Blind Spot & A Poem

I once had a robust collection of reading glasses. But now I'm down to one pair. What happened to the others? I should secure my reading glasses on one of those dainty chains, have it dangling from my neck like an old woman playing Pinochle.

As my vision has deteriorated, so goes my memory. What happened to my brown, Howdie-Doodie glasses? Where did I hang my car keys? Why can't I remember the name of the person I just visited? And, what, pray-tell, is my son's name? I could have sworn I knew his social security number last year.

Still . . .

Or how about a poem? Here's one I wrote about reading glasses.

Reading Glasses

At first the distance was a dream:

My vision an aquarium

Of moving shapes and hazy forms,

Each paragraph's clandestine scheme

Withholding vowels from the sum

Of flat lines squiggling like worms

Across the page. But through the lenses

Words appear and miracles

Of sentences, each magnified.

I have, at last, come to my senses,

And "t"s appear instead of "l"s

Inside the ink where they reside.

Raiding Libraries

This summer I have purchased a rather large supply of "used" books . . . mostly discards from libraries around the country. Becky has taken to asking me to shed other titles so I can make room for these new stacks of books that are now littering the floors, the tables, the chairs. But I feel as though I am adopting these books. They need a home. And a quick glance at the old library flaps inside their jackets tells me that few people took them to the beach, or on vacation. These books seem lonely, almost bereft. But they are sadly familiar to me. I love them all.

For example, I am now the proud father of some first-edition hardback children with names like:

More Matter, by John Updike

The Collected Poems, Reynolds Price

The Colleted Poems, Stanley Kunitz

Lamentations of the Father, Ian Frazer

Couples, John Updike

A Month of Sundays, John Updike

The Indiana Way, C. Madison

A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole

Barrel Fever, by David Sedaris

The Christmas Blizzard, by Garrison Keillor

The Collected Poems, Richard Wilbur

I have many others at home now, but these are a few of my best first-edition finds. When I leave for a few days of R & R next week, I plan to take a few of these with me to the beach. I'll get to know them. We will have conversation. And afterwards, I'll give them each a prominent place on a shelf, in a box, or in some back corner of a closet where, perhaps decades from now, I will discover them again and be able to say, "Well, long time no see . . . how have you been?"

Special Offers

If there's an editor who will pay me, I'll write practically anything for money. That's why I make special offers from time to time.

LOW MAINTENANCE WRITER WILLING TO WRITE FOR FOOD OR FOR VERY LOW PAY . . . IN FACT, I AM WILLING TO BE PAID IN POTATOES, CARROTS, PICKLED BEATS.

I've got my name and my offers out there, but few people call. Next week, I'll take to the streets and hold up my sign that reads, Will Write for Ink Cartridge.

It's tough going out there, even for writers.

A Thousand Sermons

I've been reading American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists. It's no doubt the most comprehensive, accurate, and moving biograpy I've read in years, and, surprisingly, there are so many correlations between now and then (especially around issues of itineracy, clergy families, salaries and insurance) my head is spinning.

Reading about how many miles Francis Asbury travelled on horseback and how many sermons he preached seems, from the outset, to be so amazing . . . and it was for that day and time. Miraculous, actually. But as I sit down and consider what I have done in nearly thirty years of pastoral work, I find myself saying, "This can't be right, can it??"

For example, take travel. A few quick calculations last night showed me that I've travelled an average of five thousand miles a year (by junk car) in pastoral service. Multiply that by, say, twenty years (very conservatively) and I get 100,000 miles. I'm not sure how far that is, but isn't that several times around the world? Gads!!

Or how about sermons? Being a Methodist, like Asbury and his ilk of yesteryear, I do keep copious records of my pastoral work, too: weddings, baptisms, confirmations, and sermons. Another quick calculation has revealed that I have preached something like 1020 sermons in my lifetime. Good Lord of the Post-It Note, that's a lot of sermons.

Funny thing is, I don't have most of these sermons, nor is there any record of them (unless they exist on audio tape, CD, or some other digital format somewhere). When I was taught preaching by the esteemed Richard Lischer "back in my day" . . . it was drummed into my head that preaching was, among other things, an oral and auditory pursuit rather than a written or visual one. For the most part, I agree . . . and hence, I have never written my sermons. I have no manuscripts. And in most instances, I have only cursory outlines that I either used in the pulpit, or memorized and offered without notes. So, my life in preaching is, for the most part, without record or history--although I could probably dig up the sermon titles and the dates I preached over the past thirty years.

Over a thousand sermons? Okay, even I have to admit that seems like a lot of sermon prep--especially when on considers that the early Methodists moved each year, and could "re-use" their supply of sermons in their new annual appointments. In that regard, I've probably written more sermons (or a wider array) than most of these first and second generation Methodists. Not to take anything away from them. They were amazing people.

