Old Parts
POSTED BY MARKEL
AT 10:19 AM 0 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 29, 2021
And so
passed twelve and one half years – like a raging river, the hours, days, months
and years swept me along through changes like a Styrofoam cup through
whitewater.
POSTED BY MARKEL
AT 11:32 AM 0 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, JUNE 25, 2009
Love comes at unexpected times from unexpected places. "Our
ministering two angels look surprise on one another, as they strike athwart
their wings in passing"; indeed, Browning says it best...
I thought once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware,
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove, -
"Guess now who holds thee!" -"Death," I said,
But, there,
The silver answer rang, "Not death, but Love."
POSTED BY MARKEL
AT 9:19 AM 0 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, APRIL 14, 2009
I’m lost, but better somehow. Like a hiker past the panic of
losing his way and suddenly comforted by the surroundings of rock and tree and
water, I know the hand of Providence is on my shoulder despite the lack of
direction. I suppose that is good enough for now. Still, my breathing is
shallow, as if waiting for the crash of some unseen terror. Is it fear? I don’t
know, but it leaves me cautious, stepping lightly lest I snag some snare. I
skirt the edges of friendship and peek from behind trees at what might be love
or something like it. What is love now that what I thought was love has left me
naked and lost standing in these woods? Love, let me rest a bit and get my
bearings. You will be a stranger to me and I must be prepared to do more than
only fight or flee. Speak softly into my shadow-home. Show you mean no harm.
Sit for a while on a flat rock in a clearing and let me see your open palms.
POSTED BY MARKEL
AT 9:38 AM 0 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2008
It is five after quitting time on Friday in mid November and the
long shadows and hint of cold on the day’s dregs throws open the shutters that
keep these ghosts at bay – ghosts of my youth or of other’s youths – ghosts of
broken hearts and loneliness and being away from home and hearth and friends
and warm smiles and warmer arms - away in a strange, empty land with only
darkness and the quiet waiting. So I’ll sit in a restaurant bar somewhere and
make eyes at the walls while fighting tears and heartache through scotch or gin
or pinot noir from the Russian Valley. This is my therapy. I pray there’s a
cure.
POSTED BY MARKEL
AT 3:15 PM 1 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, AUGUST 12, 2008
Another September 11 is approaching and this one, or a day near
it, will be an end and a beginning for a long season of this sequence of
numbered days called my life. I've described the last five-hundred days as
surreal and inexplicable, but they have been a part of my life none-the-less -
a part that I don't understand the meaning of or the reason for. Providence's
motives are a mystery to me as I float into an unknown, strong current to
unseen horizons.
The tears had been absent for a few weeks as the business and preparations of
the new season approached. But the recent reunion of aged faces stirred again
the realization that my one true love in this life has left me. That confession
brings Frost's silver lizards to my cheeks even now.
And so I write to no one. I pour my soul into the ether like a message in a
bottle that is tossed into an endless sea. I stand like Tom Hanks at the end
of Castaway in this instersection of life - out of ideas, love
and reasons.
Tonight I drove alone through the streets of my little city, this outpost of
ideas stocked with the untouched smiles of eternal youth. I stopped briefly for
a glass of wine and a desert at an empty restaurant bar before returning to
topless twilight, a half-full moon overhead. The convertible does bring
laughter and a smile when I think how fortunate I am to live in the age that I
do and to have such undeserved luxuries. I am truly blessed. This life is a
strange trip.
POSTED BY MARKEL
AT 8:05 PM 0 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, JULY 15, 2008
I am in an in-between world. Reality has withdrawn into the
space between my ears and the world seems like a dream or a vision. I am a dead
man walking among ghosts. I walked barefoot on the grass at Simms Library again
the weekend before last and wept at the specter of what this life has become. I
never imagined it would be what it is. But it is. I imagined some angel might
sit beside me and shore up the breach in my soul, but none appeared. So I drove
by older haunts still and spawned visions of memories of other times and places
and distant faces from my youth but still no angel visited my haunted soul.
There is nothing in memories less haunting heartache and sorrow. Yesterday has
no comfort for today. These ignorant armies clash now at daybreak, blinded and
confused. Where is hope? Where is God’s hand? Where is friendship? I am alone.
POSTED BY MARKEL
AT 9:13 AM 0 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2007
September 11 has a new meaning for me. It was previously an
unseen, unfelt disaster that happened to someone else, somewhere else. This
year it happened to me - my world came crashing down and the pieces still lay
round about. I don't know how to put this back together - whether it can be put
back together. Some days are better than others, but some days are bad. Today
is such a day - one in which snapshots of the carnage infiltrate my mind's eye,
forcing me to face the act of terror visited upon me. There are parts of me
that want to say it's my fault, that I brought this disaster upon myself. But
I' know another's finger pulled the trigger and that the fault lies there.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 01, 2007
These are dark days. The weight of the world feels as if its on
my shoulders. It has been a long, lonely three months in the wilderness with no
end in sight.
