Will Work for Blessings

What is faith(fulness)?

2011-05-06T08:35:00.000-07:00

Each morning (well, most mornings) I begin my day by reading from Common Prayer, not the Book of Common Prayer of the Anglican Church, but the devotional with a social justice bent by the dreadlock-wearin', Jesus-lovin' Shane Claiborne. Like many devotionals, Common Prayer is a mix of brief refrains repeated throughout the reading, psalms, songs, Scripture and an invitation to pray. Notably, it doesn't just say that -- pray, meaning, ask for whatever you want. It explicitly invites the reader to pray for others.

Selfishly, I have found this to be incredibly difficult, to pray only for the needs of others and not my own. So occasionally I'll sneak in my own requests here and there -- sometimes at the beginning of my devotions, sometimes at the end. This is especially true when the life of whoever I'm praying for is inextricably linked to my own life and behavior, like my wife, my daughters, my coworkers. For instance, my wife was recently diagnosed with a bulging disk low in her spine, and in the weeks that we've been waiting to figure out what's next, I've continually prayed for God to heal her (through divine intervention or through the God-given talents of a neurosurgeon) but also for God to grant me patience, humility and strength as I manage, solo, our household and family (clean, cook, mow, grocery shop, etc.). Yeah, maybe I'm cheating a little from what Common Prayer is asking me to do. But when I pray for things like patience, I really believe I am kinda praying for others, too, because when I get angry, impatient, grumpy, others suffer along with me.

Which leads me to this: our relationship with God is not a binary, either you're being faithful or you're not, kinda thing. In fact, I'm discovering that faith is at best a messy, inexact, often chaotic affair. Things are rarely clearcut. Cause and effect, so central to the process of scientific discovery, don't always follow one another in the Kingdom of God. A prayer for healing "wasted" on a man who proves to be insane may--because the act was witnessed by someone--result in a dozen people giving their lives to Jesus. Because you plant an apple seed in New Jersey, God's creation--via a complex ecosystem, wind currents and the migratory patterns of birds--may provide a hungry child in South America with fruit to eat and live another day. Pure Salvador Dali, baby. Loaves and fishes. Do I mean all this literally? Well, yeah, I guess I do. I believe God's love is a furnace that transforms our mediocrity and selfishness into pure gold, our sins rising like dross to the surface where they are skimmed off and thrown into the darkness.

So faith isn't about believing right things, or never making mistakes. It's about knowing who you belong to, and returning to that source of life again and again. Admitting, along with the disciples, that for all the allure of this world, for all the come-ons and distractions, there is nowhere else to go but the Father's arms. Messy, broken and lost as we are.

The concluding prayer in Common Prayer this morning seems apt:

You hear our prayers whether they are full of thanksgiving or full of complaints. Your mercy is unending. Even in your discipline you restrain yourself in ways we cannot know. May our mumbled words of gratitude and our fleeting praises find crevices where they can grow within your presence, Lord of light and morning. Amen.

Magnolia

2009-04-30T12:57:00.000-07:00

Two trees flank the driveway of our house, an ornamental crabapple on one side and a decrepit magnolia on the other. You don’t much notice them the rest of the year. But in the spring, like Plain Janes all gussied up for their very first prom night, they are something to behold. Almost in defiance of nature and seemingly overnight the crabapple bursts forth with thousands of tiny white flowers and the magnolia’s buds, which look a little like alien pods ready to spawn green-tentacled critters, erupt into gorgeous, waxy pink and cream blossoms that are large and delicate as teacups. They don’t give off much perfume, or maybe my middle-aged sniffer has become too inured to delicate scents, but what a visual feast! No matter how bad a day at work I’ve had, my chest swells with pride and my heart uplifts with bliss when I round the corner to our street and take in the spectacle in our front yard.

A few years ago, when some of the cousins were visiting, I cobbled together a swing from some heavy nylon rope and a plank of maple, clambered up the step ladder and tied the two rope ends to one of the magnolia’s thicker limbs with the only knot I know – the half-hitch. Any good sailor or farmer will tell you that except for maybe securing the laces of your tennis shoes or lashing shut a Hefty bag, this knot is useless and utterly unreliable. So I had no illusion this was a permanent fixture and I fully intended to dismantle it after the cousins left. But maybe it was raining, or I got distracted, and I never got around to taking that swing down, and my kids, and my kids’ friends, and the cousins, who have come back a few times since, still love to ride it, screaming with glee, or lost in reverie, under the bobbing, knobby branch of the magnolia. Yeah, I worry that one day those amateur knots will give out and someone will make a hard landing—hopefully nothing worse—and I will berate myself for not taking the deadly contraption down sooner. But when I see a child with the wind in her hair pumping her legs under that canopy of blousy blossoms and laughing, it is like a dream of childhood that I never want to see end.

Sadly, the spectacle is too brief. In late April, barely a day passes without a gentle shower or a brief thunderstorm to wash the road sand and winter grit down the storm drains and make everything bright and clean and fresh, get the earth ready for another chance at Eden. The weather takes a toll on the crabapple and magnolia, though. May is still a day away and already the driveway is littered with fallen petals, turning brown, staining the concrete and giving off a smell my aging nose can detect, the smell of vegetation slowly turning to rot. Melinda says that before the rains the magnolia is like a wedding, and after the rains like the post-celebration, the dance floor littered with confetti and cocktail napkins, the guests all gone home to sleep off the celebration. And the bride and groom in some undisclosed location happily dozing in one another’s arms and dreaming of their future together.

Incredible video using only still photos

2008-01-24T07:32:00.000-08:00

Twenty days. Twenty thousand still images. A single message. Toronto Star photographer Lucas Oleniuk captures the issue of global warming in a video created entirely by using still images. It's part of the countdown to Earth Hour, March 29.

Click here to view it. It's lovely, and depressing, all at the same time.

Worth a listen

2008-01-09T00:35:00.000-08:00

I'm a frequent visitor to the Vineyard Community Church of Iowa City Website. Two big reasons are the church's pastors, Adey and Tom Wassink. They are two of the most dynamic, poignant, smart, funny (funny is very important to me; though it’s not in the Bible, I imagine Jesus laughed quite a bit), eloquent, engaged and real preachers I’ve ever heard. I know this because, every chance I get, I go to the Vineyard site and download and listen to mp3s of their sermons. (Go here, click on Downloads in the left-hand navigation bar, and then on Teachings.)

