I am walking backward down this road, and so are you, I’ve decided. Life is like the backseat of a taxi, and that’s all there is to it: you can give instructions, but you’re still sitting there and somebody else is driving. I keep hitting potholes; I can’t see them coming because I am walking backwards. I keep going somewhere other that place I asked for. The curves, I’m getting used to walking off their edges. The steering wheel, I’m getting used to it twisting awkwardly.

I’m getting used to mixing my metaphors.

There was a spring once where I threw wheat into the air and plotted on a graph where it might land. Probabilities. Tonight is a fall two years later, two years of tilling and plowing and not looking back. Look back and it’ll fall apart, a voice whispers in my head. Look back and see nothing growing in the background. Look back on the wasteland of your labour.

And so it is; I am walking backward between furrows spread like a loam sea. Grass grows greener across fences, it’s true, and I can see my brothers and sisters of the plow and their various degrees of success and failure. I can watch them, now that I’ve set down the hardware.

Something to drink would be nice. But the taxi driver is crossing Nevada and taking me with him. If I walk far enough I’ll fall into a lake. Over and over and over the words roll and I begin to believe them.

You are also walking backwards down a road, I’ve decided. Not looking forward, but looking back. Plowing, always looking forward, never looking back. There’s a feeling in my bones that this isn’t finished; maybe we’re looking for the wrong kind of payoff, and one day my plow will hit something buried in the ground.

Maybe I’ll walk backwards into paradise.

Maybe I’ll be driven to a place beyond my imagination.

Maybe I’ll pull a notched jawbone from beneath the iron impliments I wield, and recognize the profile; I’ll laugh and laugh that I finally got somewhere and this is where it is; I’ll pick up that jawbone and slay a thousand - no! ten thousand - dreams with it. I’ll become an archeologist, and remove your rusty weapons from amongst the bones.

I like puzzles and figuring them out. I’m pretty good at it, too. I’ve sometimes wondered if I should have perhaps been a detective or a doctor, but I think the blood and guts might freak me out a bit too much.

What about you? What are you good at?

dan (is asking a question of his readers)

You know what the odd thing is? You can reduce human desire down to three primary motivating factors that influence decision-making. But at the end of the day, when all those things are stuck in the balance and you have no idea what to do, how do you make up your mind? I did, just recently. I went with my gut.

You see, I can’t tell the future. I can extrapolate. I can extend lines. I can hope for the best. But there always seems to be some bizarre curve in the road that I never could have aniticipated; some strange twist to the plot that leaves me scratching my head and wondering about the author.

Is this a good choice? Who knows. I’m not even sure if it matters as much as they say it does. I mean, things matter - but do they have to be so heavy? People with amputated limbs can live happy lives if they so choose. People whose children have died can get over it and go on and even find joy in the midst of ashes. I can live with this small weight strapped to my back.

It’s just the prelude, this life. There’s an eternity wrapped like an onion around this core of eighty years, or ninety. And my choices aren’t an accident. I didn’t come to this crossroads like cat in a box waiting to see whether he lives or dies: I cam here on purpose. Do I know what the purpose is? No. I faith that there is one. Am I going to get an answer from the sky? No. I have faith that there is one, though.

That’s the enigma of God right there. He works with faith like bright threads, like sunrise. You can look at life and call it meaningless. You can look at God and say he has no voice. You can also rest in the everlasting arms, and hear a still, small voice after the whirlwind has passed. That, also, is your choice.

We Reformed have a particular vice when it comes to choice. Clearly, we make our choices. Some are optimal, some are suboptimal. Somehow, though, we always want to peek through God’s eyes and - because we know he’s in charge of the orchestra - figure out what notes to play before the page is turned for us. But I’m not God, and I don’t have his perspective. I have my perspective and from here I can see my nose, my hair, my hands. I don’t see the finger guiding me toward the conclusion reached when the world was a glimmer in a Triune eye.

