Mission City - I - Early Experience

Just before my first vision dream, I should relate one of my earliest memories. It is segmented and the memory is more of a feeling then a recollection. None-the-less, here is what I know combined with how I remember it. My mother drove us somewhere, and I recall it as having been downtown Fort Worth, but perhaps that had been the start of the errands that morning. I must have been four years old and had the feeling that we were around tall buildings. At any rate, I now know we were on Lancaster. We walked down a sidewalk, and came to a small narrow set of steps going down below ground level.

I had no idea where we were or what we were doing there, but there was a nice lady that was very kind to me. So far, so good. The lady was dressed in a habit and there were other sisters visible. My mother remembered the event and the woman's name was Sister Bea (Beatrice). This was the Tuller School then on Lancaster.

I liked Sister Bea, and liked the place, but I did not like my mother leaving. I was very unhappy, sat by myself and did not want to be with the other kids-- none of whom I knew. The sisters tried to coax me into joining in, but there was nothin' doin'. One sister sat with me for quite some time, and that was okay, but I wasn't budging. Until...

Until they began to sing "Onward Christian Solider." All of the children stood and marched in place, all of the sisters marched in place (with dramatic and comical marching) and finally, I stood and marched in place. Could be it was my first favorite song, and I knew how to sing the refrain. So the sisters had them march around and the sister who had been sitting with me took me marching with her, and (clever sisters) I was marching and singing with everyone.

I don't remember how many times we sang the song, but as an adult, I have a feeling that they sang that song as long as it took for me to join in. It is a very nice memory, and the sense of place and peaceis somehow tied to my Mission City-- not to mention the song.




I don't remember the first time I had a dream which recurred, but I remember being five years of age, having just moved from Fort Worth to Dallas, and waking one morning, with a vision-dream distinctly not fading from memory.

The vision dream stayed with me all morning, consuming my attention. If I had been at least a teenager, I would have sipped my coffee alone in my room an hour or so later and said something out loud to the walls like, "What the heck was that?"

I knew then, that I had the vision dream at least twice before, the familiarity with it was somewhat problematic due to its simplicity. I would later, as an adult, read somewhere that it is also quite a common recurring dream-- a flying dream. It was not that I was flying that made it stand out, it was the sense that I would see the dream again and again until I questioned it, until I analysed it and tried to wring out some mager drop or two of meaning.

I sped over a desert at very low altitude, maybe at two or three feet. I could see little to my right or left, and had no horizon at all. My angle of view was maybe thirty degrees below the horizon ahead. Running into an abrupt high spot in teh landscape simply was not a concern. I did npt have any concerns-- no anxiety, and yet I was not in control. I could have just as easily been lying on my stomach on a cart being pushed by a benevolent other.

On occasion, the sands, and dry, cracked clay passing beneath me was interrupted by a low and flat plant of some kind. These plants, their variety is of no consequence, but image an "airplane plant" usually found in hanging baskets, but one that is growing out of the desert, and has not been watered. It is just before dawn or dusk time, so there is not much color to see. The plant leaves appear more brown than green, but it is not possible to tell if that is due to the low light or due to lack of water. They pass underneath and out of view so quickly, that there is no time to study them. In fact, its is only because I saw so many pass ina flicker of an instant that I have any detail at all to share of them.

If there is any feeling inside me as I observe the soil and occasional plant pass under and behind, it is a very slight sense that I am going somewhere, and that I have a pleasant sort of anticipation. The anticipation is almost silent inside of me as I am uite content to wait. The plants are very much like the birds I described before-- seen from the narrow field of view through the back window of the car. They seem to mark passage of time in an otherwise timeless scene.

If I could have seen the horizon, I could tell you whether it was pre-dawn or dusk, because I know I was speeding east. For that reason, I consider this desert scene, in the map my mind has constructed of Mission City, to be west of the city. Only in hinsdisght and experieence do I view it that way, as I have never been back to the desert in my vision dreams since I arrived at the city.

I suppose it is only an assumption that this first experience represented the beginning, the start of my journey toward the city of mission. But, I speak of worldly things. At age five, if I had possessed the vocabulary, I would have told anyone I might of shared this experience with it was somehow a spiritual representation of a spiritual event which I had found myself experiencing. I told no one.

What I am about to write, I cannot stress strongly enough that I speculate, even now, as to the Source of this first and all subsequent vision dreams. So with that it is speculation and only speculation in mind, I will state now that I speculate that it is the One True God who flew me over the desert when I was five.

Unexplained truths are projects for mankind to resolve and explain. Unexplainable truths are mysteries to be enjoyed (or perhaps endured) as mysteries. I suppose one has to believe in truth, and I do. I suppose one must believe in mystery, and I do. I suppose one has to believe in the (not just a) One True God, the Lord God of Hosts, to find any meaning in anything I am going to write. Then again, perhaps I write of something familiar to many people.

If someone is born with three eyes, all functioning, they may be a freak, and yet also have an advantage-- a gift of sorts. If someone is born with six functioning fingers on each hand, they also may have an advantage, but may also feel ashamed of the difference. For that matter, I know of left-handed people who want to hide the fact that they are left handed because they feel ashamed if others notice. Well, if someone has spiritual visions which impart information or use symbols that the person has no experience or ability to interpret, then hey may well be considered to be gifted, but they are probably more aware that since no one else talks about such things, they are freaks.

I had not learned to read yet, had never heard of visions or mystics, nor knew of anything of prayer beyond what was done in church, at table and at bedtime.

So, at age five, I had nothing to do about the desert vision dream other than "ponder it in my heart."

-----



My brother told me a story a few years later. I was probably about eight or nine. He told me that a friend of his and fellow acolyte at our parish had told the story on himself. I cannot, now, recall the boy's name, but I am going to call him Brice.

