Book Writing And Devotionals

I've been writing again.

There exist two books which have been merrily swimming about in my brain juices for more than a few years.  One is a children's book, the other a science-fiction fantasy book.

The first book never goes the direction I feel it should, though I still think it works as a concept and have pieced together a story of sorts.  I downloaded a 'Publishing Children's Books: For Dummies' book on my iPhone, but got distracted by writing the sci-fi fantasy book before I could get too far into learning the next steps.  The sci-fi fantasy book, I think, is finally mapped out in enough detail and realism that it will work if I can just bring myself to put the detail to the pages.  My plan is to just publish it in electronic form, maybe as a free kindle book.  Hopefully the catharsis merits the effort.

**If I die before accomplishing anything of note, search my computer and journals.  There's enough material there for someone to be a starving artist.

As someone who plays too much Fantasy Football and mindlessly watches/consumes the NFL in copious portions, I have decided to try and make this time less of a complete waste.  I've contacted at least one person about starting a Sunday Football devotional.  Since I'm a misplaced Titan's fan living in the frozen tundra, I've succumbed to peer pressure and will name it "Prayers then Packers."

The concept is easy - praise God, then waste a few hours of the life He gave you.

Anyone interested, shoot me an email.  I don't know how large we'll grow this, as it isn't likely to be hosted at my (cable tv free) house, but we'll see what happens - and inter-faith devotionals are always the best.  I figure, that way we increase the odds that one of us is praying in the right direction.

Hippie, Once Removed

"I take photographs, often while in my favorite places.  I don't know why I take these photographs, as if to chart the passage of time like a flip book, filling yet another volume with near identical snapshots.

I lean out onto the rocky outcroppings to capture the familiar, not-quite-right framing of building, lake, and trees.  My skin is cold in the early September air, but within me I have a heart which is warm, alive, and beating.

And hiking around, the soles of my shoes are worn.

And hiking around, my own soul is revived.

Around me the air is full, brimming with the scent of things nearly done living.  Inward I draw their spirit as it passes from the world, and exhaling I share the joys of summer given.  The leaves that remain lend a voice to the wind and it cries of change, sighs renewal, and proclaims the moving on of another year well-lived.  I hear it now, in a one-time performance, and will not forget it.

Why do I take pictures of the same things when they already fill album after album?  Maybe it is to fulfill the superstition.  Maybe capturing the spirit of life and holding it still in time will remind me that I was once young and there was a day when my wife and I held a devotional in the forest, and took communion with the wind in the trees.

I am here now, in this moment, breathing in the spirit of things which have existed only to pass on - to me, at this exact time.

*click*" -JB 09/05/11

I love trees, and I would consider naming a child River, Lotus, Sage, or Autumn - but I am not truly a hippie.  I am the son of a true hippie - a man who sought truth passionately and, I like to think, found it.  There is a freedom in searching, as you give yourself away completely to the process.  There is a freedom in finding yourself again, transformed.

Sometimes I feel that I have never had to search, but then I remove myself from the trappings of society and, feeling that I have found something of substance, realize that my search was merely quieter than some who have come before.

My father was a hippie.  I guess that makes me a hippie, once removed.

Kodachrome Once Captured

We listened to Tracy chase a Cat, and our chaperone laughed as she drove us to the Devil in your red Pontiac Bonneville.  You a tan peacoat and me my expectation, we saw a sunset burning in the trees and everywhere the sumac was bleeding.  I breathed in life with every breath and the crying down of leaves at the end of the season felt more like a new beginning.

Those are my favorite shoes I've ever owned

We climbed Boulder Mountain with the sweet taste of apple still lingering in our mouths. Driving home in slow motion, your smile lingered long after we'd forgotten about the apples.

 

For so long, I labored under the impression that I look much the same as I did before... and for so long I was right.  It startles me to look at photos from a decade ago and realize that this is no longer true.  Some dour, heavier Jamal has taken the place of the smiling, near-cute one that Kodachrome once captured.

Damn it all.

Everything (Always) Is Full Of Life

Look At That, He Said Pointing

i passed an epiphany on the floor one day

missed the point and left it lay

growing none the wiser

JB - 09/01/11

We’re all still trying to get to that concert; the one where our favorite band sings a song of freedom to the heart; when our friends gather together, growing bold and new from the experience; when everything is different after, seen from the perspective of one who stood on the threshold of ecstasy and looked down over the sea of life, understanding it all.

