I’m unemployed and I don’t have any office to go to every morning. I used to have a different place and different faces as part of my day. Not anymore.

I have to create a space of my own, separate from my home. The usual thing to do is to go to a coffee shop with my laptop, buy a coffee and a sweet and settle in.

I tried that, even going to a coffee shop a bit off my usual path. But after the second time I signed the check I started thinking: did it really have to cost money to leave my house?

The small town is so peaceful and pastoral. I walk my neighborhood every day. After all my travels this summer I’m seeing possibilities in the public spaces.

It could feel too pastoral, like there is so much nothing going on I might lay flat and join in the nothing.

And as soon as that thought appears, I think about the stuff that has happened in my life while I have been in this town. I am not great at doing nothing. RIGHT NOW it is peaceful, but I remember so many things that happened in this place.

It reminds me of those small incredibly peaceful villages in the countryside, typically England but it could be anywhere, which somehow provide the resident detective with regularly occurring murders to solve.

Murder, she wrote. And my favorite, Masterpiece mysteries from the BBC. For many years those were my favorite to watch as I fell asleep. Britain doesn’t have gunshots (as much) so it is peaceful to watch well-spoken people walk about finding clues and solving things.

I am giving it a try. I have a metal coffee cup with a lid. True, no one is here to refill it for me. But with my notebook, laptop and pen at a table by the park, there is some life in my morning.

Squirrels are chasing each other up the tree. One has a fat acorn in its mouth.

Two men are separately walking tiny dogs across the basketball court

A group of gray-haired women in knit leggings and athletic shoes are intent on getting the dance moves synchronized, as a graybeard runs the camera and sound system.

And a toddler give me side eye before she runs giggling to her person—Mama? Big sister?—by the playground.

Like ripples on a water’s surface, disturbances stay small in the larger context. I enjoy the bustle but it leaves me space to find my own drama. The clues can be seen to solves the mysteries of my life. I have my own personal murder village if I choose to look around. What excitement would I wish to experience. That’s what the pen and notebook are for.

Sitting at a table where we could see the band with our drinks in front of us, and a man passing by says “I like your shirt.”

I turn around, but he’s clearly talking to my friend. I love her, but I had spent a lot more time on my outfit. She was wearing a t-shirt. She smiled up at the guy, “Yeah, my brother used to work a Space X.”

Oh. Now that I think about it, the Space X t-shirt is worthy of notice. That’s a group I’d like to be associated with.

When I was a teenager I tried to build my identity with whatever scraps were lying around, and clothing choices were very significant. I got whatever cast-offs I could find and assembled my look carefully. I wore mismatched socks every day as a signature look. The goal at the time was to be different. I didn’t want to be like everyone or even anyone else. I wanted to fit in by standing out. On my own terms.

But my T-shirt wearing friend had a philosophy I’d ignored. Advertising what sort of group I did want to join.

As I’m doing the job-hunting thing again, I advertise what group I’d like to join as I carefully phrase my resume. ”Pick me for your company!” I don’t like how I choose to (have to?) portray myself to the market to get invited to join the sort of business I want to be part of.


When I was a teenager, socks and underwear the only new clothes I got. I have more resources now. I could wake up from the old script and signal what I’m hoping for.

We are grownups at the table, drinking our adult beverages as we scan the people nearby and the far horizon. It is clear to me now that I every person is unique. Now I’m looking for ways to categorize people.

A slogan on a t-shirt is a good way to show it. In a wide world of unique individuals, obvious signs help.

I think about my sad little ankle socks back then.

I can find old versions of my resume on my hard drive. These are snapshots of my attempts to be relevant. Cringe.

And yet the saving grace is that I’m not the only one with awkward attempts. Any high school year book shows the experiments with style. Nobody come out looking the way they imagine.

Each day is a new canvas upon which to sketch the outline of who I’m trying to be.

The choices life presents are mostly humdrum.