Adey and Tom spin wonderful stories, drawing from the Bible, of course, and tradition, yes, but also from their own lives, detailing their personal and spiritual travails and the opportunities they encounter for exemplifying Christ, as well as the struggles and joys of members in their congregation, and of their church as a body. Adey's most recent lesson begins with a story about an almost surreal encounter with a severely asthmatic woman and her traveling companions late Christmas Eve night in Chicago's O'Hare airport during a harried attempt to get home in time to be on church Sunday. The story, and intricately woven lesson contained within it about making one's life matter, is incredibly moving.

Trust me: listen to these sermons and you will be transported. You will feel lighter and more substantial at the same time. You will laugh. You will cry. You will yearn to be part of a community like theirs, part of the vision they so vividly and passionately describe. Above all, you will be inspired and challenged to serve Jesus Christ more creatively, more dynamically, more immediately. I am not exaggerating when I say I await the posting of a fresh sermon each week the way a five-year-old child looks forward to Christmas morning.

I read a lot of books. Books on theology, mission, evangelism, social justice. Occasionally I’ll come across a particularly well-turned phrase or anecdote that makes my heart soar with a sense of new possibility. But I don’t retain much of what I read, and in very short order the text, the lessons, the anecdotes begin to sift out of my brainpan like sand through a sieve, leaving little behind. But the stories Adey and Tom tell, their sermons, stay with me for weeks, for months. I’ve shared a few with my wife and we’ve talked about them for days afterward, in particular one of Adey’s teachings about demanding maturity from one's husband or wife. I won't go into why my wife found that topic so fascinating.

Like the best stories, theirs impart lessons but also inspire a certain joyful urgency, an anxiousness to roll up one’s sleeves and get to God’s work. If you have time and courage (because these are more than nice, neat Sunday School lessons), I encourage you to listen. And if there are some sermons/talks out there that have had a big impact you, let me know so I can post links to them here.

Peace

Stephen

Just For the Feng of It

2005-02-18T13:52:00.000-08:00

It’s amazing the kind of curiosity you can stir when you do something as seemingly innocuous as clean your office.

I admit it, I’m a bit of a slob. OK. I’m not as bad as my old friend, Fritz. His apartment was perennially strewn with dirty clothes, dinner plates of congealing beef bones from the local Steak-Out restaurant and paychecks he never seemed to get around to cashing. One time he so convinced himself he was going to be fired from the newspaper where we worked as reporters that he stocked his freezer with six months worth of meat. He also bought a pair of pricey Kenneth Cole shoes for future job interviews, and then refused to take them out of the velvet bag they came in and actually wear them for fear of scuffing them up.

But I digress.

Neatness and organizational skills aren’t my strong suits. I like a tidy house just like the next metrosexual husband of the 21st Century. At home, I’m more inclined than not to pick up the stray sock and toss it in the hamper, empty and reload the dishwasher when the sink starts getting full and wipe down the bathroom countertop when it gets a tad too hairy for my liking.

Work, however, is another matter.

A lot of paperwork crosses my desk each day. OK. Not so much crosses as flounders halfway across the channel, gets leg cramps and sinks beneath the undulating waves of languishing press releases, story tips, newspapers, magazines, phone messages and notebooks, settling into a papery pauper’s grave. Dust gathers there too. And crumbs from lunches long digested and forgotten. Sometimes money and plastic toys my girls play with when they visit my office. Now and again I hear the faint howl and moan of a small dog, but I suspect this is rather a trick of acoustics and that the dog is actually outside somewhere or else a complete figment of my imagination.

Well, a week ago I decided to do something about the mess. My computer was being upgraded and could not be used for a couple of hours, so rather than stare out the window I thought it would be a good idea to neaten up the place where I essentially live for forty hours a week. I threw away a forest of paper, actually put files in my big gray file cabinet (so THAT’S what that’s for), wiped down all flat surfaces and a few vertical ones, donated an extra chair to my friend Blaze. My wife, excited at the prospect of no longer needing a tetanus shot when she comes to visit, celebrated my clean sweep by buying for me a small bookcase and a lamp so I wouldn’t have to sit in the glare of overhead fluorescent lights anymore. I had to admit, the lamp provided a nice aesthetic balance to the tabletop fountain I made during a fit of craft-mania one year.

Others seemed to notice, too.

“Looks like you’ve been watching a little too much ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,’” my alleged friend, Blaze, said as he walked by my office one morning. “Trying to put a little more Feng in your Shui?”

I noticed he was carrying a bag full of potting soil and other products for the plants he was nursing in his own office.

“Look who’s calling the kettle black,” I retorted smartly, cranking up my CD of chanting Benedictine Monks to drown out his ridicule.

A couple days later Blaze stopped by again and took a look around my now clean and sparkly office.

“You know, you can get your aura realigned too if you want,” he said. A few minutes later he sent an email proving that he wasn’t fibbing – a university in California (where else?) apparently offers the service to students, faculty and staff through its health clinic. I tried to imagine what an aura realignment entailed exactly. Did they rotate your chakras? Top off your body fluids? Would hot candle wax be involved?

Another coworker used the occasion of my recent office purge to recount her experience at a local spa. After her massage, the masseuse said my colleague still seemed a bit tense and offered to do a "magnetic deruffling" for her, gratis. The masseuse drifted toward the foot-end of the table, but my friend was stomach down and couldn’t tell what the masseuse was up to down there.

“Now,” said the masseuse, sotto voce, “I want you to relax and imagine a blue flame at the bottom of your feet.”

“Oooookay,” my friend responded.

And then – nothing. No sound. No sensation. Curious, my friend craned her neck to take a peak and found the woman making dramatic sweeping motions with her hands, from just behind her feet toward the floor. Needless to say, my friend was not impressed.

Then I got a Feng Shui kit.

It was a gift from Blaze and his wife, Amy, who picked it up at a Starbucks, where they make almost daily pilgrimages for the new Chantico drink, which I’ve been assured tastes like a liquid brownie. Strangely, although I love chocolate, I find the idea of a liquid brownie unappetizing. The Feng Shui kit, on the other hand, is pretty sweet.

This is what it comes with: Tazo tea in three flavors -- Zen, Calm and Awake; a Feng Shui Color Guide, a Legend of Feng Shui, Three Powerful Figures of Fortune, the Feng Shui Guide to Happiness, a list of Nine Perfect Thoughts, a Feng Shui Wind Poem, Three Lucky Coins and One Powerful Dragon Figure.