Brice had been praying, secretly, for a sign from God about a perceived vocation to the Priesthood. One day, his family was having a garage sale. Where we grew up, their were alleys behind almost all of the houses, and so drive ways and garages were behind the house. garage sales were, therefore, held in alleys.

Brice was bored hanging out with his parents in the garage and wanted to go inside and watch TV. His parents told him to go around and use the key for the front door, because they did want to unlock the door from the garage into the house lest they be overwhelmed with people asking to use the facilities. He took the key and ran around the side yard toward the front where he was shocked to encounter a man there. He ran on past, assuming the man had parked out front and was on his way to the garage, when the man spoke to him.
The man held out a small box toward Brice and said, "Someone told me you ought to have this." Brice stood still and took the box while the man walked around the corner toward the street in front of the house.

When Brice had the box opened, inside was a fine crucifix attached to a chain -- one he could wear around his neck. He closed the box and ran after the man, but when he turned the corner, there was none there at all. He walked out to the street, and saw no sign of the mysterious person who had given him the gift.

That was the first mystical story I had ever heard. as you might imagine, I was fascinated, and stirred up.

Mission City - Foreword

It started, there, in that picture, I think. There has been a lot of changes to the UT campus since 1977, but I went searching for a place that looked like what I had seen in a vision dream. This vision dream did not recur, but it is part of the mission city-- a place I have dreamed of of since childhood.

It is not a "Mission" in the since of a Church structure, although it is a spiritual place; rather it is a place where I always find myself in what I call, "Mission Mode."

I like being in Mission Mode, it is exciting, it is comfortable, it is purposeful and it is familiar. I like it in this life, and I like in my vision dreams where it is even more real. In real life, less real, it is when the adrenalin has been kicked in by some outward threat. Somewhere and sometime along my life, I became so accustomed to be in such situations that I no longer experience fear, at least not in any distracting way. Part of PTSD, I suppose, but a really good symptom to have-- like another symptom that is a good one to have: hyper-vigilance.

When you wake up several nights a week, being kicked and punched, these things happen. That, however, is not what this is about-- just a short explanation of how I came to find grace and poise in battle.



When there is no justice, and revenge must be denied, vigilantism IS justice.

The last recollection I have in real life of Mission Mode is when I was told that a man behind me on the bus and with whom I had some words a few minutes before was now holding a knife in his hand with an exposed blade. I smiled. I smiled because I knew how it would end. I knew that if he attacked me, he would end up bad, and I would be unharmed. I'm not bigger or stronger. The only advantage I have is the one that cannot be easily overcome-- I lived it so long, that such sudden combat is a normal part of life for me. When I came out of that life with daily beatings, daily attacks, constant and unpleasant surprises, I worried how I would survive in a less violent world.

It turns out, that in a less violent world, that not being restrained from fighting back as I had been for sixteen years, had a very healing sort of feel to it. The abusers, the bullies, the evil people can get hurt in this new life of mine, and on a few occasions, such persons have been.

I sense such people. I have no good idea as to what it is I recognize when such abusive, bullying people are near, but I know it when they are close. Call it intuition.

I am easy prey. Slight build, a face that when relaxed smiles and eyes that are always searching, indicating (giving away the fact) that I am always expecting someone to hurt me. I expect to be hunted, and harmed. I am just the person sociopaths seek out, just the person by appearance, I should say.

Sixteen years of experience, and I know exactly what it takes to prompt the enemy into taking the first shot, the first punch, or make the first lunge. Few would be able to notice any threat, and before any does, I not only have noticed, I am waiting for opportunity. I am both bait and trap. "Everybody needs a hobby," I joke with friends who have seen me do this without understanding, but who are concerned that such a side of me exists.



Up until a few months ago, I had not punched a person since I was in high school. Over sixteen years in that life I had just before coming to Austin, I could not punch-- or would not allow myself to do so. In fact, in the first combat situation I experienced after coming to Austin, I remember saying to myself, in my mind "Don't punch him, don't punch him, don't punch him..." throughout the thirty seconds that the combat lasted.

I was afraid not during, but on a few minutes after it was over. I was afraid because the mans face was red and swollan, and he was bleeding from somewhere. I pulled a freind aside, almpst frantic, darm near crying, and asked in fright, "Why is he bleeding I didn't hit him did I?"
My friend answered, "No, he did it to himself, hit his face on the table to try to keep from falling."

You see, I had been talking to my counselor about my biggest fear: What I might be capable of when unleashed. Now that I saw what would happen to me if I only resisted, only tried to subdued, only attempted to restrained evil. Evil does not just use violence, evil also uses lies. You can't beat evil by being patient.

It was a simple lie which ended my life as I had known it, ended my ability to do my life's work, ended my family. Evil had no fear of me. I could have punched a certain fear into the face of evil, but I never did. Having lost everything, I worried very much what someone with nothing left to lose might do in releasing that rage.

It was so bad, my expectation and my fear, that I had taken to sleeping with a bowie knife in one hand. Not under my pillow, but in my hand. Over sixteen years, most of the attacks came when I slept, and even though I was no longer vulnerable to that person, I began arming myself, because, I knew I was now able to release my rage. Also, because I still expected to be attacked.

But, while worrying what if, I had a burglar wake me one morning, with a flashlight in his mouth going through my wallet. I never showed him the knife, hid it from his view, never touched him, but last saw him picking himself up off the street, where he had knelt, begging me for forgiveness. I was both relived and ashamed. I was relieved that I found restraint and control of myself -- a part of my character had not departed me; but I was ashamed that what the man saw in my eyes, was enough to have him fear for his life and beg. I wore dark glasses after that, unless I was in a place so dark as not allow what was in my eyes-- or what could be in my eyes, to be seen. I was hiding the part of me that not only scared me, but others.

