New Decade New Me

With the hustle and bustle of the holidays I found myself without time or the focus to write or work on anything other than my book. This year I spent a Christmas apart from my family out of necessity to save my marriage, though, in truth, the reality was a little less hyperbolic. This holiday season, I made some interesting discoveries, changed some vital behaviors, learned that I was suffering under some kind of banal alcoholism, all—it would seem—in preparation for the decade ahead of 2020.

               

Much to my chagrin, my unprofessional dispositions at work have led to the reality of being held back (yet again) in life from joining my contemporaries in the sun. My arrogance, like some Aesop fable, has prompted me to very painfully come to terms with where my career is going and how I should continue. It fucking sucks and it makes me so depressed.

    

Silver linings... At least I have a new desk.

Where to go from here then? That’s the question, isn’t it? I have vacillated on the possibility of either quitting my job or reducing my hours to part time to pursue—more aggressively at least—my writing career once Eowyn starts kindergarten. Joining local writing groups. Being more active in my peer community. Submitting stories to journals. Crowdsourcing for insight and strategies that I could not otherwise formulate on my own… I could go on. But I struggle with whether or not this is a selfish thing. Being a Youtube star, or a writer that couch surfs from apartment to apartment, takes no particular brand of courage when there’s nothing to lose. (And I don’t mean to intimate this as something particularly disparaging to those in my circle of friends that have done this/continue to do this successfully.) But when there’s a family involved, when your child is depending on you for a good life, the picture becomes hopelessly muddy. Can one be virtuous these days, while still being “dangerous”? Something to pray on, then.

Busy at work...

               

I’ve wanted to produce another “Little Bits” post, but I keep forgetting to record my momentary sparks of “genius” when they are prompted by some cursory observation or thought. Similarly, an opportunity arises every so often to write a short story, but these moments always come when I am pressed up against an unmovable deadline (ie. I have to go to work/church/bible study/the store/in laws’ house). Perhaps the imminent danger of being late to something get’s the juices flowing? Possibly. But this goes back to previous posts, lost somewhere in the ether, where I’ve mentioned the ease of writing a short story versus a novel. Short stories are accessible and “punchy.” (The structure of a short story is “Look here!”, then “Oh snap!” whereas a novel adds an additional piece: “So what?”) They are formulated with relative ease, and any subsequent work is less focused on the verbosity of the content but on its composition and flow. Lawd! A novel requires investment and an endurance that I somehow possess in the literary realm, but not in the social and occupational strata of my life. Anyways… this little rabbit trail is brought to you by my lack of focus and my lack of communication these past few weeks.

(…)

One thing that I’ve noticed now that I’ve been 31 for a while and have suffered a major setback in my professional career is the transition from a somewhat youthful awareness and motivation to a laid-back, adult complacency. It’s very strange. Everything now seems deliberate, as opposed to spontaneous. Life choices are weighted by the amount of chaos that would be injected into the ongoing domestic equation. It kind of sucks, but I’m hard pressed to establish an alternative life hack to change this pattern. How does one pursue a “van life” with a family? Probably not very easily, definitely not once the kid reaches the age of public schooling. (That is unless you are a huge piece of shit.) The shadow of domesticity isn’t that bad though, now that I’ve settled into it with Alyssa. There is a flow, a routine. I can expect certain things and rule out others. As 2020 rolls out, I have many ambitions that I hope to see happen. I want to print my next book, run a Kickstarter, and better establish myself as a writer. Hopefully that’s possible with that additional stability on hand? After doing taxes this year, I can say with some certainty that we are “doing okay,” but there’s always something else, isn’t there? I have a feeling that this year, somehow, will be a “shit or get off the pot” kind of year.

Living in Paradise

Hawaii is a strange place.

I was first introduced to the island state when I was about a year old. Before my parents divorced we went to the island of Kawaii. And while some people insist that memories from back then are a tad unreliable I do remember a road. It was winding through valley of emerald, and at the end was a pristine beach, the kind you see on postcards. My dad always wanted to live there, but in a suspicious way. There was a time that I wanted to live in Japan and “go native,” but then I turned 17 and stopped watching anime. It was like my dad never got noticed by senpai.

Sunset view from the front porch of my dad's house.

Still, I can’t fault him for liking the place. It’s very pristine and, at times, otherworldly. The east side of the island is demonstrably wet, with a microclimate that gets something to the tune of 300 inches of rain a year. There are waterfalls, abandoned structures retaken by the vegetation, and the remnants of a railway that was decimated by a tsunami in the 40s and 60s. When my dad convinced my grandma to purchase a house outside of Hilo, going there again in grade school was very much like moving up river to get to Kurtz and his locally sourced, native experience.

Concerning the west side, Kona reminds me of the “before” picture of a Mars colony before collapsing into dystopian upheaval. Brightly lit tourism and razor-sharp volcanic rock, cooking in the sun, abound. Basalt blacktop that you could cook eggs on. The beaches, where one can find them, are a mixture of coarse, white sand and coral growing on not-so-recent-but-geologically-new lava flow. The 3rd time I went to Hawaii I stepped on a sea urchin, looking like a total asshole in front of a local smoking some shitty weed. Incidentally, if it wasn’t the urchin spines that got me, it would have been the lava flow beneath. Everything here is sharp, rough, like iron castings with the marks still left at the edges.