Should I have coffee or tea?

This parking spot or that?

And really, even those decisions are often made and continued in perpetuity.

I’m a coffee drinker.

This is my parking spot.

..so routine that I can be distressed when I DON’T get my usual.

Who took my parking spot!?

Until then the jolt comes that disrupts my whole life.

“You have cancer in your body.”

The tables I had carefully set are turned over and smashed. My life is disrupted.

No, let me be clear:

My life is threatened as truly as a gun to my head. All alarm bells are sounding. And sleep is a stranger.

And the day comes when it’s my normal. Normal, as I’ve learned, it more elastic than I realized.

My faith reassured me and I held on to it. I focused on the choice for life, narrowing my attention to this moment and the next. The cancer wasn’t the only thing in my life, but it got first consideration for most things.

This weekend I went to a women’s cancer retreat, which I renamed cancer camp. It was led by counselor/social worker group leaders. Talking with other people that had already passed through the alarm-bells situation was helpful.

Hey, I drink coffee. But there are choices within coffee. Sugar? Stevia? Decaf? Iced?

Living with cancer or post-cancer treatment has choices too. Hearing other’s choices and experiences was so refreshing. Most people don’t have to enter the lair of cancer and tame that monster. It’s hard to even think about. But my fellow campers have and do, every day.

My cancer monster had to be harnessed, and shrunk. I put it on a leash and carried it with me, rather than it pushing me around. It can now fit in my pocket and quietly travel along with me. I’d rather it had not come, but since it’s here I want to make peace with it.

In front of thousands of people, Charlie Kirk was shot in the neck and murdered a week ago. I and many others are so impacted by this assassination and the death that happened in front of everyone.

His goal in his life was to ask questions and get to the answers through discussion. Some people, most significantly the man who shot him, didn’t like his conclusions. I find myself returning again and again to the act and the fact of his murder.

I didn’t want to write about it. But I can’t write about anything else. I tried hard.

What can I say? What do I have to add?

Then I remembered: I have my story. Literally.

It took me 12 years to write The Russian American School of Tomorrow. The climax of a story that builds its layers is not meant to be shared out of context. But as I grieve what has happened in the world and the assassination of Charlie Kirk, I remember.

What led me back to life from despair.

Age 18, I was lost and in hopeless pain after the culty church of my youth had used me up.

Life circumstances meant I still had to attend church, but I had carved out a space of freedom in my mind. I vowed I would not listen or value anything a church preacher of leader said because I’d never heard a true thing from a preacher. The condition was, If I heard something true I would try listening. This starts after that condition was finally met:

Something true had come out of a preacher’s mouth…One preacher, once. Like a gold prospector seeing color in the stream, I was aflame for more…Where could I find it?”

There were still those devotional books mom said were different… There might be one true thing. For even one truth, it would be worthwhile.

I was scared and as excited as a rock concert…the truth I was looking for was not something I should be talked into recognizing.

Could he really answer the questions? I read on.

He talked about Heidegger, Kant, and Nietzsche—named I’d never heard before. This guy knew questions…

He took the questions seriously.

He said they deserved an answer. More than deserved, they required an answer

He affirmed the answer should be honest, with integrity and compassion…

I needed to tear down the building

Answer the questions?

With honesty, integrity and compassion?

NO

ONE

EVER

DID

THAT.

NEVER

NOT EVER.

[They] told me the questions I should have and the answers I should expect.

I quickly realized the futility of writing them down. There were never any good answers.

Here was this guy writing a book back in the 70s, telling people that they should address questions. Those questions should be respected. Where had he been all my life?

This man said it; he explained it in a way I could trust. “Look at the way the world works. Think about it. It is consistent. This is God showing Himself to us.”

Think?

Thinking will lead me to God?

Nobody said to think. The message was: Stop thinking.

Except this guy said God answered questions.

I ate the book like a lit match eats gasoline.

