Heaven Down There

Here's a poem for a Sabbath Day and what if it's true? What if Heaven really is down, in the salt sway where all life originated and not up past the sky at all?The poem is called 'New Religion' and it was written by Bill Holm:

This morning no sound but the loud

breathing of the sea. Suppose that underall that salt water lived the godthat humans have spent ten thousand yearstrawling the heavens for.

We caught the wrong metaphor.

Real space is wet and underneath,the church of shark and whale and cod.

The noise of those vast lungsexhaling: the plain chanting of monkfish choirs.

Heaven's not up but down, and hellis to evaporate in air. Salvation,to drown and breatheforever with the sea.

 It reminds me of that scene from Terrance Malick’s 2011 film The  Tree of Life.  I could watch this trailer again and again. It's all in here, from the Creation to miracle of conception, from Cain and Abel to prodigal sons, from stern and yearning fathers to mothers who ache for the sight of their lost children - and under and around it all the waters, the waters, the waters.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXRYA1dxP_0]

Flightpath

At times in my life I've felt like that Up in the Air guy George Clooney plays, when he’s flying around the country firing people.

(Well, anyway he’s doing that until the foxy chick played by Vere Farmiga­­­ breaks his heart. We’re not sure what changes his character will undergo when the screen fades to black.)

I travelled for 25 years for my job, by car mostly, but also up in the air.

By now I can whip that laptop out of its bag as fast as the best of them.

Quick as a wink I can take off a coat, un-holster a phone, give a special curveball of a kick to my shoes so they shoot right up into my hands, first the right, then the left, and in one sweet motion land in one of those bins.

Being used to the whole drill frees me to look around a little and that’s what I like best.

This time I saw a chubby eight-year-old talking to his toy in a high squeaky voice. I also saw many grownups doing that but the toys in their cases were  their phones.

I saw a hipster in a T-shirt reading 'Honey Nut Cheerios' staring glumly for 30 straight minutes at his phone.

I saw a family of eight madly snapping pictures of each other, changing positions, forming groupings and calling "Mira Mira!" as they looked at the shots.

Theyoung  flight attendant on the Chicago to St. Louis run looked like Brad Pitt from the back - Brad P the movie Burn After Reading I mean, with his hair half dark and half bleached brassy blond.

At least he looked young until I saw him full face.  He wasn’t really  young at all. AND he had dyed his eyebrows dark.

It's weird what happens to your eyebrows as you age. Mine used to look like Jennifer Connelly’s when she was a child actress doing the movie Labyrinth with David Bowie.

Now they’re like that flight attendant’s a month after his last dye job.

Our family’s new baby has no action in the eye brow department either I notice so I guess that’s the arc of it for us humans. We take off, we rack up a lot of miles, flying here and there and all around and then we turn back into babies. It sounds kind of nice doesn’t it? It sounds like it all might work out after all, even if most of us DON'T win the equivalent of Vera Farmiga at the end of the picture.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7k6FwXJhNk]

Hi-Def Birthday

I had a birthday and got an actual TV as a present; went and ordered it Friday and here it came last night. It’s for the kitchen, to help me get through the next 40 years of meal prep. The delivery guys tromped in and set it up when we were all digging into Chinese take-out. “This is so exciting!” our visiting First Grader kept saying to them. “Sure is, Sport!” said the really muscular one in the watch cap and earring. They had been going since 6 o'clock that morning they said and here it was 13 hours later - and they still had two more deliveries. They took the old 1985 set and boy was I glad to see it go. It made me feel like I was already on my deathbed the way I could never get it loud enough; the way it was slowly dimming the picture down to cocktail-lounge level all the time.My daughter-in-law Chris programmed the sleek new baby and that was a present right there.  Programmed it, set up the DVD player, the VHS player, the Super Nintendo from 1991 which brought the two TV guys to the brink of nostalgic tears. (Please no laughing at my ancient technologies!) Chris and Carrie gave me a gorgeous scarf, Annie gave me some tall rubber boots that are cool and practical which I wore all day today right in the house and the little guys made me a hand-lettered card that looks like a ransom note. David went to two different Chinese takeout places to satisfy everyone’s whims and here I am the morning after in my awesome boots and my scarf ready to cook up a storm in front of a televised image so sharp and clear all the men on the screen look like they need to quick go shave again before the paparazzi show up and paste their poor ruined faces all over the news.Here's one of them now, a less ruined specimen than some. And under him, well, that's  me in my new boots and my latest dye job . I never got dressed the whole day. :-)