Kua beach, I think.

All this considered, I say Hawaii is a strange place because I never understood why my dad wanted to live there. (He always seemed to me more like a Montana person.) Hawaii is about as large as San Diego County but with a 4th of the population and extremely isolated. Everything needs to be imported to the state and utilities are enormously expensive. Not only that, Hawaii is a welfare state, specifically the product of colonial occupation. Poor education, lacking infrastructure, and a deficit of investment in collaboration afflicts the island native population. So my dad, Mr. Red State, is up in arms of course. I never understood the mentality that conservatism intersects with business-minded pragmatism. You would think that the solution to bolstering up marginalized populations would be to invest in education and social infrastructure. But conservatism in practice seems more like social Darwinism, without teeth or the wherewithal to commit genocide and “thin the herd” so that the invisible hand of the market can act.

Hiking near Waipio valley.

Great view at the end.

I'm not good at taking pictures of myself.

This time visiting the island, I was able to see the house my father built, which after so many years of toil and hardship is complete. The last few nights have been marathons of movies, an old pastime of the Warren household. Last night I wanted to share with my dad the Netflix Series “Documentary Now,” only to have him abruptly turn it off and switch to The Matrix and Alita Battle Angel. (No, I’m not bitter at all.) For fucks’ sake, does anyone out there still have the critical thinking left to understand subtlety and nuance? Have we truly descended into the Age of Unreason?

And for all the unruly and disrespectful abuse—my dad asserts at the hand of its own natives—the islands have endured, I see an opportunity for this place to flourish and grow into a modern paradise. Fertile agricultural land, readily available geothermal power, myriad opportunities to repair infrastructure, and technological discovery (vis a vis the Mauna Loa Observatory). Shouting from the stands, angrily bellyaching about social and institutional poverty without any intension to fix it in a productive way, is the height of stupidity. So while my dad has finally realized his sought after dream, I can’t help but comprehend the irony of his life. He’s trapped in a recursive loop of disillusionment and hatred of the other and he doesn’t even realize it. My brother thinks it’s a waste of time to discuss and have a meaningful dialogue with him, and for the first time in my life I’m starting to believe that. Then again, I suppose, people hear what they want to hear. As Jesus once said,

You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”

The Three Loves

The post is mostly for me. I don’t want to forget.

In my experience, there are three particular dimensions of how people have historically loved God. And like all things that have been enjoyed best in moderation, no one perspective should be more indulged in than the other. Certain denominations, certain people, it becomes clear which position is over emphasized and which others are diminished.

Or, maybe, I’m just wrong about all of this. But who cares, right?

God’s Love, as in how we classify the crucifixion, can be realized as an economic transaction, a court proceeding, or the ebb and flow of a relationship.

Language of debt

We have heard things like, “God pays our debts” or “the wage of sin is death.” I often hear members of the church using economic jargon to explain how God loves us. For instance, at a very awkward charity dinner, a guy about my age (18 at the time) got up on a stage and started talking about God. He explained that salvation was like God giving you the keys to a brand new Lamborghini, for free. We would be a fool not to take it right? The problem I have with language like this is that the language of commerce is very integrated into our society. The United States is one of the richest countries in the world. We shall not want. Every house has a car that was paid for with money the person didn’t have. Every channel selling products and services for the small, small fee of whatever. Because we are conditioned to be consumers from birth, it’s only the next logical conclusion to see God as an ATM machine with the infinite credit “of his righteousness” that we can draw upon, because his Son “paid our debts.”  All these statements are true but, given the context of our own wealth, God’s love becomes transactional. Our devotion is conditioned on spiritual return on investment. If our profits and losses forecast indicates that keeping stock in God is not worth it, then we’ll invest in a new idol.

 

When Paul says in Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord,” the language is worthy. 2,000 years ago, the world was minting coinage with important people on it. So a basic template of transactional commerce was available for Paul to use, only he frames this in the context of the process of labor in action. People worked harder than we could ever imagine back then, far more than we do today. Working a full day (530AM to 730PM in the Summer) with no respite, and all for a small pittance, was the labor Paul was intimating. When people sin and turn away from God, its hard labor on an ever diminishing timetable and pay scale. It would be like working 35 years at a company, standing apart from your co-workers as a champion for the Brand and then getting an ignoble death instead of a company watch. (Or worse, receiving the watch that you worked so hard for, and then getting shot in the face.) It would be like building a skyscraper for your entire life, and at the ribbon cutting ceremony being barred inside while it’s demolished with decades of hard work coming down on you. Paul is talking about investing in the self, giving purpose to work and action, working a long, hard day and receiving payment. (Possibly an analogy for a lifetime of experience.)