My counselor smiled when I told him, and said, "You do not have it in you to seek to harm someone, or even to plot their harm. You are who you are, and whatever you may become will not deviate from what you are." I wanted to believe him. But so far, I had merely met and confronted one abusive sociopath, and struggled with and subdued another. What if neither confrontation or subduction would suffice?

So it is last summer, sensing evil, I paid close attention. I set a trap and waited for the abuser to find it. My friends simply left the table when the sociopath began acting out, I sat quietly until I alone remained with the abuser and his lackey. Soon, he sprang the trap, and I knew he would. I knew, and I was in control, but an abuser never, ever, expects their prey to be prepared. I was not only prepared, I was plotting.

In a discussion about Werner Von Braun, we disagreed. I was proven wrong, and took it well, how upset can aperson be to have said, "I don;t think Von Braun was ever an SS officer" and then learn that the Nai rocket scientist, indeed, had been? Taking it well was not what the sociopath expected, nor wanted. So his lackey announced to everyone within earshot, "Don't f**k with me about history! This guy should not have f**ked with me!"

That is obviously an over-reaction to being proven correct in a gentle discussion about a Nazi scientist. I flipped my hand and continued smiling, indicating to them that I was nonplussed. After all, it was quite a bit short of what I was used to. I could, and probably did, sleep through worse verbiage and at higher volumes.

They were nibbling at the bait, but not yet biting. The sociopath, not his lackey, was the one I wanted to battle. Having gotten no reaction from me, other than a dismissive and non-threatening wave, the sociopath lost patience during the silence and repeated, in a loud voice intended to draw attention from others, not so much me, "You really should not have f**ked with my friend."

He didn't know me, he was not sure if I was the prey he sought. He wanted to try a little verbal push. I took it and said nothing. I thought he had just bitten, but waited for him to run with it. My lack of response prompted him again to break the silence, this time, nervously sharing some comradery with his lackey. "Man, did we score some good s**t tonight?!"
"Yeah, man, that was some good stuff."

They were talking about some cocaine they had been bragging about before the others started to leave the table. The source of false self-perception I was witnessing-- and which I was manipulating was in part the cocaine talking, and partly the personality disorder.

The bravado went on like that for a few back and forths, and in my quiet observation, the lackey used his eyes to indicate to the sociopath that they had retained my attention. The sociopath leaned forward toward me, and I leaned forward, scooting my chair closer to the table to indicate I was going to speak something quietly to the two. Surely they assumed I was going to ask for some of that cocaine.



The sociopath looked almost friendly, like he thought I wanted to join in and be a bad boy as they thought they were being-- as they wanted everyone to think they were. Instead, I very quietly, for their ears only, spoke, "I don't like the way you have talked to me. You have no call to speak to me that way, and I don't plan to put up with anymore. Is that clear?"

It took a few seconds for what I said to seep in. I said it in a friendly, conversational tone, but there was no question being asked of them. It was statement, and they knew it.

A normal and sane person would have taken the unexpected reprimand with some form of backing off. A friendly personality would have apologized. A person on cocaine would have stopped short of apology, but backed off the abuse, pretending it was not intended. But a sociopath would do what this guy did do.

He went ballistic, began cussing and yelling and pounding the table; and drawing no reaction from me, as I smiled and watched, he stood and stepped so close to me (still sitting in my chair) that he went beyond "invading space" he actually began bulldogging against the chair, trying to turn it over as he continued his rant.

I stood up so fast that he stuttered in shock as he finished yelling that I would have to fight him for talking to his friend the way I had done. A rule of sociopaths is that no one is to tell them to stop being abusive. He waited for me to throw the first punch. That surprised me. So I provoked him, with the same sweeping motions of the arms he had been using to draw attention to himself at the table, I bellowed back at him, "The way I spoke to your friend? I haven't heard a single utterance from your mouth without the word 'f**k' in it, and half of those have been directed at me. And you don't like it? You don't like it that I told you not to talk to me that way? I haven't even used the word 'f**k' yet, and you two can't stop yourselves!"

He bulldogged his chest up to mine, and I shoved him back, sending him staggering to keep his balance as he crashed through one of those plastic patio chairs one sees everywhere. He got his balance and lifted the chair, so I stepped forward to put myself too close for a swing of the chair to hit me with any force. He did swing it, but I blocked the motion with my wrist against his wrist and he lost his grip-- the chair went behind my back and clattered to the patio deck. He ran backwards a few steps to get away from me and grabbed another chair; and again I stepped inside the swing and blocked the chair with my arm.

He held on to this second chair and began poking at my face with the legs of the chair-- like a lion tamer might do. With my left arm, I shoved the legs of the chair to my left, collecting over a dozen bruises from the four legs before successfully doing so, and I believe his exact words as I did so were, "This f**ker can't talk to me that way."

He was playing to the crowd, and hearing no reaction, looked away from me for an instant. My right fist came arcing up, around and past the chair tapping him squarely in the cheek. The poor guy was still trying to talk, when he should have been more aware he was in a fight that he, not I, had picked.

The first chair was "turn the other cheek." The second chair? I had run out of cheeks. In my check- list of required actions before I allowed myself to engage, that ws the last item to tick off. He should not have been trying to convince his imagined "audience" that he was in the right, because in doing so, he never saw the punch coming and might have had his jaw clinched as mine was. What came from his mouth I have never heard from a man before. It most closely resembled the sound of a suddenly startled cat.

He dropped the chair and I was moving closer to prepare for the fist fight to ensue, but before the chair had bounced a second time, he was running away while making that startled cat sound. His lackey was nowhere to be seen.

