Moving Ahead . . . and A Midnight with the Legends of the Pen

Here's my problem. I had been gathering some interesting thoughts over this past week . . . thoughts about the same old issue, trying to be a Christian while living in reality.

I had the notion that I would spend my Sunday afternoon typing out a well-thought-out essay. But instead, I've spent the last four hours working on my new business and now, once again I'm typing like mad just to put together a few loose thoughts.

The reason I decided to start this business (headache clinic if you are curious) was because last fall I was becoming an empty-nester, and I knew that I was destine to be empty myself. That means, spiraling downward in depression and loneliness.

Having worked in headache clinics for most of my life, I had always had a dream of creating a better one in the back of my mind. Last fall, when I committed to doing this, it was like grabbing the horns of a rabid (and add Mad-cow disease infested) steer. It has bounced around between a hellish nightmare of financial ruin to euphoria and back again . . . but always, consuming. That's why I've felt frustrated that I could not put my thoughts together here in a coherent way, nor could I feast on the thoughts of other bloggers the way I should.

The good news is that my plan worked! I never had time to drown in the melancholy wasteland that I'm so familiar with. Where I sink into the muck up to my waste and can't walk out. Besides, Ramsey, my last (of five) child is sitting with me right now and has been almost every week end since he "went off to college."

Okay, enough of all of that. I will say I have some thoughts that I wish I could express to someone.

It was an interesting night last night. On Friday night I worked in Bellingham, where my clinic has a second office. I noticed that the small theater down the street was showing Midnight in Paris. I first heard of this movie through my third son, Tyler. He is the one that got me turned on to fiction. Two years ago he was playing in a band called Caulfield and the Magic Violins. Since then it has been shortened to just "Violins." Their theme song (and biggest "hit") has the chorus about saving the children who were falling off the cliff while running through the rye field. Believe it or not, I didn't know what that meant. After all, I grew up in the Bible belt where the very wise (dualistically speaking) school board had banned most great novels. Any novel that had words like damn, shit, suggestions of alcohol, sex outside of marriage and certainly "sonofabitch." So we, even as high schoolers, were left with Winnie the Pooh and not much else. So, in the past two years I've been introduced to more Christian truth by the likes of such word-smiths as Joyce, Faulkner, Lawrence and Butler than by a thousand Baptist preachers.

So my fifth child, Ramsey said to me (actually at this very table where I'm sitting right now but two years ago) "Dad, if you really want to get inside Tyler's head, you've got to read a Catcher in the Rye. I read it . . . and Holden changed my life. A boy who wanted to see life as it really, really was . . . and realized that we are all a bunch of phonies.

So, to make a long story short (or at least shorter) I gave Tyler a call. "Hey, Midnight in Paris is playing in Bellingham, want to go?"

"Certainly."

So at 6 PM, Tyler, Ramsey and I loaded up in the topless Jeep (which I had cut the top off with a Bowie knife when the windows broke) and drove the cold twisty road, which hugs the cliffs above Puget Sound, up to Bellingham.

It was very enjoyable movie in the typical Woody Allen style (it reminded me a lot of Purple Rose of Cairo). A surreal and causal journey across realities. But it was a lot of fun to ease-drop on Fitzgerald, Picasso and Hemingway during their Paris "artist gang" days.

Afterwards, the three of us (at 10 PM) went out to dinner at a nice Asian restaurant overlooking the bay. We had a wonderful talk about art, novels and music. Tyler was saying the same thing that Jeff Dunn was saying the other day on Imonk. basically the music world has collapsed (like the literary world) around corporate hype. As Jeff said, deep thinkers who are good writers and have something to say, are invisible to publishers. However, the famous are stalked by publishers for their name . . . so they can get a ghost writer to create a book for them.

So, in the Christian world, the big sellers are Jon and Kate Gosslin teaching people how to have a Christ-centered marriage. Sad. Tyler was saying that the music world is reflective of the same mindset. So, Lady Ga Ga can make millions . . . woops, I mean billions, for someone, but does she have anything to say?

Hemingway certainly couldn't get published today or virtually any of the top novelist . . . not unless they had had sex with a senator first.

But I will end this now as I must, unfortunately, go do the books at my business and see if I have enough money to keep the doors open in July. I hope to work in a kayak paddle before the sun sets.

I will try to come back tomorrow and start what I wanted to post. After reading on Imonk the debate about what is "abuse," I thought I would like to create a narrative of deconstructing what spiritual abuse looks like at the local church level. Not whining about stuff I've been through, but creating a totally fictional account.

Sorry about the typos but once again I'm late.