the smell of bacon everywhere

WARNING: vegetarians beware! Skip to next post. Gruesome animal preparation details ahead. (healthy eaters, may want to beware too!)

yesterday was my day to be the full time stay at home dad. As I am sometimes prone to do on such days – I put together a long-term cooking agenda.

First thing, we cooked bacon. J, A & I ate it with our eggs, but it is important to note that the smell of bacon is very low on Lynn’s list of favorite sensations (eg. she doesn’t like it). On the other hand, my very gracious hog-breeding brother in law supplies us with this delicacy often enough that we have a stock of it in my freezer. So its very important to, on days where lynn will be gone for a long enough time, cook the bacon in the morning, and work to eliminate the smell all day.

Drat if she didn’t smell it on Jaelyn’s clothes as soon as she hugged her in the afternoon. Note to Future Self: remember to burn the children’s clothes! (What I need is Harvey Keitel’s pulp fiction character to come in to rid the house of the smell – can you just see Jaelyn, Addison and I, naked in the yard, getting hosed down by “the wolf”)

So later in the day – about two p.m., I used the bacon grease (now congealed nicely in the frig) to start a roux – eventually I added chicken flavored with chile, fresh corn cut from the cob, fresh tomatoes from the farmers market all over rice. By the time I sat down to dinner I had already half downed a glass of cabernet savignon, fresh bread came out of the oven. The kids played together happily as I prepared (this alone is a miracle). Jaelyn fashioned the most amazing ostrich out of legos(she first said, this is a bird, and I was thinking – sure. Bird. It does look like an ostrich. Then SHE said it. Ostrich. I didn’t even know she knew what an ostrich was. Kind of like the other day when we were under the tent and Abby and Jaelyn were pretending that the fireplace window was a movie screen – Jaelyn said they were watching Beauty and the Beast, and Abby protested – no it was the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Oh, I said, Jaelyn hasn’t seen that one. She’s probably read it tho…but Jaelyn interrupted. Yes I have, Dad. At the Y. And with that teenager-correcting-her-impossibly-naïve-parents kind of voice. I was stunned. When did my four year old slip beyond my mind-control-capacity…) The world had this intense smile on her face and I felt as if the smile was directed completely at me.

So when Over The Rhine’s The World Can Wait played these words –

I want to feel and then some
I have five senses
I need thousands more at least

I repeated them aloud to Lynn (one of my more annoying traits, I’m sure, constantly creating pull-out quotes from the text of everyday life: bolding them, increasing the font, adding a fancy little box). That’s exactly how I feel right now! I exclaimed. Five senses are INADEQUATE to experience the world!

My friend Greg and I founded the Sensualists Club about seven years ago – he had the coolest of all sensory responses. I think he’s trademarked this idea – but I’m gonna tell you about it anyway --

It’s called the happy-hot-eared-food-buzz. Like the buzz you’d get from alcohol, but it’s a sensation that you just get when your MEAL is really great. (and he and Andrea make some really great meals). Only its this focused buzz-type-thing in your EARS. And its HOT. Isn’t that great? I’m not sure that I’ve ever had it – but I’m SO glad that someone in the universe has it.

And quoting from OTR and talking about happy hot eared food buzzes together makes me think that I really should plug the OTR concert experience. There’s something about Linford’s musical structures and Karin’s voice LIVE that is pretty amazing. When I first heard them, I turned to the table I was sitting with and said, “I feel like my entire body just turned into a giant eardrum that won’t stop resonating.”

I just finished the novel Secret Life of Bees last night. It is both a novel about sensual experience of the world (simply because Sue Monk Kidd writes such lush descriptions) and a novel about sensing God – sounds like the mystical tradition – a tradition that I have been drawn to – appealing to my interest in sensual experience *&* hearing God’s voice (two themes heretofore alluded to in this blog). Anyway, I was going to insert a section that I read last night which directly responded to my earlier blog about hearing God.

-----

[August tells a story about how her Grandmother once heard a hive of Bees singing the Luke 2 account of Christ’s birth. The narrator giggles.]

-do you really think that happened?

-well yes and no, she said, some things happen in a literal way, Lily. And then other things, like this one, happen in a not-literal way, but they still happen. Do you know what I mean?

I didn’t have a clue. Not really…

-what I mean is that the bees weren’t really singing the words from Luke, but still, if you have the right kind of ears…you can hear silent things on the other side of the everyday world that nobody else can.

