NO GOOD VERY BAD DAY

I was a fever pressed like old flowers between striped sheets. Seven AM was cruel to my pounding skull and raspy breathing. Snow had come; traffic would be slow. Five minutes of inner dialogue to convince my sick body to get up. Five minutes to brush teeth and grab clothes from the cluttered floor. Through the front window on the driveway, Pa scrapped snow and ice from my car while I tossed a salad inside a bowl.

-thanks, Dad, I shouted, shoving my backpack and lunch onto the passenger seat, and he waved goodbye. He had started the car already and Robert E. Lee was warm. It had been a toss up between Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, but the latter had suited him. 

What normally is a 15 minute commute took two hours: traffic moving at 10mph. I called Joh and left a voice-mail with my usual birdy-chattering, however my 'm's' came out like 'b's'. Dumb cold.

Even with leaving an hour early, I was late. Friday mornings with the Owen boys are a favorite of mine, still it was hard to read them the same book over and over while losing my voice. I talked with the eldest about moving and Star Wars and WWII POW's and God, I talked to the middle child about trains and hungry goats, and I talked to the baby about foreign embassies in North Korea. After lunch, where one child decided to spit his "yucky" mandarin oranges out (I thought, into the kitchen trash-bin), I began to put the middle child to bed, 
-but first, let's have you go potty and wash your hands, I directed.
-otay, his little voice answered. As I left him to grab the baby. 
After tucking the middle child in, I was in the kitchen warming a bottle when I heard a waterfall. It was a beautiful sound, but not the sound you want to be hearing from inside a house, especially not from the house you are babysitting in, and especially not when you are the only adult. Turned out the mandarin oranges had been spit out into the bathroom sink, clogging the drain, and the faucet had been left running. Dreadful. Water pooled from the ceiling creating islands out of boxes and inched its way toward the carpet. Panic inside of me. I could continue writing about the incident, but honestly, I'd rather not. In the end, the leakage was stopped, the floor mopped up, and the mom arrived back home so I could leave for my other job. Consequently, my car would not budge, being stuck atop a hill of solid snow. After fifteen minutes of shoveling and only being able to breathe through my mouth, he was released. Back on 35, I realized I had left my work clothes at home, including shoes, and would not have time to stop by and pick them up. I improvised and made a skirt out of a black cardigan and told my rain-boots they would have to do. You should see the blisters I have from wearing them all night without socks--because my socks were still soaking from the flood. 

rene gruau

All in all, it was a no good very bad day. One of those comic-strip days when a rain-cloud follows above your head. I avoided customers because my breath was hot and heavy in the air and I avoided answering the phone because customers could not understand me and I avoided helping in the bar because customers would notice my failed attempts to catch the dripping from my nose. 
After work, my cousin surprised me in the parking lot and I told her of my miserable day and she gave me Kleenex and we laughed until we reached that state of laughter where you become silent and your eyes well up. At home, I collapsed on the living room floor with an uncontrollable fever, every muscle and bone replaced with sharp rocks and ice; I felt as though my skull had duplicated itself around my brain and the two of them were at odds to break through my scalp and jaw. 

Yet I am reminded: 
"The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own’ or 'real' life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life- the life God is sending one day by day; what one calls one's ‘real life’ is a phantom of one’s own imagination.” -C. S. Lewis