Always it rides on the edge of our vision.  Every moment and none are that concert.  We live unaware of the splendor that surrounds, never having consciously acknowledged the import of it all. 

In the end, only the end matters.  If we could lift our heads to gaze out on the horizon, all would come into focus.  Yet, even knowing this, we are distracted by that which blazes past as the world spins madly on.

Life, as always, couches its answers in a new mystery to solve.  It is not the passing epiphany which carries import, but the implementation of that which one knows they must change.

Decades? We Ain't Got No Decades. We Don't Need No Decades. I Don't Have To Show You Any Stinking Decades!

In the Baha’i Faith, the number nine carries symbolic significance.  The unity and oneness of mankind is seen as one of the fundamental truths which humanity is newly mature enough to accept and cultivate in this era.  As the largest one digit number, nine is, therefore, seen as the symbol of this truth.

In roughly two weeks, my wife and I will privately mark the anniversary of nine full years having passed since that night (and subsequent morning) that we spent chatting on AIM and decided to go down this road... and in another eight months or so we will mark our ninth wedding anniversary.

Nine years ago, my roommate (Asher) had to stop into work and I decided to go with him.  What ensued was one of the few nights in my life when I literally did not sleep at all.  Instead, I chatted with this girl I knew – first in a public radio computer bank on Purdue University campus and second in Asher’s room (the only computer we had) while he slept.

What better way to celebrate an unconventional beginning to a relationship than an unconventional, yet spiritually significant, anniversary party?  We haven’t decided what we will do, precisely, but we will be treating this anniversary as one of the big ones.

THE big one, actually, so please save the date.

One can keep its paper, five its wood, and ten its tin.  Gold?  Diamonds?  Who needs ‘em?  We’ve got better.

After nine delightful years… we got soul.

A Revolution: Not To Change, But To Return

I attended the Green Lake Baha’i Conference this weekend.  I enjoyed myself thoroughly, and was even introduced to the work of Anis Mojgani – a slam poet who produces amazing, expressive, thought-provoking work.  Potential poetry, his is not.  More to the point of the story, however, one of the breakout groups they had was about telling your story.  The description mentioned blogs, so I wandered in.  Wandering out, I took away the view that expressing ourselves is one way of encouraging understanding.  There was more to it, but those are the words I have settled on for the moment.

We spent maybe 3 minutes writing about our spiritual journey, starting sentences with “I remember.”  From there, we then just started writing what came to mind for another 10 minutes.  Afterwards, I spent some time putting the resulting words into a semblance of order and this is what resulted.