-----

And what i left out with my elipses would erode my argument if I were making one – but I’m not. I just thought the passage was powerful about the possibility of hearing the Divine in the world around us. Maybe I’ll return to those ideas in another blog…

Let me pause a moment, to note that I’ve rearranged my indexes over at the side. I’ve added some connection points to friends that have web presences. It’s great to feel the possibility of connecting to y’all. (Sense the incipient plug? Where’s your web presence?) I have to compliment my brother David, first family member to join me in the blog. His reticent yet reflective post cracked me up. i was trying to figure out whether or not Uday or Qusay was the jostler -- or if there were implicit Jacob / Esau, Cain / Able, Levi / Joseph implications in the whole "bad big brother motif"...?

I must also send a BIG shout out to my friend Glen who just successfully PH-d. I truly look forward to reading his diss -- _Seeking Forgiveness_ (a far more impressive title than my laborious and dull -- CONSTRUCTING IDENTITY & blah, blah, blah...GARAGE SALES

We're off to Michigan tomorrow (if the day goes well) night & so my posts will be sporadic for the next week. The same goes for email and voicemails out of commission here at casacommunitas right now...

peace~

- rain & mortality -

its rainy today in canton.

abby & noah were at our house to play -- two two year olds and two four year olds -- means that you *don't* want a rainy day.

so when i got there, lynn had built the biggest friggin tent EVER out of chairs, couches, afghans, quilts. it right near filled the whole livin' room. multiple rooms. hallways. ahhh! nostalgic joy that came from building such tents.

with the humidity recurred a rattle in my trachea. i had the same rattle (with deep breaths) through much of the month of june (rainy season). But i never put it together with the rain until today. using the spiritual-gift-of-worrying that i've started to learn from Lynn -- i just assumed it was the latent asbestosis that i've been waiting to kill me. it's supposed to have a latency period of about 17 years. I guess I should have about two more years before it kicks in (of COURSE i'm jesting -- i have no intention of dying that soon).

but it is remarkable what can stimulate thoughts of your own mortality.

and it is remarkable to think that 17 years have almost passed since I was 18 years old.

dazed and ancient, i bid you:

peace~

- Theological nugget -

The readings in church were great today --

pulled together Genesis 1:28 - in the image of God were they made...

WITH

Matthew [...hmmm...] do we pay tax or no? whose IMAGE is on the coin? Render to Ceaser that which is his, and unto God that which is his.

AND

2 Cor 5 therefore we are ambassadors pleading -- BE RECONCILED to GOD --

the connection of God's image being essential to human beings -- then the ways that so many forces have corrupted that divine image with instutional obligations, the worship of power -- and finally that the new tradition -- initiated by Christ is to call the whole world back into reconciliation -- the symbol of the Divine within us is like a sign cut off from its referent -- just like Baudrillard & Lyotard describe --

and our calling is to be calling to reconcile the world to its maker....

peace~
andrew

I'M NOT HYSTERICAL!

read this title in a hysterical tone

A student --

(who I like very much, in case you're reading, unnamed student) accused me in class recently of being a conspiracy theorist.

I thought of her accusation in the shower after I wrote the last email.

I think that there's a part of being reflective about shifts in the contemporary political climate (particularly if the shifts that you illuminate feature your own position as being one-down) that makes you sort of SOUND like a conspiracy theorist.

SO to distinguish my last post rant from a conspiracy theory, let me clarify how I am like and unalike conspiracy theorists: (how very aristotelian / rationalist of me)

1. conspiracy theorists always reveal a victim. (I fall into this category. I reveal the socio-political causes of the contemporary Liberals to be victimized.)

2. conspiracy theorists always allude to an extant body of secret knowledge. (I don't think I fit here. I admire the righties for being able to harness a particular kind of populist rhetoric, but i don't think there's any secret knowledge submerged by them. Au contraire -- I think its a particular work ethic, combined with a particular a-theoretical bent, a willingness to embrace media institutions, and a proficiency at using the free market to build their audience)

3. conspiracy theorists point to a body of poweful others who protect the secret knowledge & who victimize the victim (albeit indirectly). (Here's another important point of divergence. I DON'T believe in a "vast right wing conspiracy" I think the right wing (like the left) is made up of a curiously diverse set of bedfellows who sometimes aren't even bedfellows, but in terms of ACCESS to the vast - American - middle, they have found (though not neccessarily cooperatively nor intentionally) some successful touchstones for reaching them.)

As always, I'm borrowing heavily from lots of influences for my ideas -- richard hofstadter is responsible for the nice distinction of the constituent parts of conspiracy theories...

hope you're still sabbathing!

peace~
andrew