I awoke with the thought on my lips that I fully intend to die one day.

Let me back up. I had a dream that I was cleaning a roof. My father had stayed up all night making Christmas for me. There was a tree. It’s odd that no one has yet asked me to clean a roof. I’ve cleaned chimneys. I’m just like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins – I do it all for kisses. But I wondered at his love for me, I in middle years having Christmas made. It was a sacrifice, the key to joy. It occurred to me that those who suffer can be redeemed by the same surrender. We decide what we want to do, to be. We make a plan, many of us, but then death comes on us while we’re busy trying to find fulfillment in vain. Fulfillment was never the goal of life, it turns out. It was not our plan but rather God’s plan that might have given us the suffering that leads to joy. Death finds us having suffered without having joy from it. We do that anyway – suffer, I mean. It’s our ‘verb,’ as a government advertisement would put it – It’s what we do. Attempting to mitigate this reality consumes many of us as our one and only true aim, yet this is no vocation; it leads to a wasted life which we must amend before we can enter His Presence in the hereafter.

So, I said I intend to die. But that is not the same as saying I don’t intend to live. What I mean by that is that you can’t do one without the other. I know an Army general who once told me every death is a heartbreak. Every death breaks God’s heart all the more, yet it is ultimately surrender to it which awaits us. And I remember learning that heroism is the disregard of person in the service of others. It is heroic to sacrifice, and that’s exactly what life is supposed to be. Life is supposed to be a heroism. The Christian life requires austerity and renunciation, as our friend the Baron has said. But it is not the sole property of Christians; we don’t have a monopoly on the truth of Being. That’s why Religion is God-created – we can’t make its rules any more than we can decide not to die.

So what does this have to do with cleaning roofs? I have no idea. Such is the nature of dreams. Yesterday I was writing about life experience, specifically the Boy Scouts, and how it is holistic – that is, we cannot trace the source of every act of Grace and categorize it just so. We are the totality of things both known and unknown. Dreams are life experience as much as any waking experience. What we read in a book is life experience as much as anything else we do, or have done to us. The music playing in the background is life experience. You, reading this, are having a life experience which is filling you. I am part of your totality, as you are part of mine. And I am saying I had a dream from which I awoke with the thought on my lips that I fully intend to die. I welcome it – in its right time.

It seems to me that in order to live well this thought, this intention, must be foremost. I will never become comfortable with the whole idea. Did someone say life’s purpose is to be comfortable? The penultimate aspiration of Judeo-Christian civilization is not to collect things until you expire at last in a comfortable bed, having lived a life of not offending anybody too badly, staying as far away from the truth of anything as possible, and having a “nest egg” at least large enough to pay for your burial. These are things some of us may do, and others not. They are irrelevant to the infinity with which we are about to attempt to merge. Heroes may rest in mass graves with complete anonymity and villains may lie in state and have cities named for them. This is a confounding fact, isn’t it? But it illustrates the visible falsehood to allow us to see the invisible truth.

Isn’t that what music and poetry and Art are supposed to do? In Art we represent an illusion – a depiction of an illusion – in order to demonstrate a truth beyond it. And I’ve told you this: My friend is called an Abstract artist, and he touches his body to see if it seems real, and says, “I don’t feel abstract.” He’s funny – you’d like him. He insists he is a representational artist; he represents what he sees.

Well, I’ve wandered far from that roof top and Dad making Christmas for me. On Christmas Eve we would get the tree and put it in its stand. My job was to retrieve the wooden box containing the wee lambs made of bone and brushing the sawdust off them, setting up the Nativity. The Christ was absent – that is, He had not yet arrived. The Three Kings were over the fireplace on the other side of the room to begin their journey. We would then go to midnight mass, then home to bed. Mom and Dad didn’t sleep that night. They assembled. They created. They made Christmas. We slept, and experienced dreams perhaps of cleaning roof tops which would become our totality. Not a single thought of death entered yet into our minds – unlike other children in many, many places – and that is a result of others’ heroism, most notably the figure of the baby Christ in amongst the lambs next morning who was the greatest of the many gifts.

That’s the truth I would like to express in my abstract, dream-like way.

I know I told the story about how Dad made me a raven for my birthday. It was really a crow – ravens being scarce ‘round us. But he knew I liked Edgar Allen Poe, and I suppose any 13 year-old who could recite 19th Century poetry deserved at least a crow. He worked very hard on that. Taxidermy was his hobby and I don’t know why. He collected road kill. I can see him out there fighting with the guys in the plastic helmets from the county – you know, with the flat shovels? I also told about the deep freezer in the cellar. Mom would say, “I need you to go down to the freezer and get the baked ziti.” Well, the package marked baked ziti was right next to the package marked “raccoon.”