I may live, never having heard a word from the Lord. Never. I may not understand anything. I may never have a clear-cut choice to make. But still, I’ll choose; and in my choices there will be joy.

Dan (is trying to walk somewhere… and isn’t getting there easily)

There’s an elephant in the room here, and nobody wants to talk about it. The conversations are subdued. It’s sound like the taste of water. In the absence of words, all we have is our conjecture, and you have named it a treetrunk to your rope. At the end of all things, though, we can call it what we like, an elephant it remains.

Maybe it was the image, that perfect image in my head, left in contrast for staring too intently. My silence, and your laughter. No matter your intentions, the picture lingers and will until its purge and retribution.

Two days. I’ve started counting down the hours, the minutes forming like spirals. I am a whirlwind. You are a shelter. I am a hurricane. You are nailing fast the shutters. I am tsunami. You are trekking inland.

I have seen the Grand Canyon, and it’s an honest gulf; no pretenses. It craters and stretches, a stark relief to its surroundings, the plains and hewn roads. We are perhaps both trying to cross in our own ways, mitigating damage and making plans. What do to if this bridge gives? And as you knit your elaborate parachute, I’m strapping dynamite to my chest.

I swerve in and out the margins like crazed letters in a spiralbound notebook. I don’t make sense. I’m backwards and upside down. Or maybe it’s perspective - you are moving and the universe is standing still, upside down and backwards.

It burns. Silence, still. An elephant suspended over a cliff on uneasy words, and I don’t trust their threefold cord, not with this perfect image in my head.

Again, I am a safekeeper cracking vaults. I know all the ways in, and I have taped them shut. And when you take baby steps, knife in hand, I move to the side and let you continue. If you must be decrypted, I must watch as you unravel yourself. I can’t help here. The guiderails have been set: let’s see who follows.

Let’s talk about leaving, and how things are never the same when one returns. Again, perspective. The world goes away and remains unchanged. It returns and you’re a dimension deeper. You fold in on yourself and reach around the other side to touch my shoulder. I am the same, but you’ve been startled. You drink your first cup of coffee, and you are the same, but the liquid suddenly has a face. You drive, and the road moves under you, and your destination creeps up when you aren’t looking, when you forget about the wheel and pedals. You tie a string around your finger, and alchemy turns it gold. A silver ring slips off your finger years before and feels naked without the flesh and bone and sinew wrapped inside it. You remain silent while the entire world speaks in cacophony. You become time and move with the minute hand.

You stare the elephant in the eyes, know its name, and the irises are blindingly familiar. You recognize the striations. You are a mirror, uncertain when to move, but certain that you should.

Drama. I hate it.

I’m not sure of a lot of things right now; whether or not they’re worth it. I guess we’ll see.

I realize this blog has been without a salient post in a great while, and I feel it my duty to the public, proper, to once again regale you with more of my real-life adventures. Not the ones I made up on the way home from work that involve either pirates or ninjas. Speaking of which, I wonder this quite often: which is cooler, to be a pirate, or to be a ninja? The answer to that question might indeed be the glue that holds reality together, due to the overwhelming influence that ninjas and pirates have had on popular culture and the armed forces.

I digress, however. I should be talking about my day at the beach, and instead I have begun to ramble about pirates and ninjas. Although the topic is fascinating, and I’d like to see more research time taken from scientists who study the effects of global warming on the flow of Heinz ketchup from a bottle, and instead given to those that study the effects of global warming on the perceived coolness of ninjas versus the perceived coolness of pirates.

I trigress. This Monday was Labour Day, a time to celebrate the fact that we can work and receive regular paycheques by spending said paycheques on our day off in various restaurants and parks whose workers celebrate Labour Day by labouring so they can receive a regular paycheque and possible tips instead of living in a cardboard box and eating the cast-off tuna sandwiches of the middle class. One must wonder - how do they celebrate Labour Day? Do they dream of starting a union and picketing? Would they, perhaps, picket on Labour Day to protest that they have to work on Labour Day, thus poisoning the well for everyone else? It’s a good question, and the answer could possibly prove once and for all whether or not labour unions are indeed a good invention that have been corrupted by Satan and should all be gathered into the Texas desert and converted to an alternative energy source. I, for one, would drive a car that accepted biodiesel created from union labourers. Except, of course, if the byproduct of a unionized worker was also terribly inefficient and would stop my car at random times to demand job security and a pet monkey. I kid, of course. Unions don’t typically ask for pet monkeys.