Imagine, all that wisdom and serenity in a box that weighs in at just 1.4 ounces.

Of course, the figures are little cardboard cutouts, as are the coins. And the Nine Perfect Thoughts, which are to be torn off at the perforations and carried around for good luck, are about as profound as the slips of paper you find in fortune cookies at low-rent Chinese restaurants. They range from banal to painfully unfunny. To wit (or not):

“I possess the luck and the fortune of the dragon.”

“When my furniture is in alignment, I no longer bump my shins.”

“Don’t forget to turn off the stove before I leave to work.”

“Perhaps this is the year I will get new drapes.”

And so on.

In the brief Legend of Feng Shui I learn that the term itself is pronounced foong shway, not like something Garth from Wayne’s World might say when a good-looking woman passes by.

I have to admit, though, I do kind of like the Wind Poem, or “weathergram,” that comes with the kit. It’s basically a tag where you can write down a simple thought, prayer or poem, and then hang it from a tree limb for some stranger to find. Inside the tag it says, “If you are touched by the message on this Wind Poem, please feel free to take it: You might offer the string to a bird for its nest.”

I like the idea of leaving inspirational messages where people you don’t know might find them, the anonymous kindness of it. It seems like a very simple, pure gesture in a world where we’re bombarded by messages and demands and come-ons. There’s no reward for our gesture – or at least none we will know about. If we find the tag missing one day, it could just be that the wind blew it down, or some litter officer stuffed it in his trash bag, or a bird decided to use the whole thing to line its nest. Then again, maybe someone who was on the edge of despair came across it just when she needed it and thought of it has a blessing from an angel, which in a way maybe it was.

So the next time you’re out and about, walking among the budding trees, keep an eye peeled. There might just be a little Wind Poem blowing in the breeze, waiting for you to pluck it from a quivering branch.

How Shui it is.

A Wing and a Prayer

2005-02-08T20:12:00.000-08:00

From up here it looks like someone murdered the Holy Spirit.

The pigeon is splayed on its back against the alley’s wet, filthy pavement, its head wreathed in fresh blood. The tail feathers are fanned out, and the smoky blue wings – which are creamy white on the undersides – are half open and akimbo. The head is cocked slightly and a solitary, tangerine eye remains open and fixed on the purple-gray sky as if the pigeon is waiting for someone to descend from the clouds, scoop it up and take it back where it belongs.

I’d heard the soft thump of flesh striking glass, a common enough occurrence in an office building with large picture windows. Usually the bird glances off, tumbles a bit and then claws its way back into the air, no worse for the encounter. But this was different. It sounded different. The flurry of feathers dropped away and down like a diver pitching backwards off the gunwale of a boat. I stood up to look where it had gone.

The pigeon was upright on the ground, two stories below, taking halting steps along the alley and shaking its head, the way people do in cartoons when they’re trying to shake loose some crazy idea. Okay, I thought. It’s disoriented. In a minute or two it’ll flex its wings, scoop up some air and join the thirty or forty of its kin making the mid-afternoon rounds of the downtown sky. Only it didn’t. The head-shaking slowed until the pigeon looked like it was nodding off to sleep.

I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer, asking God to fix whatever was hurting in the bird. I tried to will it to fly. But the impact and fall broke something inside it that was beyond repair. Suddenly, the pigeon started flapping violently and flipped itself onto its back. That’s when I saw the splatters of blood on the ground, the red glistening in its beak. It took two or more shuddering breaths and then it died.

Now I feel as though I’m in mourning. Yeah, maybe it’s a little crazy. I mean, lots of people consider pigeons to be nothing more than “flying rats” that carry diseases and crap on statues and fight over breadcrumbs in the public squares, making a general nuisance of themselves. But I’ve never liked to see birds or other animals in peril or suffering. I always brake for squirrels. If there’s a bug in the house, I catch it, open the door and let it loose outside. Once, when I was living in South Carolina, I stopped my car to help a turtle cross the road because I was afraid the next driver might not notice it and smash it to smithereens.

A couple years ago I made the mistake of leaving a door open to my garage a few days too many. A family of sparrows came in and built a nest in a stack of wood I kept on shelves mounted close to the ceiling, which meant that I couldn’t close the door all summer because the mom and dad sparrows wouldn’t be able to go out and look for food for the babies. One morning I saw that a recently hatched chick had fallen from the perch, hit the roof of the van parked in the garage and tumbled to the cement floor. Miraculously it was still alive. So I put on my leather work gloves, gently scooped the frail creature in my hands and climbed a ladder to put the bird back in its nest. All summer I worried about that chick, wondered if it would survive, wondered if it might have picked up my scent and been rejected by the parents. The next summer I got my answer. We had bought a new house and I needed to take down the wood and there, dry as a fig and half as big, were the desiccated remains of the baby bird. I tried to not let it bother me, but it did, and I felt like I shared some of the blame for the bird’s death, though I can’t say why.

In Luke, Jesus says, “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows” (Luke 12:6-7). Most folks who read that passage focus on the part about people being really important to God. And while that’s true, it also says that not a single creature on Earth is forgotten by God. Not an ant. Not a flea. Not those annoying bugs that skitter up your nose and buzz in your ear at the height of summer. Not an elephant killed for its ivory, or a bear for its paws. Not the loon that gets caught in a plastic soda can ring carelessly discarded by a boater and drowns. Not the baby sparrow born in my garage. Not the pigeon that, giddy for the gift of flight, mistook a window for the sky and flew straight through death’s open door.

Personally I prefer the other name for pigeons, the one they had before they fell from grace in the eyes of human beings and were relegated to the trash-heap category of pest: Rock Dove. Dove. Symbol of peace.

Symbol of the Holy Spirit.

It’s a little thing, but I’m glad the Rock Dove didn’t die alone. Even though I was two stories up and could do nothing to save it, it wouldn’t seem right for its life to pass without someone noticing. No one, no living creature, should die alone.

Every hair on your head. Every feather. Every first and final breath.

Sad news

2005-01-24T07:22:00.000-08:00

Will, whom I wrote about earlier here, lived for just a few short months and he never ventured beyond his bed in the neonatal intensive care unit. Born at just 24 weeks, he faced enormous obstacles just to try to get to his original due date, which was supposed to be in mid-February. Early Saturday morning Will passed away.

