prodigal son he has returned. and although he wants more and more than the man can sometimes offer, he is grateful for that which he has. and the man is grateful too. for the artist has helped to complete him and give him back that which he needs to share with those he loves.

the clock ticks a
reminder to beg the question
when will our last breath