Thirty years since I had punched another human being and I enjoyed the act itself, the self-control I felt (I really did have mental check list), and even (but to a lessor extent) the description I heard days later of his face from that one punch, "both eyes blackened, and a jaw that looked like a baseball was under the skin."

I felt like I had just dispensed one fair measure of justice and it felt very, very, good.

Oh, but my counselor was upset with me! I admitted to her that I had a strong intuitive feeling that they guy would test me, and seek me out as prey; and so I settled it in myself to wait for him to do so, and bait him if possible. That was where she took exception.

I answered, "If I had left, who would have brought fear into that abusers life? Who would have made him think twice before repeating his evil way of finding pleasure? If I had left, who would have learned that I am not easy prey? A few days after, I started hearing stories about how he would cuss out and embarrass waitresses because he knew the girls could not risk losing their jobs. I didn't know the man but my instincts were dead-on accurate. I got one of the bad guys."

She conceded both points but disliked my wanting the situation to escalate-- using my experience with such people to bring about an occasion to harm someone. Good point, I thought, except I have always wondered if my abuser and accuser of sixteen years might have been helped if someone along the way (other than me) had found occasion to knock her teeth loose for her pathological abuse.

My counselor then said she would have expected me to do what I seem to do so naturally-- that is, to look for what had hurt the other person so badly to make them abusive to others-- to have scarred their psyche so as to live such a miserable and meaningless life.

I answered, "My abuser was abused as a child, I only know part of the story. Maybe a parent or both parents, maybe a sibling or siblings? I never heard the details, well, not many of them. I also know that she killed a man, was charged with manslaughter, willful manslaughter I think it was, but was no-billed by the grand jury. She did it, but they just did not want to prosecute. She also aborted a child before I knew her, which she, as a catholic girl, never got over either. Yeah, she had it bad.



"I had compassion for sixteen years, but she stole my children and my life. I don't care about abusers anymore. I want to hurt every last one of them-- maybe that is what stops them? Maybe it is what all of their victims need to heal? Maybe it is what I need to heal?"

...

Well, all of that is not my mission, but it explains, I hope, why I feel "whole" when in Mission Mode, why I no longer experience fear, but only control when threatened-- and why some of my friends have voted me "most likely to die by gun shot."

If you think about, if you lost children and lost everything you owned, and lost your life's work, your hard-earned reputation, your dreams, and so on-- if you lost everything...

What have you got to lose?

And who do you desire to please?

Which brings me, finally to the story of the Mission City.

The Mission City - Intro

When I was very young, my parents read to me a picture book about a Tug Boat. Perhaps ten years later I sensed something. I had stayed in the car while my mother had run into a store. It was gray afternoon. I don't remember what time of year, but I was not aware of being either warm or cold in the car.



She had parked the car in shopping center off of Coit Road down around Spring Valley Road. Is that the one that ran west alongside the golf course and emerged at or near the Church of the Transfiguration? I think so. Anyway, with nothing to do, I lay down in the back seat of the car as Mom left the car to go inside, and just did nothing. I watched through the back window of the car an occasional bird fly overhead and in my state of mind, that was enough. I mean, I was at peace, no time seemed to pass, I was not anxious, I was not really thinking, I was just there and content to remain there.

Without eyes, ears, nose, tough or taste, I sensed something. Still, I just lay there-- not trying to concentrate on what I sensed, I just remained. Another bird flies by. I feel familiar with the timelessness of my present. The familiarity strikes me, and I do try and concentrate on that, and then the familiarity drifts away, unable to be caught by my senses. Two more more birds pass by limited line of sight. In my mind's eye, I see a harbor, arge cranes there to load and unload cargo ships. It is a vivid image, yet surreal-- familiar and unfamiliar. The image the like the deja vu some time before, distracts for a moment, but fades. A bird passes.

My mother unlocks the car and gets in saying something in greeting. I don't remember what it might have been. I respond, and want to return to that timelessness and contentment, but the world is the world, and I am master of nothing in it. As we swing out onto Coit Road headed north, I ask my mother, "We never lived by a harbor, have we?"
"No. We only lived in Richardson and in Fort Worth before our home now. Why?"
"It is almost like a memory -- of a harbor big cranes, but even though I can see it, laike a memory, I don't remember ever seeing anything like that, not like when we have been to Galveston and Houston. It's a memory but not a memory."
My mother then told me how she had a "memory" like that, of an ivy covered house, and how she had asked her mother about just as I had her about the harbor.

When I was reading a tug boat story to my children many years later, I turned the page and saw the harbor I had seen that day in my mind's eye-- close enough to solve the mystery...

... to solve that mystery.

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See the whole list, at 11points.

Girl on a Bus

Just the two of us riding on the bus last week while the cold wind gusted and the smell of rain announced the end of the Indian Summer in Austin. She was in her mid to late twenties, kind of pretty, dressed a little on the shabby side which tended to blend with the tattoos. She talked-- downright chatty, just a hair shy of boisterous and there was no escape, I was the only one there.

She spoke about how cold it got and how suddenly it came; about what a pleasant day it had been, and the fun she had with friends in the park; how she had drank quite a bit and felt good and happy because of it, and how she hoped it would help her fall asleep although she felt very energetic.

The route was headed downtown, and that late at night, it was common for a twenty-something, (often tattooed, and almost always pretty) girl to ride alone on the route on her way to a job tending bar on or near Sixth Street. Those in the little black dresses would be off to waitress, those in more casual and at least as revealing attire, probably to be pulling beer until closing, and those, like the one on the bus that night, pulling beer or backing the bar at some rock club. That is what I assumed she was off to do before she said she was hoping to get to sleep soon.