Through it all his parents, my friends Mary and John, remained at his side, watching as their firstborn struggled to breathe and squirmed against the constraint and pain of of the wires and tubes snaking in and around his body. They only got to hold him a couple of times, and in the few photos I've seen the look on their faces as they cradled his tiny head against their chests is pure joy. They read him books, including Goodnight Moon, Two Little Trains, and Jamberry, played him lullaby CDs, got to know him the way only parents can know their children.

As a way to keep friends and family abreast of Will's condition, John started a blog, which can be found at www.willkenyon.blogspot.com/. As I've said before, John is a gifted writer, and before long many people were following Will's journey, including many strangers who stumbled upon the site by accident or heard about it through the Internet grapevine. Thanks to John's blog, many of us got to know Will in a way we would not have otherwise, sharing John and Mary's joys every time Will seemed to be turning a corner, their fears as he struggled to rid his body of excess fluid and to fight infection, and their great loss, which now is our loss, too.

Amazing, isn't it, how much of an impact even the smallest, most vulnerable among us can have on the world? There's a great lesson to be learned there.

For those of you who are the praying sort, I hope you'll offer up some prayers for John and Mary. They need to know how loved they are, and how loved Will was and is, and after their hearts are wrung out and their throats raw from crying and the condolence cards have stopped showing up in the mail and people have stopped shaking their heads sadly when they pass by and giving them wide berth -- when John and Mary enter that long, lonely silence that follows all tragedies, that place where they have to go alone -- they need to know that they are still not alone, that God is with them yet, holding them the way they got to hold Will those too-few times in the hospital. They will need to know that peace. Pray for that, will you?

As far as my own blog? Well, I haven't updated it in a while, partly because I've been really busy and partly because my heart just hasn't been in it. I hope to put some new things up there soon. But they may take this blog in a slightly different direction. I've been doing a lot of thinking about my faith, about Christian spirituality, about prayer, and maybe I'll share some of those thoughts with y'all, if for no other reason than to keep me honest. The truth is, I'd considered launching a different blog, an anonymous "God talk" blog that even my friends didn't know about because I was afraid what they might think about me. "Oh man," they'd say, "looks like Steve's gone off and got that old time religion. Hide the booze."

But maybe I'll take that chance anyway, because this is really important to me. And in the end, whether people want to admit it or not, I think that is what's really important to everyone -- figuring out why they were put here on earth and what they're going to do about it.

The Pleasure of Simple Things Done Well

2004-11-29T12:55:00.000-08:00

Yesterday afternoon my daughters and I planted a bleeding heart root and a couple dozen daffodil bulbs. Wearing gardening gloves five times too big for their hands, the girls knelt on scraps of cardboard I’d retrieved from the recycling bin and bent over the loamy, fragrant soil, carefully digging up small holes with trowels and now and then holding up a worm or a stone they’d come across like prizes plucked from a Cracker Jack box.

I don’t know how good a chance the plants have of surviving. It’s pretty late in the fall planting season, and today we woke to a scene straight out of Currier & Ives. The first snow of the year always seems the purest and the whitest and this morning it blanketed the trees and landscape like the robes of Arctic royalty. The small patch of woods behind our house was transformed into a magical forest where I imagined unicorns and wizards in white cloaks moving among the frozen trees and acting out some drama beyond the ken of human senses. But how the weather bodes for the plants we put to bed we aren’t likely to find out until next spring.

And that’s OK, being uncertain about the future. Because the real pleasure is knowing that my daughters and I did a good thing, a simple thing, the best way we knew how at the time. It is a realization I come back to with greater frequency the older I get: the deepest satisfaction often comes from the simplest activities. Planting daffodils, for instance. Or, as my daughters and I did afterward, picking up sticks to use later as kindling in our fireplace. Or sipping a cup of hot chocolate in the kitchen, where we could survey the work we had done.

I have come to this pleasure in other ways, too. By cutting wood or hammering nails, “drows’d by the fume” of cedar, oak or pine. Walking in the woods early in the morning when much of the world is still asleep and the air is taut with the sound of rustling leaves and wind and the scurry and scratch of squirrels vaulting from tree to tree, their tails following them like wisps of grey smoke. Writing a letter – on paper with a pen in cursive, not by email – to a dear friend I haven’t spoken with in years.

If this all seems obvious – that simple things are best – why is it that the lesson is so easily, repeatedly forgotten? Why does it require so much effort to do so little, especially this time of year when greed and gluttony take center stage? Who knows? But now when I get the urge to reinvent myself, to figure out what life is all about, to plumb the depths of my soul, I know the best course of action is not to think but to do.

To plant a flower.

To hand-wash the dishes.

To build a fire in the fireplace.

To make soup. Which is precisely what I did yesterday afternoon, a hearty Italian recipe my grandmother brought over from the old country.

I blended together Parmesan and Romano cheeses, breadcrumbs, nutmeg and black pepper. I grated lemon peel into the mixture, the citrus tang tickling my nose, and cracked three large, bright white eggs into the bowl and kneaded the dough to the consistency of polenta before stuffing it into a potato press and watching the noodles drop into a boiling pot of beef and chicken broth. I inhaled the steam rising out of the pot and was absolutely transported by the smells it contained.

This was heaven. This was joy.

Want Some Cheese With That Whine?

2004-11-22T12:58:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I know. It’s been a few days since I’ve posted here.

Not that anyone’s noticed.

By last check of my web stats, I’ve had about three visitors over the past week. A couple were apparently just clicking the “Next Blog” button at the top of the page and came across mine by accident. No visitor has stayed on for more than a couple minutes. So if I don’t write anything today – or ever again – will the world care? If a blogger types something in the woods and no one’s around to read his stuff does he make a sound?

I was making this argument to my wife last night. Told her I was thinking of booting the blog. Fishing for a little pity.

“It’s only been a week,” she said, deftly avoiding the baited hook.

I took a bite of my fifth chocolate bar of the evening, putting a big dent in my diet plan but just a teeny dent in the supply of candy collected by my children Halloween night. “Yeah,” I said. “But what about the friends I emailed to tell them about the blog? So far no one’s tuning in.”

“First,” my wife said, “you only emailed them the middle of last week. Second, they’re probably busy and haven’t had time to look at it yet.”

