The man who never alters his

opinion is like standing water, and

breeds reptiles of the mind.

— William Blake

I like that moment at the end of the day when I turn out the lamp and settle back unto my pillows, and for a short time my eyes haven’t adjusted to the dark and there is a such a simple peace. I think of the people I love, and have loved and lost, and the small animals that have brought a furry joy to my spiritually abraded days. I hardly ever think about George W. Bush, Rumsfeld or Rice, or Clinton for that matter, and not even Ahnold Schwartzenegger. They are not, jointly or severally, worth a passing glance when I settle back to say my prayers.

I met a man today from La Conchita, a friend of my Dad’s. He told us that he’d been having a tough time, going to so many funerals. He went to one today for one of the men and – there were a thousand people there. Please understand that there never were a thousand people living in La Conchita. They were only a few hundred. And here in Carpinteria, we’re only 13,000. Do you see?

You need to know about his ceiling – the ceiling of the man I met today. He lost it in the 1995 mudslide. He was in his house, trying to coax his cat from under the bed, when the police made him leave his cat and his house behind. He was driving away when he saw in his mirror the roof of his house come off, flip over and land in the street. He walked back and looked at it, and said, “that’s the ceiling inside of my kitchen, my dining room, my study.” Later, someone stole the light fixture from his ceiling. That was all he ever saw of his home, the rest being under the mud to this day.

I learned some things about mudslides this afternoon; you don’t want to know. Mud’s faster than you think. You probably can’t outrun it. It’s not evil, it’s just a friend to gravity. Mud doesn’t pretend to be moral when it takes life, doesn’t deceive with reasons that dissolve in the rain. It can’t hear us cry, or else perhaps our cries would cause it to forebear. And when the sun comes out, mud doesn’t pretend that what’s been done is right.

So tomorrow we’ll have an inauguration. It doesn’t matter. You’ll have something better to think about, and find it easy to turn your back on this broad and fetid defilement of our better conscience. Make something up, or take a hint from me and think about mud. The intractable deafness of mud, which sits there atop the splinters of lives and homes, not despite the cries of the innocent but because it is mud. And Man, which came from mud and returns, having practiced an indefensible and bloody refusal to hear.

CASSIUS Who offered him the crown?

CASCA Why, Antony.

BRUTUS Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca.

CASCA I can as well be hanged as tell the manner of it:

it was mere foolery; I did not mark it. I saw Mark

Antony offer him a crown;—yet ’twas not a crown

neither, ’twas one of these coronets;—and, as I told

you, he put it by once: but, for all that, to my

thinking, he would fain have had it. Then he

offered it to him again; then he put it by again:

but, to my thinking, he was very loath to lay his

fingers off it. And then he offered it the third

time; he put it the third time by: and still as he

refused it, the rabblement hooted and clapped their

chapped hands and threw up their sweaty night-caps

and uttered such a deal of stinking breath because

Caesar refused the crown that it had almost choked

Caesar; for he swounded and fell down at it: and

for mine own part, I durst not laugh, for fear of

opening my lips and receiving the bad air.

–Julius Caesar, Act 1.

I’m having one of those days. It’s not your fault, I know. But I can’t seem to get connected to the productive beam of psychic red bull that runs left to right through the fields of the Lord.

I’m bored, already checking out tonight’s TV listings. West Wing, which I recently commended to jumptheshark.com for its apparently having begun the last lap of the race to oblivion, is on tonight. I never miss it. WW replaced Northern Exposure as my favorite show, and that replaced M*A*S*H. At least tonight it appears to have most of its regular cast. Last week, it was just Josh plodding around in angst over his new nominee for the next president. But tonight’s episode is “365 Days,” an apparent reference to the time remaining in the presidency of the MS-stricken President Bartlett.

If if walks like a lame duck and quacks like a lame duck….

OK, I could be writing, working on the book. And I owe e-mails to a few friends, though a lot of my friends are blowing off my e-mails lately.

But then I wouldn’t have come up with that cool red bull … fields of the Lord line. And that was entertaining wasn’t it? A little glimpse into my interior life … no charge. Right, then my work here is done.

I would like to thank the people of the Los Angeles area for thoughtfully considering that the roads, not to mention the nerves, of the Santa Barbara area were strained to the limit by recent storms. And thus for not zipping up here like you do every other 3-day weekend. It was good that you foresaw that, if you drove up here past the La Conchita disaster area, you’d have to drive back past it, and every rubbernecking idiot would have to slow down for a look. You knew that it would cause massive gridlock, not only on the freeway but on every significant side street through my little town.

If you guys from the LA area had decided a sunny drive up the coast, and a nice lingering look at the sight of our recent heartbreaking loss, were just what you needed, it would have been very hard on us. And we’ve been through a lot, as have you. And no one needs that kind of meaningless diversion right now anyway.

