sparkling clean septic systems and airline culture

6:37 a.m. -- i hear addison coughing upstairs, its a bit of a gagging cough and i'm a pretty over-protective parent when it comes to sickness...

i arrive to find him throwing up on every piece of bed linen, pjs, pacifier, you name it.

i rush him to the toilet so he can hold his head in it (which he clearly enjoys) and not throw up anymore.

i briefly remember the scene from trainspotting. i think about how much more alluring, clean and sparkly our bathroom, toilet, and possibly even septic system is than that one was.

I wipe him clean, make him a sicky bed on the couch downstairs.

(one of my favorite memories from being childhood was sickbeds on the sofas.)

(parenthetically to that parenthetically, one of my favorite traits about my grandma linda was that she always refered to couches as "sofas" or "davenports" -- never couches. i subsequently always presumed that the word: couch was a bit lowbrow. my grandma linda was a pretty class act. more on that later.)

9:00 a.m. -- the babysitting coop is scheduled to arrive -- no word yet on whether sickness will postpone their arrival.

11:30 a.m. -- jaelyn's preschool is having a thanksgiving feast for which she volunteered us to bring hotdogs. every four year old got to volunteer their specialty food. so the menu includes popcorn, hotdogs, white cake & (i pity the four year old's parents who volunteered on this one --) turkey.

3 p.m. -- i leave for 5 days in miami.

that's right i'm leaving my wife with a sick two year old and a precocious 4 year old for five days.

i don't feel good about that.

but i do relish the chance to be in liminal spaces all days -- airports / airplanes -- alone.

finding space to be alone is so difficult during this season of life...there's something so freeing in the massness, the globalizingness, the strangerhood of airline travel...its a world (at least here in the "developed" world) that is so antiseptic...

i don't embrace those values, but i have to admit that they provide me a place for solace.

peace~

monastic church

as many of you know i've been following the *emergent church* movement in various online venues for a bit now -- i'm intrigued and more than a little excited by the movement ....

(though i do, of course, have reservations, hesitations and questions)

but the idea of a monastic model as being complementary to an ecclesiastic model is pretty exciting to me.

exciting why?

well:

A.) it's sorta more compatible with the way i want to be invested in higher education (particularly, in my case, "christian" higher education...)

B.) its pretty descriptive of the ways in which i have most profoundly experienced church -- particularly if you think of these monastic models as cells -- in the ways that my friend kevin rains writes about. (I do understand that I'm taking liberties with the concept of monastic living here -- by stretching it to include communal living...but using the notions of residual and emergent...it seems like its the vows and the depth and the size and the intention that is the resource-giving residue and the small-pieces-loosely-joined-structure that gives us the grammar to imagine new incarnations of these profound truths...)

C.) it seems a better way to address some of the pressing questions around how the church handles vocation which i was blogging about so much this summer -- and am always thinking about a great deal...

oh and BTW, Daniel, this bit of reading, i think, defines your ideas for your house of preparation beautifully.

man, i gotta get back to grading!

leaving for miami in 27 hours...

peace~

comments? readers?

my brother david, former pirate, later a cubicle crime lord, now a curiously not-substituting-any-identity-real-live-blogger turned me on to

who offers shareware for adding comments to your site.

so my page is finally a little more democratic. we have room for minority reports. please feel free to go back and rant about ... whatever you've been disagreeing with me for a long time about...

or not...

~peace

10 things i'm "into"

1. IM - ing with my brother David - there's something about the discourse of fragmentation and commentary that delights me.

2. Lynn's style - my wife has become so daring and expressive and bold both in her personal "look" (which is hot) and in her thinking about her profession and vocation (which is deep).

3. family dance nite - we light candles and writhe -- these days to the Flaming Lips (Jaelyn has a longterm, ongoing thing for the character and song -- Yoshimi) and Rufus Wainwright (i must also allude to the eargasm that song #3 from this new album - WANT - gives me when i listen using earphones. i'm pretty sure it would have a similar effect upon anyone even slightly open to the world of suprising sensual delight).

4. emails from old friends - I need old friends. The day to day social fabric of my life feels precarious and threadbare -- in general premised upon too many "professional" relationships.

5. boundary breaking - a few "professional relationships" -- students and peers -- who are shockingly honest and regularly kind

6. cottage cheese - i don't know why, i just love it right now.

7. phone conversations with daniel - we've been concocting more than our average share of thinking / heresy lately.

8. grey skies and a midwestern chill in the air - i'm a northern boy, what can i say?

9. impending thanksgiving - traditionally Rudd thanksgiving is our favorite holiday of the lot. can't wait. (i'm particularly eager to see Ang & Ryan's new house -- which will be -- I'm sure -- *very* goth.)

10. hair wax - i can't believe how much difference it makes in the day to day grind.

* not neccessarily in order. except for the last one. b/c that's a little bit tongue in cheek.

** as for the title: my friend Greg used to regularly be "into" new things -- he's an early adopter of, i think, all important trends. this *is*, if you're wondering, Greg, the co-founder of the Sensualist Society (of which I am the other co-founder). and the Greg who fantasizes about taking a nap in a pile of freshly laundered clothing while flying in an airplane. But *not* the Greg who quoth _The Raven_ in a mask and cape on a public stairway in Florence, Italy. That's another Greg who is also often "into" very interesting and exotic things. Right now he's literally "into" Korea -- where he teaches and has astonishing adventures. He *is* the Greg who made the mobile whirling over my desk...

***what if i die on the plane en route to miami and this is my last blog? aren't our lives trivial?! aren't our joys mundane?!

peace~

...............
dreams
................

this weekend i dreamed that i had made a creamy plum and pomengranate sauce to be served with grilled salmon.

it was amazing.

i've never made a sauce for salmon, nor have i ever made a creamy sauce that included plum or pomengranate.

lynn dreamed that i broke up with her to go out with johanna.

jaelyn never reports her dreams, and the ones she does, i know she makes up because they're too much like the story structure she uses when she tells normal everyday stories. this morning, though, she promised rather cryptically, that she would reveal her dream from last night at supper.

we sort of ate in shifts around the counter and there was never any "formal" family conversation. now she's asleep. Drat! I'm intrigued by the world of children's dreams.