“Cats come and go without ever leaving.” — Martha Curtis

And yet there’s a space here where he once was.

“So please don’t tell me that the bigotry that overturns or denies protections and equal rights to gays and lesbians in places like California and Maine doesn’t affect me. It does. And please don’t tell me how you really do love your gay friends, but you think that ‘marriage is between one man and one woman,’ because as far as I’m concerned, that isn’t love. I’ve never yet been told of one single incident in which a minister or priest or pastor was forced to marry any couple that he or she didn’t feel comfortable marrying. This isn’t about religion. This is about civil law, and treating all people with equality and dignity.”

Becky is so much more eloquent than me when it comes to expressing conviction while gripped by a righteous, blinding rage. And her sentiments are probably more effective than what I would say, which is this: if anyone ever comes between me and mine, I’ll kill them.

And no. that is not a metaphor. For anything.

My 40th, to be precise? Well, Jodi did.

Actually, a lot of people, friends and family and co-workers, made this a wonderful weekend. First and foremost of course was the big guy, Mike, who helped organize the nice shindig we had at the house on Saturday afternoon. Then there are Scott and Jay, my friends from Indianapolis who came into town with their adorable beagle Lucy and spent the weekend. And then there’s Jodi, who flew in with her boyfriend Dave from the fabulous city of New York and brought her own special brand of fabulosity with her.

I have not been looking forward to 40. Entering my fifth decade has just made me realize how much more I want to accomplish. True, this life is not a race and I’m not operating on a definite schedule, but there is a finish line, and I can’t see it but I know there is so much ground I want to cover between here and there.

I’d better get a move on.

Me: Hey, nice turn signal, Mister Gateway Ambulance Guy. Next time why don’t you wait until the very last minute to use it? Oh wait, you did.
Mikey: Well, you know if they can’t find the crash victim, they’ll just make one.
Me: (after laughter) You know I’m blogging that.
Mikey: Who knew we were funny when we’re hungry and under-caffeinated?
Me: Not me, but then my memory is like herpes: it comes and goes for no apparent reason.
Mikey: And doesn’t seem to serve much of a purpose.
Me: (silence)
Mikey: What?
Me: I’m looking for another ambulance.

Today’s WTF moment came when I was listening to a podcast of “To the Best of Our Knowledge” segment on “Re-Considering Crafts.” A writer and graphic designer, Leonard Todd, was discussing the slave Potter Dave, a remarkable man and a gifted potter who signed his works (unheard of at the time for a slave to do, to say nothing of the fact that he was literate) and even wrote poems on some of them. Leonard Todd’s family for a number of generations “owned” Dave, who was treated with varying degrees of compassion, but particularly so by Todd’s great-grandfather, which was around the time Potter Dave wrote poems on the pots he created.

My moment of mental disconnect came when Todd said he was proud of his great-grandfather.

I can perhaps see taking some comfort in the fact that your great-grandfather was not a brutal and oppressive slave owner, but he was still a slave owner. Is there anything in it that even leaves room for pride? I can’t see it. If I had any connection with slavery (and as Americans we all have a connection), I can’t see feeling anything but tremendous shame.

It occurred to me as I was putting away groceries that my relationship with Chapter Nine of the book is somewhat adversarial, and it made me think of the relationship between Kirk and Khan….)

ME: Nine, you bloodsucker! You’re going to have to do your own dirty work now! Do you hear me? Do you?
CHAPTER NINE: Jeffrey! You’re still alive, old friend?
ME: Still. Old. Friend. You’ve managed to kill just about every other thought I’ve had but like a poor marksman you keep missing the target.
NINE: Perhaps, I no longer need to try. I’ve done far worse than kill you: I’ve hurt you. And I wish to go on hurting you. I shall leave you as you left me, as you left your characters: marooned for all eternity  inside the center of a convoluted mess: buried alive… buried alive….
ME: NIIIIIIIIIIIINE!!!!!!!!

(Let’s just say I’m not sure when I’m going to be able to move on to Chapter Ten….)

I’ve noticed a new recurring element that’s been appearing in my writing lately. Before now, one of the things that came up a lot (“recurring theme” sounds pretentious, but I guess that’s what it is) was the notion of home and how to define it. Lately, though, I’ve been coming up with characters who’ve reached—not a crossroads; more like a mile marker, and they’ve turned around to look behind and take stock of everything that’s happened to them, everything that’s brought them to the point in their lives where I start writing about them, and wondering why it’s taken them so long to get where they are.

I wonder if this is in any way related to turning 40 this month. (Of course, just asking that question implies an answer.)

“I think we should take surfing lessons,” Mike said.

I lowered my book, which I’d just opened, and looked over the edge of the pages. I was wearing sunglasses at the time. “Okay.”

“They start in five minutes.”

“Well then,” I said, closed the book, and got up from my lounge chair. Ten minutes later, I was standing in the sand, hands on hips, listening to a man who looked like a cross between my father and the Great Santini explain to me how to get up on a surfboard. Before that, I’d never touched one, much less gotten on one, paddled out into the ocean, and stood up on it. I was going to do this?

Yes, I was going to do this.

I was also going to fall down a lot, but he’d told us the proper way to fall down into the water. In fact, I fell down every time I stood up on the board. For an hour, I got up, fell down, paddled back out, and sat on the board waiting my turn to be pushed toward shore as another wave came in behind me. The only time I didn’t fall down was when I felt the wave fizzling out beneath me as I was kneeling on the board, preparing to stand, and I lay back down and started paddling back out.