Something that pagans have understood even longer than Christians and much of the history of Judaism is that the favor of the divine comes at a steep price. Blood sacrifices weren’t merely an expression of primordial savagery, they were expressing an idea that the things we want come at a price, often at the expense of other things. Children were sacrificed to ancient Mesopotamian and Sumerian fertility gods. The same principal applies however when we buy products made in sweatshops today. Likewise, Viking raiders would flay and hang their own people to ask favor from their gods for victory, just like we send countless soldiers to die in foreign war zones so that we can wield soft power in future geopolitical dealings. So when Christians talk about the payment of Christ’s blood for our sins, it should be more sobering, not just something to “yaddy-yaddy-yadda” while drinking the communion wine.

Justified By Jurisprudence

Reformed Theology favors overwhelmingly a legal perspective when speaking to things concerning salvation, often using a “courtroom analysis” of Soteriology (the “ology” that studies the act of salvation in Christianity, and its mechanisms). Humanity is on trial for crimes against the divine and in a dramatic turn of events, during the sentencing hearing, Jesus sentences himself for the punishment, being both 100% Man and 100% God. There is also the matter of the blessings and curses that God stipulates in his law, as pertaining to the Hebrew people. Jesus, being a member of that population, acts as a proxy for both the rewards and punishments of the law that the Jews received from Moses (seen in Deuteronomy, Chapter 28). As a result, he (Jesus) can satisfy to the fullest extent what is required to be justified before God. Just as well, he can be sentenced for the unlawful actions made against God. (This is why they explain so thoroughly the perfection of God’s justice in both the Torah and the New Testament.)

Focusing on just the legal aspects of religion, one can strain out most—if not all—of the lurid and compromising history of Christianity in the modern era, namely concerning the Puritans. Often, there’s this desire to sing the praises of the Puritans, who really strived to live out their lives with holiness and dignity, though this seemed to be at the expense of others. The Scarlet Letter, the acts of the Salem Witch Trials, and the implicit need for a “Great Awakening” indicate that living under a legal mindset begets a religious experience robbed of the “freedom” of the Gospel that united disparate social classes and demonstrated Christ’s love to the world in the latter half of the 1^st century and 2-3^rd centuries. Legal thinking tends to compartmentalize ideals and paradigms. Rather than think about helping another in need, we may assess first the need against hypothetical factors. “Why is this person like this?” “They must have done something wrong to be like this.” Each of these ideas Jesus himself refutes in both Matthew 5:45 and John 9:1-12. He says God “…makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” And, concerning the Gospel of John, Jesus’ own disciples ask why a man, stricken with illness, has lost God’s favor. It is such an insane idea, as if God’s people—or anyone for that matter—can save themselves from their circumstances, but this idea is rampant across the fragments of Christendom. If not based on the principal of social contract, the charity of the Gospel should be enough, at the very least, to support ideas like universal healthcare and class inequality.

On the matter of categorical thought, I myself was radicalized by the previous wave of reformed theology that mainstream Christianity experienced in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Ideas like “Catholics [or insert other denomination that you don’t agree with] are not saved by the grace of god,” and “theological requirements” to evidence salvation were cancerous growths on the church. And while I would be remiss if I didn’t clarify that salvation does come down to assenting to some very basic theological presuppositions that allow the Gospel to work, the fact of the matter is is that salvation by Christ is far from the idealized process laid out by reformed theologians. Jesus’s duels with demons, societal pariahs, and competing theological traditions—advanced by both secular and religious authorities—were strained and fraught with internal and external conflict. If we are to live like Jesus, we ought to expect the same atypical experiences.

The legal aspects of Christianity aside, there is merit to a uniform theological paradigm. Christianity, like any society, has norms and conventions that are assistive in bringing people together. While it is silly to fight and murder people over how-to-love-each-other-best, that doesn’t negate the need for organizational structure and theological scaffolding. The apostles did a good job at addressing concerns of the day and teasing out the finer points of the emerging Christian beliefs, and that work shouldn’t be cast aside simply because cursory readings chafe against our sensibilities. Trademark sayings like “the woman is the weaker vessel” (1 Peter 3:7) and “I do not permit a woman to teach” (1 Timothy 2:12) are certainly damning bereft of context, but the former was dealing with spousal abuse and the later with, possibly, women from cultic backgrounds syncretizing with emerging Christian liturgy. If we bristle at certain things stated in the cumulative swath of biblical literature, it is very likely that we are reading it wrong, and not the other way around. (This tends to be the case when adapting 2000-4000 year old worldviews to, ultimately, overlay them on top of a society with radically different ontological and epistemological backgrounds.)

“It’s Not You Jesus, It’s Me…”

The appropriate way to “love” God is hotly debated. (As in, for what he does in our lives and how we should thank him in worship.) Truly, it is an absurd circus of emotional baggage and presuppositions that seem to serve the individual more than the group. Relationships dominate our lives. From them we derive positional meaning in society, and validation, affection, and so on. Similar to how the law monitors the growth and attenuation of society, relationships judge how we grow and mature. Those with unstable relationships are perceived as a burden to be around, while those adept in cultivating them attract others with charismatic magnetism. The over-emphasized effect of relationships in our lives contaminates other aspects of life, including the religious.