I quadragress, if there’s such a thing. This Monday, Labour Day, I spent hours at the beach in much the same fashion a lobster spends time in a pot of boiling water. That is to say my tiny screams of horror were not heard over the sounds of water and wind, and by the time it was all over I was a delicious shade of red and several hungry children were gnawing on my leg. Or, that’s just the way it feels thanks to the fact that I didn’t imagine I would need sunblock on my legs of all places! What a silly concept! The sun doesn’t go that far down!

Apparently it does, considering how painful it is to walk. Mental note: buy sunscreen and avoid beaches. I brought my guitar to the beach, as is my custom that I started this year, realizing that I would have to play a eulogy for my nine years of attending the Labour Day Modest Beachwear Party. Nine years! I’m far too old to be doing such things. In fact, I spent most of the day giving life lessons to the younger denizens of our little beachfront stakeout. Little jems such as, (to the girl who didn’t know what to play on the guitar), “When you’re holding a guitar on the beach, there are only three things; you, the guitar, and the beach. The beach does not care what you play, nor does the guitar. So play.” And to the guy who was playing in a manner I can only describe as “brave”, “Kurt Cobaine is already dead. Please don’t kill him again.” And to the people who were intent on killing every form of creeping or flying life no matter how remotely threatening, “A bee is an itegral part of creation. Every bee that exists is there for a reason, and that reason is not so you can decide whether or whether not to bring it’s life to an end. Not to mention that the bee you agitate is not likely to sting you: it’s more likely to sting someone around you, and as such, you are causing needless potential pain for other people.” Of course, humans never listen to other humans unless those other humans are grinding up their gold and making them eat and drink it. As it was, several bees died needlessly because the Beach People decided to drink things that attract bees.

This, of course, brings up an interesting question. When one asks, “Do you catch more flies with vinegar or honey?” I tend to ask why the false dichotomy? Why would a person want to catch flies other than to destroy them as pests? How does that make a good analogy for any sort of human relational dilemma, unless one is a dictator of a small banana republic? In fact, it’s a great deal more likely that you’ll catch more bees than flies with honey, and bees are well known to defend the honey they have just found with a force that’s rather lethal to them and sometime also quite lethal to those they sting. The analogy, I think, is flawed in exactly the same manner as “too many cooks spoil the broth” is when contrasted with “many hands make short work.” It’s witty and partially true, but at the end of the day life is about more than attracting a set of handsome flies to mount on pins and show off to the underwhelmed general public. I’m just saying the inherent contradiction renders the supposed lesson of the proverb untenable.

We sang on the beach, too. Interestingly enough, we sang several slow songs really fast. Like “How Deep the Father’s Love”, which is most certainly a slow song. In fact, Kevin will agree with me here: it’s a very slow song and deserves the dignity of being played a tempo that graces its subject matter. Days of Elijah, on the other hand, deserves the opposite. I’m not trying to be overly critical, but here’s how it breaks down: if you’re leading on guitar and you slavishly follow one rhythm, it’s likely that rhythm won’t fit all or even most of the songs the populace would like to pick, and you’ll end up singing song way too fast or way too slow, or your strumming will be wildly out of sync with the song itself as you labour to keep up. You see, I may not be a guitar-playing genius, but I do know at least that much, and I would beg the world to at least make a mental note, should the world decide to pick up said stringed instrument.