She was right, of course. Still, I’m not sure which is worse. Being ignored or being damned with faint praise. Right now I think I’d prefer the faint praise.

Let’s face it. This isn’t Hemingway I’m writing here. Before this entry -- and not counting the very first one where I basically just said “Hello, world, here I am!” – I’ve written a total of just six essays. And a couple of them aren’t really essays at all but preambles to older material (an essay and some poems) I decided to inflict on – well, on whoever might happen to read my blog.

Which is no one, really.

I’m not a stupid person. Well, in some ways I’m really quite remarkably stupid. But I know people have little time to read, and when they do read they want something fun or intellectually stimulating or mysterious or titillating. To date I’ve posted essays on a friend’s vasectomy, the challenges of raising two daughters, another friend’s premature baby, the pleasure of watching a meteor shower (which, it turned out, I never got to see anyway because it was cloudy all that week) and my freaking out about some heart flutters. Oh, and some poems whose only distinction is that they’ve been rejected by some of the better poetry magazines in the country.

And I wonder why no one has offered me a book deal yet.

OK. So maybe I won’t give up the blog just yet. As my wife says, if I really ever want to be a Writer – with a capital W – I need to keep at it, regardless whether anyone is reading. It’ll help me sharpen my skills, find my voice, develop a stronger sense of narrative. And because I’m writing on a public website and there’s the potential for someone reading me, the blog puts the onus on me to write rather more regularly than I would otherwise – and, frankly, ever have – in a personal diary.

Which raises a good question: Just what exactly do I want my blog to be? A confessional? A sounding board? One of those albino lab mice I inject my poetry and prose into to make sure my writing’s safe on animals before exposing humans to it?

I guess I’m still kinda working that one out. So if you’re up to seeing where all this leads – yeah, you who just stumbled across my blog from the SatanDogLover blog – stick around. I probably won't provide much titillation, but at least the writing should improve with time.

Wanderings, Ponderings and Poetry

2004-11-19T09:35:00.000-08:00

There are a few things I wanted to write about today.

Uno

I’m about as proud as a husband can be about the well deserved and hard-earned kudos my wife has been getting of late for a wonderful book she’s recently published about a long-time banking family in Iowa. Now, before you roll your eyes, know this: more human drama is contained between the covers of this book (beautifully laid out and illustrated, I might add, by a wonderful local artist and friend of ours by the name of Shannon) than you’re likely to find in your library’s Mystery and Suspense Section: bank robberies; meetings with such famous personages as Daniel Boone, Carl Sandburg and most of the 20th century’s U.S. presidents; tense encounters with Indians; Civil War battles with narrow escapes; bank heists; family tragedy and triumph; anguishing financial struggles that pitted farmers against bankers. There’s lots of humor, too, including a great anecdote about a traveling circus. And that’s just the first couple chapters.

They say that behind every great man stands a great woman. As the husband of a truly brilliant and successful wife, I can’t say that the reverse is true. But I can say this: I’m sure glad Melinda picked me to be her running mate.

Dos

It rained yesterday. No. It didn’t just rain. The skies wrung every last drop of moisture from the clouds until water flooded the streets, sweeping into the gaping storm drains torrents of leaves, trash and one or two small children. OK, I made that last bit up. But basically it started raining in the morning and continued, unabated, until well into the evening.

It rained in some pretty peculiar places, too, or so I learned this morning. Like, in my friend Blaze’s house – through light fixtures, door frames, ceiling vents. Along the walls. Down into the basement.

Well, you might say, astute reader that you are: Clearly this fella needs to get a new roof. And you would be correct. Which is precisely what Blaze was in the midst of doing when the heavens decided to unleash a few hundred thousand gallons of rain. The problem is, the roofing crew had left the job unfinished yesterday afternoon before calling it a day. They’d taken off half the old shingles and laid down fresh tarpaper, but that was it. I guess the rain scared them off. Got in their ears, too, and soaked their brains. Because they didn’t bother to put up tarp before leaving.

So when Blaze, his wife and their little boy arrived home at the end of the day, ready to fix some dinner, relax, maybe watch a little TV, they noticed water dripping in surprising places. Then in more places. Then, pretty much throughout the house. Fortunately, after quickly deploying buckets and garbage cans, they protected their furniture. But the big concern now is mold, so men with large fans are arriving today to try to air-dry the house. And the roofing company promises it’ll cover all repair costs.

Still, I gotta give Blaze credit for not going postal. Probably doesn’t help matters that it’s raining again this morning.

Tres

Finally got to yank the Holter heart monitor electrodes off my chest this morning. And was it really necessary for them to tape over my chest hairs? I’ll drop off the monitor later today and hear back from the doctor a week or two from now. Unless, the technician who hooked me up said, they find something really bad.

I hate honesty.

Quatro

Got another rejection today for some poems I submitted to an online poetry e-zine. Second rejection from them in a row. Yeah, it sucks. On the other hand, I probably don’t put in the time it would require to elevate the kind of writing I do to truly publishable quality. My ability to put together coherent sentences has gotten me by many, many times, especially in college. Got me through a newspaper career and is now buttering my bread as I write press releases for a living. But writing as art? Seems to be another animal altogether. And I’m learning, in painful, want-to-crawl-under-the-bed-and-hide kinds of ways, that coherent sentences alone do not constitute art – no matter how flowery the language.

So, as a kind of poultice on my struggling artist’s soul, I’m going to post a couple of my poems here. Publish them my own damn self. At least until I get up the nerve to send another batch of my babies off to the slaughter.

------

ENTOMOLOGY

Afternoon, and the insects

Seem drunk on summer’s

Distillation:

Ladybugs shell the

Western wall. Box elders

Braille the golden mailbox.

A moth, sulfur-winged and

Freckled, careens with

Ornithoptic grace into the

Window.

We, too, grow uneasy at

Night’s prevail. Wrapped

In ribbons and revelry we pray

For a child against a chill that catches

Our breath and turns our words

Against us.

In the woods we gathered

Pine cones, caressed rough scales where

Fetal forests dream of mountaintops, and

Brought them home in cradled arms

With winter on our tongues.

On the gray counter by the sink they began

To bleed black beetles that

Sizzled to the shadows. We seized them

And threw them out onto the porch, shuddering

At their dry scatter.

Even the moth has dusted itself off and

Rises into the quivering air and by sharp

Degrees resumes its travels south along a

Thousand fresh trajectories.