I got to keep my questions. They were God’s gift to me.

Anything I could think of, if truth were true, would stand up to investigation.

If God was who he said he was, he would be able to handle it. The most intense investigation and questions I could imagine were fine.

I could finally live in the world and trust it.

###

Truth is true, and questions will lead us to it. There is a cost, and we have seen. I won’t ever stop making room for the next question to find a higher way.

RIP Charlie Kirk

One time at my new job, I was given a bldg. and room name that needed help right now. The buildings were laid out roughly in a circle and the rooms were named after characters.

I had no idea where I was supposed to be, but the conference started in 20 minutes and I had to set it up. The clock was running and I made a choice:

Pick a direction and go fast. The faster I discover that the next room is the wrong one, the faster I’ll find the right one.

It was a near certainty that I wasn’t going to find what I was looking for right away, even if I took time to try to figure it out. Silicon valley business leaders call it “fail fast.” Start, keep going and then figure out what worked and what didn’t. Sometimes making plans will waste time.

I started a fail fast plan for myself this summer. I want to sing and play songs, and I felt unskilled and incapable. That seemed a sign to plow ahead and do whatever I can. I would love to have a cool band to play with, but why would anybody want to play with the aforementioned unskilled person I am? Plus, scheduling people is challenging.

The easiest thing was just to play and sing by myself. Personal goal: play and sing 100 songs. Do I even know 100 songs? I guess I better learn them.

I’ve been keeping up with it. I thought I had 33 done, which is one third the way through. It’s been a delight to talk with my family about the songs, and the things I’ve learned about the music and myself.

I took the time to make the list. I had to go through my Instagram and listen so capture the names. Two things were immediately apparent:

1. I had finished 35, not 33. Further towards the goal than I thought!

2. I am not happy with my performances. Cringe! Would that I could do justice to this music I love!

But what is not so immediately apparent? With these 35 songs, have I found a theme? Do I have a style? From my seat of cringe, I am judging that I only do easy songs. And maybe serious ones.

Since I chose whatever songs I thought I could learn quickly, easy makes sense. Don’t know about the serious part. Maybe serious songs are the ones that are easy.

Or maybe serious is what does well on piano. I am seeing I would like to practice my skills more and get better. Then the happy songs might come to me.

On the other hand, maybe I should assemble a playlist of tearjerking songs. That would be within reach. I’ll take requests or suggestions. Here’s the list of what I’ve got so far:

