Lost Luggage

When I was in college there was a skit on Saturday Night Live one time about “The Island of Lost Luggage.” It was hilarious. But when it really happens, especially to a frightened person in a strange city, it's far from funny.

Today I had a long layover between two flights. I walked around the airport a bit. There was a lady sitting on the end of a row of seats near the baggage claim. At first she looked a bit familiar but, no, I didn't know her. She just looked a little like somebody I knew. Then I noticed that she started crying and then she lay down across several of the seats and started sobbing. I felt like I had to do something so I walked over and said, “Are you all right?,” which is what one says in such a situation but is ridiculous because she obviously wasn't. She said, “No. I've been waiting for my luggage for five hours!” in a decidedly foreign accent that I couldn't quite place. I said, “I am so sorry.” I asked if she had checked with the lost baggage office which she had. I offered my phone which she didn't need. I mentioned a few other ideas all of which she had tried or there were reasons they wouldn't do in the situation. After a while I finally said, “I wish there was some way I could help you but I can't think of anything.” I decided she just needed someone nearby who she knew cared about her plight so I just sat there a couple seats away. Near enough to be there but not close enough to be a threat.

After sitting there a while I decided there was some praying that needed to be done including asking that this poor woman's bag would show up. Within a few minutes the conveyor started rumbling again with a new load of bags from another flight. The woman got up to go look them over. Then she came up from behind me with suitcase in tow and a smile on her face. She stopped and said in her thick accent, “Thank you for your moral support.” I said “Ah, so there it is! Good! Well God bless you” and she was on her way.

So I guess that's why I was put there in that in-between city for those couple of hours today. Hours I thought would be wasted. It's curious to me how some prayers can be answered just like that. Quickly, simply. All neat and tidy with a nice little happy ending. Then there are the others. Things that are of such enormously greater import than a lost suitcase full of clothing. And the answer doesn't come. And it seems the matter has been set aside or completely ignored. I know that's not the case, but it can feel that way. Another flight arrives. Surely this is finally it. You wait at the conveyor belt and watch as other's receive what they are waiting for and go about their lives. But the belt stops again. And still nothing. Each time the loss feels deeper and more hopeless. God has his own ways and his own timing. He is dependable, but certainly not predictable. Each situation is handled on a case by case basis and you just can't ever pin him down. And sometimes that is excruciatingly difficult.

Best Quote

I've had this perhaps all-time favorite quote for some time. In today's passage from "My Utmost for His Highest," I came across it again and realized it was from Oswald Chambers. Here it is with a sentence of lead-in:

"Stop having a measuring rod for other people. There is always one fact more in every man's case about which we know nothing."

Every day I try to relate to people with this in mind. I also claim it for myself. My first name happens to mean in Hebrew, "God is my judge."

7,000

Wow. As of today there have been 7,000 peeks at my random and ephemeral thoughts that would have otherwise registered for only a fleeting moment in my mind's eye, then just drained away into the ether. Blogging is pretty cool.

Holidays

I've always pretty much wanted to minimize holidays. I said it was because I was resisting the commercialization of everything and the retailers screaming about my responsibility to buy stuff for everybody. It seemed every time I turned around there was some new special day invented by Hallmark. I've always much preferred to give a gift or say something to someone I love because I felt it at the moment. And the effect is better when they aren't expecting it. When you do it on a holiday the doing is more like a chore with a deadline and the getting is expected and therefore doesn't count for very much. Even Christmas was marred when I got old enough to be useful in the light -hanging and tree set-up department. My parents always got a real tree and they had this perfectly awful stand that required countless trips under the branches and into the needles to endlessly loosen and tighten bolts in attempt to get the tree straight enough for my mother's satisfaction. I would think about how I was going to have to undo all the work in just a few weeks - a real Scrooge when it came to decorations. So I suppose the bottom line of my eschewing the calender mandated days has been selfishness.

There is that commandment number four to consider: "Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy." I've tried to do that. I have been in church on most of the Sundays of my entire life. But the commandment isn't quite hard and fast. Like killing in war, there are some exceptions to the rule. Jesus spoke of the reasonable thing to pull your son or ox out of a well if he should happen to fall in there on a Sabbath day. (Luke 14)

(an aside: Having worked most of my life in the creative process vs. making widgets or pushing paper or some other 9 to 5 pursuit, I have had my ox in the well on perhaps many more occasions than normal people. Creative fields are deadly to predictable, controllable schedules. While a wonderful and worthwhile way to nourish one's soul and those of others, after a lifetime of doing so I have come to the opinion that the creative process is a dreadful way to make a living.)

And there is Jesus healing on the Sabbath several times (ex: John chapter 9) directly forcing the issue of the Jewish leadership of his day being so legalistic and repressive about the number of steps in a sabbath day's journey, etc. at the expense of compassion for human beings. When he was chastised for letting his disciples do a bit of work to get something to eat on the Sabbath he said that the day was made for man and not man for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27). And then Romans 14 says that some men consider some days special and others consider all of them the same and let each man be convinced in his own mind. So I've been convinced in my own mind that every day being the same makes more sense; that I should be considerate and loving and honoring of God and others every day, not just on special ones.

