Do you ever think about your ceilings? I do. Sometimes. Not very often. I mean, they just hang there, right?

Wrong. They mean something.

I was sitting in my desk chair this afternoon, taking a brief break from housecleaning – shredding some of the crapity crap crap people insist on sending me snailmail. I leaned back in the chair and looked up at my ceilings, and this is what I saw:

click to enlarge

And for some reason, looking up at my ceilings – which as you see are cottage cheese, acoustic ceilings – made me suddenly quite happy. Maybe because my place has a new roof, and this ceiling is one of the structures that keeps me safe from the elements. Maybe because the texture is so silly, imperfect and benign. Maybe because I’ve been in other places with such ceilings, in which I felt accepted, safe and loved.

I’ve thought about ceilings before. Several years ago, I wrote a prose poem/short story called Shasta in the Wind, in which the protagonist faces the prospect of suicide:

Walter looked at his idea, blue steel reflecting nothing in the dim lit room. There was nothing at all but weight in his hands. The sandpipers skittered and poked the sand about his feet and Shasta tugged, and then he heard it: Far at the southern end of Tar Harbor came the Amtrak he was waiting for. The ride he was promised, for which he held the ticket in his hands, and Shasta tugged the other end of it. Walter looked down and saw the air around the dog was going blue and the dog was pulling him into the blue. He felt with his tongue for a place for his big idea to fit; felt lightly as rising smoke the coffered ceiling of despair.

Ha ha! The roof of the mouth becomes a ceiling of despair, and the perfect place to fit the muzzle of poor Walter’s little gun. Does he do it? Read the story and find out, good pilgrim; I’m not giving it away.

And why coffered, you ask, beyond the obvious? Why, check this out, in good old T.S. Eliot:

In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her
strange synthetic perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or
liquid—troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odours;
stirred by the air
That freshened from the window, these
ascended
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
Stirring the pattern
on the coffered ceiling.

You’ll find that in A Game of Chess, one of the sections of The Waste Land.

In college, I did a senior paper on Eliot’s poems, which included observations on eroticism. My professor, whom I admired greatly, said that the eroticism in Prufrock was gay, but I didn’t buy that. He also said there was a symbolic vagina in the laquearia, the coffered ceiling, in the text above. I had some trouble paying cash for that one too. But so it goes.

As a final observation on the importance of ceilings, I refer you to the films of Orson Wells.

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Al Young, from Berkeley, was named California’s new poet laureate Thursday.

Young said one of the first things he wants to do is establish a state
poetry Web site “where young and old people of all kinds of ethnicities and
backgrounds can express themselves.”

“There is a sense of urgency to talk about some of the problems
threatening our planet and threatening our species,” Young said.

“Poetry is one of our oldest human languages. It goes behind the
chattering and speaks to the heart of things.”

[Sacramento Bee]

It is necessary to register on the Sacramento Bee Web site to read this article. It’s unfortunate; you probably won’t bother, and I don’t blame you. It’s a hassle. And I don’t understand why newspapers want to make it harder for people to view the content they work so hard to deliver.

I thought I’d do you all “a solid” and check out the new AIM mail, so you don’t have to. So you don’t need to bother. It sucks and bites. Big, ugly ads in the way, tag line at the bottom of your messages … and it’s slow to access from the AIM homepage. No competition here to Yahoo or even Hotmail. In my humble opinion.

Oh man. When Wal-Mart starts to drift with the tide, we know that the economy is in the horse latitudes. The high price of gas is only part of the story. There’s nobody at the helm, and the horses are nervous.

It got breezy this afternoon. I went to the bank. I got to the front of the line, at the end of the velvet rope and brass posts. And there I had the pleasure of staring at myself on a black and white TV which sat on the counter between the tellers’ windows. I was being watched by a camera on the ceiling. That was fun. No, I really hate that. What is that, a subtle warning to bank robbers? They don’t already know about the cameras? But I digress.

I left the bank and drove past the school where I went as a kid, and saw the American and California flags, flapping in the wind. They were thrust out due east, toward the playground.

I remember we used to run away out into the playground on windy days, turn and face the wind that was blowing due east. Then we’d hold open our nylon jackets – windbreakers – at the bottoms, and lean over into the wind. It could almost pick us up! Then we would run hard into the wind, spread our wings and jump – and for a moment we would fly.

Yesterday, I mailed the mortgage payment. I’m leaning a little on the grace period this month. So it goes. But I digress.

I did something evil this morning. I was driving past the school, heading the other way. Handel on the stereo. There was a group of kids by the fence, girls I think. And kids sometimes stand by the fence and try to get cars to honk, so I gave them a little toot toot with my silly Toyota truck horn and waved. Then I realized they were yelling “Our ball! Our Ball! Get our Ball!” and I passed their ball, in the gutter, doing 23 miles an hour and didn’t even slow down.

I didn’t want to stop and get out and cross the street and toss the ball over the fence. I was moving – places to go – and oh boy I’ve done it now. I mean, it you believe in Karma – little wheel turn by the fire and rod, big wheel turn by the grace of God – or just that what goes around comes around, I’ve really stepped in it this time, right?

Any thoughts on atonement would be appreciated. And since you’ve so graciously waded through my pitiful tale, here’s the poem you were expecting:

The Wind, One Brilliant Day

The wind, one brilliant day, called
to my soul with an odor of jasmine.