UNDONE

The cold has come too early again, creeping

Like clematis along earth’s tilted axis, filing

The edges of days down to copper.

How can we help, we ask the neighbor whose

Wife has left to find herself. My wife places her

Palm against his shoulder and

He leans into it, like falling, like release.

Say nothing to the children, the wife whispers

Before driving away in her car, waving;

We want this to be a positive change.

In their yard by the creek winter has already

Begun putting down roots. On the

Limb of a tree a crow scowls

Like heavy fruit grown too ripe to eat.

STAINED GLASS, CIRCA 1967

Lightning was best though headlights would do,

Illumination rising like a fever—sill skyward—

The seeded glass bursting into glossy blooms of

Daffodil, pomegranate and plum.

Sometimes my mother would wake to find my

Bed empty, wander up to the loft and

Lie silent beside me on the narrow couch,

Her hair like feathers against my cheek.

I might have disappeared then, floated

To the ceiling and through the angular

Smear of vermillion there. But her presence

Held me fast to her, tethered:

Her steady breath. The lift and settle of her chest

Like a pink shell moving through currents at high tide.

Her heat, her scent--cigarettes and cold cream. And

My knowledge, even then, that this could never last.

VISITATION

Outside the rooftops

Have dropped their white

Skirts to the gutter, exposed

Their rough skin to the pearl sky.

All that moderates this immodesty

Is a gray bramble of arteries and

Soft swaying synapses that

Now and then spark blue

Smoke and cardinal and

Cold, cold, cold.

It is the last morning.

The furnace heaves its

Heat and dry lightning, and still the chill

Presses up through foundation and floor,

Blossoming like an orchid in flesh and

Flexed bone –

It is a familiar ache. Even the

Water in the walls groans

At the thought of more winter,

Elbowing thin sleeves as

It seeks its own best path.

Above the stove a boy in a sailor

Suit leans in to kiss an inclined

Head. The girl’s hands are tucked

Deep into gloves big

And white as cats. They sit on a

Swing just like the one outside

The window and there as

Here the wind has bleached the

Landscape, piled dune upon dune along

The inland shore and propped up

The golden dead. At

Such a moment anything

Seems possible; even resurrection.

In the living room where the

Girls sleep and now are beginning to

Shed sighs and dreams like lanugo

My mother sits in the

Thinning darkness and watches

Over them and drinks her coffee

Practicing goodbye.

I Heart Huckabees

2004-11-17T13:14:00.000-08:00

The palpitations began last January. Sometimes they felt like a moth trapped beneath my breastbone, fluttering to get free. Other times there was a sudden whooshing sensation as though my heart had taken in and disgorged an inordinate amount of blood in a very short time. On a few occasions it felt as though someone had stuck a finger into a deep bruise in my chest. They could appear anytime, anywhere. They rarely lasted more than a few seconds. Nor did I experience any other symptoms (dizziness, breathlessness, chest pains). And yet I came to dread these flutters, which only made them worse and gave my imagination license to fly off to some dark and unhappy places.

Google didn’t help matters. If you’ve never tried to look up medical information on the Internet, here’s some advice: Don’t. Especially if you’re like me and take the Woody Allen approach to self-diagnosis, which states, “If you noticed it, it’s probably fatal.” Based on my Web research I could have been suffering from any number of heart ailments. Many require lifelong medication or surgery. A few are incurable.

On the other hand – and it’s a big hand – palpitations are often indicative of nothing. They just happen. Lack of sleep, excessive caffeine or alcohol and anxiety are possible culprits. Sometimes the heart’s complex electrical system fires off a few extra sparks now and then just to make sure you’re paying attention. Or maybe, not unlike the main character in Ray Bradbury’s short story “Skeleton,” I finally became aware at the age of 40 that there’s an honest-to-God, flesh-and-blood heart pumping inside my chest and that my continued existence depends on its regularity.

The doctor didn’t come right out and call me a hypochondriac. But after checking my family history (a grandmother and several uncles with heart disease), my exercise regimen and my general health, and even giving me an EKG, he suggested that I probably had nothing to worry about.

Probably.

I hate that word. Leaves the door open just a teensy, weensy crack. Zip, there goes my imagination again.

For the next few months I did what the doc suggested. Cut back on the java. Upped my running time. Tried to get to bed earlier. Tried not to worry. And gradually the palpitations subsided, and then vanished. Didn’t have a single one all spring, summer or early fall. Then about three weeks ago they came back.

The doctor still thinks its nothing to worry about. Probably. Still, I went ahead and got fitted for a Holter monitor this morning. Not a halter monitor, as the perky but linguistically challenged hospital receptionist called it when she buzzed the clinic to tell them I was coming by. I may not be in the best shape, but I do not have man breasts.

For the next 48 hours the device will record my heart beat in much the same way an EKG does. I can exercise with it on. Sleep. Anything. I just need to be careful not to pull out any of the five electrodes taped to my chest. I’m also supposed to stay away from electric razors and electric blankets, which can apparently interfere with the device’s circuitry. Nor am I allowed to bathe or shower until the monitor comes off Friday morning. I don’t see this as an inconvenience, though my family and coworkers might by week’s end. And then, in a week or two, I should know whether I’m going to live, or whether I should start making arrangements with the funeral home.

I sure hope it turns out OK. Then I can turn my attention to that weird rash that’s cropped up on the back of my legs.

Twinkle, Twinkle

2004-11-16T14:43:00.000-08:00

Winter doesn’t offer many consolations. It gets dark before dinnertime. The landscape is brown and bare and the trees, which only yesterday blazed with fiery reds and brilliant yellows, stand skeletal against the gunmetal sky. During the worst of it the cold and snow drive us indoors and underneath the covers, bury us in heavy clothes and force us to rush from shelter to shelter, head bent against the wind. Even the streetlamps and storefronts festooned with decorations do little to buoy the spirit, especially when the holidays have come and gone and we realize that we still have three more months until spring.

On the other hand, there is this: winter offers some of year’s most magnificent starscapes. And beginning tonight, skywatchers are in for a special treat. The annual Leonid meteor shower is set to sprinkle the night skies with pixie dust over the next few days. Although most of the tiny meteors (actually dusty debris from the comet Tempel-Tuttle) are no bigger than a grain of sand, they leave long, fiery streamers of light as they burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.