But considering the travel mileage (and the time I've spent in the car) and the sermons (and the time I've spent creating and practicing them) I'm amazed I still have anything new to say . . . or maybe I don't. Perhaps it's all been said before, just in different ways.

Still, it's good to know that the mind still works, still creates, and that the Spirit still speaks in new ways. Every week God gives me a message, and usually a whole bunch of humor, and several chapters, and essays, and blogs, and poems, and proposals and stories. I guess I should be thankful for my fingers, which can still type quickly. Only God knows what I should do with all of this material after I write it.

Can We Talk?

Although I've given some interviews of late, I've decided I don't want to talk anymore. Enough talk. I'm ready to focus more energy on writing again. That's what writers do. Write. Produce.

Still, in the event that some of my interviewers want to get down to the nitty-gritty of me, or perhaps want to ask those controversial questions, here's where I stand on the big debates. I'll go ahead and ask the questions and offer the answers myself.

So, Mr. Alleycat, do you drink fair trade coffee, or do you buy sweat shop beans produced by indigenous populations who are enslaved to brewing your drug of choice?

Let me set the record straight, I do drink coffee (though I don't always savor it . . . sometimes I just get a sense of it and spit it out . . . does this count as a "taste"?). As for the trade debate, I've never traded for coffee. I usually buy it (or I send me son into the store with instructions to steal it). I would, however, be willing to trade the following for a pound of french roasted: two yellow-page directories, four socks that don't have mates, two cans of cat food that our feline won't touch (both contain free trade horse-meat, I think).

Okay, Mr. Alleycat, enough about coffee. Isn't it true you plagiarize most of your work, borrowing material from good writers to make yourself look like you can actually write?

I for one am glad to set the record straight about that bathroom material I borrowed back in 1982. Yes, I did copy material from a third floor bathroom stall at the ISU library, but I thought this was a classic and was public domain. I mean, wouldn't you assume that anything written on a bathroom wall was public? I saw no copyright. As for my other material . . . Heck, there are people stealing off of me! In fact, there are two people trying to steal my name. I'm just relieved they can't consistently spell it correctly.

You think you're so freakin' important don't you?

Absolutely not! Now way! Well . . . okay. Yes. Heck, I don't know.

What keeps you humble?

Oh, my, lots of things. Writing this blog. Attempting to have sex with my wife. Rejection. The natural ageing process. Depressing book sales. Jelly beans. Scalding my upper lip with coffee. Abject failure. Cold toilet seats.

So, what do you hope to write next?

Anything I can sell. And I've also got this idea for a book about a world where dogs rule and people are kept on leashes and fed food out of cans. The humans are ruled by the dogs and are only let out of the house twice a day to use the potty. I'm a bit fuzzy on the title . . . but I'm leaning toward Planet of the Dogs. I can see it as a series . . . you know, Beyond the Planet of the Dogs, Beneath the Planet of the Dogs . . . and finally, Going to the Dogs. I think it could be a huge seller.

LOL

It's been some time since I've offered an overview of my reading activities, but my shelves have become littered with summer books I have purchased and intend to read, and even more books that I have purchased and hope that, someday, I'll be able to discover them again after they get buried.

A great many of these are humor volumes.

For example, in the past month I've knocked out Humor Me, by Ian Frazier, Disquiet Please!: A Collection of Humor from The New Yorker, I Love You, Miss Hudleston, by Phil Gulley, The Seinfeld Scripts (from Season 1 & 2), and Best Thought, Worst Thought, by Paterson.

Among the humor books, though, George Carlin's, When When Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? is the raunchiest, bawdiest, weirdest, foulest, and most off-the-wall book of stand-up humor I've read in a long time. That's why I read it all.

And now, as I make my plans for further reading, I'm hoping to tackle, The Mysterious Theft of the Mona Lisa, by R.A. Scott, American Saint: A Biography of Francis Asbury, and a massive stack of poetry books by various older and contemporary poets.

Until next time . . . keep reading and LOL.

It's a Small World After All . . .

Another interesting experience this week. After talking to a gentleman from Florida, he asked for the correct pronunciation of my name. I handed him a business card. His response was: "I've only seen your name one other time, and this was in a bookstore. There's a writer who has your same name . . . unless you are him."

"I'm him," I said.

Small world.

About the only experience yet to come would be the day I encounter someone on the street, or at the beach, or on the bus . . . reading one of my books. But I doubt that would happen. After all, people make the comment that they've "seen" my books in bookstores, or they have "seen" my name on a book before. But very few people say, "I bought one of your books the other day and I'm really enjoying it . . . it's changing my life and helping me to come to terms with my own demise, really giving me food for thought, changing all of my relationships . . . and, good Lord, how do you write so freakin' well, anyway?" No, this never happens.

I mean, that would be miraculous.