Unlike the previous two points, I think God doesn’t mind our deficiencies in this aspect. In fact, Jesus’ ministry emphasized getting to know, being able to serve, and showing others how to love people in a way that seems so alien to our understanding of relationships. Speaking from personal experience, relationships are judged on their effectiveness to make us feel appreciated. If we stop feeling appreciated, then the relationship dissolves and the parasite moves on to another host. When Jesus is included in our lives, this pattern is challenged. An old-timey example of this is the Tower of Babel from Genesis 11:1-9. Whether or not you believe this happened or not isn’t the point, but the Tower of Babel narrative describes what was likely a ziggurat, and how it’s construction angered God. In ancient near east culture, ziggurats functioned as a connection point between the real and the divine. Supplicants—often the ruling class or royalty—would ascend to the heavens and meet their God there to ask for favor and guidance in matters of state, which was often a display of power and dominion. A city-state would often feature a patron god, whose worship was cultivated by a temple cult, vested with power on behalf of the royalty. In many ways, the relationship was quid pro quo and one-sided, where the royalty used the favor of the gods to justify their rule. So, imagine God’s anger and disappointment when the people he created build an extravagant mound to demand from their maker all the things that they want.

Fighting against Christian friends (the “good” kind) is like pissing into the wind because Jesus’s challenge is to love others more than we love ourselves. Often, that means taking into consideration thoughts and viewpoints outside of our natural inclinations. It means submitting to other people for insight and instruction. Conversations are not strategic tools for one’s gain, they are the means of reaching a consensus that benefits both parties around the influence of a mediator. This of course can be annoying. It can be infuriating even. I hate going to church sometimes, even though I know that I will encounter someone that needs me as much as I need them. In becoming a part of a church (local, global, whatever) there is a shedding of the person you were before, and not in a way that forces the participant to relinquish their personal agency. People are integrated into a system with parts, roles, and purposes. If person A is supposed to serve the role of “feet-of-the-church” and person B as the “eyes-of-the-church,” if they never cross paths, person A is going in the wrong direction and person B is stuck where they are at.

In sum…

Each perspective is intended to supplement the other, as I said before. Imagine a version of Christianity where we feel the weight of our divine debt, the gravity of our legal standing, but no cultivated relationship with Jesus. The result would be hopelessness. A Christianity with emphasis on intimacy with Jesus, because of an acute awareness of how much it cost, begets a hyperbolic and ungrounded faith. Particularly ugly, due to the potential for poor understandings of Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy, as well as cultivating a flippant, transactional, approach to faith. Lastly, a Christianity dedicated to the lawful application of faith and a close relationship with God could, without the emphasis of our debt to God, would be patently passive and without a sense of urgency. Understanding the idea of debt makes salvation seem more immediate. That’s just my opinion, at least.

Hopefully these ideas have been stimulating. Sometimes I just like to write on autopilot and wake up to an impromptu essay. This has been one of those exercises, though spread out over the course of an entire month. I should add that these are my off-the-cuff assessments. Also, I’m not a pastor. I’m just some guy in a one bedroom apartment trying to make ends meet. So… yeah.

Little Biiits

Sometimes my ideas are ill conceived. (It can be difficult getting things down on paper and trying to formulate ideas.) And there are methods to avoid these endemic struggles with scribbly impotence. I once wrote a blog every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, for almost 2 years. It was a worthwhile project, teaching the art of filling up the whiteness on command. (Sometimes you just need to get something down on paper, knowing damn well that you need to go back, erase everything, start anew.

The below are what I would call “micro ideas.” Or, as I want to call them…

Max Fleisher’s Superman, Episode 1: “Superman”

The Max Fleischer Superman cartoons remain one of my favorite works of animation to date. The entire series, much to my disappointment, remains digitally restored up to only standard definition. (Yes there’s a bluray out there, but it’s nothing but a digitally upscaled lie.) But even with the grain and distortion, the series is a triumph of film making for the innovations Fleisher brought to the table.

But more importantly are two key sequences (0:57-2:15 and 9:48-9:58) in the first episode—the FIRST time Superman was given motion and life—where we discover the world Superman lives in. The first clip depicts the origin story of the Man of Steel, where no mention of Martha and Jonathan Kent are made and his life in rural Kansas. Instead, the Kryptonians are already possessed with super abilities and Clark Kent is raised in an orphanage. The triumphant and hopeful music declares that Superman is a warrior for the people, for Truth and Justice, posing as a humble member of the press. Furthermore the sequence indicates that Fleisher’s Superman arrived very much under the same circumstances as many immigrants. (Fleeing from persecution and disaster.) The second clip is just a simple transition showing a sweeping countryside yielding to a vast urban environment. Realistically, we don’t get to see this very often in our own lives. Symbolically, Superman is returning from the pastoral fields and farmland to bring his ethos to the people of Metropolis.

Recording ideas on-the-go, remembering the “hooks.”

It kills me, sometimes. I will be at work and I suddenly get a great idea for a story. When I get home I forget it, or simply lose momentum. For me, it’s difficult to jump into a story. There’s an inner monologue that is going. It shapes the way I think and lends momentum and immediacy to the narrative. Trying to recapture that train of thought is difficult, so one of the things I do is record ideas in a notepad on my iPhone. Ideally, I would record the idea and then the place where I am when I thought about it, but this doesn’t always happen. Either way, recording these in the moment helps to isolate and freeze that moment in time and then resume the train of thought that produced the story in the first place. Much of the “micro ideas” above and below were recorded this way.