m

AN IRRELEVANT PHOTO OF A CACTI

I awoke too early for such a late night. They weren't there and I was locked out. The lights were off. I waited, pulling the black cowl that I half-stole from the lost and found box over my head and hugged Sailhamer's book. 
-Listen to the birds. Those are lovely harmonies. Llewyn Davis must have listened to these. Just a little bit longer. You're early, but there has got to be someone here soon. Give them a minute to open the door. Certainly they saw saw you come around the back. Watch your breath curl like smoke. Watch the sun coming up. Don't you want to paint it tucking from behind the trees like a flashlight through a spider's web. The door clicked, someone unlocking 
-You must be freezing. It was the young man who had served me the tomato Basil soup three weeks before that I had decided I wouldn't order again. 
-hello, I shivered. 
-I think your group canceled, he said. He was in two places: half of him inside, half of him passed the doorway. 
-really? Crap. I gave one of those smiles people do when they are shivering and scowling, but smiling instead.
 -Can I get you anything warm? Coffee, soup? 
-I should probably head out, but thank you. You should have said yes. Why do you always say 'no thank you'? 
I drove 7th until Kellogg, John Ireland and Selby. At Nina's, I sat between five elderly gentlemen with their unfolded and crinkling New York Times and refilled mugs of steaming roast. Some were waiting for their wives to share breakfast, some were waiting for no one. I rolled up my worn plaid sleeves, then unrolled them because I was fidgety on my second mug and empty stomach. I finished a book, pulled out a newspaper; pretending I was an old man. I watched June meander around the store, offering a plateful of pastries and chatting with regulars. I watched a father, with newborn son in a stroller, sit beside his three young daughters, the first two little women seemingly from a lost Victorian novel, however the youngest daughter wore a raincoat much too big for her and knee high rain-boots that couldn't seem to stand still. I don't know which world she was in, her imagination absorbing thoughts through her bright eyes, but I would have liked to visit it. Instead I visited the bookstore below and bought a captivating book, though I would have rather visited her world. 
I wore my Lowa's to church. Light pooled through the rounded glass, echoing us. Counting birds, I walked: a pear, bottled water, and apple in my satchel strapped to back. I planted a tree in the city. I put the streets to memory. I took a path I hadn't tried. I called back to the Pine Siskins, Dark-eyed Junkos and Purple Finches. I walked, as though my feet were writing a letter in cursive; a prayer to God. The miles weaving into hours, clocks losing their power: I was released. There is something though, how after being under the sky and sun, alone on your feet for so long a time, wandering with inner compass--there is something how after all this, one sees clearly. Maybe it's the fresh air, maybe it's the limitless possibilities that awaken and swallow all of you, maybe it's God breathing. Again, inspiring. Left or right? Road to next, I prodded... something deeper moved me, answered. 
I am glad I walked. My one full day off work. I walk. I will always walk. When I walk, I can feel, I can think, and I don't struggle to find words. They are there; accessible, at the tip of my tongue. 1 John was a song through and through me. I've been re-reading it again, twice and twice. Mostly on accident. But I choose to. It swells within me. Every line making more sense, finding its place of comprehension, tangible: everything connecting. And I get it. 
I explored a vacated property and peered into latticed windows with two strangers, now friends (how beautifully and passionately curious they were), the house hasn't been lived in since last year May. Rot inched up the walls and caved in the roof where siding curled. It was large and the upper level windowpanes cracked to let in birds. Rabbit pellets covered the backyard. One startled me. Antique paintings and musty books frothing with dust and strong smell... we wanted to buy it and start again. Give it back the life it once had. It was so easy to see how beautiful it had once been. As we circled the house, the decay became more evident. The weight felt tragic. As we parted ways, we decided that we were glad the birds and bunnies had such a home. 

I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW YOU

Vanauken
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=sheldon+vanauken&commit=Search


Garrels. 

Monet. 

"I would like to paint the way a bird sings."

"Everyday I discover more and more beautiful things. It's enough to drive one mad. I have such a desire to do everything, my head is bursting with it." 

"I perhaps owe becoming a painter to flowers."


Keller. 

Bonhoeffer.
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/29333.Dietrich_Bonhoeffer


Cash.




Hansard. 
http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2014/02/14/3945189.htm


Van Gogh.

Lewis.

Keats.

McMillan. 

I ALWAYS KNEW YOU COULD BE LIKE THIS

I stood behind the bar in the paint studio. Mrs. W entered the shop with her husband. Her five feet tall self dancing to the 60's music, hair wrapped in a red scarf, arms and face animated in storytelling. We talked for a bit. She had found a pool table slab at a warehouse and was going to fix it behind her stove as a back-splash. She had painted her van with chalkboard paint so that strangers could write and draw on it while she was at the grocery store. 
The last time I had seen the W's, I was picnicking under a willow on Lake of the Isles. I watched her dance around the store, as I greeted customers. She was life, rapturous and valiant. Mr. W was tall and quiet, but there was a profound softness or warmth about him: I especially noticed it when he looked at Mrs. W. His eyes would fill with light as if he had seen her for the first time, yet eyes that knew her fully and truly loved. Nothing false or superficial in them. He saw her, the wholeness of her, and that was the end and beginning; I have not seen a man look at his wife like that before... well, perhaps I have, but it was right as the wife walked toward the man in a white dress. They made each other beautiful. Timothy Keller illustrates well what I saw in the W's. From his book The Meaning of Marriage: 

Within this Christian vision of marriage, here's what it means to fall in love. It is to look at another person and get a glimpse of what God is creating, and to say, "I see who God is making you, and it excites me! I want to be part of that. I want to partner with you and God in the journey you are taking to his throne. And when we get there, I will look at your magnificence and say, 'I always knew you could be like this. I got glimpses of it on earth, but now look at you!