This semester I'm taking a graduate course on the writing of WWI. It's revealed
a lot about that period and the changes that were taking place. Mostly it
reveals a lostness - of innocence, morals, beliefs and, to some degree, sanity.
One interesting book, "Regeneration", probes the study of what was
popularly called 'shell shock'. Another writer described it as a sort of
psychosis that resulted from being suppressed for long periods of time in
front-line trenches under continual fire, when the natural inclination was to
fight or flee. Soldiers had to basically hunker down and take it and it either
drove them mad or tore away their souls. It transformed them into something
less than human.
I'm fighting that battle now.
POSTED BY MARKEL
AT 6:25 AM 0 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2006
I had lunch with a friend yesterday who happens to be the pastor
of our little church. I like him more than I used to. He’s about my age and
interestingly free of the baggage most ‘men of the cloth’ I’ve known tend to
carry around with them. I think it’s because he’s seen a darker side of life
and come out of it - while not unscathed - with the knowledge of those 'wider
paths' of life. Over our lunch of Mexican food at Abuelo’s, we talked of
family, of work, of life and its various challenges – not small talk; more of a
catching up on events and motives and paradigms. The interesting thing about
our time was that when I brought up a point about this life being over sooner
than we think it will, I was swept with a deep emotion – one that broke my
stream of thought and word and caused me to tightly close my eyes to stem the
tears that welled from my soul. What was that all about? I suppose it could be
from the self-contained stress of my job, bitten off and compressed in the pit
of my stomach for the last thirty months. I think instead, though, it was one
of those moments when the reality of this world, rooted in matter and time,
intersected the reality of another world – one that transcends time, space and
reality as we comprehend it in our finite minds. I believe the soul is eternal,
that Man is essentially spirit, and that our spirit is what separates us from
the birds and the fish and the furry little animals that inhabit my back yard
begging for food.
I don’t know. Maybe it was just the hot sauce in my enchiladas.
POSTED BY MARKEL
AT 6:22 AM 0 COMMENTS
MONDAY, MAY 08, 2006
The English language is so limiting when it comes to describing
different types of love. We say we love someone, then have to launch into a soliloquy
to qualify it. For instance, my wife is my soulmate, no doubt about it, and I
love her deeply and eternally. I also love my best bud. I love old loves from
my past. I love my children. I love a lot of people, but I love them in
different shades, like the shadows on the rocks above Cattail Falls. I don't
have a name for those shades. Some are deeper, some move as the sun tracks
across the sky, but they are all love.
POSTED BY MARKEL
AT 1:51 PM 2 COMMENTS
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2006
I actually wept during communion this morning. It wasn't the
bread or the wine or even the pain of my partially pried off fingernail - it
was the song we sang while the 'bread' (actually, some kind of puffy Triskit
I'm guessing they purchase in bulk at 'Church Warehouse') was being passed.
"Redeemed, How I Love to Proclaim It!" was the song, and unless the
lyrics were subliminally stirring I'm guessing it was the melody that shook
loose some ancient memory associated with joy or pain or some other tear inducing
emotion. Funny how music does that.
POSTED BY MARKEL
AT 11:53 AM 0 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2005
It's Friday night and another tomorrow is left behind - think
I'll watch a movie and forget about this present reality for awhile. This
watered down lite beer hasn't yet numbed a nerve, and it may not before I'm too
full to have another. NEWS... Looks like I'll be heading back to Las Vegas for
New Year's - the Father-N-Law has sprung for a free 5 days at the Venetian
complete with gaming $. Not a bad 'look-forward-to'.
POSTED BY MARKEL
AT 6:30 PM 0 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, JUNE 24, 2005
This morning I'm thinking about the Matrix. The writer of the
book or script or whatever the movie came from, really wasn't far off. If our
soul it the only thing that is truly eternal, then the atoms that make up
everything in the physical world are merely a curtain over the eyes of our
spirit. These fingers, this keyboard, my window, that squirrel - all are
matrices of atoms held together by God knows what - interracting by some
mysterious force that noone can really, fully explain. Far out.
POSTED BY MARKEL
AT 8:28 AM 2 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, JUNE 23, 2005
For some time I've wondered why those few years of Jr. High and
High School have had such an impact on my psyche. It's been twenty-two years
since I walked the stage, and twenty-six since my first blog (albeit on a white
sheet of notebook paper). Between seventh and twelfth grade I lived a
compressed lifetime - one that still often inhabits my sleeping hours. What was
it about those years that made such a profound impact?