1. Someone like you by Adele

2. Rocket Man by Elton John

3. The Luckiest by Ben Folds

4. Piano Man by Billy Joel

5. Baker Street by Gerry Rafferty

6. Pennies from Heaven

7. Looking out my back door by Creedence Clearwater Revival

8. By the Waters of Babylon

9. By the Rivers of Babylon

10. Chasing cars by Snow Patrol

11. Nothing else matters by Metallica

12. Broken Wings by Mr. Mister

13. Vincent by Don McLean

14. Wicked Game by Chris Isaak

15. Hotel California by the Eagles

16. Star Spangled banner

17. Have I told you lately that I love you?

18. Riptide by Vance Joy

19. Iris by the Googoo dolls

20. Part of your world from little Mermaid

21. Sam Stone by

22. I’ll follow you into the dark Snow Patrol

23. I know there’s an answer by The Beach Boys

24. Nothing from Nothing by Billy Preston

25. Horse with no Name by America

26. Where the streets have no name by U2

27. Ordinary World by Duran Duran

28. Fields of Gold by Sting

29. Pompeii by Bastille

30. Reason to Believe

31. Missing by Everything but the Girl

32. People Get Ready

33. Love’s Divine by Seal

34. Hurricane by Neal Young

35. Let it Be by the Beatles

AND

36 Joy to the world by Three dog night

37 Silent night

38 oh HOly NIght

39 It came upon a midnight Clear

40 Rockin around the christmas tree

41 One by U2

42 Last Christmas by Wham!

43 Wonderwall by OASIS

44 Its Friday I’m in Love by the Cure

45 Everything I do I do it for you

46 Raining in Baltimore

47 Last breath by Plain While Ts

48 Losing my Religion by REM

49 All of Me by John LEgend

50 Dont it make my brown eyes Blue

51 I’ll be there for you (THe friends Song)

52 The River Knows your name by John Hiatt

53 Round Here by Counting Crows

54 Always on my Mind

55 Never been to spain by three dog night

56 Close your eyes by James Taylor

57 Drops of Jupiter by Train

58 high hopes

59 don’t stop believing

60 hand in my pocket

61 follow the sun

62 The Reason

63 Babylon by David Gray

64 Sound of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel

65 Where have all the flowers gone

66 istanbul not constantinople

67 Whatever Lola Wants

68 Blue Moon

69 Bicycle built for two

70 Moscow Nights

71 Yesterday

72 Somebody

73 Gotta be by Desree

74 jobseekers lament

75 you’vegot a friend

76 kiss me by sixpence none the richer

77 youre so vain by carly simoon

78 hey there delilah

79 Why Worry by Dire straits

80 Dimming of the day

81 Danny Boy

82 Time after Time

83 Please don’t go

84 Cockles and Mussels

85 Wellerman

86 Vine and Fig tree

87 Folsom Prison Blues

88. Hallelujah

89. Western Highway

90 daydream by lily meola

91 Head over feet

92 Such great heights

93 Creep

94 viva la vida

95 washed in the blood

96 nothing but the blood

97 Oh the blood of Jeses

98 I’ve been redeemed

99 Victory in Jesus

100 Sing by the Carpenters

With the school year starting, and the days getting shorter, there is a feeling of getting back to the routine. Enough with the vacation out-of-the-office summertime mood, people around me are getting serious. What did I forget to remember?

I hadn’t forgotten everything. I kept some of my stuff going. As my long-time readers know, I have a habit of consistency. I’ll keep things rolling because I’m stubborn like that. I’ve been letting a few things get away from me, but then again I’m still plugging away at most of my internal commitments.

With the fall I’m thinking of getting busy. Like the axis of the earth I’m shifting to a new but traditional season, the long experience of starting school. Get up early, slip on the new shoes and the jacket and start it up.

I remember that person. I was that person. What person am I now?

I am thinking of sci fi episodes that feature crossing timelines. Did the “real” crew members accidentally encounter the “evil” version of themselves? The clue is usually a goatee.

Maybe the “real” me is that eager kid starting the fall with ambition and goals and I have become the evil me. Or maybe just the disappointing me. What are these shoes I’m filling now? And did I really mean to collect all these houseplants?

It seems exciting at the time. I snipped the starts and grew them for years, tending and watering so they would get bigger. Most of them have bigger pots than they started in.

And I am watering them. They are tough plants that can endure a lot. They are even bigger than the second pot and are falling over.

Which leads me back to the intersected timelines. Do I want to stay in the universe that is committed to these plants? I am not sure I want to stay in this time line.

Not sure how to jigger the space-time continuum, but I am looking around with new eyes to see what doesn’t belong here. I do know how to move those habits and objects out of my life. That’s a start.

The poor you will always have with you

-Matthew 26:11

I finally volunteered at the local food back this weekend. Shame on me for taking so long. Food is a kind of charity I feel good about. I’ve been a customer and then a volunteer of foodbanks in my life.

I can think of two outstanding books about struggling with basic sustenance:

Charles Dickens Little Dorrit is a story about a Victorian era young woman born in a prison for men who didn’t pay their debts. She was born in debtors prison and lived there until her adulthood allowed her to get a job outside to pay for her family’s food. We have a modern system of bankruptcy now, which seems an improvement.

George Orwell Down and out in Paris and London is Orwell’s story of a time when he found himself in a period of no income. He had to find a way to scratch together enough to keep body and soul together until he started his next job.