Recognizing the hurt caused by church and community.

I’ve been there before. Being angry at other people, or being disillusioned when something that I bet so much on doesn’t pan out. For whatever reason, when religion plays a role in this, the hurt stings extra. What I never understood can be summed up in the following: person A befriends person B, but after some amount of time a rift develops, people say hurtful things, and the union is torn asunder. Subsequently, person A befriends person C, and it all starts over again—or doesn’t. People seem ready to trust people again, but not institutions. And I suspect this is due to familiarity. You can know a person more than an institution. By default, an institution is the sum of all its parts.

Richard Beck wrote a book titled Unclean (which I have yet to finish) that I feel describes the psychology of contamination and rejection in a very powerful way.  He describes hypothetical scenarios that are presented to individuals. One example was a situation where the viewer is placed in front of an Olympic sized swimming pool of fine wine. At the opposite end a beaker of urine is poured into the pool. The participant of the study is then asked, “would you drink out of the pool?” Many declined citing the contaminant in the pool, despite the scientific reasoning that it was physically impossible for the contaminant to travel quickly enough to comingle with the opposing side before one could drink.

Church/community/fellowship (I’m speaking now in the context of a faithful community of people that worship Christ, with fidelity and authenticity) is meant to be a “safe place” for people of all walks—that is at least the intention. But there are many cases where a part contaminates the body, and the result is a fractured community. Personally, I have experienced this directly and indirectly, and it sucks. It’s like I said before: you can know a person, more than an institution. So, when a solitary individual impacts your walk with God, the ultimate conclusion is often the nuclear option.

What bothers me is that people are willing to seek out friendship after being burned (most of the time), knowing full well that they can be betrayed again and again. Yet, for some reason, seeking the same kind of community (of the Christian variant) seems off limits. And perhaps this is because the influence of religion impacts the community with a farther reaching existential consequence. But, I would argue, a marriage, a relationship, a place of employment, an institution or heritage society, holds just as much existential weight. (Especially if one is “non-religious.”) As someone who has been there and been hurt by people that you are meant to trust, I would argue that if we are to be like Jesus then we should accept and understand the same pain that Jesus experienced. After all, the Church (as in the entire population of “believers” in any given context) is fundamentally flawed. The people who take part in it are there because they have arrived at the conclusion that they “need help.” To close off communion with these people, for any reason, is counterintuitive. If one is a part that makes up a whole, if too many “parts” abandon the “whole”, what remains will be worse than when it started.   

Buying guitars.

Buying guitars can be an exemplary exercise in racism.

Let me clarify.

The manufacturing of instruments has changed over the past 100 years as pertains to guitars (especially electric guitars). The building of a guitar is an art form, just like any other work of craftsmanship. However, with the advent of technology that was influenced by the “assembly line” techniques that enhance production, there is now an awkward intermediate point in which we find ourselves in. A guitar can be built in the United States and Indonesia, using the exact same equipment, but the Indonesian variant is considered “inferior” because it was made overseas with cheap labor.

I am guilty of this perception. What has changed me from thinking this way is by watching members of the music community invest large amounts of startup capital into overseas development of electric guitars. Solar Guitars is a great example of this. The emphasis on affordable instruments balanced with an intentional insistence on quality workmanship, seems to strike a very equitable middle ground. Not only this, but the work provides jobs and labor to people across the world that might not otherwise have a means to survive. So, in a way, buying guitars made overseas would constitute an act of charity, if anything. I myself have an eye on this one. It’s soo dope!

What would it be like to be two lawyers married to each other?

This is something that comes from my talks with clients at my job, which you would think would provide me  with stories aplenty, but this is not the case. The cinematic universe we see ourselves in, is woefully deficient of hijinks and hullabaloo.

However I was speaking with a customer and found out that they were conducting business as two lawyers, married. This I thought was fucking hysterical. I immediately imagined tense dining room encounters, sweat percolating on each other’s’ brow, embroiled in passive-aggressive cross examination while the children played with dinosaur chicken nuggets, benignly unaware.

iWantToBelieve™

One of the things I find exceptionally funny about theology is how divisive it is. This should not be construed as a pillory of theology or the merit of it being studied. What I mean to say is that theology, both good or bad, predominantly becomes a pain point for believers in a larger community setting. So-and-so is "A," which so-and-so is "B" and, next thing you know, shit is going down.

I slaved over a new "Personal" blog image.
Behold my 18 year old self on the last day of HS!

I made a personal revelation a few weeks back. I tried writing about it, but to no avail. I was far too tired and frustrated. (This has NOT been my year.) The above has merit in that, for the first few years of going to church, I did not put my faith in Jesus, but the traditions surrounding Him and His church.

