Commuting

I am feeling a lot better these days. It's nice to be out of school, past finals, and actually making a little money. Working makes the time fly, too. It's way better having a job that stimulates your mind, too, than working as a telemarketer. Even if it's telemarketing for charity.

Commuting is a strange experience, though. I spend about 3 hours getting from work to home every day. It gives me more time to sleep, and think, and watch people, which is nice, but I don't feel as well rested during the week. Even so, I enjoy spending time alone every day, and there's no better place to be alone than on crowded public transit.

I intend to enjoy the company of many friends this weekend, and belatedly celebrate my birthday with my family.

Leviathan

I have not blogged for quite a while. Settling into marriage, starting law school, and searching for some direction in my burgeoning legal career have left me a bit too muddled to write anything. Searching for a summer job was particularly stressful, because your first internship (or lack thereof) in law school can determine what opportunities are available to you down the road. Having found a very pleasing and hopefully rewarding summer internship (that actually pays!), I feel as if the fog which has surrounded me for the past year is beginning to lift somewhat. I am starting to feel more confident in my future work, and my ability to practice law. However, not everything about clear vision is comforting. Having been burdened by the stresses of pursuing a career in law, I am still left wondering what kind of future I have committed myself to.

The work, I believe, will delight a certain part of my brain. The part of me that preferred to keep "Mensa Brain Bafflers!" handy for bathroom reading instead of something a bit more narrative. However, I fear the oppressive obstacles facing legal, business, and government entities in the near future. I quake before the unstable obesity of our nation's fiscal future. I have no doubt that we must cut spending AND raise taxes in order to pull ourselves out of this quagmire. The financial foot of this nation is sunk deep into the quicksand of debt and deficits. If we struggle aimlessly to correct it, we will only hasten our crushing suffocation. Only through a well reasoned tax policy focused on reducing our debts and hence our annual interest payments can we wade ourselves out of this mess.

I think what bothers me about our two party system the most is the insane dichotomies we create. We have Republicans who sensibly advocate cutting programs, but also advocate cutting taxes. We cannot reduce our debt with that model, and will likely not cut enough to stop increasing the debt. On the other hand, we have democrats who are willing to impose new taxes, but who in the same breath propose new spending measures. Even with increased taxes, we will continue to see the debt rise under this model, and surely will not see any reductions in the deficit. However, as voters, we are still too greedy to really get behind a platform that says "Cut spending and raise taxes!" We, not only Congress, simply wish to consume more and more. Soon our nation will be like the 800 pound man on the daytime talk show who cannot fit through his own door anymore.

I suppose what bothers me most is that this situation was set up by irresponsible generations before us. In order to address this problem, our generation will suffer disproportionately high taxation with lower services for most of our income producing years in order to pick up the tab (with interest) that our parent's generation has left behind.

Let us be angry, but let us do better. Let us not wait until our nation is so rotund that we must be evacuated from our house by means of a crane, like some perfectly spherical man-fruit fallen from the tree.

And even with brave words like these, I dream of dark whales swallowing me whole.

Bergman's Virgin Spring

Every time I think about the final scene in Bergman's Virgin Spring, I say to myself "I am small, and without knowledge, but my my soul yearns, and calls out to God."

Marriage

In little more than two weeks, K and I will be married.  I'd love to be able to say that means that I know who I am now, or how I am supposed to be right before God, and be encouraging always, and how to keep faith, ever constant.  But, rather, I think that my looming marriage makes it even more important to remember how little I know about myself, how much I will change, and how that is true for K as well.  We will have to grow together.  Sometimes with plenty of space to stretch our limbs.  Never apart, yet never static.

God, give me humility.

I am working as a temp until I start law school at Michigan in May.  Temp work, now, that has been a humbling experience.  Not because I look down on the work.  Rather, because I'm not very good at my job, and I feel I should be better.  I can't get any temporary clerical work right now that would make use of my work experience and skill set.  All of those positions are long term, much more than three months, and I feelt guilty applying for a job I know I don't want to keep when the term of employment ought to be at least a year.

And so, I am calling businesses, trying to recruit managers and owners to participate in the Muscular Dystrophy Association's annual, local lock-up fundraiser.  It's a great cause, and I love my work in some ways, but as I said, I'm not as good at it as I would like.  I'm not a very pushy person when I know I'm incoveniencing somebody, especially when they have every right to say "fuck off, I have work to do."  But, that is my job.  And, although it may annoy some people when I call them, it does real good in people's lives.  And, in this interim period, when I'm starting my own household, it helps the ends meet.  But, I am underperforming, and I am not sure how long they are going to keep me on if I don't bring my numbers up.

I have helped schedule events for sitting US Senators, I have filed reports with the Federal Election Commission which could have put my relatives in jail if I screwed them up, but I have never been quite so scared of failing in my entire life.  Because, if I fail, my fiancee, soon to be my wife, could suffer for it.  Protecting her and providing for her (at least, providing what I am responsible to provide) is the most important thing in my life.  And, no matter how hard I try, I might get fired, I might have a hard time finding a temporary job in our local economy.

And, maybe I won't.  I just can't say for sure.

And, I guess this brings me back to marriage, again.  It's a big deal.  Aside from kids, it's the biggest thing I will do in my whole life.  And, just as I had no control over my fate as an individual, I have no control over the fate of K and me.  As a single man, my pride could survive.  Even without control over my destiny, over the unfathomable complexity of this living society I am a part of, this breathing and heaving earth I reside on, I always told myself "I can roll with the punches.  I am tough."

But now, I don't just want to be tough.  I want to make sure that K's life is wonderful.  That our life together is perfect.

And I cannot.

God, scrub me clean of the pride I have clung to my entire life.  Let my pride fall away in favor of faith in you.  Let me always remember that, as much as I would like to control my destiny, I can only try to do what's right, and remember that no matter the outcome, no matter what I feel is important, only one thing triumphs.  Your glory.

So, let me be the best husband I can.  Let me be the best provider I can.  Have mercy this sinner, O Lord.   And I will remember that, as caught up as I am in the turning of this world, your faithfulness and your judgement are all that is eternal in my existence.

Lord, make me humble.  But, Lord, please also make me better than I am.  In order to balance my vocation and my family and my own survival in the years to come, I will need to be.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger,

RRK

The future looks good.

K. seems very happy about some new revelations she has been having about what she wants to do with her life. That makes me very happy, too. I'm really looking forward to sharing many cups of coffee in the morning with her, and many glasses of wine in the evening, and everything in between. And I'm glad that she might be finding something that she loves to do. As much as we love each other, everybody needs to be able to pursue something that they can claim as their own. And, by God, you'll know this woman by her works. They couldn't have been made by anybody else. No matter what she does.

But Don't Worry, Darling

When I ate
the sweetest
fruit I ever ate I
bit deep
and filled my mouth with
soft flesh
and
the
juice
ran
down
my
chin.

When I lick
my lips
I can still taste
phantom nectar,
and then none
of the fruit
shipped to the supermarket
in floating chlorine bath houses
across rough
trade routes
stirs
my appetite.

Humbert Humbert

I'll never get
Humbert Humbert
's hard on
for Lolita.
And it's not just
that I hate the idea
of getting dirty
looks
from the proper sort.

It's because
I
want everything
he does not.
He hungers
for more forbidden
fruit.
The ripe pears
and melons
that tempted old Humbert
Humbert's gag reflex
make my mouth
water.