As I post this, I am no longer in the same place emotionally.

~~~

I find myself thoughtful without direction.  My over-active nerd-brain runs wild, stampeding violently past as I try to lasso a stray thought.  The ones I capture are but mere shadows of the stallions I see blazing past.  I circle back.  I circle back.  I circle back, but I never see them again.

Recalling the Genesis of Ourself

i remember a little girl

i remember a hill

i remember a drink dispenser

a conference at camp tecumseh

i remember mysterious paths

cars in the woods

hidden schools just over the hill

rocky inclines where water used to be

i remember friends and community

gathered at happy hollow park

i remember the speech they had us practice

and the games based on virtues

i remember memorizing a prayer

on the way to somewhere i’ve forgotten

and the feeling of pride in the accomplishment

i remember our father snapping his fingers

when we talked during prayers

and the sternness of disappointed stares

i remember wrestling and jumping on the bed

sent to play after devotionals

i remember a number of things

enough to reflect

too little to recreate

-JB 08/27/11

I know that I come back to the same thoughts, the same emotions.  I’m a record skipping willfully - an out-dated version of myself trying to hold onto cherished relics from a past era.  One such is recycled regret over, more than the loss of innocence, the forfeiture of myself (even if just a little) to a world that continually moves on, allowing no return to pick up the pieces of poor choices.

If I could find that truer self who I took out in the woods and told to stay, I’d let him know that I don’t think remembering him is a waste of time, and I try to remember as often as possible.

In the absence of Marty McFly… remembering will have to do.

The Idiot's Guide To Group Introductions

As part of corporate orientation, each new(ish) hire was paired with another new(ish) hire so that we would have a buddy during orientation.  We were given a script of questions to ask about each other, and then we were supposed to come to orientation with a gift idea (you don’t actually have to buy it) for the other person.  Here is how I see my speech going:

**Names of people and places have been changed to protect the identities of individuals involved**

Thank you!  Well, my name is Jamal Black and I am here to introduce Bilary Hecker.

(start as if regaling the group with a delightful story of profound human interest)… You know when you meet someone and you make that connection that says:

“We talked for, like, a half hour... (dramatic pause)… and we asked some pre-determined questions… (dramatic pause)…and now we know some random facts about one another…” (pause for laughter)

Well that’s what we have.  So, I’ve been wracking my mind for at least… (pause to think)… a few minutes… (pause for laughter)… and I’ve been trying to decide what I should get, as an imaginary gift, for my new partner… (dramatic pause)… in crime… (pause for laughter)… that would represent this new… (with emphasis)… thing… (continue)… that has happened.

After not so much careful consideration, I decided that I would get some green play-doh.  Green, because it represents growing things like… (pause to think)… grass… (continue with hesitation as if you are having trouble coming up with ideas)… or broccoli, or spinach… (continue as normal).  Play-doh, because we can form this friendship into whatever we want… (dramatic pause)… and then bake it in the oven of life… (dramatic pause)… and it will stay that way for… (pause to think)… a while… (trail off questioningly)… I think…

Shh... There It Is Again. Did You Hear It?

Somewhere in the distance a clock is tick-tocking.

Mostly the sound gets drowned out by the buzz and hum of day to day life as it drones inexorably on, but there are times when I imagine that I can almost hear the repetitive soft mechanical clashing as my swiftly passing days go by.  Aware as I am in those moments of the fleeting nature and unknown length of my existence in this world, I am at once disarmed by the entirety and magnitude of it all, while simultaneously I feel empowered by the urgency of needed actions which will raise the sum of my life to something worthy of the gift.

When I was 19 and 20, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.  I signed up for college under the belief that I was “supposed” to, but had no internal drive for it and no end goal in mind beyond the supposition that I might stumble upon a subject which interested me enough to pursue as a career.  In the end, I found some interesting subjects, but not nearly enough of them and fewer still maintained my interest beyond the first few weeks.  After a few semesters, I failed out of Purdue University.  I did not, in fact, Boiler Up.

Faced with the vastness of infinite choice, I floundered.

Many instances upon a time, I have again had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.  I felt then, and continue to feel, the persistent need to live a life of consequence but what does that mean, even?  Yeah, there are the universal principles of service to God and service to fellow man, but how do I apply such principles to my own specific life in a way that suits my strengths and interests?  How do I achieve something uniquely me - or should that even be a consideration?  Well-intentioned but non-confident action is better than inaction, but what if more thought and consideration before acting would magnify the effect of future actions?  What if it doesn’t?

There is a fine line between planning and floundering - a razor’s edge, even.  I have faltered in the past but, though I lived to regret it, I used that remaining life to work hard and recover from my first pass at college.

The Great Newspaper Upstairs is writing my story even now.

The deadline approaches.

tick-tock… tick-tock… tick-tock…

Do I have time to recover again?

Please, Sir, I Want Some More

Shelly and I stayed home for the first full weekend in what feels like the entire summer.  We baked fresh foods with ingredients from our garden, walked to a coffee shop and grocery store, cleaned, weeded, cut my hair, and generally relaxed.

Home, Again, At Last

cicadas singing, fan turns round

peaceful nights and summer sounds

it's finders keepers - life is found

-JB 08/21/11

Life is made up of minutes, days, and years; but is lived only in such moments as are stolen and sufficiently and joyously squandered in the simplicity of togetherness with loved ones.

From Sixteen To Marriage

Paranoid Loneliness

cloaked in shrouds of brash words

and the false bravado of youth

eyes unsmiling tell the story

of almost men and near women

searching frantic for someone

who reminds them

of what Jackie Wilson said

- JB 08/15/11

Per normal, I have little meaningful to say - though even less this time.

I was just remembering today what it was like to be single.  Fortunately, I married young or I certainly would have gone crazy.  Everyone I met was first considered as a potential mate and second as a person.  I was an almost man on a mission, for certain, though in many ways it was a waste of time.

I was rarely interested enough to try a relationship and even then didn't commit to it.  Man is nothing if not often self-defeating and I fit the bill more often than most.  Eventually I came to a point where I decided that it was going to happen or not, and I gave up trying.  Within months Shelly and I were dating.