negrito7's Xanga

Postcards without postage, pt. 7

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 05:15:01 GMT

Dear Sophie,

It is the time of barbecues and bottle rockets, and I am once again reminded of you. Did you watch the fireworks tonight? Did you whisper confession to your companion that you have nightmares of real rockets raining down fire, cracking the veneer of peace in your sleepy satisfaction? Did you tell him under the flash and glow how you weep for the ravages of war?

It seems so long ago that we talked that way. Remember how we walked the city night in search of the final ingredients for our summer sauce? How we worked together until sunrise, juices mixing and simmering until all was just right?

Then, we waited. A good marinade has to settle before its true taste can be discovered.

But I awoke later that morning as a lone explorer. I don't know what secret conflict forced you to flee, but I want you to know that our recipe worked. It just needed time to grow into its full flavor. How I wish you had given it time.

From my house in Portland I can see fireworks flying to the heavens in every neighborhood for miles, and I cannot sleep for the flashing and popping. I am reminded how your heart was a restless refugee, afraid to stay and fight the battle to make someone, someplace, home.

Do you weep for me? Please do not, for healing has found me in this place. I hope it might soon make its home with you, a whisper of peace in the night air between us.

Ramón

Loquetur pacem

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 06:56:37 GMT

The first thing I noticed was her smile. You just don't get many smiles like that in customer service––genuine, warm, and directed. I've given my fair share of fake smiles from behind the counter, mostly in response to the overwhelming lack of humanity I begin to feel at all the mechanical interactions and orders mouthed while talking on cell phones. But to see a genuine, warm smile directed at me is a rarity indeed.

The second thing I noticed was that she had a tattoo on her inner forearm written in another language. Sneaking glances, I suspected it was in Latin (I am in fact a language geek), so I asked what it meant.

Tattoos are funny like that. They can be intensely personal, and yet out in the open for all to see. They sometimes beckon, prompting the viewer to get below the surface level to what is beneath. In essence, I was really asking her, "What's the story behind that smile? What's your story?"

But there is only so much you can ask from behind a counter, from behind a green apron. Sometimes the divide between us is too wide to cross in a single encounter.

In a tiny village a few hours outside a small town with plastic palm trees in Western China, I once met poor Tibetan children who had some of the most radiant smiles I've ever seen. Contentment was written all over their faces (as well as curiosity at us foreigners) but without speaking Tibetan, there was little else I could learn about them. I remember being amazed at how little we take advantage of the opportunity to ask about someone's story when we speak the same language.

"It's in Latin," she confirmed before pausing. "It means, 'The Lord will speak peace over his people.'" As she said this last part, I watched the divide rise up between us. Her beautiful, beautiful smile turned heartbreakingly sad as she remembered her story. As she remembered what had moved her to inscribe those words indelibly upon her fading body. "It's from when I used to be a Christian."

Then she walked over and stirred cream into her coffee.

One of my favorite things in Islamic cultures is how Muslims greet one another with "Asalaamu alaikum", Arabic for "peace be upon you." It reminds me of Luke's story about Jesus, how he sent out seventy-two of his disciples in pairs to the villages where he would soon arrive, villages like that one in Western China. The first thing he told them to say was, "Peace be to this house!" I think there is forgotten power in the pronouncement of peace over one another.

When the terrible things happen, there are often no meaningful words to say. Just empty promises or well-intentioned but misguided assurances that everything will turn out fine. But, the reality is that many times things do not turn out fine. What is there to say then? When we have sat with our loved ones in silent mourning for seven days and seven nights (like Job's friends before they started pronouncing judgment and giving advice), what is left to speak but peace?

In the speaking of peace over someone, we are not describing reality as it is. We are speaking of how it should be. There is simultaneous acknowledgment of the desperate brokenness of a situation, the hope of healing, and our utter powerlessness to bring it about alone.

