West Virginian Headstone

Sarah sent along this photo of a headstone from a cemetery in West Virginia. The epitaph reads:

"Remember friends as you pass by;
That all mankind is born to die;
As I am now so you must be,
Prepare for death and follow me"

Contributed by Sarah.

Epitaph

I've been thinking about epitaphs some lately. Morbid, I know, but it has to do with a coffee table book I'm playing at writing.

Here is the epitaph I would like to earn:

He had a soul so big, the whole world couldn't hold him.

I think that would be nice--feeling like the world just could not physically contain you any longer.

Texan on the Train

I found this in a journal I kept the January I studied in Egypt.

A Texan on the train talks to Samiha about how he and his wife have saved for ten years to come to Egypt. Antiquity draws everyone. From the Japanese tourists forming a conga line in the club car to the Texan making the same three jokes about his life to each person he meets. I hope I have more jokes than that.

The Band Box

I kept the receipt to a tiny burger joint in Minneapolis that my friend, Amanda, introduced me to. It reads:

Band Box Diner

Grease

For
Peace

GRUB $6.60
GRUB $8.45
DRINKS $1.25
DRINKS $2.00
TAX 1 $1.83

PAY UP $20.16

Under Eaves

It rained hard in Duluth on Sunday afternoon. My friend, Josh, and I huddled together under the overhang of a building on Superior Street. Still in our suit coats from Josh's concert and the subsequent after-parties the night before, we did our best to stay dry as water flooded the street.

"I keep thinking about that samurai proverb about running through the rainstorm," Josh said.

I laughed. "So do I."

"I'd make a run for it, but I don't want to get these shoes wet."

"I hear you." I showed him the jacket I had turned inside out. "This jacket is suede."

I pointed to a small geyser gushing from a manhole cover. A minute passed.

"Well," Josh said, "if I had to be stuck under eaves in a rainstorm with somebody, I'm glad it's you."

Stranger Lefty

I realized today that I love making left turns. When there is someone in the opposing lane of traffic who is also turning left, an entire conversation takes place.

First, you make eye contact with this complete stranger, looking for the sign in their eyes that they are indeed making a left turn as well and not just playing with you or being annoyingly forgetful. Then, you realize they are doing the same thing to you. Finally, in less than 30 seconds, you make a nonverbal agreement with Stranger Lefty, and rely on each other to proceed and turn your respective lefts safely.

Contributed by Aryn.

My Niece's Grace

Before dinner on Easter, my niece reached from her high chair to her mother and father, sitting on either side of her, and grabbed on to their fingers. She looked around the table waiting for my parents, aunt, and me to join hands, too. She expected us to say Grace.

"Come Lord Jesus, be our guest, and let this food to us be blessed. Amen."

Emma clapped when we finished.

Twenty minutes into the meal, Emma reached for her parents' hands again. They looked surprised. "But Emma," my sister said, "we already said Grace."

Emma shrieked in response so we joined hands to say Grace again.

"Good thing it's not a long Grace," my father said.

"She's just a grateful little girl," I said.

Later, my sister refilled my niece's plate with some more mashed potatoes and Emma reached out to pray.

My mom laughed. "You like making all these adults do what you want, don't you, Emma?"

"Maybe she just knows Thessalonians," I said. "Pray without ceasing."

We said Grace a third and final time.

29 June, 2005

A jumbled entry from Black Notebook: Volume 13:

Rendezvous with Paul at Blackwoods Bar in Otsego. Coronas, whiskey-sevens, appetizers, and trying to convince the waitress that Paul and I are long-lost brothers.

Talked love. Talked faith.

Built ourselves up into elaborate metaphors. Oaks complaining about the saplings up in the canopy where they can't hear.

Love, faith, greatness.

Told Paul what the book is about. "Sooner or later, everybody's world blows up," he said.

Reluctantly hit the road. Paul climbed up on the concrete base of a lamp post in the parking lot, screaming into the night as I drove away.

Vonnegut

"A purpose in human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved."

--Kurt Vonnegut
1922-2007

The Woodland Hostel

In Duluth, I lived in a house on Woodland Avenue, across the street from the University. I loved that house and the people in it a great deal. We called it the Woodland Hostel.

It had a cement stoop out front perfect for drinking beers in the summer and watching the cars go by. There was a door out onto a flat spot of the roof where my house mates and I could stand just right to catch glimpses of Lake Superior down the hill. There was a floral printed couch in the living room. Guests would sleep there for days, weeks, or on and off for months, saying that couch gave the best night's sleep they had ever had.

One night, we put up a dozen or so musicians who had been kicked out of their hotel. They were in town for a music festival at the NorShor Theater (It's a strip club now.). They drank us out of gin and ate us out of Kraft Easy Mac, ice cream, and hot dogs, but it was worth it.

I fell asleep around four in the morning to two of them belting out "What a Wonderful World" in their deepest Louis Armstrong voices in our backyard with the song reverberating off the neighbor's brick walls and up to my bedroom window.

1 June, 2005

I was flipping through some old notebooks and I found a story my friend, Ryan, and his sister told over beers at Sir Benedict's Tavern about the time their parents tricked them into protesting the expansion of Interstate 35 as children.

Ryan:

"So, however many years ago, there were all these protests about the new freeway--there didn't always use to be a freeway, you know--

Ryan's sister:

"This was before the whole underground plan. They wanted to run it right through down town."

Ryan:

"Right. So our parents, they tell us we're going to have a picnic and we end up in the freeway median in Two Harbors and the paper takes a picture of us with the whole picnic in the freeway median with the caption: 'Is this how you want your children to grow up?' or something."

Ryan's sister:

"It was a dead give away when there was actually no food in the basket."

Say Say Oh Playmate

I spent time at the Science Museum today and my heart was happy when I stopped focusing on the exhibit around me and watched the people instead. Playing on the ground near me, were three people with hand puppets: two little girls of different races and an adult who appeared to be their nanny. They each were wearing a doll of a different race on their hands.

One doll was named Molly and Molly wanted to join as the others were playing the sing-song hand-clap game of 'Say Say Oh Playmate.' And as these little voices sang "... and we'll be jolly friends, forever more...," I was happy. Because these little girls will grow up in a future where they are not scared of racial differences. And maybe they didn't learn anything new from the stats and facts of the RACE exhibit, but they learned that a Korean, Guatemalan, and Kenyan can all be jolly friends.

Contributed by Catie.

Someday I'll say I love you with just a stutter

See, scat did us right
wild and unintelligible
A man 'come a trumpet
just sounds better
So, if God speaks,
it's in tongues Pentecostal
'Cause a man's made to babble