I’m telling it again. Why? For a different reason this time. I think his interest in taxidermy came from scouting. I don’t believe there was a taxidermy merit badge, but from whatever outdoorsy kinda thing we did that might have been in some way related he decided out of the blue to start collecting dead things. I know he was into nature photography. Still is. And golly, but that costs some money. It was the same with flying. He was a pilot. He’s no longer a pilot – hasn’t been for years. It cost too much money to get the flight time in. Three of us went to college on his dime. The seminarian-turned-married-man who was my father had every intention of being a forest ranger, but teaching became his profession. I know he had a love/hate relationship with teaching.

I was a Boy Scout at one time. It became terrifically uncool. I think it is still. I think the people who control the nation’s thinking are just like I was. The difference is they’re between 40 and 60 years old and they’re still there – they haven’t grown at all. I get the impression that scouting is now presented as something quaint and Republican, the butt of jokes from people who don’t know the first thing about making an earthen shelter out of sticks, grass, and mud. (Yeah, we’ll see who gets the last laugh when you come knocking on my earth house door.)

But when I think of all the things I know – and all the things I know how to do – because of scouting I’m taken aback by their multitude. I learned how to save your life in case you were to begin to die in front of me. I learned how to fix things, build things. I learned how to plummet in a controlled way down a 5,000 foot chasm. (I can tell you, that’s a head rush). Well, there’s lots of things. Some of them are quite practical, applicable to my day-to-day life. Most are not, I admit. But that’s not really the point of learning.

The whole mind has to learn. In order for that to happen the whole mind has to be taught. Why read Shakespeare if you’re going to be an automobile mechanic or a shoe salesman? I’ve heard people ask that. “What’s the practical application?” they ask. Well, the shoe salesman – or any kind of salesman, for that matter – who learns what Shakespeare teaches about human nature will be a better salesman. That’s eminently practical. The automobile mechanic will have developed an expanded mind in general, and any hands-on occupation from custodian to brain surgeon is enriched by the application of acquired creative intellect. But again, that’s not the point. Even if there really is no practical application the mind is improved vastly by learning even purely academic things. Whatever that mind applies itself to doing one may expect a higher likelihood of success in doing it. So, right now I’m thinking about the brain surgeon who jogs past my house each morning. What’s the practical application there? He’s already a Greek god.

It’s funny – we get this holistic approach right when it comes to physical education. Nerdy boys like me stood out in center field looking for pockets in pocketless short-shorts, thinking it was a useless endeavor, resenting it, and nerdy boys (and girls) must still do that sort of thing in schools today. The benefits are arguable, but I survived. The argument is that a healthy body helps to build a healthy mind, endurance, strength, and competitive behaviors build social skills, intuitive skills, and so on, and so on. I don’t know if my Phys Ed class did any of those things for me, but I do believe the principles upon which the curriculum is based are quite sound.

I think of all the experiences scouting gave me – the opportunities, the memories, the ability to tie you up so well you’ll still be there at Christmas. Shooting – yes, marksmanship. Archery too. I may be a little rusty these days, and I didn’t follow through as many of my friends did with a stint of military service. That too had become very uncool. But I was a darn good shot. Focus, the ability to concentrate, attention to detail, hand-eye coordination, spatial perception. The ability to clear the mind isn’t one that people are just born with. Sometimes we walk into a Buddhist monastery somewhere hoping to learn how to do just that, minds full of garbage. It helps to know right from left. It helps to know that voice you hear inside your head is You. Yes, you’re not imagining things. You can cancel the therapy. You’re just thinking. You’re probably thinking utter rubbish.

So Dad made me a stuffed crow mounted on a piece of driftwood. It was very special. I don’t think he understood my interest in macabre matters. I know he didn’t really approve of it. I don’t think he had any idea why I would have wanted such a ghastly thing hanging over my chamber door - and before I was old enough to know what to do with any girl named Lenore – but he did it anyway. I’m glad he did. You know, come to think of it, I never expressed an interest in watching him do whatever he did when he defrosted the package next to the baked ziti. I suppose if my interest in the macabre were genuine I would at least have wanted to see that. Well, in later life I’ve helped with deer cutting. That’s not really the same though, because I go home afterwards with a nice package or two of fresh steaks. Carving a raccoon must be its own reward.