But in speaking peace over someone, we are also saying, "Don't be afraid. You don't have to do it alone," and it is powerful. It is the first thing Jesus says to his gathered disciples after his resurrection––peace to you.

It's what I wanted to say to her from behind the counter, from behind my green apron. Not because she used to be a Christian, but because she is sad that she used to be a Christian. Because maybe hearing the Lord speak peace over us starts with some guy on the fringes of mainstream Christianity who smells of coffee and chonga bagels saying, "You don't have to do it alone."

Maybe next time I'll have the courage to speak across the divide, "Asalaamu alaikum."

A city in the clouds

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:11:26 GMT

The nights grow longer now. The solstice has carried us over the apex of daylight hours, is guiding us down to the valley floor. What's down there? It seems strange to be at the beginning of summer and realize that we are in decline. Is that what gives these months such frantic energy? We are reminded with each sunset that the days are fading, their exuberance shortening, our somnolence growing.

Portland is renowned for its rainy months, but driving tonight I was struck anew by a persistently overlooked feature of this city––the clouds. Being only a little more than an hour from the coast and mere minutes from the entrance to the Columbia River Gorge, we find ourselves spectators of the mass migration of clouds of all shapes and sizes, colors and consistencies. Quite simply, they are spectacular.

The clouds fit the temperament of Portland's denizens. We are a hapless lot, locked in step with dreams bigger than our ambitions and besotted with the startling enchantment of this place that will never fully be ours. Portland is a city of dreamers indeed, with all the attendant depression and alcoholism tucked into the folds of bewilderingly genuine creativity and optimism.

I was watching Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back a few weeks ago and was reminded of Lando Calrissian's Cloud City. Here is a man who was a gambler, scoundrel, and thief trying to make it legit as a city administrator of a mining outpost. He was trying to leave a lifestyle behind, but the cutthroat in him had to be resurrected when offered the opportunity to ensure his security by turning in a friend from the old days. Even before Darth Vader kept changing the deal, had Lando's betrayal already lost him the real Cloud City––his dream of being legit?

All you non-Star Wars fans can pay attention again. Portland is a Cloud City of sorts. Local author Chuck Palahniuk called his offbeat tour guide of Portland Fugitives and Refugees because of the double lives that so many of us lead. We often come from all over with demons on our trail, chips on our shoulders, and the elusive dream of a new start clutched against our breasts. This makes for some great art.

It also makes for some spectacular failures. What happens when the dream falls to the cold, hard ground of reality below? What happens when it shatters into a thousand tiny fragments of rejection and regret?

Oh, how painful it is to watch a dream descend from the heights of possibility! See the horde of disgruntled pilgrims in its wake! Do you see those migrant dreamers over the horizon, swaying with the ebb and flow of the tide? In waves, we come and go, realizing the demons on our trail were all along in our heads. The dream could not escape the seeds of nightmare buried beneath the surface of our reinvented selves. So we leave again, in search of a cloud bank sturdy enough to hold our legacies.

The clouds are gathered on all sides tonight, towering behind the West Hills and lurking behind Rocky Butte. They resemble mountains, dark and impassive, peaks reaching for the sky. It could be a brochure for another country, Portland being swallowed up by some granite utopia beyond the Columbia.

But I look at the crescent moon hanging in the sky, and I can't help but laugh at how much it looks like nothing so much as a glowing toenail clipping. The things I want to cut off keep growing, inexorably. They remind me that this pilgrim has a long way to go in finding the balance between hope and disenchantment. I'm just glad I am not alone in the journey, for the days grow shorter.

Airplay Cafe

Fri, 29 May 2009 07:46:11 GMT

I'm beginning to have a new place in Portland just a couple months before I leave. It's called the Airplay Cafe, and it's on the corner of E. Burnside and 7th.