We, and by we I mean my posse in general, ate at Kelsey’s afterwards, which is always a rewarding experience. And due to my exposure to massive amounts of sun, having not eaten anything yet that day, and several other extenuating factors I won’t bore you with, the double Scotch I ordered went straight to my head and caused me to act like a monkey. Although I can’t say that giggling uncontrollably about Kevin and his delicate treatment of our earstwhile waitress was unenjoyable. It was, in fact, great fun.

Speaking of waitresses, I generally enjoy my culinary service experience in Canadian venues, but this Kelsey’s was different. I’ll cut the waitress a modicum of slack due to the fact that we were all sunburned and happy while she had probably been treated like the Disaster Zone Food Ferry all day long, but please. At least fake a smile that looks like a smile not being faked instead of a fake smile that looks like someone just lit your hair on fire and called your mother a vulgar name! I mean, humour me. If only for your tip’s sake and for your own fragile sanity. The waitress we had was obviously not happy to see us. I understand, youths don’t generally tip very well, but let me explain something to you waitresses. If a certain subset of the population tips in a steriotypical manner and you give them service that fits with your presupposition, how are they likely to tip? Exactly. And if you didn’t follow that, I mean “not very well”. That is to say, you are perpetuation the steriotype by giving them bad service. The only way to break out of that rut is for you to do the honest, noble thing, which I like to call “your job”. Do it well, and I will tip you well. Don’t bother giving proper service, and I will tip you like a shoeshiner that spits on my leather and leaves it there. The end!

Afterwards, I drove Nick’s car to his house and took a certain female back to hers. And Shana, I have your stuff in the back of my car. If you have any need of it, I apologize profusely for having not dropped it off at the local coffee shop.

And also, I lied. This post was most certainly not about a day at the beach. I wrapped some other stuff in a day at the beach. I sideswiped your head. I’d apologize for that, but I’ve run out. Tomorrow, maybe?

It’s lunch hour. Or lunch half-hour. I’m eating a delicious bowl of pasta soup and drinking bottled water from a most dubious bottler. It, however, still tastes like water. That is to say it doesn’t taste like much.

I also just got off the drums, having given “Say it Ain’t So” by Weezer a brand new rhythm section. I call it the “Slow Descent into Madness” remix. Basically, I took the first verse and chorus and downtempoed them to a seemingly slower jazz beat, picked it up a bit for the second verse and chorus and then for the bridge, built until the climax of the song which turned into a five minute drum solo. By which time the song had long ended, but hey, Weezer’s never going to know. Then, with a final double-splash, it ended.

Dan (Finito.)

When I was young, or more to the point, when I was young and stupid, I heard the Jars of Clay album “Worlds Apart”. Not only did I hear it, but I tore it to shreds in my mind and in conversation, not due to the album art that some people found so offensive, but because of the lyrics that I deemed in my immaturity to be so darn unclear. And by “unclear” I didn’t mean that I didn’t get the point of most of them: I did. I just didn’t like the point they were making.

I remember being a huge advocate of music that proclaimed Christ. A noble goal, you think? Yes. I think it is, and there’s a lot of really great music that does just that, music that I listen to. But in my head, any musician worth his spiritual salt would sing only about spiritual themes. Amen. I supposed if I had been inventing instruments for them to play on, said instrument would play only three notes, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Of course, now that I’m old and stupid, I can laugh over my youthful intellectual indiscretions. Right now, I’m listening to “Worlds Apart” and actually really enjoying it. I don’t terribly like the music, and it’s not half as well-produced and -structured as their most recent albums or their first, but it’s pleasant enough to run through every once in while.

I’m not going to go into why my perspective changed, or why I think Christian musicians should sing about things that don’t directly draw lines to God. Instead, I’d rather put it in personal terms. I simply hadn’t the context to appreciate these songs when I was young. Jars sing of complex things, and even though their efforts are sometimes a little cheesy (ever heard “Tea and Sympathy?), they paint a compelling picture by painting around the corners of what we’re normally thinking about. And though I really do think the metaphor in “Tea and Sympathy” is a little… overextended… I understand exactly where the narrator of that song is coming from. And I appreciate what he says now because I’m not a small blathering child anymore talking about things I don’t understand. Not that I have already attained, but I’ve gotten somewhere in the intervening time. And that somewhere understands those great songs by Derek Webb on Caedmon Call’s green and purple albums, the ones that talk about spending nights with friends talking about loneliness and straws that break camel’s backs and driving until hands stick to the steering wheel.