"Off work for the day?"
"Yeah, kind of between jobs. I'm going to wish I had a tent tonight."
"Oh no. You're camping?"
"Yeah."

Camping does not mean in a state park-- it means in a homeless camp. In the old days, it would be a hobo camp. Same thing, but rarely transported by train. In Austin, the police are known to raid the camps on occasion and seem to have used "King of the North (Pole)" and Shack's character as a training film. I am thinking of the well known "David." A well read homeless man.

Several years back, I was riding the number three bus north from the UT campus area, up to the woodworking place to sell woodworking tools supplies and teach classes on the aspects of the work I was particularly good at. My brother used to take the bus from his home in Dallas to his IBM office in Irving, and told me how the best part was that he spent his commute time reading books. Taking his lead, I was re-reading Shakespeare's, "Henry V."

Over my shoulder, the homeless man, full beard, unwashed hands, spoke to me.
"Have you gotten to Henry's speech yet?"
"'Once more into the breach?'" I asked.
"Yes. I saw you reading that and started trying to come up with the Saint he mentions."
"Saint Crispin."
"Ah. Yes, 'We were there on Saint Crispin's Day.'"
"Exactly."

David is brilliant, pleasant, and in the southern idiom I like to use, "just good people." I knew it before the end of that thirty minute bus ride. We chatted the whole way. Then I saw him on that same bus either to or from work at least twice a week. I went to my storage unit soon after meeting him and when I ran across the rest of my little Shakespeare paperbacks, I tossed two in my backpack that David mentioned as being his favorites. He had told me how he once had a good library, and most important and dear to him, a manuscript he had been working on. He also mentioned missing having a Bible. All of it was stolen from his low rent, subsidized living.

David didn't connect the dots for me, but I connected them in this way. He was on the downward slide, no body in his family, friends, or work-associates noticed, or those who noticed did nothing but watch. He went from slide to freefall. Having never been homeless, without two nickle to rub together and hungry, David sought out help using some of the civic resources available.

Over a time, he got set up with taking free meals with others who had fallen on bad times, persons allowed to freefall. Most were despondent. In their despair, most had turned to drugs; and whatever they made, while not good enough to afford a room, were enough to score a virtual vacation from life for the time that the cocaine lasted in their system. David admits to having addiction problems, but he did try hard to stay clear of drugs and alcohol when he first found himself on the street. Like most, he thought his time on the street would be a few days, maybe a few weeks; and then he would climb back out and start anew in life.

Very few ever climb out.

Once homeless, a person can go to the ARCH (Austin Resource Center for the Homeless). You can get a cot, a card showing your where at least one free meal a day can be had, maybe a bus-pass to help you get around for job interviews. So far, so good if you ignoring that most of these job interviews were to dress up like the Statue of Liberty and beckon persons driving by into a tax office. They'll get $10.00 for each hour they do this. The real problem, one soon learns, is that if you want to bathe for a job interview or a new fond job, you can only do that between 3 PM and 5 PM.

So, you get the job, and after two days working 8-5, you begin to smell. No one wants to hire you if you smell. You cannot work and bathe if you stay at the ARCH-- you can only do one or the other. Hey, rules are rules. So, anyone who doesn't want to give up, will sleep in the woods, bathe in a creek and dress out of a backpack. The homeless know this and, presumably, the civic aid organizers know this, too.

Summers are hell because the creeks stop running, and winters are hell because the creeks are so cold bathing is painful. David did this. He kept trying, he kept working. Most people give up at the point when they realize they are working full time, and they are still homeless.

Not David, but many find it like this: You climb out of your sleeping bag (assuming it hasn't been found by a hobo and stolen), dip a towel in the creek water and clean up as best you can. Brush your teeth with brush and paste in your dop kit in your back-pack (assuming it was not stolen with your bedroll-- a homeless person knows not take their bedroll to work with them-- so they hide them in the woods), put on your work-clothes and take the change you saved and walk to the nearest bus stop and head downtown to get food.

If a Mobile Loaves and Fishes truck shows up, you can get breakfast, otherwise you go hungry while at work. Or, if you don't work, you can go to one of the places on the card the ARCH gave you, and take a the correct bus for the correct day of the week and go have a satisfying lunch. If you chose to work instead of eat, you may have $40.00 in your pocket by lunch time. Day labor, and Statue of Liberty type stuff may front you some money, if the boss is understanding. So you can go to McDonald's for a meal and buy a cup of coffee and still have $30.00 dollars left over.

If you can get your own street corner, you will do much better panhandling. In no case, will you earn enough for a deposit and first and last months rent and the electrical deposit required for renting an apartment. For those paid by check, taxes come out and if any child support is part of one's responsibility all of the check may be garnished to pay the child support. The government can, does, and will take all of your earnings if the government wants it-- no concern about your eating on that end. What are the homeless going to do? Hire a lawyer? Ha! Nope, once one falls below the affording a lawyer level of income, the 14th Amendment ceases to be a right.

Child support fathers who are homeless must work for cash-- because otherwise they work 40 hours a week and take home something like $11.00 a week to live on. That is in the "best interest of their children" according to the divorce papers.

Personally, I lived in my car, and worked 30 hours a week as an accountant for an institution of the State of Texas. I then worked 20 hours a week selling woodworking equipment and supplies to contractors and hobbyists. I also worked (borrowing a car, since the one I lived in had broken down) so I could continue work as an ordained Priest serving as a hospital chaplain. one or two nights a week as a PRN (on call). I used the bus system and my bicycle for commute except for the night chaplain work, when I had to be able to get to either hospitals within 30 minutes in the middle of the night when the bus system was not running.