“In return for the odor of my jasmine,
I’d like all the odor of your roses.”

“I have no roses; all the flowers
in my garden are dead.”

“Well then, I’ll take the withered petals
and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain.”

The wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself:
“What have you done with the garden that was entrusted
to you?”

— Antonio Machado

More evidence that it is as I – a straight man – have long thought. Being gay is not a matter of aberrant choice, or sinful predilection. It is the physiology of the brain. It cannot be willed away, nor can it be encouraged or discouraged by parental intervention or psychotherapy. Gay men are, indeed, born that way. God’s will, and who am I to judge? Conversely, the hypothalamus does not need its own flamboyant parades or prissy, frolicking TV shows.

Frankly, I’m bored with all vicarious depictions of sex. Let’s all – the whole dogdarn human race – just change the subject. Thank you very much.

For Gay Men, an Attraction to a Different Kind of Scent – New York Times

Happy Mother’s Day to all the Moms out there. Sorry to have to break this to you, but my Mom is the best. She’s the most generous, selfless, loving lady on Earth. She has infinite personal integrity. And she could write a book of all the crap she’s endured … well, we won’t go into details on that. On the grounds it may tend to incriminate me.

The rest of you Moms are great too of course, but not this great. Here’s a star to guide you.

In last night’s post, I mentioned that I live life in the slow lane. Today I heard back on that thought, beyond the comment Erik left to that post.

One of my duties as an acolyte in the Liturgy is to read the Epistle for the day in English. This is a selection from the letters of St. Paul, sometimes from the Book of Acts. Another man reads them first in Slavonic. Today, before the time for that reading, the priest told me to read it more slowly this time. So I slowed my pace down quite a bit.

After the service, I asked if that was OK, or if it should be even slower. He said it should be slower, that I should read from my soul, and the congregation would listen more attentively. He pointed out that we are all headed to the same place — the grave — and there’s no need to be in a rush along the way.

Ponder that a while, buddies.

Today was the Orthodox feast day of Thomas the Apostle, source of the western expression, “doubting Thomas.” As I was listening to the things being read about him in church, one thing jumped out at me: his incredible courage. Can you even imagine the focus, the pressence of mind, required to reach out and touch the wounds of God?

is grounds in my mind to open an investigation leading possibly to impeachment of the president. The intelligence that served as basis for attacking Iraq was fabricated to fit his predilection to shed blood. And this is just a drop in the ocean of indictable, perhaps treasonous, evidence the man has simply shrugged off. It’s amazing. A brave new world.

British memo: U.S. data manipulated for Iraq war

Found on All That Arises.

I don’t know. Those last few posts are pretty stupid, aren’t they? Shallow. Vapid.

Sorry. I’ve been trying to punch things up a bit. Make the blog more interesting, maybe fun.

The truth is, I’m kind of a serious guy. Oh, I have a sense of humor. And it’s not as if I sit around pointing out the rules to everyone. But I like life in the slow lane. I spend a lot of time just … thinking. So I don’t have many adventures to write about.

Today, for example, I didn’t do much of anything but read, hang with the dogs, and do laundry. Then in the afternoon, I went to Church. I helped the priest serve Vespers and Matins, came home, watched TV and here I am.

I’m a writer. Poetry, short fiction, and a novel in process. I’ve tried sharing all that here, but it’s not been well received. It’s met with indifference. The faint chirping of crickets.

So which way should I go here? What do you want to see on this blog? Should I bring back the anti-war rants? Pictures of puppies? Come on, people, click the doggone comment link and convince me I’m not alone in the cosmos.

I know how it is to face a long weekend at home with nothing fun to do, so I’m going to pass along one of my favorite home activities. Don’t say I never hooked you up with some serious fun. My dog and I do this all the time and it’s a blast. Actually, you can do it at the office too, and you’ll want to eventually. But I’d practice at home first. It’s a sport originale!

It all started one night recently when I was watching Howie Mandel on Comedy Central. The guy’s still pretty funny. So I decided to get up and come down the hall – the entire length of my massive penthouse condo – and check the ol’ e-mail, filter through the shipload of comments on the blog, check messages on the Batphone, etc. I wanted to do this right away, but I couldn’t, because that insipid Disaronno booze commercial was on the tube yet still again, and that thing makes me want to launch lunch, you know? Seriously, I want to settle that bartender’s smarmy oversexed issues with a pitching wedge.

“Disaronno on the rocks.” Oh ho, mon petite, I’m getting’ me some tonight. Wink wink. Oiler than a bucket of anchovies.

The tube was on mute and I was half off the Barcolounger Longhorn , but I have to pass by the TV to get out of the room. I can’t stand to look at those greasy overactors again tonight, so I have to close my eyes. Right?

Right. Then it comes to me: I wonder if I can make it through the dining room, down the hall to my office, and to my computer with my eyes closed? Well it wasn’t easy the first time. The monitor was on standby, and the office was dark, so there was no glow through my eyelids to help me out. But I made it, and a new home entertainment sensation was born.

Seriously, this is better than karaoke, even it you live alone. But if you have housemates, it’s a blast. Blindfold each other! Careful of sleeping pets! But stay off the friggin’ Disaronno; this is a serious sport. You could wander head first into the bathtub, so dogsakes do it sober.