Working today in an area under a balcony within a lovely Craftsman, and I feel splashes of something on my face. I'm taken aback. It's The White Tornado on the balcony above spraying me with a product called Parsley Plus, and giggling. I don't know whether it's the parsley or the plus that is supposed to be the active ingredient there - but it sure do smell tasty. Parsley plus deadly poison, I suppose. Available at better health food stores. I'm a pragmatist when it comes to ingredients. I use what works. Some products just smell good, so I'll finish with them.

Nothing else.

I'm burning CD's for the car. Brian Eno's Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy - stuff like that there. Just itching for the new Fibber McGee and Molly season to get going. In a couple of weeks, get us through 1940.

Kirby and I stripped and refinished a tile floor yesterday. I sold the customer on the idea of saving it rather than replacing it. Hey - it's good lino tile from the 40's, nice pattern, no nicks. Just a little furniture and fixture leg damage. I ended up in my first year in business with a ton of area rug-style lino, perfect condition. The fellow was going to just throw it away, put in carpeting. I said, 'Well I'll take that old junk away for you at no additional cost. I'll just add a dollar or two to my estimate for the gas.' Well, I had to come clean on it. I'm not a wheeler-dealer. Fair is fair. I told him what I'd be likely to fetch for the stuff when I actually got to the job site, and he laughed - gave it to me anyway. That's the thing: to be a square G. It ain't easy.

I'll tell you that I receive electronic payments more frequently. People say, 'Hey, why don't you do all your banking electronically? It's so convenient.' And I thank them for the advice, but it gives me such pleasure to sit down one day each month with a checkbook and all my bills and pay them - not finagle them, just pay them. For so many years I couldn't dream of doing that. Always with the Peter and Paul deals. And the stress, the stress, the stress. I repeat myself when under stress.

I repeat myself when under stress.

I repeat myself when under stress.

No more. I live well within my means. It helps to be alone. It helps there's no one cleaning out the joint checking account to pay for studio recording time for some up-and-going-nowhere singer with a Peter Frampton hair do.

Well, the WT's brother is looking for an apartment but it's difficult for him having both a dog and a girl. I said, 'Both? That's just excessive.'

My day in a nutshell. Or nutcase, if you prefer. Thinking about lino. Thinking about all good things that now are gone, like Johnson's Glo-kote. You're not supposed to drink the darn stuff. I'll post a picture of Hal Peary for old time's sake, and because I'm just a silly girl. The parsley may kill me before the new season begins, and then what'll I do?

I was leaving a comment on TR's latest, and it got me thinking. On Saturday I will go to a party, or get-together, in the hills. What a can of mixed nuts we will be - my friends, like bloggers here. One thing we will all have in common: we are all self-employed. That occurred to me yesterday. Some of us are old. Some of us have killed. No one of us has ever murdered, though. Killing a person is like having a million toothaches in your heart. How can a sane person then go the 7-11 store and purchase a body-sized plastic garbage bag? I wondered because once at a get-together many years ago when we were smoking pot and drinking sake, and ingesting some orange powder that contained whatever trippy substance, and listening to The Piper at the Gates of Dawn no doubt, Tim decided to go to sleep on the kitchen floor. Joe said to me, "Where's Tim?" I went to find him, found him dead asleep. I went back to Joe and said, "Tim's dead." He nodded quite seriously as if to say Well, he would, wouldn't he? And so in secret, so as not to arouse the suspicions of the other guests, we went to the 7-11 store to find a Tim-sized plastic garbage bag. We had him halfway down the back steps to the dumpster when he woke up. That was extremely funny. We really were idiots, but not entitled to be. Now we can laugh again. But at all times we were in God's world and all was well. Let the children play. Today we are self employed because we know it's God's money - not ours. Making money is easy because money has no intrinsic value, therefore the supply of money is infinite. Because I have more it does not follow that you must have less. Money is a form of communication, and money limitations are caused by a lack thereof - someone along the line is blocking the communication, usually a government - pesky interfering things that they are. In every cry of every Man/ In every Infant's cry of fear/ In every voice, in every ban/ The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.

I will be in charge of the fire on Saturday. A gun dealer wearing a Michael Savage for president cap will be grilling, an old pinko revolutionary will be telling stories about tripping out with Dennis Hopper in the desert somewhere, the young heiress will be putting on her heirs - While you walk through the parlor/ Wearing nothing but your armor/ Playing indoor games - and somehow it all works.