I keep going back to the night I was saved. I remember that there was a "cool" looking guy with frosted tips and a mild flirtation with obesity performing what I can only describe now as some kind of morality play. He held an apple in his hand, speaking to us about the original sin of eating from the fruit of knowledge. On the stage was a cheap mirror and he proceeded to throw the apple at the mirror. He said that our lives, without God, become like the mirror: shattered and irreparable. And while he was technically right, only today can I point out a myriad of reasons why the execution was, at it's core, a manipulative exercise. Still, it stirred in me a response to follow Christ. And I guess you could say that I've been confused ever since. (In a sublimely good way, of course.)

Something apparent from the several months of counseling that I have invested in so far is my never ending need for validation. It is a pathological fixation, from what I've been told, and the repercussions have sent ripples throughout my life. It has affected my personal life, my professional career in IT administration, and (I've just realized) my relationship with God.

Thinking back on my life, always wanting to be in the right standing with society, becoming a Christian was likely, in my 15 year old mind, the best possible decision. Existentially speaking, I could now be in the "right" with almost 2000 years of tradition and structure to cement in the certainty that I was "doing the right thing" by accepting God's promises. The irony here is that I was violating the entire paradigm of Christianity by doing something, to get something. I accepted Christ as my authority so that I could be "in the right."

Now, it certainly didn't help that I was attending a church that produced, with factory-like proficiency, people that walked, talked, acted like Christians, but whom may not have even been Christians in the first place. I would be remiss if I didn't mention that it was a "Non-Denominational" church, which without qualm produce the least common denominator of "Christian," many of whom I imagine practice because their belief was passed from mother to daughter, father to son. They, in essence, operating from the same position I was. "I'm doing this because this is the right thing to do."

So imagine my sudden shock of arriving at the conclusion that I had not really accepted Christ because I wanted him, but because I wanted something out of it: the certainty that what I was doing was the "right thing to do."

There are so many ways to proceed from here and I am content to stay on the page, but with all of life's changes in elevation I suspect I will be thinking about this more as time goes on. Ideally we should believe in Jesus like we believe in superheroes. We love what he does and how he saved us, and aspire to be more like him everyday.

Crawling From the Wreckage

Oh! The joy of a wireless hotspot. As I write this I'm on my way down to LA to visit my sister-in-law in Redondo Beach. My kid has yet to meet her cousins . It's only been two years, right? (And one of them was born on the exact same day as Eowyn!)

Many moons ago I wrote my last update. suffice to say the last month or two has been harrowing for a handful of reasons. I had a nervous breakdown (was due for one) and had a spurt of creativity fueled by the turbulent period. I wanted to, as well, invest some time into some more developed ideas. At least one of them will get a longer format treatment to be featured at the end of my next book.

LA is a strange place. The heart of such whimsy (made fun of in such films as Demolition Man and Beverly Hills Cop) and violence. It's likely the home to California's future mega-multi-metropolitan-dystopia. Similar to the adage "you are what you eat," if the city was conscious, it would be screaming with existential terror because so many of it's inhabitants yearn for the end, a la Mad Max-styled diesel punk or the neon highlights of a Blade Runner-esque cyber-punk vista. (Pick your poison.) All of this is popularized in the film industry that has so molded the psychological and topographical landscape of the LA city basin. I don't think I could do it, living here. When the big one hits Sunset Boulevard will erupt like Vesuvius.

It's nice to finally begin the third edit of my new book. It's the final stretch, after 4 years of working on it. I had originally told myself to finish the book in two years, but, unless that's the only thing I'm doing, fat chance. I vacillate between the two, but the third draft is the most important draft in my mind. It's like sanding a piece of wood, or stitching up a laceration: the work isn't done, but its LOOKING like it's done. And that, if anything else, is a salve on my addled brain. Seeing that all that work and perseverance wasn't just for nothing.

If any of you have been following me in this journey, thank you. Seriously, thank you. It can be infuriating writing a book, especially when you know damn well that there are so many other books out there that you are fighting to compete with. With as little ceremony as possible I must say, Let me be YOUR author, friends. Nothing in this world gives me more joy than telling stories.

On another note, I got my fist unsolicited review! Very excited! See it below:

Thank You Mystery Reviewer!

"Madison Monroe: Investigative Therapist!" - An Original Short By Stuart Warren

I had this idea when I was on my way back into work. I had just seen my therapist and was working out the idea that I was one of many patients. Which isn't unreasonable to think, but in a profession that focuses on mental health and wellness, I wondered how empathy played into it. To see a patient, to want good things for a patient, it all seems a bit Hollywood. But then I had this funny idea that led to this, and could turn into something more...

“This one,” Madison thought. “He’s a jumper…”

A languid fan turned side to side in the dry heat. Midday sun overhead heating the adobe husk as if they were roasting in a pizza oven. Madison twisted in her seat, chewing on the end of her ballpoint pen. Her blouse was sedate, a paisley amalgam of earth tones that emphasized space, secreting away the physical alacrity of three hundred combined hours of expensive yoga and personal training at Perpetual Fitness. It’s what the job required on any given day. And, despite maintaining a slight—though healthy—distance from clients, nestled into the fortress of throw cushions surrounding her, she awaited the call to go over the top into no-man’s land

Across from her, reclining stereotypically on a couch that she scored from a thrift store two blocks from her downtown office, was David: typical white male, mid-thirties, struggling with anticipatory anxiety and workplace stress. Additionally: fear of bright lights, obsession with oil slicks, mentions blood every so often with uncomfortable familiarity... David’s proclivity to fiddle with his clothes, to nervously pluck at his anemic beard: tell-tale signs of clinical compulsion. Deliberate and textbook. She knew now, without exception, that David was the murderer. Christ, he even had dried blood under his fingernails. Oil painter, my ass...