My teenager was feeling sympathetic towards the homeless people we saw on the streets around us. I love her kind heart. And I figured if she could see how the charity systems work for the poor around us, it would ease her heart. Our life with her has included relying on charity.

When I was her age, my family was well acquainted with the systems that fed those who couldn’t. I wrote the story of butchering a road kill moose here. Alaska used that system to share food with those in need.

Later, I got become a cook for a YMCA day care, and had to feed 70 people (mostly little kids) breakfast lunch and snack every day. The food came from the local foodbank. That’s when I first learned about the lifecycle of the food industrial complex. Grocery stores take in huge amounts of product, fresh and processed and do their best to sell it all.

A percentage is left over, and that gets passed on to the tail end of consumers. As a cook for a charity institution, I ransacked these misfit items and turned them into food. There were some weird items to get through.

At the food bank this weekend, these institutional over flows were distributed to the individual consumer. The baked goods, meat, boxes of crackers and other random things were available for distribution.

We had 250 banana boxes and we stuffed them with similar items so each box had a hearty assortment. This was not the sort of thing that could be automated. It was a by-feel kind of thing. Each box had items I would have been glad to have. The recipients signed up for their box. They drove through in their cars, present a number to get their box.

At the end were a few folks without cars. A smaller box with the extra items that didn’t make it into the 250 were put into the hands of the walk-ups. They’d been waiting under a tree for their turn.

Clearly the Saturday was a culmination or a week of accumulating the food for distribution. And the food being stuffed into the boxes was the result of a lot of connections with merchants so that these extras could be gathered and given to people who wanted them.

My daughter enjoyed the productivity and obvious benefit of what we did.

There will always be a reason for a person to need food. Healthy fruit trees will make more than is easily harvested, and this is an example of how generosity is built into the world.

Different times and places did it differently. I got to see again how sharing and generosity is done in my time and place.

The chicken meat has frozen itself around the bars of the basket in the freezer. Earlier, I’d jammed a butter knife into the packages to free them. I got a few, and some were too stubborn to extract.

And today I have no chicken for dinner. What will I do? I’m hungry!

My plan is foiled. I had purchased chicken to solve this problem, but this best laid plan came to naught.

What choices am I left with?

Freedom of choice is best served with time. When I have time I have more choices. Since I burned up my time by giving up on freeing the chicken from the cage in the freezer, I have to come up with another choice.

I have money. I have a car. I could go buy some food.

I remember other hungry times when I had a car but no money. That was a time to look in the cupboard.

What is in my cupboard? I had been looking for meat, because I wanted protein. What are the other options?

Time and resources increase the choices. Resources are the result of work done previously, often by me. Did I stock my cupboard previously? Did I save money from a paycheck I earned before?

Some resources arrive as gifts. When I play monopoly, I get 200 dollars after I pass GO. I have the gift of 24 hours each day I live. I can also have the resources that were given to me by the family I was born in. Do they give me food that they worked for?

My choices are dependent on my location. What is common here and what is rare and precious? It could be easy to get water near a lake, but it is rare in the desert. In the same way, I could have natural inclinations that are valuable. I am a person who writes, that could be rare and valuable. I also could stockpile skills that people need, to trade for

Chicken

I have an embarrassment of riches in my choices right now. I’m stuck in a rut. As you can tell, I have chicken for dinner a lot. Is that the choice I really want?

I know I could change it. I could start choosing to eat no meat at all. Or NOTHING but meat. Big choices is where big changes start. What do I want?

While staying in Cologne our hotel was in view of the cathedral. I watched people walk from the window. And I heard the bells.

The bells rang on the hour. Not every hour. I couldn’t find the pattern during our stay. I was teleported to a time when the bells would tell the city to pray. Bells were and still are a way to notify the people all around.

BONG

Pay attention!!

BONG

Stop and notice!!