Dan (I want more musicians to write about food, because food is the best metaphor ever.)

I wonder what the future will look like. Okay, not the future in which we have flying cars and cities where trains fly through the air like antigravity-equiped serpents. But the future of me. That little slice of tomorrow that belongs so far as I know to this guy and his frail plans.

What works out? What doesn’t? (I’m not so influenced by the always-put-on-a-smile people that I must insist that even when things don’t work out like I want them to they’ve still worked out. They haven’t. If I haven’t gotten what I wanted, then my desire has been disappointed and from my point of view it hasn’t worked out. The end) Where do I go? Where do I get away from? Is the journey the thing, or is it the destination?

I think everything will be fine - at least in the grand scheme of things. Maybe I won’t always get I want, but it’s probably better that way anyways. Even the apostle Paul didn’t get what he wanted all the time, despite being lifted into the heaven of heavens. In fact, he got a thorn in the flesh.

Maybe that’s it, that prayer that God always denies. That healing, that place, that person. Maybe in the third all three wrapped together. But I’ll be fine, I think.

Dan (Don’t I want more than fine, though? No. I’m not arrogant to believe that I deserve better than fine, and if I get that much I’ll be happy.)

ps: Totally unrelated, but the problem with having an amazing life is that it quickly becomes the status quo and you become accustomed to life at that level. You can never have a truly “amazing” marriage, because you get used to things being amazing and gradually focus like you always will on the little things that have gone wrong. The only way to truly have an amazing life is to understand that heights are matched by depth and proceed from there to a place where you’re thankful for what you’ve been given.

My name is Dan. I am a white guy. I weigh about 235 pounds on a good day. Some of that is even muscle, I’m proud to say.

I own a black 2003 Ford Focus. It’s pretty dirty inside right now because I’m posting on my blog instead of cleaning it out. Actually, there’s another car parked in my driveway and I can’t clean it out on the road. Instead, I’m polishing my shotgun collection. Okay, I live in Canada so I’m not really allowed to have a shotgun collection.

I have a fish. The fish should have died long ago due to the fact that I didn’t feed him for a two-week period when I was majorly depressed and wanted something other than me to go belly-up.

My answering machine is currently on the system default answer. My telephone number is 9056158247. My social insurance number is yeah right you don’t get that particular set of digits. I don’t have a cell phone anymore mostly because when I drive I drive and that’s all I do and I hate being interrupted in the middle of driving.

I am a Christian. No, not one of those mildly-crazy barnacles on the good ship James Dobson, nor an I the fling myself at the wall and call it a spiritual gift sort of person. In fact, my religious experience is less of having strong feelings of romantic emotion toward God and more of a safety in the knowlege that I’m not dead anymore. I’m Calvinist, but thanks to the internet and its monks, I need to qualify that I’m not going to take the Institutes and beat you with them until you repent in blood and ashes. On the other hand, if you’re not a Calvininst, you’re wrong, even though you’re probably still saved if you’re a Christian of the evangelical variety. I know, it’s not particularly en vogue to say those sorts of things, but:

I believe that there is a right and there is a wrong theology. I also believe theology is in the fingertips: many an Arminian I’ve know has had better kinetic theology than the Calvinists I’ve become aquainted with over the years. Of course, they just don’t know they’re living a contradiction, but there you have it.

I haven’t written a song in a week. Sad to say, I know. My sister is getting married. I have several more that don’t seem as anxious to make it to the altar. I’m singing a song at her wedding.

I am tired.

Dan (But it’s not late! Dang!)