To bathe and change, I had a membership at a gym, and swam laps in a pool, used the showers there, changed clothes and headed out-- every morning. No one knew I was homeless. I looked good enough, had clean clothes, and was clean myself. I learned to hang out in a neighborhood pub near my accounting job at night, because I had access to a bathroom until closing time. Then I walked to my car parked on a side street, crawled in when no one was looking, hung towels across the back windows and with the back seat folded down to make a flat surface all the way into the trunk, slid into a sleeping bag.

In the winter, I was okay, but did wake with frost on my hair and the inside windows glazed with ice on several occasions. In the summer, I bought a bag of ice, and kept that in a Styrofoam ice chest with a towel. I would wipe myself down with the ice cold water and sleep until the heat woke me and then cool off again.

In the mornings, I would wake, dress very slowly so as not to make the car shake and give away my presence, then slide to the front seat to look as if I had just parked there. When the coast was clear, I would get out, with my backpack, walk to where I had chained my bicycle, nearby, and ride to the gym. After a shower and shave and a breakfast taco, I would walk into the office ready to go. After work, I would eat as many calories as possible for the money I had, then using cycle and bus combined, would go to the second job. I'd get off around 9:30, and cycle all the way "home," (because the last bus had already run before I was able to get to the bus stop) straight to the little pub, to read, write, and sip beer until closing. Then, I ended each day with the horror of sneaking into my car parked about half a mile away to start the whole thing over.

Of course, when I was not in public view, I was left alone with my thoughts of the family I once had, especially my children who had disappeared with my ex-wife. I prayed, and I cried. God was with me, and let me know it when I needed to know it-- sometimes in beautiful, intimate ways.

I had insurance through the state accounting job, and after a year of homelessness, noticed that I could not gain muscle mass no matter how hard I tried. I cramped every time I went swimming, and was beginning to cramp every time I rode my bicycle. Something was wrong and, fearing the worse, I went to see a doctor.

The doc ran all of the tests and assumed exactly what I assumed: that it would be cancer. I week later, the tests were back and I was told that I was in the best physical shape I had ever been in, and simply could not consume enough calories to fuel my life-style-- swimming and cycling, that I was malnourished and due to to living in the elements I simply required more fuel than I could afford to consume. My net income, after child support garnishment, was less than $600 a month working three jobs for nearly 70 hours a week.

The wealthy physician offered a novel solution. He said he had some friends who would appreciate a healthy body such as mine and pay well. That I did not kill the son of bitch right then and there in his office is something I sometimes regret. The look on my face shut him up, and I gather he realized how close to death he was at that moment. I walked out, quit the two jobs which the Attorney General knew about, and went full-time on a job they did not know about and so could not garnish my wages. I tripled my income working for the lowest paying job alone and cutting my hours from 70 to 40. Does that seem right to anyone?

Six months later, my Priest-- one of only two people besides that sick physician who knew I was homeless-- contacted me to let me know he knew of a room for rent and had already contacted the owner on my behalf. I ended my fifteen month stint on the street. I made it without a drug habit, without an alcohol habit, and with a disgust of moneyed people who are in a position to help, but instead choose to prey upon the poor. I made it with my faith in tact, my spirituality in its highest form of my life. I also had made some very good friends.

Not knowing where my children were, or how to contact them was the Hell which predominated (and does to this day) my life. But God did not leave me alone in my pain and agony. Like the doctor, prowling lions, seeking someone to devour; the State Attorney General's office and the courts are no different. At the exit interview with the state job, I told the HR rep my story-- and she is the one who suggested I quit my job and work "under the radar" to support myself. She also called CPS on my ex-wife, saying that, based upon what I told her about the abuse she dealt out to me when married and the horror stories my children had told, she had a legal obligation to do so. That of course aggravated the situation-- because once CPS learned it was an abusive female, they were not interested, and that abusive female then learned she was above the law. But, the law is the law.

Of course, when my ex- realized the money stopped arriving (while I lived in my car, she had bought a beach house) there was Hell to pay.

I had filed for enforcement of my visitation rights (having joint custody) and adjustment of child support. Imagine how long it took to save the $1,400.00 this cost me in legal fees! Consider being malnourished and choosing to forgo a meal to save up for legal fees. I did that until it literally threatened to kill me. Consider the agony of a father eating regular meals againand each bite tasting like the blood of his own children! The legal maximum of this state's child support is 25%, and I was having 55% garnished and 30% in tax off the top, leaving me only 20% of my earnings as "take home." The courts refused to schedule a hearing, and that is when I went homeless, and that is where it remained when I crawled up off the street by earning a living on unreported income.

I had pulled one of my own teeth on more than one occasion during those homeless days. It is not as bad as the movie Castaway might leave you to believe-- the pain which causes you to do it is that bad, but the actual act is survivable, and the relief is immediate-- endorphins kick in and the source of the original pain is removed with the tooth. I recommend bourbon. Then, I was able to get a loan and make payments on some corrective surgery. It looked like shoddy work, and I looked mean and angry because of a false jaw-line that I could not afford to have fixed. I was angry, just not mean. That false look got me in a few fights-- a facial expression I could not change, and so didn't feel like explaining nor apologizing for when mistaken for something else. I broke my hand, but that was nothing knew. My ex-wife had broken my finger in one of her episodes, and no one has ever worked me over like she did --on an almost nightly basis.

Somewhere along the way, I had lost my ability to be afraid. Being poor, hungry and homeless taught me I could survive anything. It toughened me, not my heart, but my body; and then proved to me that I could survive anything-- no matter the pain. Without fear, you just don't care about pain. I don't miss fear, and I don't miss the pain; but it bothers me that with the fear also went self-preservation. Without self-preservation being kicked in by fear, you find you really do not care what happens to you, except maybe on an intellectual basis. Reconciling that is tough, but possible; and once reconciled, one's spiritual life is in excellent shape-- where it is supposed to be.

