I saw something beautiful today. On my way home from Santa Barbara, just at sunset, I was coming through Montecito. The sky ahead in the east was darkening. I looked up and saw a fire truck pass ahead and above me on an overpass, its right lights spinning in twilight. As I had the windows closed and the AC on, the fire truck was silent.

One of those moments, you know?

Sometimes I go to the kitchen, make tea, and forget that I did. I’ll look down an hour later and see the cup sitting there like a sad, dark eye. It reminds me of these lines from James Wright:

I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

Waste is a kind of sin. Isn’t it better that God strike down an apple tree – that an orchard of blind apples goes up in flames wrought by summer lightning – than that one pinkish Fuji rot in my fridge?

There is something about waste that transcends cost, that surpasses infinitely the sum of its matter. It’s a failure of love, a failure of life. The apple, ripe with its Biblical allusion, was born to be eaten. It’s the only way it can live on; an apple’s eternity – and often an idea’s – depends on such subsumption. This tea, which I am still drinking despite its tepidity, is far too close for comfort to the ennui of a late spring late evening, failing to write or to thrive.

I mean it would be that way, if it really was that way. Maybe it’s not. Maybe I’m just a little bored and in a mood to watch myself write. (Some bigtime words in this post.)

And my tea got cold, is my point.

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.

–M. Scott Peck

Really? Why then, stick with me, gentle reader, and let us see together what my intransigent indolence and intractable existential dyspepsia might portend. And let’s hope it’s not a celestial vocabulary test; at least, not too soon.

They say the writer Dorothy Parker had the habit of answering the phone by exclaiming, “What fresh hell is this?” I have always admired this, and am frequently reminded of it. I’ve read that she initially started saying it whenever her train of thought was interrupted, then later began answering her phone this way.

Back then of course (Parker wrote in the 1920s and 1930s), there was no caller ID. So Parker had the guts to bellow this phrase at whomever happened to be jangling her life, and cutting short the frayed thread of her creative weaving. I like that. I don’t have the guts to do it – even with caller ID – and I wish I did.

Well, not really. Truth be told, I love the telephone; I always have. I like talking to people, and I’ve always wanted to be popular. So on my 17th birthday – 30 years ago next month – my folks got me my own phone and a private line. Here’s my old phone, next to one I’m using now.

State of the art in 1978, kids. But I don’t use it because it doesn’t work well anymore. There’s something wrong with the receiver. Maybe someday I’ll get it fixed, because you gotta admit that’s a real phone. It’s got heft. It’s a thing of substance, unlike today’s instruments. And unlike today’s blogging, in which I’ve kind of veered off into the trivial, from pondering a Calvin cartoon.

I suppose my point is that we writers are communicators at our core, that writing is our way of reaching out into the world and making ourselves available. We leave the line connected – unlike our little friend above, and unlike Parker with her implied demand for solitude – and we hope the phone rings.

Another great Parker quote:

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

The air over and around our little swale of California coastline has been unstable and disturbed. A snitty wind, an occasional spit of drizzle. It has matched my mood, which swooned last night when I picked up the newspaper at 1:00am, just to still my jittery thoughts and get some sleep.

“The newspaper?” you ask, incredulously. Weird, I know. I can’t remember the last time I picked up a paper for bedtime reading, instead of, say, poetry or a good novel. I wonder if God led to me pick up the press so I would find what I did.

I guess it would be good advice to say the obituaries are best perused in high daylight, because no one would prefer solitude and the small dark hours to learn that one of his friends is dead.

Over the weekend, I’ll write and share something about my old friend; his style, his kindness, his unique and interesting history. He was an acrobat, a dancer, a soldier, a friend. His name was George.

When I pass a church, I like to look at their sign, to see if there’s a message for me. Most churches, sadly, don’t feature the week’s sermon topic out front anymore, but if it’s out there, I’m slowing down. “Do Not Test God,” was the message for me on Thursday, at the Summerland Presbyterian Church, a few miles from my house.

Now it falls to me to look at what’s going on in my life — in my real life, not my mind — at this moment. Am I testing God? The first layer of truth I peel back has two sides:

I don’t know how it is with my life right now. I’m too busy thinking to call what I’m doing really living.

I’m always testing God. Always, I’m leaning into the wind instead of sailing with it. And saying to myself, “I can push this just a little farther, put off doing the next right thing just a little longer, and God won’t make me live with my consequences.”

For example, it’s 12:15AM. I have an appointment with my personal trainer for a workout at 7:00AM. I have to get up at 6:00ish to make that. And tomorrow night is the annual reunion of my high school band. It lasts most of the afternoon and through the evening. I should be asleep. I’m a middle-aged guy now. If I don’t quit blogging and rest, tomorrow night I’m going to feel like sh