BONG

This is an ancient human need, both individual and community.

I need to join the gathering. Or I need to take an action—like closing the gate.

The whole community may need to pause and mourn when someone dies.

I hear these church bells that have been all those things for the people around for centuries.

We all know that the sun rises and sets every day. We can pay attention to the moon waxing and waning, and even the stars moving in the sky. The bells were created by human beings to add new points of significance in the day.

The age of industry created non-agrarian methods of production. Factories required people to gather at times not tied to the sun, and bells were the way to call out the start of the work day. The workers came—DON’T BE LATE!—and the machines could make the things that people needed and wanted.

The business in the area would have had competing bells that would sound out. This was the way to communicate far away. The factory needed people to show up for the work at the factory, And the people wanted to get paid.

It was hard to get used to the factory’s demands. The work force was agrarian peasants who got up with the sun. The machines of the factory were not affected by light or dark, and they would work winter or summer. The industrial age brought so much productivity. The bells would wake us up in the dark of night.

And in its season, more rest. Long days in summer, and shorter in the winter. That must have been part of the “innovation” of daylight savings time.

Now, I strap a watch to my body that taps my wrist for notifications, and a device in my pocket the chimes to remind me to do a task.

I have a feeling in my gut that this movement is out of control. Was I meant to be notified and brought to attention in all these ways? If everything is important, then nothing is important.

But those bells are so beautiful. I want to hear them. Their significance as a call to action is lost and only the beauty remans.

I was last in Cologne 18 years ago. My impressions of the cathedral and the surrounding businesses are updated with what is happening now. It’s been a pilgrimage destination for centuries. And the Romans were there even before the cathedral.

Pilgrimage is a place for commerce. There are businesses surrounding the square, with anything I want.

I last visited in 2007, when Germany admitted .67 million immigrants. They have admitted more and more immigrants since then. In 2022, 2.67 million were admitted. What does that mean?

I saw a different flavor in Cologne this year. Literally. The square around the cathedral had a lot of take-out shops. The German beer shops with traditional food are there. From my view, the other styles of food outnumbered the local food.

I came to Germany to have an experience. I can have all these international flavors at home in California. As we saw the sights, I got hungry. My family was exhausted, so I let them go back to the hotel. I set off alone and hungry. I had a credit card. And some currency.

I had a mission. The taste of Germany that only the land itself could give.

I found the first German-seeming pub and looked at the menu. It was helpfully marked CASH ONLY.

Ooh. The first barrier. I had SOME currency, but what if it wasn’t enough? They wouldn’t take my credit card, and I figured I’d better keep looking.



Surely  closer to the cathedral would be have options. I up there, and saw waiters bringing bowls of soup out to the tables. This had to be it!

After the waiter dropped his food off, I asked him where to go to be served. He pointed into the door vaguely.

Ok, I went inside and looked around. I saw tables, and a menu by the door. But I didn’t know what I was supposed to do to catch the server’s attention. How did I do this?

The sky was darkening. My hunger was more demanding.

I gave up and walked back to the shop name Istanbul kebap. I felt it as a personal failure. The Turkish guys making the plates were eager to take my money and give me food.

I took the bag with my food back to the hotel. It was delicious, and Veronica ate half the rice and chicken. When I put the fork of cabbage salad to my tongue, I got a zing.

Mediterranean food can be spicy. Hot sauce is everywhere in southern California too.

But this?

German food has a reputation as bland. When the cathedral was only a couple centuries old, the drive for spices gave Christopher Columbus a reason to set off for America.

I could imagine the medieval Europeans with nothing but cabbages and turnips in the dark ages.

I shook my head. This Turkish shop had found the native taste for their recipe.

The chef used horseradish for the kick it needed. People are always on the move to adapt to the landscape they are in. That hasn’t changed.

This German ingredient—flavor—appeared in the middle eastern dish served in Cologne. It’s perfect.