But it seems I'm a hypocrite. Even with my bent toward eschewing holidays, I do remember fondly mother's days and father's days, etc., leaving the church at noon on a Sunday and the family gathering at the house or some restaurant to honor my dad or to be honored by my own little family. Basically it was just an excuse to get together and celebrate family and for that it was great. So holidays were kind of a love/hate thing.

I dread holidays more than ever now. I go to church by myself on a day like today and it's worth the effort to do so. But then comes the really hard part: walking out the door by myself as I see others gather with their families to head off to dinner together or whatnot. I'm filled with memories of being part of that as I head off alone into an alone afternoon and an alone evening and another week alone. And I have to buck up and take it. It does pass and I know it will but I know it's coming and I dread it. I've skipped church on a few holidays this year to avoid it. But sitting at home isn't much better. The sharp emotional hit at a more concentrated point in time is replaced by a general malaise accompanied by a good bit of sitting and staring at walls or the trees out back or whatever.

So, as much as I try for them not to, holidays matter. In fact, my lifelong attitude about them has no doubt greatly influenced the circumstances that now require me to experience them by myself.

PS: Both my kids called me this afternoon. That was really nice.

Tired

After trying unsuccessfully to stop dozing off and giving myself whiplash as I was hurrying up and waiting for hours on a job yesterday, I was thinking about being tired. Then I started into this poem which sounds very pessimistic but was really quite a lot of fun to write. And it kept me awake.

Tired

Worn down by work
worn down by strife
tired of the murk
I'm tired of life
tired of trying
peace to keep
too tired to play
too tired to sleep
tired of giving it my best
of trying hard to pass the test
of enthusiastic bounce and zest
trying to smile as others jest
striving to be a gracious guest
of vigilance and guarding lest
I tip the cards close to my vest
of slogging through the endless quest
the extra mile at one's behest
and swatting vainly at the pest
of spending to feather the nest
of what was fine and then got messed
the sun is sinking in the west
just leave me be and let me rest

Revision

I was working on a song a while back but I had two melodies and then two titles and finally I figured out that I had two different songs all mixed up. Some additional lyrics and a bit of sorting and I think I got the two of them separated.

Strangely Familiar

strangely familiar looks back at me
questioning eyes
what do they see?
two roads diverged in a wood
far down one before me stood
a man who had been set apart
is this the end or just the start?

strangely familiar
familiar stranger
too old or too new?
do I know you?

deep or shallow?
trash or prize?
the scope is hard to recognize
ambiguous his state of mind
sorting too little and too late
the hidden path is hard to find
a time has come to stop and wait

strangely familiar
familiar stranger
too old or too new?
do I know you?


Wilderness Solitude

Sunny and gritty
hot dry wind
empty vistas with no end
quietly welcome each new day
one step at a time will find the way
to deal with all that has me vexed
and move along to what comes next

wilderness solitude
wilderness solitude
...wilderness
...solitude

Listen to silence
loud and clear
ponder the weight of what I hear
life was moving way too fast
headlong into a desert vast
no telling how long it will last
one day it will be in the past

wilderness solitude
wilderness solitude

the cedar chips again

A while back I talked about moving "stuff" and likened it to cedar chips. I just spent the last five days traveling up to Columbia, going through all the family possessions in storage for the last year and a half or so in our friend's barn, parsing out what was my stuff, and giving away or throwing out everything that would cost more to store than to buy again some day as well as all kinds of obsolete files and assorted other junk. Several trailer loads are ready for the dump. (and there were already several loads culled out when we moved out of the house) Then all that simply couldn't be parted with was loaded up into a 16 foot yellow Penske rental truck.

--- And here I will pause and say a REALLY, REALLY BIG THANK YOU!!! to my former students Adam Erickson, Jon Duren, and Aaron Jolly who, without my asking, insisted on coming to my aid. YOU GUYS ROCK! And thanks to Rod and Allison for your hospitality. And last but not least, my daughter Stacey who stuck with me for the long haul and provided the best moral support a dad could ever want. ---

The guys really did help me tremendously, moving all the heavy stuff and generally making everything go faster. Ever since I schlepped all that stuff up the long flight of stairs to the barn's loft I have dreaded the day when I would have to carry it all back down. The guys did the lion's share of that and my back, right hip, and left foot are eternally grateful. Seriously, my hip has been giving some trouble again and I seriously doubt I would have been able to negotiate those stairs many more times than I ended up having to.

So, all got into the 8x16 foot truck, albeit with a good bit of airspace above the load. And a canoe, acetylene welding rig, and air compressor that would have other places to live. But I still worried a good bit during the eight hour trip to Orlando if I would be able to shoehorn it into my 5x9x12 foot high storage unit. I had built two levels of lofts in it turning 45 square feet of floor space into 135, but the top two feet were already packed with boxes of stuff from my office at the school which had been stored at a friend's office. (I just helped him move his company a week ago and he no longer has surplus space.)

