Hunting is not a sport. In a sport, both sides should know they're in the game.
-Paul Rodriguez
Author Archives: Kyle Kimberlin
like soft snow
A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics". All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.
-George Orwell
dreaming of a white christmas
Is it going to snow? It’s supposed to plunge into the low 30s tonight, 10 degrees below the normal temperature for December nights on California’s south Coast. It hasn’t snowed in Santa Barbara since 1932, but I remember making hail cones and a little hailman (cousin of the snowman) in the driveway in the late sixties.
Actually, it does snow here, on the foothills behind the coastal towns, but not down here at sea level. It doesn’t help that I’m 110 feet above the surf, unfortunately. I’m not high enough. Maybe you’ve had that problem too, from time to time.
Speaking of snow and ice, I’m really sorry the three guys on Mt Hood couldn’t be rescued. I’m sorry for their families. And I really hoped it would go the other way for them. But is there anybody out there who disagrees that there’s something fundamentally illogical about high-altitude mountain climbing in December? Why do some people want to take high risks with their fragile lives? What’s wrong with a nice hike among the trees? A good old September backpack trip, someplace pretty, would be good, don’t you think?
I’m just sayin’, life is short, all glory is fleeting, and there is happiness in a comfy chair. And while none of us has the promise of tomorrow, I have an appointment with my flannel sheets and down comforter.
santa’s blog
No, really. It’s at dailyclaus.com, right here on the internets.
I found it at dooce.com.
Metaphor’s hooking you up again.
fine art
Let us practice the fine art of making every work a priestly ministration. Let us believe that God is in all our simple deeds and learn to find him there.
-A.W. Tozer
holy crap
Peter Boyle’s character used to say that on Everybody Loves Raymond. I’m sad that he is gone.
NEW YORK – Peter Boyle, the actor who transformed from an angry workingman in “Joe” to a tap-dancing monster in “Young Frankenstein” and finally the comically grouchy father on “Everybody Loves Raymond,” has died. He was 71.
Here’s a tribute to him, by his niece.
delusions of something
Want to know something funny that I did? A couple of days ago, I took some folded poems out of a little notebook, which I have not used for a while, and laid them on my editing desk. On the top of the stack was a poem called The Black Dog, which I wrote in 1999. Maybe I’ll post it below. Anyway, today as I was standing by that desk, looking out the window, I moved that poem aside and began reading the next.
It was beautiful, it was brilliant. It was called Japan, clear as a bell rung for no reason but love. I thought to myself, Damn, this is good. Why haven’t I tried to get this published?
I read the whole poem, enraptured with my sadly neglected genius. I got to the end. It said Billy Collins. You may remember he was made US Poet Laureate in 2001. Good grief. I guess I printed and carried around a few of his poems for a while, for inspiration. Here’s his poem, Japan.
And since I apparently never finished The Black Dog, here’s another old (1998) poem from me.
EXISTENTIAL DOG
Little friend asleep on the floor
between the taciturn piano
and the stone cold fire,
you speak and the night retreats
as far as the curb and lifts
from the roof to hide behind
the shivering stars.
I cannot
cry out and chase the darkness
back. But I can climb
into the thin air of snowmelt,
close my eyes to see the forest,
the full moon and the cold lake.
Then descend in sadness smelling
gasoline, and hear my clock resume
its unrelenting drive.
The clock
hides his face in shadows,
in the magic lantern specters
of my wild, angry hands.
I smash it, make tonight
a Ferris wheel fluorescent, burning
in the East, driven by a storm.
© 1998 by Kyle Kimberlin
a blessing indeed
Today is the birthday of James Wright, one of my most favorite poets. I remember reading this poem in college in the mid-80s, and feeling a kind of happiness, a tender love of the intimate power of words, such that I trembled and was almost carried away.
A Blessing
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more, they begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.James Wright
rood rudeness narrowly averted
Concurrent with the posting of my rant about the Seattle trees, I e-mailed a link to said post to Rabbi Bogomilsky. He must have read it upon returning from buying fish at Pike Place Fish Market, because he has relented in his threat to sue, and the trees are going back up.
My beloved Grandma, rest her soul, would say, “Thank you, Jesus.”
Time for some poetry, giving you a hint to the inscrutable title of this post.
Wondrous was that Victory Tree, and I the sinner guilty
and badly wounded with stain. There I observed the glorious
wood
adorned with garment that beautifully beamed,
garnished with gold; with it gems stood
covering splendidly the Lord’s tree.