I honestly don't remember much of my life before that time. Random snapshots
and vague emotions haunt memories of those early years, but full motion video
at 15fps begins to kick in around seventh grade with wide screen HD taking over
by my sophomore year of prep school. College? A sidebar. The first ten years of
marriage? A blur. Yesterday? I don't know what I had for breakfast (oh, yeah,
bacon and eggs...maybe).
But I can vividly remember what the space under the bleachers looked like where
I would sneak to play chess during pep rallies in seventh grade - interesting
to recall since I was on the football team. I can smell
the hay in John Coston's barn where we would have after-game parties in eighth
grade - dim, colored lights hung from the rafters and hay bales strategically
placed throughout. I can hear the sound of Turner Creek gurgling over boulders
where we jumped from rock to rock at Falls Creek Church Camp in 1978, 1979 and
once again in 1983 (that last trip like a last kiss). I remember the feel of
the soft ground under my feet as I practiced for cross country running around Stevenson
Lake. And I can savor the taste of my first bottle of wine at Pat McGees in
Arlington on my eighteenth birthday (when 18 was the legal drinking age).
Funny, too, how I can see in slow motion the ice bucket as it flipped over onto
the floor when I tipsily got out of my seat - cubes of ice skittering under the
feet of patrons all across the restaurant, and me just 'happy' enough not to
care.
And while those vivid recollections are boldly etched on my memory, it's
something deeper and more meaningful that makes that time important. I
want to believe it has something to do with the forging of my soul, that those
few years were the furnace where my alloy was determined. It's as if life was
compressed, concentrated, compacted, so that each second was sweeter, more
bitter, harsher, more joyous, colors brighter, sounds clearer, emotions at
their most intense...
I think sometimes it was the relationship matrix of which I was a part that
made the time important - the friends I had and the values we shared created a bubble
that was our community, our world...
It was also a time of discovery, when everything was new and bright and held
promise...
I need to think about this some more. I think it's important, but I'm not sure
why.
POSTED BY MARKEL
AT 2:59 PM 0 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22, 2005
Wednesday is over and so is more than half the work week. I'm
excited because I wil be staying at the Taos Inn on July 1 with my girlfriend.
I've wanted to stay there for some time, but my last reservation was cancelled
in lieu of Big Bend. I'm
looking forward to walking the plaza, dropping into the bookstore for a D. H.
Lawrence novel, and dining at Doc Martin's. I like it there - I like it a lot.
Friday or Saturday I'll be taking the ninos to mi padre's casa in Ellis County.
He'll head to Angel Fire with them and I will have a week with my girlfriend
ALONE - YEA!!! I think she will probably go stark raving mad without the
constant badgering and bickering. The following weekend, after Taos, we'll pick
them up in Angel Fire, sedate them, and proceed back to the bright, shining
center of the universe.
The Jeep is a done deal. I'm excited. It will be nice to have another project
to invest with my sanity.
POSTED BY MARKEL
AT 8:41 PM 0 COMMENTS
MONDAY, JUNE 20, 2005
Father's
Day is yesterday and my gift to myself is a 1948 CJ-2A - disassembled - a
do-it-yourself kind of deal, but one I relish. My '46 is somewhere in Vermont
and in my memories, but the freedom-feeling of wind washing over my scalp longs
to return, so return it must - but probably not until late Summer or early Fall
when graduate school and football return along with, hopefully, cooler weather
and full assembly.
Tomorrow creeps towards me now with only a book, a prayer, and five quarters of
an hour holding it at bay. But Providence has been there already, so fear hath
no sting.
POSTED BY MARKEL
AT 8:37 PM 0 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, JUNE 17, 2005
Fifteen 'til five - not long now before one of the Shiner Bocks
in the fridge hits my lips. For now, the smell of solvent-based inks fills my
nostrils, a bad substitute for pending inebriation.
One month into my 41st year and I still don't feel any different between my
ears than I did at nineteen. Richer in experience, yes, but I'm still that
small child that walked alone through the fields of my youth. Tears are never
far away and I don't know why. Tomorrow creeps on at this not so petty pace,
and my soul jumps at the scent of eternity, longing to gallop home.
Providence has been to tomorrow, and that provides some comfort; it makes fear
less tangible. Yet joy is fleeting - why? Where is relief for my furrowed brow?
Why do these snapshots of my mind haunt me? Where's my burning bush, my pillar
of fire, my glorious vision?
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
painting by George Rowlett, courtesy of Art
Space Gallery - London
POSTED BY MARKEL
AT 2:42 PM 0 COMMENTS
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