“It’s the same thing, every time. The lights. They’re a trigger,” he said.

Looking at her notes, a scrawl of shorthand psychiatric notations, she circled the macabre profession casually, written out with paradoxical whimsy. It was almost two in the afternoon. Her next client was already out in the waiting room, scrolling through social media and listening to the warm and fuzzy NPR broadcast featuring a documentary on the lives of polyamorous circus musicians.

“So, David, when you avoid this…” She paused, prompting the word in her mind like a late night talk show host. “You avoid this stimulation, right? You’re building it up. Making it out to be something catastrophic, like that stone that was rolling after Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

David sniggered. “Mmmhmm, I loved that movie.”

This was typical David: escape coping through nostalgia.

“David? Did you read the chapter in the workbook yet?”

He tilted his head sideways. Madison saw the reflection of the ceiling light in his glassy stare.

“No,” he replied. His posture clenched and relaxed, like a blood pressure monitor. “I’ve been wanting to, meaning to… It’s just been a hard week.”

“I’m sorry,” Madison cooed.

Quickly changing topics, she continued.

“We’ve established that you tend to worry, think apocalyptic thoughts. But… you know… not everything is the end of the world, David.”

Madison watched David roll over, onto his right arm, placing his head on his pillow as if he were about to sleep. He laughed. A disembodied voice, strained, nervous, unraveling like a roll of toilet paper.

Pushing against her couch, making a half-hearted effort of a pushup, he replied, “I know, right?”

“And you still think this is because of the loud noises that you were subjected to? As a child?” Madison probed further. Time was cheap, borrowed at this point in the session. The sting was in process. The cops were already outside. She could hear the police chopper cutting through the air overhead.

“My father had a gun. Late at night on the farm he would go out to check the traps around his chicken coop. And it was always unexpected, the shot. You would hear it in the night echoing through the hills like a jet engine, or a bundle of dynamite. Fourth of July, I hated the most. I would be dragged there by a babysitter or family friend and cover my head under the blanket for an hour. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! And I would shiver. They would laugh and cheer like it wasn’t a big fucking deal. And afterwards, I would look up and see it: the phosphorus afterglow of smoke, like blood spilling out onto the night sky.”

She needed more time. “David, did you come up with that right now? That’s really creative.”

Immobile, he looked up while lying prone. “Yeah? It just came to me…”

She leaned forward, masking her victorious smile, making wide strokes across her note pad. Not circles, or even underlines. It was the signature brush stroke of an epiphany. “So… okay, David. This is an ongoing thing. What steps have you taken to desensitize yourself to sudden increases in volume? What do you feel does the most to walk these panic episodes back to a place of calmness?”

But, it was too late. Chatter in her ear. The extraction imminent. The shrill ping of microphone feedback made her wince. David sat up. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“Ah, yeah… Just a migraine,” Madison replied, irritated. “It’s that time of the month…”

So much for the signed confession, she lamented.

At the corner of the office, from a slim five panel door—exit only—a sudden compression of blasting air. An explosion of brass colored woodchips, projectile fragments of door knob, and deadbolt barely missing her head. Through the haze, David scurried like a rat, rolling off the couch, and clumsily pushed the air conditioning unit out of the window frame.

“Down! On the ground! NOW!”

Ignoring the officers, David stumbled through the open window, reaching out for a railing that was not there. Afterward, Madison heard a scream and a chorus of cries below.

Fuck. She rolled on the ground in pain. “Why? I was so close!” she shouted.

As the officers swarmed in, inspecting every inch of the room for danger, they parted for Detective Jefferies. A gaunt face with high cheekbones and wiry hair slick with oil, he wore second hand slacks and a ragged windbreaker stained in the color of blue ice. He circled quizzically around the ruined office, sucking on a lollipop. It was her fault. Once, she made the recommendation for seeking a health substitute after watching Jefferies chain smoke a pack in two hours. Not candy, though. She didn’t recall recommending grape flavored Big League Chew to baseball players hooked on chewing tobacco. And carrots would just exude the aesthetics of wise cracking rabbits. Jefferies kicked a piece of wood across the floor, distantly remorseful. “Sorry about your place…” He grimaced, crunching into the candy and discarded the stick, flicking it like a cigarette butt.

Madison clambered for the windowsill in a daze. She saw onlookers gathering around what remained of David after his three story fall. It was a waste, losing a client. He was worth, at the very least, four more sessions.

Reluctantly peeling herself away from the tragedy, she left the window and slumped down in her chair. Drywall dust scattered out from under her.