Frankly, a lot of the events are geared toward families with kids and are not my cup of tea. However, there's a great open mic every Wednesday night with a featured songwriter (such as Dustin Pattison, who you should check out), which also allows musicians to use the house band during the second part of the evening. But, tonight I moved from giving mixed reviews of Airplay to being a fan. Tonight, there was jazz.

There were four young players who swung hard and funky – Farnell Newton (trumpet), Greg Goebel (piano), Eric Gruber (bass), and Chris Brown (drums). Do yourself a favor and follow the links to check out these guys' music, because it's phenomenal.

I first saw Farnell Newton a couple years ago at the Monday night jazz jam at Produce Row, and then saw him later with local Cuban band Caña Son. He's an exciting player who excels in straight ahead jazz, funk, soul, Latin, hip-hop, and what sounded tonight like a hard-bop/funk fusion.

I first saw Greg Goebel playing at Wilf's with Kate Davis during this year's Portland Jazz Festival, and saw him again at a Produce Row jam. He is quickly becoming one of my favorite pianists in Portland, with harmonically complex and rhythmically adventurous solos that are always tuned in to what the rhythm section is doing around him. He is slated to play a long run of shows with local modified bass master David Friesen in support of Friesen's newest CD release, Five & Three.

This was my first time to hear Eric Gruber, and I liked what I heard. He really helped amp up the energy in the rhythm section and had some fantastic harmonic interplay with Greg on some of the solos. He only took a couple solos himself, but they were harmonically rich and rhythmically driving. He plays with tenor saxophonist Devin Phillips' New Orleans Straight Ahead and the Andrew Oliver Sextet.

I had never heard of Chris Brown, and I can't believe it took me so long. He was leading a lot of the songs tonight and brought high energy and tons of rhythmic complexity. They played one or two of his compositions and a few of his arrangements, all of which were stellar. He's a Portland native (son of the famed Mel Brown), but has been on the East Coast for a decade now, where he teaches jazz theory at Rutgers and plays drums in the New York scene with luminaries such as Benny Golson, Essiet Essiet (see the link for Produce Row above), Kenny Davis, and Roy Hargrove.

These guys put on an amazing show. You have two more chances to catch them as a quartet before Chris heads back East. Tomorrow night they'll be at Jimmy Mak's at 10pm playing as Itutu and Saturday night at they will be playing as the Farnell Newton Quartet at a very cool new Portland event (which sadly ends in mid-June) called 'Round Midnight at 11:30pm.

Do me a favor and go to one of these shows, since my early work schedule will not allow me to enjoy a repeat performance. And after Chris leaves, be sure to catch Farnell and Greg whenever you can. They're well worth the affordable cover fees that Portland's underappreciated jazz scene currently charges.

Journals on fire

Fri, 22 May 2009 16:23:24 GMT

Throughout my childhood I would periodically have these intense episodes of overwhelming anxiety with no apparent cause. It's been ages, but I had one last night. All the crazy bunched up in this tiny space just behind my left ear lobe, and it felt like my soul was going to vomit.

When this feeling comes over me, I want to lay in bed in the dark and stare at the ceiling. But then I feel out of place and I want to eat a pint of Ben and Jerry's Oatmeal Cookie Chunk and drink a Sam Smith Oatmeal Stout. But then I am acutely aware that I am self-medicating and I put on a movie and try to tune out the low level jangling in my lungs.

I can't be around people in that state, mostly because any reasonable person asks if everything is alright and what's going on and is there a reason. I can't talk about this thing very well. It makes me feel like a psycho, and how do you say to someone, "It's cool, I just feel like yelling at the top of my lungs and banging pots together and setting my journals on fire. Don't you ever feel that way?" More frightening is if I somehow aim my anxiety at them and lash out. People avoidance is the name of the game when these moments hit.

Thank goodness for text messaging and email. In the past when I had access to neither I would just hole up in my room and read fantasy books or play video games, sensing that with each page turned or level beaten that I was drifting further away from the relational moorings that make me human. At least now I can communicate with people (in an admittedly one-sided fashion) without having to interact with them that moment. It helps me to feel like I'm still connected, still held together somehow. And now I'm blogging about it to keep that feeling going, I guess.