I know, I know, I’m just a sideshow of paradox.
taking one for the team
NEW YORK – Peace activist Cindy Sheehan and three other women were convicted of trespassing Monday for trying to delivery an anti- war petition to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations and refusing to leave.
I’m glad my Mom never had to do that for me. In other words, there but for the Grace of God …
o tannenbaum
SEATAC, Washington (AP) — All nine Christmas trees have been removed from the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport instead of adding a giant Jewish menorah to the holiday display as a rabbi had requested.
Maintenance workers boxed up the trees during the graveyard shift early Saturday, when airport bosses believed few people would notice.
“We decided to take the trees down because we didn’t want to be exclusive,” said airport spokeswoman Terri-Ann Betancourt. “We’re trying to be thoughtful and respectful, and will review policies after the first of the year.”
Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky, who made his request weeks ago, said he was appalled by the decision. He had hired a lawyer and threatened to sue if the Port of Seattle didn’t add the menorah next to the trees, which had been festooned with red ribbons and bows. [Link]
Every year, it’s something. Every year, somebody sees Christmas as a fitting time for a fight, and hires a lawyer, and I am so tired of it. Every year, somebody expects Christmas to be refashioned to be all things to all people. Every year, somebody confuses the secular (Santa Claus/Christmas Trees) celebration with the religious (Birth of Jesus Christ/Nativity of the Son of God) reality, and gets his litigious knickers in a twist.
Christmas is the popular word used for a Christian religious holiday, The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The word Christmas itself is not an official Church sacramental term, but mostly we know what it means. In this part of the world, Christianity is the most prevalent religion, and the secular society has decided it’s fun to play along with the Christians, adding Santa Claus, reindeer, snowmen, etc. It’s pretty inoffensive. The Christmas tree is not a religious symbol, it’s a pagan and popular one, with only a vague cross-like symbolism. I mean, it’s vertical; it portends to rise from the corporeal to the divine. But it’s a dead tree, or plastic. It’s not a cross. Propping one up in a public place is not a de facto endorsement of Christianity. It’s an endorsement of evergreens at solstice, hohoho, mistletoe, chestnuts, egg nog, sleigh bells, santa and rudolph, “you’ll shoot you eye out, kid,” etc.
You do not have to be Christian to put up a tree, or lights, or exchange gifts, and doing so does not imply that you believe in Jesus Christ. That shibboleth is a bit more difficult to pronounce.
I’m all for Jewish folks and their Menorahs. God bless. A beautiful way to recall and celebrate a miracle. But tree is not to Christianity as Menorah or Star of David are to Judaism. Sure, I have a tree in my condo, with little ornaments, and my folks have a beautiful one with many lights and family heirlooms. I love Christmas trees, but we don’t pray around them. There’s no ritual. You put it up, decorate it, it’s fun. It’s not sacred. Our symbol is the Cross. If someone puts up a Cross in an airport, that’s when you get to demand equal protection.
If you went to Mecca or Tehran or elsewhere in the Muslim world, and demanded to nail up a cross during Ramadan or some other Muslim holy time, what do you think would be the reaction? Right, not well received. But we Christians are expected to donate our religious times to everybody else. We’ve already been overrun by commercialism. So if the good Rabbi wants to enlighten the bleak Solstice, maybe he should string some twinkly lights. Any color will do. And plain old UL-listed indoor-outdoor; no blessed oil required. Indeed, I can’t believe a Rabbi would want or permit a Menorah to be set up in an airport. I would be offended by a cross there. Doesn’t it mean something important, something that transcends picking up your luggage and trying to find the Hertz counter?
The lights on my balcony do not form a cross, because it’s a debasement of something Sacred to parade it around in public. That would be like me using Holy Water to clean my kitchen. Too bad the good Teacher in Seattle couldn’t just smile at the trees, and hope the kids were enjoying them, that the pretty robbons and bows lifted people’s spirits, brought some consolation to a embittered world in a dark time.
the last spike
WASHINGTON — The 109th session of Congress, frustrated by partisanship and criticized for its meager record of accomplishment, ended with flurry of bill-passing and promises of change when Democrats take over the House and Senate in January. [Link]
I am reminded that when the last spike of the transcontinental railroad was driven at Promontory Summit in northern Utah, the striking of it was broadcast by telegraph. I wish they had done something like that today, as Dennis Hastert gaveled the 109th Congress to its ignoble end. We have CNN, C-Span and the Net now. I would’ve liked to see it – that inauspicious moment – sigh into history.
Simply a moral vacuum.
Metaphor 