following fire trucks and riding in the rain

I decided to go for a bike ride today out to Old Time Pottery to pick up some incense. As I pedaled, fire trucks passed me with their lights flashing and sirens blaring. I followed them for a while, and it crossed my mind as I did so that had I taken a car I wouldn’t have bothered to give chase. I observed with a condescending countenance the woman who had pulled her vehicle off the road to wait for the passing parade as I pedaled with ferocity to keep up with the fire engines. While riding, I reflected on how driving is overrated. Yes, it gets us from point A to point B quickly, but what about the journey? What about the freedom to follow fire trucks? What about my prerogative to pursue a new found path, an unexplored trail, a different route? What about….what…about… the rain? Just then, I found myself in the middle of a thunderstorm. (On a side note, given the conditions, I availed myself of my recent approbation {see “a topless teaching”} concerning the covering of my torso…seriously, it’s not about vanity!) . Quickly I remembered there were other reasons for riding in cars. Rain pelted me for minutes until I could make it to an industrial park and take cover under a narrow overhang. Eventually I ventured out again when the rain diminished, but this time, in spite of my soggy shoes and socks, I enjoyed the shower. I thought about how outside of getting “stuck” in the rain I would never intentionally experience it. And why? Because comfort is such a commodity, and propriety dictates showers happen indoors. Well I say confound commodity and piss on propriety! Enjoy the voyage. After all, whether we know it or not, point A and point B are illusions anyway – we’re always on a journey.

Curly no more

My daughter’s fish died about a month ago (thus prompting eventually the need for another pet, about which you can read in “Bad Rat or Bad Rap”). It jumped out of the fish bowl. My wife found it still alive and placed it back in the water, but it was too late. Hours later it hovered motionless at the bottom of the aquarium, and then eventually became a belly up beta. We did a brief service by the toilet side at which my 4 year old daughter sang then cried. It was a solemn yet beautiful ceremony. Poor Curly (my daughter named it) decided she would push the envelope of her existence. Apparently the proverbial grass looked greener on the other side of her fish bowl. Obviously it was not – it was the wrong environment for a fish. But our funeral rectified that as we placed Curly’s corpse back in the place of its origin –water. And so, I’ve come to the conclusion that toilet bowl funerals are quite suitable for fish, in the same way that dirt funerals are appropriate for humans and other ground dwelling beasts. It makes sense in the circle of life as we know it, I guess. And while death may mark the doorway to dirt for human bodies and a segue to the sewer for pet fishes named Curly, I’m convinced that restoration and resurrection have entered the world. Their presence incrementally and mysteriously rewinds and reverses the known order of nature. Now, in large part hidden, a quantum explosion of revelation will one day disclose the ways in which these forces have been at work in and through God and his people. Don’t worry, fish will still be in the sea (or fish bowls) and man will still walk the earth, but the circle of life will no longer entail death. We'll finally be in the right environment to sustain life.

Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future

Indeed, Mr. Miller, truer words are hard to come by. I would add, however, that the more it slips the faster it seems to do so. Like a biker who progressively gains speed as she barrels downhill, so life moves with such increased celerity with every passing year. Hell, every passing week seems to contain less time than the one before it. If perception is everything and appearance reality, then the reciprocal rule to quickening time is that prenatal existence and infancy must have entailed eons. Childhood would have sped up some, but we still lived in a slower space-time-continuum back then.

I remember epic summers that went on for years as we explored the Australian pine woods up the street, walked the fences around the house, rode bikes up 7-11 to play Punch Out, spent hours on Atari, watched Star Trek reruns, etc. And if summers were long, the school year was a frigging ice age. Inching along infinitesimally with its glacier pace, school moved in on the childhood delight of those lengthy summers like the doldrums of the dark ages.

Yes, time is moving along more quickly with each passing moment. I guess it’s all the same in the end though. Because while our summers may be shorter, so too are our semesters.