Deep breath...

Ok. Time to start the day.

One man's house

Tue, 19 May 2009 04:49:04 GMT

I have been sitting in my living room, staring at my laptop, for nearly a half hour. I want to write something profound and moving, because I feel it all swirling just beneath the surface. The other night I took semi-detailed notes on an event I wanted to write about, but the thought of pulling them out and composing a coherent essay is exhausting.

There are other thoughts running through my brain these days, such as the complexity of love in all its forms – familial, fraternal, romantic, divine. And then there is that most elusive love of all, the love of one's enemy. I definitely don't have the energy for that post right now.

No, I am sitting here staring at my laptop, because I am mostly enamored by something so ordinary in Portland that even mentioning it seems pointless. Tonight, I am enamored by the rain. Perhaps more accurately it is the smell of the rain that is captivating me.

Sitting by the window after a string of gorgeously warm and sunny days inviting we denizens of Stumptown to imagine summer in full swing, I am struck by the fact that in all of the autumn, winter, and spring rains we have had, it has been years since I stopped to smell the rain. It's such a distinctive aroma, and it wafted through the window unexpectedly as the sky turned it's final shade of night. My first thought was, "Oh, how I've missed that smell!" My second thought was, "How did I miss it when it's always raining?"

It sprung upon me tonight, held me down and wouldn't let me go. In minutes I will turn off the lamp and lay on my dark bed, drowsy mind dancing slowly to the rhythm of rain falling gently on the walkway below my window. In my dreams, I will wrestle with the rain until dawn, demand some kind of answer for an ineffable question. Perhaps I will awaken with a name that dissolves on my lips before I can speak it.

The rain speaks to me in so many ways. All the powerful imagery comes to mind of cleansing and baptism, growth and refreshment. The first time I came to Portland, I was in awe of the vividness of the greens here. Unless you grew up near a rainforest, there is no way to prepare for how green the Pacific Northwest is. Four years later I can tell you that it is a 9 month deposit of rain that produces the pristine perfection of lush vegetation set against sapphire skies during the summer. It's well worth it.

Rain brings to mind Lauryn Hill's performance on MTV's Unplugged 2.0, the recording of which is the last new material we've heard from Ms. Hill in nearly a decade. Near the end she plays Bob Marley's "So Much Things to Say", which includes the lines:

Though the wicked may find me guilty
Jah will prove my innocence
'Cause when that rain
When that rain falls
It don't fall on one man's house
Remember that

This is Marley's rendition of a troublesome part of Jesus' sermon on the mount. Why so troublesome? Because the original statement is that the rain falls on both the just and unjust, which is meant to underscore Jesus' remarks immediately prior: "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you..."

There I go, marking the head of a trail I have neither the courage nor the energy to explore tonight. Suffice to say, the smell of the rain is moving me to contemplate the deeply subversive call to love my enemy and the necessity for all of those symbolic functions of rain to come into play for such a call to be followed.

The rain is singing redemption songs, and redemption is a welcome companion tonight.

Improvising

Sat, 16 May 2009 00:31:31 GMT

Jazz is once again a metaphor for my plan, or lack thereof. The essence of jazz is that each song is a framework, a beginning and ending melody which bookend a myriad of improvisations in the middle. Each performance is completely different.

When I started playing jazz, I would go over the songs for my lessons and memorize an “improvisation” that sounded good from start to finish. It worked while I was playing alone, but once my teacher started playing piano with me, he would ask, “Why aren’t you responding to what I’m playing?”

I’m thinking life is like that, for me at least. I’ve got great players surrounding me, a strong starting melody, and now it’s time for improvisation. The trick is that I can’t plan it and I can’t figure it out without committing to play something with no idea where it’s going next. I must put myself out there, then listen and respond to what the other players are offering.