It got me thinking about A Love Supreme, and how learning the language of music expands the mind beyond the machineries of any drug, and that in poetry the meaning of life is expressed. The meaning of life is sacrifice. It's absurdly simple. There are true thoughts and there are false ones. The false ones murder. The true ones kill. To be about a business that is not your own business is the business of life, to know that it's God's money, God's world; my body God's body, my mind God's mind. And to the extent that I dissolve myself and all of my opinions into love I am true, and I do right. It is not for me to teach, to persuade, to titillate and entertain. I cannot give a rat's end what you think of me, and live. I would die a millions deaths to think else.

Who says Mama's little baby likes shortenin' bread?

Mama's little baby likes Freedom.

That would be the thing we all have in common in this little group. We used to be monkeys living in the trees, and then we lost our minds, and now we're free. The world is open like a girl, and joy rains on us from the sun. In the most difficult terrain your feet will find the path without looking at the ground. Look instead at the death that welcomes the glad and happy soul ahead and everything will be as it should be.

The devil's in the details, someone said. The details change. They vanish - like smoke. Thunder in the mind today, glorious thunder. A beautiful morning.       

When I was a boy I bought a plastic head of the sort you might use to display a hat or a wig at a garage sale. Why? That’s a very good question. Don’t expect an answer. I ended up placing it atop a sort-of baker’s rack or plant stand in my room at home. Since I did not seem to have a knack for keeping plants alive I ended up finally draping a cloak over it. The effect was as you may imagine – a broad shouldered man with a bald plastic head. I really wanted to be a writer when I was a teenager. I had come up with the character name Sydney Horatio Plumnick. At some point I began referring to the makeshift statue by that name. I may even have written the name somewhere on the base of the plastic head. I seem to remember doing that.

Sydney Horatio Plumnick lives in the hearts and minds of men.

Who is he, and why should we fear him?

In the middle of writing a post for The White Lodge it occurred to me that The Squabbler and Sydney Horatio Plumnick were really the same person. I was a teenager again. My blog was like my room at home. I was making a place for myself to live in, and I was making a friend who could live in it with me. The world outside is a very scary place, scary and a little unreal. Here within The White Lodge it’s not like that.

In between Sydney and His Squabship I spoke frequently of having a Dark Companion, of never being truly alone – always feeling that I was accompanied everywhere I went by an invisible person to whom it seemed natural that I should speak. People might find me speaking to my Dark Companion. I may have appeared to be talking to myself. About half the people in the world talk to themselves. The other half are really bothered by people who talk to themselves. God has some sort of plan in mind there. A few people knew about my Dark Companion. He was no secret. If someone asked me, “Who are you talking to?” I would answer, “I’m talking to my Dark Companion.” About half of them understood.

I cannot write without also watching myself write. I cannot live my life without also watching myself live it. I am not The Squabbler. The one who watches isn’t really me. I have learned to understand him that way.

Many years ago I experienced the phenomenon of “being beside myself” with fear. The cause was not a battle in a war, nor was it an accident, injury or some other legitimate trauma. The truth is my little brother came up next to me while I was standing outside our parents’ home on a gray and rainy day wearing a plastic poncho. Inside the poncho I had no peripheral vision. I had no idea that my brother was approaching. I felt rather than saw the approach of another person. I felt the presence of another person. In an instant I imagined who that person might be. Perhaps I imagined Sydney. Perhaps I imagined the dead lady at the top of the tower. She was a character in my recurring childhood nightmares. I don’t know who I imagined I felt was standing close to me - within sixteen inches it happens - but when I turned and saw my little brother in his own plastic poncho I was badly startled. I realized immediately who the person was – or, almost immediately. I saw myself – and him – as if from a distance of about ten feet, and somewhat higher than my usual eye level. Well, my friend The Squabbler stands at about seven feet in his socks. The picture I saw with my eyes was an unusual one. Seeing yourself from outside yourself is nothing like seeing yourself in a mirror. In a mirror everything is backwards; it isn’t real. I wasn’t looking at a reflection. I was looking at myself and my brother. I could not see my face because of the poncho’s hood. I remember thinking, “Who on earth is screaming?”

The bizarre happening lasted no more than a second – less than a second, perhaps. The next thing I knew I was eye-to-eye with my little brother. My throat hurt. He said, “You’re weird!” and walked away. I felt suddenly sick to my stomach. I felt suddenly like a rope which was attached to the sensitive lower part of my stomach was being pulled very hard, and then it was more like an elastic cord which was snapping back after having been extended. This cord was anchored deep inside my body. When it seemed to snap back I doubled over and knelt. Perhaps I genuflected. I can’t tell you it was painful because it wasn’t really painful, but it was so unusual a sensation that I reacted as though I were in pain.

True story.