Please, do yourself a favor and read this book.

m

BEFORE SUNRISE

Jesse: Alright, I have an admittedly insane idea, but if I don't ask you this it's just, uh, you know, it's gonna haunt me the rest of my life

Celine: What?

Jesse: Um... I want to keep talking to you, y'know. I have no idea what your situation is, but, uh, but I feel like we have some kind of, uh, connection. Right?

Celine: Yeah, me too.

Jesse: Yeah, right, well, great. So listen, so here's the deal. This is what we should do. You should get off the train with me here in Vienna, and come check out the capital.

Celine: What?

Jesse: Come on. It'll be fun. Come on.

Celine: What would we do?

Jesse: Umm, I don't know. All I know is I have to catch an Austrian Airlines flight tomorrow morning at 9:30 and I don't really have enough money for a hotel, so I was just going to walk around, and it would be a lot more fun if you came with me. And if I turn out to be some kind of psycho, you know, you just get on the next train.

Alright, alright. Think of it like this: jump ahead, ten, twenty years, okay, and you're married. Only your marriage doesn't have that same energy that it used to have, y'know. You start to blame your husband. You start to think about all those guys you've met in your life and what might have happened if you'd picked up with one of them, right? Well, I'm one of those guys. That's me y'know, so think of this as time travel, from then, to now, to find out what you're missing out on. See, what this really could be is a gigantic favor to both you and your future husband to find out that you're not missing out on anything. I'm just as big a loser as he is, totally unmotivated, totally boring, and, uh, you made the right choice, and you're really happy.

Celine: Let me get my bag.

Celine: So often in my life, I have been with people and shared beautiful moments and it's like traveling or staying up all night and watching the sunrise, and I knew those were special moments, but something was always wrong. I wished I'd been with someone else. I knew that what I was feeling, exactly what was so important to me, that I did not understand. But I am happy to be with you. You couldn't possibly know why a night like this is so important to my life right now, but it is. This is a great morning.

<< 

Jesse: I know what you mean about wishing somebody wasn't there, though. It's just usually it's myself that I wish I could get away from. Seriously, think about this. I have never been anywhere that I haven't been. I've never had a kiss when I wasn't one of the kissers. Y'know, I've never, um, gone to the movies, when I wasn't there in the audience. I've never been out bowling, if I wasn't there, y'know making some stupid joke. I think that's why so many people hate themselves. Seriously, it's just they are sick to death of being around themselves.

Let's say that you and I were together all the time, then you'd start to hate a lot of my mannerisms. The way every time we would have people over, uh, I'd be insecure, and I'd get a little too drunk. Or, uh, the way I'd tell the same stupid pseudo-intellectual story again, and again. Y'see, I've heard all those stories. So of course I'm sick of myself. But being with you, uh, it's made me feel like I'm somebody else.

<<

Celine: When you talked earlier about after a few years how a couple would begin to hate each other by anticipating their reactions or getting tired of their mannerisms-I think it would be the opposite for me. I think I can really fall in love when I know everything about someone-the way he's going to part his hair, which shirt he's going to wear that day, knowing the exact story he'd tell in a given situation. I'm sure that's when I know I'm really in love.

THE STRANGER AT THE FOUNTAIN

LISTEN / FILM CREDITS

July was new. We said goodbye to old friends, as tradition, marking our farewells with swinging in The Wabasha Street Caves. Beasley's Big Band whipped up a happy contagion echoing in the cavernous corridors, and we swung. When 'Sing, Sing, Sing' played, the floor parted like Red Sea for Zeke and me. I followed his decisive, quick movements, somewhat belated to their pull, moving to the rhythm pounding inside and through. Ten minutes of adrenaline. By the end, the small crowd applauded as sweat drenched our faces and palms. 