“Why didn’t you stand up?” the teacher asked with a laugh. Why, indeed.

One of my favorite parts of the whole process was waiting while Michael took his turn. Facing toward the waves, I sat up on the board and looked around, just enjoying the experience of bobbing up and down on the water with no particular place to go in any particular hurry except the shore. I think I could have done that, and the practice, all day.

But eventually the hour ran out, and we had to paddle back to the beach and put away the surfboards. If we lived near the ocean, I think I’d sign up for surfing lessons.

A few days later, on another stretch of the beach, I was reading another book and looked up to see a man giving his eight-year-old daughter surfing lessons. She did better than me.

I think my favorite part of the Lewis and Clark Half Marathon today came toward the end, when I was running down the street before getting to the Foundry Art Centre. Before that, there had been people on the side of the road here and there, but honestly there weren’t a lot of spectators along the route overall. (This does not go down as one of the most scenic runs. Part of it goes through a suburban office park, and another part goes over a highway bridge, which at least gives some views of the Missouri River. After that, there was a long stretch of nothing but corn.) It always helps (me, at least) when people on the sidelines are yelling things like, “Way to go!” or “Good job!” or “Keep running, you worn out old git!” Clever people that they are, the organizers of the race had our names printed on our bib numbers—even if they did misspell mine—so that anyone who wanted to encourage us by name could do so (and also, I suspect, so that they could identify us if we passed out and so that we could identify ourselves at the end in our dazed and confused condition).

Toward the end of the race, I really needed the encouragement. And as I approached the spot where this ten-year-old girl was standing, I could hear her mother prompting her with the names from the runners bibs.

“Jeffery,” her mom said.

“Go, Jeffery!”

Luckily, whichever way you spell it, the name sounds the same.

*2:01:32 is about 15 minutes better than my last half-marathon, which is even more amazing to me considering that I didn’t have a drop of coffee before the race this morning.

You know, when I started this blog, after my last one, I wanted it to concentrate on my writing—what I was working on, what I was reading, where I was submitting, who was helping and encouraging me. Let’s face it though: most writing about writing is dead boring. Some of it can be fantastic, soaring, inspiring prose, but most of the time, I feel like I should save that for the printed page.

No, more often I find myself writing about the things that amuse me or, lately, infuriate me. And I’m sure that I’m not the first or the last who is peeved to high heaven about the monumental amount of bullshit I read every single fucking day about the outrage over health care reform. Really, you’re outraged over, let’s see, death panels? Euthanasia for grandma? The government (gasp!) involved in our lives? Rationed care? SOCIALIZED MEDICINE! NAZI LEGISLATION!

Honestly, the level of hysteria would be funny if it weren’t so unremittingly repugnant.

In this morning’s paper, a round-up of where local legislators stand on health care indicated that Rep. Todd Akin, a Republican from Town and Country (that’s one of our rather tony suburbs in an area we call West County, is concerned about “government takeover of health care” and that it is critical to preserve the relationship between doctor and patient. Todd, that would be great if one actually had such a relationship to preserve. If you don’t even have insurance, like several of my friends, then you joke about things like selling your organs and your blood when you have to go to the emergency room.

Rep. John Shimkus, a Republican from Collinsville (that’s in Illinois but just across the river from St. Louis, for my lovely non-local readers) is worried, bless his heart, about any sort of public option. Actually, he’s “adamantly opposed” to it because it would drive companies out of business. Isn’t his concern sweet? It would be terrible if some of these companies actually had to compete in the marketplace, for fear that they might get pushed out. Of course, I haven’t heard him or anyone else from his party express concern about the individuals who have been pushed out of the marketplace, who can’t afford to get in it on their own, and who, as a result, are sometimes forced off this earthly plane of existence (that’s a poetic way to say “they die”) because they do not have access to care that might save their lives.

And Sen. Christopher Bond, who will not be one of our state’s senators after the next election, says government should not “ruin the system” with something big and expensive.

This may be a news flash for Mr. Bond. It’s already big, it’s already expensive, and if this system isn’t ruined, I don’t know what is.

The truth, which I can’t believe is less than obvious to anyone, is this system already rations care. It makes it so expensive and so out of reach for so many people that their rationed portion is zero. When they need it they can’t have it, when they get it, it’s not enough, and when they use it, they have to mortgage everything they own to save their lives.

Death panels? They already exist, only their actions go by the opaque euphemism of recision.

Meanwhile, the level of venom and vituperation people are expelling in protest of any change is so astonishing that I’m surprised someone hasn’t been shot. I mean really, people, just stop. You think the president is a Nazi? Do you realize how post-rational you sound?

Actually, you sound so concerned about keeping what you have that you can’t stop for a moment and step outside of your bubble of privilege to consider the woman who runs a small business who can’t afford health care and has to hold fund-raisers to pay for an operation. And you are blind to the fact that what you have now is not worth what you think it is. How you sound is hysterical, childish, and most of all, selfish.

One last thing: those who cry “socialized medicine” at the prospect of any type of reform? I hope you’ll see your convictions through to their logical end. Take your children out of school. Stop drawing Social Security or Medicare, if you’re entitled. Don’t call the fire department if your house is ablaze. If someone holds you up, don’t call the police. Stop driving on public roads. The government shouldn’t be involved in any of these things either, should it?