If you have some time, take a stroll outside these next few nights and spend a little while watching the heavens for these shooting stars. If you have kids, by all means, bring them, too. So what if you have to bundle up a bit? Make some decaf coffee and some hot chocolate for the kids. Sit on a couple lawn chairs and wrap yourselves up in a blanket. Then watch the fireworks begin. Trust me, it’s magical.

If I can’t convince you, maybe the great poet Stanley Kunitz can with his fabulous poem, “Halley’s Comet.”

----

Halley’s Comet

Miss Murphy in first grade

wrote its name in chalk

across the board and told us

it was roaring down the stormtracks

of the Milky Way at frightful speed

and if it wandered off its course

and smashed into the earth

there'd be no school tomorrow.

A red-bearded preacher from the hills

with a wild look in his eyes

stood in the public square

at the playground's edge

proclaiming he was sent by God

to save every one of us,

even the little children.

"Repent, ye sinners!" he shouted,

waving his hand-lettered sign.

At supper I felt sad to think

that it was probably

the last meal I'd share

with my mother and my sisters;

but I felt excited too

and scarcely touched my plate.

So mother scolded me

and sent me early to my room.

The whole family's asleep

except for me. They never heard me steal

into the stairwell hall and climb

the ladder to the fresh night air.

Look for me, Father, on the roof

of the red brick building

at the foot of Green Street --

that's where we live, you know, on the top floor.

I'm the boy in the white flannel gown

sprawled on this coarse gravel bed

searching the starry sky,

waiting for the world to end.

Will's Story

2004-11-16T11:14:00.000-08:00

Today, it turns out, is national Prematurity Awareness Day. It also happens to be the UN International Day for Tolerance, Admission Day in Oklahoma (after a few minutes of Googling I gave up on trying to figure out what that one is about) and in Estonia the locals are celebrating their Day of National Rebirth. But those are for another day and another blogger to ponder.

Prematurity is rarely a good thing. There is premature baldness. Premature graying for those who manage to keep their hair. And in the boudoir too many premature performances can lead to the early demise of a relationship.

Today’s national awareness day, however, is about the birth of babies before they are due. According to the March of Dimes, which began the campaign last year, one in eight babies born in the United States each day arrives too soon – sometimes way, way too soon.

Such is the case with my friends Mary and John. Their baby was due in February 2005. But after hearing that President Bush was planning another round of tax cuts for the middle class, Will decided he wanted in on the deal and came into the world on Oct. 26, at the not-quite-ripe age of 24 weeks. He weighed less than a pound when he was delivered and measured just over 10 inches long.

It is difficult to imagine a human being that small outside of the womb. One incredible photograph taken by John shows Will’s footprint alongside a quarter. The quarter is only slightly smaller than the foot. To put things in even greater perspective, a website about the developmental stages of the fetus says that at 24 weeks a baby’s eyes have just fully developed, it can demonstrate both hand and startle reflexes, it is beginning to form footprints and fingerprints and it is forming alveoli in the lungs. It still has to look forward to controlling some body functions and developing eyelids that open and close (26 to 28 weeks) and rhythmic breathing and partial control of body temperature (30 to 32 weeks).

In other words, John, Mary and Will have a long road ahead of them. But I’m hopeful. Will couldn’t have asked for better parents. They are salt of the earth kind of people: kind-hearted, bright, funny, generous to a fault. They give Midwesterners a good name. And they’ve been blessed with a wonderful family and lots of friends who care a great deal about them. A number of these friends spent a recent Saturday morning raking the autumn leaves from their yard. Others have been stocking their freezer with enough home-cooked meals to last them until Will finishes graduate school. As for the hospital where Will is going to spend Thanksgiving, and Christmas and New Year’s Day and possibly next Ground Hog Day and Valentines Day? It’s got one of the country’s premiere premature infant units and some of the world’s top doctors.

So while the Estonians get mad drunk on grog and dance their crazy Estonian dances in celebration of National Rebirth Day, Mary and John will be spending today beside Will’s hospital bassinette, watching his tiny inhalations and exhalations, the flicker of eyes beneath paper-thin eyelids, and trying their best to ignore the beeps and hum of the machinery in the background and the tubes snaking to and from Will’s delicate body. That’s how they’ll spend the next day, too. And the day after that. And the day after that. Until the day comes, at long last, when they can finally bring Will home and celebrate a kind of rebirth, too, when Will sheds the label of premature infant and simply becomes John and Mary’s son.

John has started his own blog about Will, and I don’t think they’d mind if I shared it here: www.willkenyon.blogspot.com/ John’s an incredible writer, and his updates on Will’s progress make for some gripping reading.

And if you’re interested in learning more about premature babies, the March of Dimes website is a great starting point: http://marchofdimes.com/prematurity/prematurity.asp/ In addition to information about Prematurity Awareness Day, the organization has created a way to donate to the cause through a “bandingtogether” campaign.

A Proposal

2004-11-15T09:07:00.000-08:00

In the interest of keeping the ball rolling on this blog I may occasionally pull something out of my Trunk Of Unfinished Things -- random thoughts, writings, etc. -- and post it here in the light of day. Today is one such day.

I actually wrote the following essay over a year ago, then recently brushed it up before submitting it to a local radio program that was looking for things to read on a weekend talk/arts program. In the end they said thanks but no thanks (though they encouraged me to send a few more poems, some of which may appear here at a later date). Probably it was just too sentimental. But I don't apologize for that. I come from a long line of weepy Italian men, and the older I get the more I appreciate that side of me -- the side that can be laid low simply by one of my girl's smiles or surprise hugs (the kind where they put you in an armlock and try to wrest your head from your neck).

Hope you enjoy it.

______________

My two daughters and I were at the breakfast table one morning eating, appropriately it now seems, Life cereal when my then-three-year-old, Abigail, popped the question.

"Daddy, when I older can I marry you?" Big blue eyes. Skim milk dribbling down her chin. How could I say no?

"That's very sweet, honey, " I said, "but actually I'm already married to mommy."

Abby's sister, Emma, who was six at the time, offered an elegant solution to this dilemma.

"Just tell mommy, 'Sweetie, I love you very much, but you are too old for me.'"

This did not seem prudent, especially since I'm six years older than Melinda. If anyone's owed a newer model, it's my wife.

I tried to let my daughters down gently.

"I'm flattered, really, but I'm sure both of you will find very nice people to marry when you're older." I coughed. "Much, much older."