Meanwhile, my new landlady saw an add in the paper for bus drivers with Capital Metro, and recalled that I had told her of moonlighting as a school bus driver back when I was a parish priest serving a poor mission which could not afford to pay me the minimum stipend of a Priest. That is what good fathers do for their children-- be they real children or spiritual children.

I applied and was accepted. Just before starting there, full time and again having insurance, I received notice of a hearing on my child support in Galveston. I borrowed a car and went down to Galveston.

It was three visits in total to Galveston to meet with the Attorney General and ultimately the judge. The first meeting was at an AG office near Galveston. They had sent me a notice requesting me to bring certain documents, and included a flyerstating that they would help with enforcing my visitation rights. I was excited.

An hour in that office, I had provided all of the financial documentation, and the case manager was very upset that my claim was correct-- that the AG had forced me into poverty by taking more than twice what was legally allowed to take from me-- and had done so for over two years. She was in no mood to offer reparations, reducing my child support to make up for what I had been forced to overpay. All she could do, from her predatory standpoint, was recommend lowering my child support to the maximum and delay the order being signed by a judge for as long as possible. The enforced poverty would continue as long as she could make it continue. In turn for her brand of "justice," I kept my mouth shut about my new "on the radar" job I was starting.

I then asked about my visitation rights being enforced. She refused to give me their address. I showed her my divorce decree making it clear that I had joint custody, specific visitation weekends and days throughout the year, and pointed out that I could not be with my children since my ex- had moved out of jurisdiction of the court without the court's permission and in doing so, she had violated court order.

The AG worker sharply slapped my file closed and said she would not submit a request for lowering my child support if I asked about my visitation again. Tears leaked from eyes. I was alone and with a monster who could hurt me and wanted to. The excitement and hope I had on the way to this meaning evaporated-- I was not getting my children back. I shook with grief and tears flowed. She stood up, and walked into the hall, saying over her shoulder, "I'll give you a minute."

I struggled to pull myself together, and as I did, heard her laughing-- laughing, mind you-- in the hallway with her co-0workers that I was in her office crying. Her co-workers all laughed with her, seeking someone to devour as they were.

A couple of months later, I had a hearing with a judge and was expecting the reduction of child support and then sought to bring up my three year old motions filed with that court for enforcement (and amendment) of my visitation.

Here is how that actually went...

The judge calls my ex- and myself up to stand before the bench. He announces the case, and says, "I see Mr. Giles has not made child support payments in several months. Mrs. Giles, can you think of any reason why I not throw your ex-husband in jail for failure to pay?"

My ex-wife, also seeking someone to devour, smiled with satisfaction and began stuttering something about my not paying anything if I was in prison. However, a commotion erupted to my right and it was a lawyer with the Attorney General's office-- one I recognized, interrupting the judge and hurrying to the bench with papers scattering.

"Your Honor! The Office of the Attorney General is in agreement with Mister Giles." The judge paused to let her explain an show him the documents."

Trying to rescue my children was going to get me thrown in prison. I was a hair's breadth away.

That was the same woman with the OAG I had met months before-- not the nasty clerk laughing about my crying, but from another time in court. I think it was the third time I had showed up for a hearing on the motions I had filed only to find that the OAG had convinced the judge to cancel said hearing after I appeared and was ready. I knew what they were doing and why. To her cohort, I explained that I was aware and would persist until I had him in prison for contempt of court.

In a private room, the judge directed me to meet with the OAG representative instead of before his bench. I had done this once before, so I knew the game this time. He coldly demanded I pay back child support-- the money I had stopped paying when I quit my official job to take undocumented an unreported work so I could survive, physically.

I answered what questions were to my advantage to answer and taunted him that the other answers I would only provide before the judge. He asked why. I said, "Because you know that if my answers ever get to a judge's ears, that you and your ilk are going to have to answer to it-- and I am not telling you anything about how much I know, because you will go to prison for it if it the last thing I do. Right now, you do not know what I can prove and what I can't, and your questions are only directed at finding out what I know to protect yourself-- nothing about my children.

"You see, sir, you have taken part in kidnapping my children from me. You may call it what you will in your legalese, but, essentially, my children were kidnapped, are being kept away from me contrary to court order, contrary to my will and contrary to their wills, and you have declared yourself as my enemy by refusing to help my children. You are aiding and abetting their kidnapper, and I am their father.

"In the olden days of the Republic of Texas, men of honor, men of courage, and men of justice would have walked into this court house with their rifles and removed you and your ilk from the system. We don't do that anymore, and I think it is a shame. You are an enemy of justice and worse, you are my children's enemy. I will treat you as such. Do we understand one another?"

The linebacker sized lawyer only answered, "So you are not going to answer anymore questions?"

I smiled, "Maybe. But first, let me tell you a little story. There was a young man whose passion in life was to become a lawyer and serve justice. But somewhere along the way, he found that he could not accomplish justice, he could only practice a trade and treat his passion like a career. I know Priests who once had a passion for saving souls but soon got caught up in a career instead-- they are priests, but they don't save souls, they just make money an ply a trade. They got discouraged and faced a difficult decision at some point in their lives, and they chose what most choose-- they chose to be career men at the cost of their passions.

"I don't hate those men. I wouldn't go to any of them for spiritual direction, and I find nothing worth imitating in them, but I don't hate them. Few men make heroic decisions in our day and age. The only reason I did, was circumstance. Not only do I retain my passion for souls, but also my passion for justice. That you sold your passion for a career does not cause me to hate you. That you know where my children are, but refuse to unite me with them-- that makes you less than human, and I will treat you as less than human as a result. As I said, I retain my passion for justice. I am sorry you have lost yours, but that was your choice. You threw it away.