I’m going to China in September, if all continues apace. I will study Mandarin and work with my friend to figure out how to bridge the Christian/Muslim divide in our minuscule corner of a tiny corner of the world. After a school year (semester?), I’ll see if it’s time do something else, and if that something else has made itself accessible.

It is not much of a plan. It is the first note, the first lick, in a longer improvisation that I cannot hear yet. All I can do is surround myself with good players, put my heart and soul into that lick, and pray that I don’t miss what the others around me are playing.

Then, when the time for improvisation is done, I will know the exact changes, exact notes for how the tune finishes. I will be able to look back and see how the improvisations brought the melody full circle. Then, if I’m fortunate, I’ll be able to look back and discern a coherent, plan-like journey.

Either way, I was playing jazz, and that’s what it’s about.

Easter musings

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 19:44:57 GMT

Despite the candy, the egg hunts, and the Easter Bunny; despite the overlap of Christianity with a Roman pagan holiday and its eventual wedding to Empire; despite all of this, the roots of Easter are in remembering and telling the story of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Thus the traditional greeting is, "He is risen!" to which one responds, "He is risen indeed!"

In addition to remembrance, there is also anticipation. The resurrection of Jesus was viewed from the earliest days of Christian faith through the lens of the restoration of the entire world. The apex of this restoration was the final abolishment of death, perhaps rendered most poignantly through an improvisation on the writings of the Hebrew prophet Isaiah:

"Death is swallowed up in victory.
O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?"

Therefore, beyond even remembrance and anticipation, there is a present call to action. Behind the anticipation of death's eventual impotence is the faint echo of the most frequent command in the Bible - do not be afraid.

If death is defeated, we are free to live in the risky ways of Jesus that will put us in conflict with the ruling powers - proclaiming good news to the poor, proclaiming liberty to the captives, recovering sight to the blind, setting at liberty those who are oppressed, and proclaiming the year of the Lord's favor. Thus the resurrection as a promise of the full restoration of the world is more immediately an invitation to join the present work of reconciliation. The hope of the resurrection is part and parcel with the hope that what we do can and will in fact make a difference. That is why we remind ourselves, he is risen indeed.

So what does this have to do with the poem in my last post? It's about the hope of the resurrection, in all of those dimensions mentioned above, but this time through the lens of grief. More than the hope of the resurrection focusing on seeing loved ones lost again someday, for me there is the day to day battle against being paralyzed by grief.

I lost my grandfather last spring, and the grief and regret have come close to being paralyzing at times. As I mentioned in the last post, that poem was not written specifically for my grandfather, but for dear friends who lost a baby to a miscarriage this past winter. It was the last in a series of devastating losses in my community, and it cut deeply. That poem was my response to the grief, and in the end, it was about my grandfather too, because it is about the hope of the resurrection.

And what a hope it is.

A poem before Easter

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 05:30:59 GMT

Rather than my normal explorations of religious themes through the culture and history of 1st Century CE Judea, I've elected to share a poem written in January for dear friends who lost their baby. It is essentially an Easter poem.

Fallen in the Garden

Winter has come
Leaves crowned with autumn
have fallen like tears
wearily
to rest upon roots deep
in the soil of sorrow
A garden of mourning
in bloom

Also fallen
lie the seeds of promise
Joyous burden of spring
dormant beneath skeleton shadow
Hardy shell of hope
waiting within
earthen womb groaning
for glorious birth

Snowfall

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:59:53 GMT

Gliding above these
fields glittering
with snow I am blinded
by a vision
of purity
covering the land.
If only peace
would lay its mantle
upon us with such
bedazzlement,
such finality.
I am imagining
war weary boys and girls
crowing with delight,
gazing with wonder
as whispers of promise alight
from the leaden sky
to blanket the world
in cessation,
violence at last enthralled
with the silent fall
of winter's gentle magic.