“We raided his house this morning, in front of the bodega on Third Street. One of those craftsman homes with the paint peeling like at get out. Finally got a judge to sign the warrant. The construction work in the backyard on those new condos was the perfect cover, you know… for hiding the bodies. Just like you said, all of them were members of the gun club in the valley.”

Jefferies unwrapped another lolly and put it in his mouth.

“They all were—get this—partially exploded! As if fireworks were jammed down their throats.”

Madison hung her head, massaging her temples. “The confession… it was almost there…” She muttered.

“Sir?” One of the officers came in, dragging a fragile nymph of a boy. “This one was in the waiting room.”

                Madison leaned forward, peeking around Jefferies.

“Mark? Hey, I’m sorry... Can we reschedule for Thursday? Something came up…”

For the rest of the afternoon she sorted through her case files: photographs, slides, newspaper clippings, and whatever notes she had written down from her sessions with David. The office space she rented out was a part of a historical location from the turn of the century, before there was such a thing as global warming and the nights still got chilly. She lit a fire in her office and tossed the paperwork in, almost nostalgic. Mostly angry.

Weekends. That sacred time when one could lay out on the beach and get a $100 tan while shooing away the peeping homeless. It was time to get out and see the world. So, that night she met up with Joselyn and Steven, a pair she had met at the county correctional facility the year before. They had good energy, well balanced. Yin and Yang. Steven’s tendency to overanalyze and hyperventilate when his favorite character died on television and Joselyn’s frenetic and manic fascination with World War Two trivia and samurai swords. Kat-something…

They were at the local favorite of hipster and disenchanted youth renown, Your Face’s House, at the end of the bar, holding down the corner closest to the bathroom and the karaoke machine—just in case. Joselyn was jawing on about her latest client, Charlie, who committed suicide the day before the failed arrest on David.

“And that’s another thing. They never teach you how to profile. You think you have a jumper, but he’s really a cutter. You think you have a cutter, but she’s really prone to shoot up and OD.” She took a long drag on her cigarette, burning away a centimeter of tobacco. Into her chest went all the spite of the world, Madison figured. A convection oven dotted with freckles and rosacea. “I mean… fuck me for making a difference…”

“We do what we can,” Steven murmured. He took another sip of his Guinness and wiped the foam from his moustache. (Joselyn called it the “Tom,” as in Tom Selleck. Madison would always cringe, knowing damn well that it was a walrus moustache, trimmed short to the lip.)

“This last week,” Madison slurred. “I almost… I almost got ’im. Fuck… Fuckin’ cops… Shit.”

“Next time sweetie,” Joselyn stated with certainty. “Remember: the opioid crisis is the best thing since 9/11. Fuckin’ Pandora ’s Box. You’ll get another one, eventually.”

Madison swirled her drink counterclockwise, She bent over it, slumping down.

“When do I stop, you know? Caring?”

This caught the others off guard.

“Where do I draw the line? These aren’t just paychecks. They’re people.”

“Never get attached to the client,” Steven cautioned, nonchalant, flattening his cardigan closer to the bulbous outline of his torso. “If you did, life would be romantic comedies.”

“The shitty kind,” Joselyn agreed, smothering her cigarette. “Like, Bridget Jones’ Diary shitty. And you can forget that Hugh Grant shit…”

“I have one guy,” Steven began, calm and collected, staring too hard into the wood grain of the bar. “He’s nice, good kid. Believes—hands to God—that there’s lizard people, as in the conspiracy theories that you see on the Youtube. He’s intelligent, polite. Sometimes even poignant… How to proceed—that’s what they don’t teach you at med school.”

The bartender broke away from a group of college kids and checked in with the three, wiping the inside of a pint glass and setting it behind the bar.

“You guys good? Need any food?”

Joselyn declined while Steven search through the menu hastily.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” He replied.

“And do you want that medium or welldone”

“Medium.”

The bartender smiled and collected Steven’s menu, leaving a card behind with a number sketched onto it.

Joselyn eyed the card jealously. “Medium, huh?”

“Medium,” Steven repeated. “I don’t spend much time in restaurants, but I know how hard it is to cook hamburgers.”

Madison was busy looking at the card. She smiled, surprised, frankly.

“You’re gay, Steven? Aren’t you married?”

“No… and yes, I am married. I just like the validation,” he said professionally.

Madison lifted her drink. “I’ll drink to that.”

After the burger came, which was on the edge of medium-well, Madison gathered her things and left the bar, hoping to get an early start the next morning. Saying goodbye, she ventured out into the wet October night, checking her phone as belligerent students weaved across the sidewalks. 16 messages from Mark. Jesus Christ. Another from a number she didn’t recognize. She checked it as she jaywalked across the street. The noise on the other end was modulated.

“Of thirty bare years have I

Twice twenty been enragèd,

And of forty been three times fifteen

In durance soundly cagèd

On the lordly lofts of Bedlam,

With stubble soft and dainty,

Brave bracelets strong, sweet whips ding-dong,

With wholesome hunger plenty,

And now I sing, Any food, any feeding,

Feeding, drink, or clothing;

Come dame or maid, be not afraid,

Poor Tom will injure nothing…”