I don’t know which of you Einsteins first had the idea of cutting through Carpinteria, 3 miles above the site of the traffic jam, thinking you could get ahead of a few cars that away, but he’s an asshat. Everyone of you who did it crawled through our town, then got back on the freeway on the other end. You gained nothing, but you made things miserable for us who live here and just wanted to get home for dinner.

The one mile drive from my parents’ house to our local market, which usually takes two minutes, took 30 minutes this evening. The drive to my house from the market – usually about 3 minutes – was another half an hour. That’s longer that it used to take me to commute from Goleta, 10 times farther from home, in rush hour.

Let me just say this: We are not Disneyland up here. You’ve already got that down there. How about, just for a while, try Tucson for your weekend getaways, OK? Thanks for your support.

Please take a moment to remember this man, whose eloquent and passionate service catalyzed a season of positive change in the land. I’m not posting any quotes – that would be too easy. But I’ll suggest that we consider what civil rights means to each of us.

“If there is a special Hell for writers it would be in

the forced contemplation of their own works.”

— John Dos Passos

It’s a different way of looking at things,

of celebrating half-light and fog.

For instance, a bee I saw, just

for an instant, fumbling among

the camellias and darting past

the dog’s head. You’d almost believe

it was Spring, forgetting the windmills

droning all night to save the lemon

trees from frost. But the chiminea,

warming in compassionate sunlight,

is half full of rain. And in January,

I prefer fog. I would rather have

a morning with the houses gray

and almost lost in it. With Papa

standing by the pickup, asking

if I’ve got good tires, a full tank

of gas, a map, some cash.

They called him Bee. He liked

a Timex watch, a good pen

in his pocket. Ballpoint, blue.

I had everything I needed, checked

everything but the weather.

So he stood there by his house

in the long, cold January, foggy

San Joaquin, breathing gray exhaust

in the gray world. He stood there,

waving as I disappeared.

Kyle Kimberlin

January 15, 2005

with Grandma & Papa on my way to CSU, Chico, January 1983. Click on the image to enlarge.

My anti-war blog is active again. Just thought I’d mention it.

My uncle, a rancher in Arkansas, used to talk about how he always had to remind his sons to “get the gate;” to close the gates behind them, so that cattle didn’t escape. I’m reminded of this by the fact that the barriers came down here in Carpinteria this morning. The freeway is open again at La Conchita. The thundering herd is with us again.

I’m told that the cupboards were getting pretty bare at our stores, though I hadn’t needed to shop lately. And I noticed the gas station was closed yesterday for lack of deliveries. I haven’t seen my Time magazine yet this week, though I haven’t checked today. Other than that, and the fact that all our police cars got dirty, I wasn’t effected much. Well, there is this abiding sadness, a sense of the abject fragility of human life, and that massive scar on the hills. You can see it from Summerland, eight miles west.

To my neighbors in La Conchita: I understand it’s Home, but you’re worth more than a pretty place to live. The true vista is in you, not from your living room windows. The rest of that slide will fall on that town. Please don’t be there when it does.

Last month, I mentioned taking Papa’s clock down to the shop for repair, as it came to me from their home when Grandma passed away. It hadn’t been wound in a few years. It’s three times older than I am, and let me tell you, after that much time on the job a vacation is in order. Well, it’s back on duty, with its steady tick-tock resounding through my living room.

It’s really nice. I’m very glad to have it, and the other things that make it seem on some level as though these people I loved are still with me. When it chimes, it’s beautiful. But I have to be honest. A small antique table in my condo doesn’t give its voice the same resonnance as Papa’s mantle.

click to enlarge

The clock, the photo of cousin Tim beside it, and the one of me on the TV, barely moved in a quarter century. Our grandparents thought a lot of us, they truly did.

Did I mention that when I was little sometimes I got to climb up there on the hearth and wind it? Yeah, it took ten half-turns for the chime and ten for the movement. When I wound it tonight, it was the same. As a kid I loved clocks; I had a thing for them. I loved winding them, and setting them just so. Even now, I set my computer clock via the Net, then a watch to that, then the clocks in the house. I got this from Papa you know, who liked time to be just so. Though in the end, it’s the most great common divisor of souls.

When the shadow of the sash appeared in the curtains it was between seven and eight oclock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch. It was Grandfather’s and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it’s rather excruciatingly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father’s. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it.

I’ll take good care of it, Papa.

Have you been giving some thought to the quote I posted about faith? I have. Yes, quite a lot of thought. Here, I think is the next step on this path:

Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.

In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.

And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.

Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

John 14:1-6

I bring this up because I’ve been thinking a lot about moral and spiritual relativism and the bad taste that Christianity seems to be leaving in the mouths of Americans these days. I’m a Christian, and I’m troubled by the trend. Something to ponder, because I have to something besides sit here for a while.

I admit that my experiment of not posting my latest short story has failed decisvely. Oh well.