I got to Orlando and went straight to the storage facility pulling in at 8:00pm. The gate is locked at 10:00 so I had two hours. I got an awful lot done in that amount of time and got to the point where I could see how it was all going to go. I had a plan and it felt good. After 10:00 I took some stuff to the house where it was to go and then dropped the canoe and the little motor and boat stuff at Dave's house on the lake. He was there but sleeping so I was werry, werry qwiet. Got to bed at a decent hour and slept well.

Today everything was safely stowed and the truck returned by 8:00pm. All went in like an engineering project. I don't think a car cubing machine could have gotten it any more compact. The space is 540 cubic feet. It's crammed tight to the ceiling. I had enough room left over for maybe one or two more boxes. That's it. All archive video on VHS, etc. is in my room at the house to be transfered to DVD and originals tossed. (That was about six boxes worth. I had already tossed four or five boxes of tapes at the barn that had no archival value.) Went out and bought myself a good meal to celebrate. Now I'm back at the house ready to get a good night's sleep and be at a camera gig starting at 8:00am tomorrow. I have seven days of work in a row.

I'm about as de-junked and organized as I've ever been in my life. I know where every single thing is. It's quite extraordinary. And a little weird to have every earthly possession from a lifetime of accumulation reduced to such a finite known volume.

So, the last nagging thing left hanging, the barn full of junk, has been dealt with. I'm officially out of South Carolina. I have Florida plates on the vehicles, a Florida license in my pocket, and will soon have an area 407 (or more probably 321) cell phone number.

And life goes on...

Orlando Folk Scene

Sunday night I went to a weekly folk music circle that was recommended to me. It has been going on for something like ten years more or less. It's an interesting format. Everybody sits in a circle and one person plays a song, then the person to his or her left plays a song, and you go around and around clockwise all evening. You can play along and back each other up and/or sing harmony if it's a song you happen to know. I played a good bit with the other folks and they even nodded my way to take a solo now and then. I've been in some similar jam type situations where everybody is trying to play over the top of everybody else and it's just an annoying cacauphony. But this was different. People only seemed to play when they had something to contribute and always behind the person whose turn it was and always with effort to enhance that person's performance. Everybody was friendly and kind and supportive of everybody else, encouraging the beginners and praising specific things about more accomplished performances and offering suggestions for this or that. It's a good place to try out new songs on people who will listen and give feedback. Ability is all over the map from raw beginners to some lifetime experienced musicians. The personalities are all over the map as well. All in all a nice group showed up and a few real characters. I'm told it's different every time.

Today was Friday. I was working all week helping my friend move his company from downtown Orlando up to a new office in Lake Mary. I did a lot of unwiring and rewiring of video equipment in racks and editing systems, making shelves, and mounting brackets and whiteboards and such. Anyway, I took a look at my "Friends of Florida Folk" magazine to see if anything might be going on tonight and saw a "first Friday of the month" open mic at a church up in the north part of the city. By the time I had everything dealt with that had to be done, I got there about two hours after it started. But I still watched several people and small groups play and last thing I even did a little looped instrumental thing and two of my new songs. They were very well received. I got lots of requests form folks to be sure to come back and an invitation to come to another popular open mic night. Also a woman who was one of the featured musicians at the Faux Festival, and kind of a fixture in the Orlando folk scene, sought me out afterward and wanted a card and said something about lining up musicians for something or other.

My songs came out very comfortably and I was able to use the JamMan to good effect as I'd always hoped I would be able to - for the instrumental and then just to loop a verse of rythm part at the end of a song while I did a solo over it for the ending. It worked great! For this I just plugged in my Baggs pre, then the Korg PX-2 for a touch of effects to sweeten the guitar tone, then the JamMan and then into the house system. It took about 1 minute. I felt I was really able to emote to the twenty or so people who were still there at the end and I was able to play and sing about as good as I ever can at home alone, so that's a big step. I'm starting to get comfortable. It makes such a huge difference to play to an audience who actually want to listen and who like what you are doing. I don't think I'll ever play in a bar again! I think I'm going to try to hit as many of these open mic nights as I can. Already I saw some familiar faces from Saturday. Some people seem to make the rounds but I understand each one has it's own regulars and it's own flavor. I'm starting to get a feel for the quality norm of the players and their music at these open mics as compared to the musicians that get featured to play whole concerts or sets at various events. I think I've got a good shot at some of the latter. Especially after how it went over tonight. But then, those folks had endured a few truly torturous performances not long before so I suppose that put me in a good light. Several other folks besides the woman I mentioned above talked to me and encouraged me to play at more events. I enjoyed myself and I think I'm going to do more of this kind of thing!

But not for a while. You may notice the blog go quiet here for a while. I have to do some hard traveling next week. It looks like two round trips to Columbia and back to move stuff. Then the next week I have a five day camera job. And the week after that it looks like there may be another trip. (By plane!) No telling how much I'll be able to get on line if at all during all of it. But I should have a story or two when it's over!