My relationship with my daughters seems to be entering a new territory, one I'm not entirely ready to explore. Leading the way is Emma, who in the past year has asked questions – or made observations – about kissing, death, how babies get in a mommy's tummy, lipstick, boyfriends, God, parental sleeping arrangements, Britney Spears, hair dye, and same-sex couple hood.

Mind you, her questions are always G-rated, the kind of things you would expect from someone who still sleeps with a special blanky and considers Kraft macaroni and cheese (the 59-cents-a-box kind, with the packet of orange powder) haute cuisine. Still, it's clear the world is starting to open up for her, from the cozy, familiar microcosm of her yellow-painted bedroom with its dolls and its butterfly-covered comforter and parents who have an answer for everything, to a place colored in myriad shades of gray. A world that's more complex, and therefore more alluring, but also one that is less certain.

It’s the normal course of growing up, I know. Keeping her away from her personal Tree of Knowledge would do her more harm than good in the end. Also, it would be impossible. Just like learning to cross the street safely, or how to dial 911, she needs to understand that life is uncertain and sometimes dangerous if she’s to survive and thrive in this world. So when she starts pushing against the walls of her adolescent world, I try to let in the light and darkness she’s after in small and equal measures. Yes, honey, sometimes pets die, but their memories live on with us always. Yes, some people do hurt other people, but there are many, many others who feed the hungry and care for the sick and hold the lonely in their arms. How you treat people is far more important than how pretty you are.

When Emma was born, a friend told us that parents are given an invisible apron with eighteen strings our children can cling to as they grow up, and that each year we must be willing to cut off one of those strings so that when our daughter becomes an adult she’ll be her own person. It’s a pleasant enough image, even if my wearing an apron is not. But to be honest with you, I’ve been cheating a little since my girls were born. After clipping each string, instead of throwing it away, I’ve been secretly tying it to one of the remaining strings, giving my daughters the distance they need while trying to strengthen the ties that still bind us.

As for that last string? Well, when the time comes, I’m guessing I might just conveniently lose the scissors.

V-Day

2004-11-13T08:56:00.000-08:00

Last night two of my buddies and I went out for a night of drunken debauchery. Actually, since we all had to get permission from our wives to leave the house for a night, and because we are all parents of small children who think daybreak is a reasonable time to get out of bed, there wasn't much debauchery. Unless you count my running a few yellow lights over the course of the evening. We did, however, do some drinking, starting with some imported brews at one eatery (Blaze, pining for his college days, ordered a Schlitz, “for old time’s sake”), followed by a couple more beverages at a quaint tavern where each winter a Welsh transplant with a wonderful brogue and more than passing resemblance to Kris Kringle reads to the rapt audience Dylan Thomas’ “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.” Then we all settled in to a nice snifter each of B&B (Benedictine & Brandy, for the uninitiated), which glides down the throat like liquid fire and warms the stomach and cheers the heart until –- basking in the drink’s smooth afterglow -- you consider everyone in the bar to be your very best friend. It was so good in fact that we decided to pick up an entire bottle (retail $34 for a fifth -- and worth every cent) at the 24-hour grocer and take it to my secret He Man, Woman Haters Clubhouse (a.k.a. the home of my in-laws, who are wintering in Florida) for further imbibing and manly talk.

Unfortunately, the talk eventually turned to Cav’s recent vasectomy.

Now, I don’t consider myself to be an especially squeamish person. I was, for a while, a police reporter and saw (and smelled) a fair number of corpses, including one gentleman who tried to make a U-turn over an active railroad line with his semi trailer when a train came and jettisoned him from his cab onto the centerline of a highway about thirty feet away . But there are some subjects that just curdle my milk. Sharp objects near the nether regions is one of them. Cav’s vivid description of the procedure caused my arms and knees to draw up into the fetal position and I began mewling like a newborn kitten plucked from its mamma’s teat. It did not help that the last name of the doctor who performed the procedure was also Sharp. I jest you not. Or that every last person involved in the procedure (Cav excepting) was a woman, from pre-op to post-op.

As Cav tells it, he was told to put on one of those drafty hospital gowns and handed off, so to speak, to a nurse who expertly shaved him with a straight blade. (Is there any way other than “expertly” that one might wield a straight blade without doing irreversible damage?) Freshly shorn, Cav was laid out on the operating table and a sheet was drawn across his midsection so he couldn’t see what was going on. Cav, a bright and curious guy, told the doctor he wanted to watch the procedure. But the doctor discouraged it. “Trust me,” she told him. “Once we begin cauterizing and you can smell your own flesh burning you’ll wish you’d kept the curtain up.”

Then the visitors began to arrive.

The local hospital where Cav did the deed is a teaching hospital. So when the doctor asked if he minded having a few med students observe his vasectomy, Cav – ever accommodating – said bring ‘em on. So in they came. First one. Then three. Then four more. In the end, a dozen bright eyed, freshly scrubbed med students gathered around the maypole to see Cav’s manhood get snipped. A couple of them even peeked around the Curtain Of Unknowing to introduce themselves. And Cav, with his business all hanging out, said howdy right back because, frankly Cav’s a decent guy and because just about that time the Valium had begun flowing through his veins like milk and honey in the desert. Nor, apparently, was Cav the only person in the room under heavy medication. When one of the med students introduced herself, Cav asked if this was her first vasectomy. She replied, "Yes, yours?"

Me? I would have called off the operation right then and there.

Now, normally a vasectomy only takes about five minutes. But because Cav was so gracious about sharing his experience with others, the doctor made sure each of the students saw and understood every step of the procedure, holding up this bit of flotsam, shoving aside that bit of jetsam until she moved in – a good twenty minutes later -- for the coup de grace. But by then the drugs had begun to wear off and Cav levitated from the operating table, shouting, “What the hell was that? What the HELL was that?” The doctor muttered her apologies, poked him a few times down yonder with a syringe of dope (See? I’m not the only one in the fetal position here, am I?) and quickly brought the surgery to a close. A short while later, Cav was good as gold, back in his street clothes (and wearing a jock strap stuffed with a two-pound bag of frozen peas) and doing the Vasectomy Shuffle down the hallway.

It took me a few minutes to recover from Cav’s story. But with the help of a couple more B&Bs I was able to move out of the fetal position. I even stopped mewling after a while. And when Blaze vomited into my mother-in-law’s kitchen sink? It didn’t affect me one bit.