The first beats of 'In the Mood' called and in the chaos, Johanna and I latched arms, imitating Anne and Diana from the Christmas Ball scene where they wore puffed sleeves and their chins in the air, when a young man tapped my shoulder and separated us from our ridiculous imitation. I didn't have voice to say, 'No thank you'. His arms led swift and determinedly, I was unaccustomed to his gentle, however forceful way, and tripped embarrassingly on my feet. The song closed, we parted with few words. The music and heat began to throb. I passed the knight's armor through the double wooden doors, escaping into the solace of the cooling evening. 

Pulled to the fountain, I picked a handful of over-sized pebbles, positioned myself seven feet away from the bowl of water, and with back turned and eyes closed, tossed the rocks, bit by bit, aiming for the double tiered bowl, waiting for that hopeful ker-plunk!

"You are still here?" A voice like the oak my grandfather used to read David Copperfield in, humorously asked. I opened my eyes to a passing stranger with a gently aged face and long, smiling eyes.  He was irresolute and curious, as several hours before I had also been tossing pebbles.  
"Oh, no, Sir." Laughing, I defended my sanity, "I just found my way back." 
"May I join you?" 
"Sure. Here," I placed a few stones in his palm, "Now stand on this brick, with your back turned. Perfect, now close your eyes and think of the most wonderful thing you can... something that isn't true yet. Don't say what it is yet, just let it be." He smiled, his eyes closed. I laughed, "Now, throw one of the pebbles over your head and aim for the fountain." He tossed, the pebble missed and fell onto the red bricks. 
"Try again." I encouraged. 
"And what happens if it makes it in?"
"I don't exactly know. I like to believe your wish will come true. But I know God hears them. And what he does with them is for the good."

We continued for several minutes, tossing stones, as if we were long-lost friends of misplaced generations. 
"Do you like dancing?" He asked.
"I really can't dance, I just try very hard to deceive people... well, except for Native American tribal dances. I'm good at those." 
He laughed louder than the fountain. 
The ping of stones hitting the water filled us with a soothing contentment and we began to part ways, as dusk was also settling into night.
"Goodbye friend! Have a good summer--or life, actually, because I don't think I will see you again. But I hope I do!"
His smile reminded me of a full moon and he said, "Adieu." 
I called back, "What did you wish for?"
"Oh! I forgot to." 
"You better hurry, you only have a minute left until the magic wears off!" 
He laughed again, then called across the cobblestone courtyard, "Are you really a Native American?"
"No Sir, but in my soul I am."

I remember he wore a white shirt. I like to think he was an angel. 

MORE THAN A POCKET WATCH

November of 2012, Uncle John gave my pa a pocket watch. There was a letter folded in the package, explaining the story.  

Erich, 

What makes this story powerful, is not so much the story of the watch, but when it took place. Uncle Harwood had gathered his living siblings together at Grandpa Halberg's house on the St. Croix, to discuss Grandpa's fate. I don't recall who all was there, but it included Uncle Harwood and Dad... I'm not sure who else. I was there, but not in an active role... I was just a kid. As they, the brothers, talked, it was becoming clear that Grandpa could no longer live there... he would have to go to a nursing home. The feeling in the air was that of sadness. 

As this discussion is taking place, Grandpa was in his little bedroom by himself. Unexpectedly, he came out of his bedroom... every one, except Grandpa, was sitting. All eyes turned to him, no one knew what to expect, and there was a breathless silence. Then, Grandpa began to tell his story... 

'When I graduated from High School, my father wanted to give me a pocket watch. I told him that would be nice, but what I really needed was a new suit of clothes. So that's what he gave me. Then, when I finished college, my father wanted to give me a pocket watch. I told him that would be nice, but what I really needed was a new suit of clothes. So that's what he gave me. Then, when I graduated from Seminary school, my father wanted to give me a pocket watch. I told him that would be great... and that's what he gave me.'

Then Grandpa, who had used this watch his entire adult life, explained that he wanted to give the watch to Avery. He also expressed the idea that he wanted it to go to the first born son of each generation. Then Grandpa went back into his bedroom... that was the last time I ever saw him totally lucid. It was a magical moment. 

Years later, Dad gave me the watch, and told me the story... even though I was there, I loved hearing it. Then, since I will not have a son of my own, I gave it to you. When you feel the time is right, you can give it to our dear Aharon... and the story will continue... 

Hope this helps Erich. I love you very much.
Your brother, John