"So, sir, now that you know that I know who and what you are, do you still want to ask me the same questions again, because I will not spare your soul in my answers? I will tell you the truth about yourself so that you are fully aware of your own self-loathing as long as you want to continue this. Ask away, if you want, but I bet I can last longer telling you the truth than you can hearing it."

"I think we are done." He said.

I stood up and stepped to the door. I stopped to say, "You are probably going to win, because you know how to silence your victims in court-- but I will walk out of here being me, and you will still have to go home being you. We both know which one of us is a man."

Not surprisingly, another lawyer with the OAG was in place later that afternoon when we met for a second time at the judges request. This time it was the woman who would come to my rescue a few months later-- the one I recognized as she rushed to the bench to stop the judge from ordering me to jail.

She started with the same questions, and I stopped answering when she asked a question I knew she had the answer to. Another lawyer going through the motions, but not engaged in the action.

I said, "Last night, I drove around Galveston with my car windows open. I drove slowly through shopping center parking lots, by churches and playgrounds and schools. Do you know why I had my windows down?"
"No." She bent the single syllable to indicate annoyance.
I continued, "Because I hoped that if my children saw me-- even if I did not see them, I might here them call out to me. I don't know where they are and you do."

I tried very hard to maintain the directedness of my cold anger I had used with the linebacker lawyer before, but my voice broke at the end. Maybe it was because it broke that she heard me. She said very human words. She said, "I am sorry."
"I hope you are. If you are, you will stop asking the judge to cancel the scheduled hearings, and let me testify, let the judge bring my children back into my life and my life into those of my children-- you will stop this protecting of your own careers because children have hearts and so do fathers-- and they matter.
"Now, are you sorry enough that you will listen to my answers with some concern? Will you do what you have to do to be in keeping with what my divorce decree ironically claims as being in the best interest of my children?"
"Let's go over what we need to."

I started with the 55% garnishment. She immediately said it was impossible. I handed her the first check stub from the first child support payment-- garnished wages. She looked at it and said, "That must be just one mistake--"
She stopped talking when I handed her the entire stack-- every pay stub for over two years. I had highlighted each of them with different colors to make them instantly readable.

She flipped through seeing the same numbers on each and every check.

"My God! This can't happen! How did this happen?"
"Uh-huh. So, where are my children?"
"I have never seen anything like this before. I cannot tell you where your children are, but you are correct that you are required to be notified. I am just saying that I personally, cannot tell you, but I will help to make sure it happens."
"Uh-huh. You talk like a human, and I suspect you are, unlike your co-worker. So far, no one in the Office of the Attorney General has acted like one. Saying so is one thing three years into this, taking you at your word is not going to happen."
"Can you give me a few minutes?"
"Yes."
"Can you be back here in fifteen minutes?"
"I'll not leave if it means a chance to find see my children."

I came back and she seated me at a conference table and then warned me what she was going to do, making sure I could handle it, promising it would only be a few minutes. I agreed, and she brought my ex-wife in with the linebacker lawyer.

She asked my ex- some easy questions, and reached the place where she asked her to give her address. My ex- said that it was in the records already.
"Would you confirm it for me so I can complete this form?"
"I would rather him not have it."
"I see." Alright, thank you.

My ex- instantly went into what is referred to as splitting. That is to say, she went into a emotional state where a person is viewed by her (or anyone else with her condition) as all good or all bad-- and nothing in between can exist for the person she beholds. The female attorney became "all bad" to my ex- and the rant began. I rarely saw this psychotic activity directed at someone else. For the first time, I was in a position that her raging did not matter to me. In fact, her raging at an ally of her's was potentially useful. For an instant, I wanted to interrupt and become the lightening rod for her wrath-- force of habit. When it was my children, I always interrupted-- children should not know monsters.

I tuned-out. I could, for the first time ever. I could not listen if I chose not to. Eventually it ended, and I ended up in the room alone with the female attorney. She spoke quickly and urgently: "I think I can keep her here for a few hours. Do you know what school your children are in?"
"She keeps moving them, apparently to prevent them from forming relations, but I think I know where they are."
"Go. You have almost three hours before school lets out. Go find your children."
"Thank you."
She just nodded.

I went to the Catholic School. The office staff was alarmed at my request to see them. Not just surprised, but something was upsetting to them-- something proven wrong, something of regret. I don't know more than that, but it was an odd feeling they were having. Someone from inside an office came out and without any greeting snapped, "Go x number of block east on this street." You are less than five minutes away."
The staff looked satisfied with the authority's directions-- not the accuracy, but the relief of having someone help. The staff seemed to share some urgency in the matter. I left and they wished me godspeed.

Down the street, it was a similarly odd mood. A public school, and the office staff told me that they children had only been enrolled for a few weeks before their mother took them out and enrolled them somewhere else. Same feel, same urgency, same relief.

This time I was headed to the school they used to attend the year before. A different mood. I knew from the hesitation that I had found my kids, and I knew from the long absence of the office worker into the back that I had also found the school where my ex- taught school. They had a political situation, and were trying to reach my ex-.

I would not leave without seeing my kids, and so was armed with my divorce decree so they could not deny me access to them. But this group was nervous. They asked me if I could come back when school let out so as not to disrupt their class time. I agreed under the condition that before I left, word would be sent to my children that I would be waiting for them in the principal's office when school let out.

That was pretty much of a "check mate" on whatever they had planned, because once our agreement had been shared with my kids it got sticky for them to renege when I returned.

So I did see my children. I was over joyed, and they were happy. My daughter was feverish, and so I took them to get something to eat and then went and bought some acetaminophen at a drug store. My son asked as we walked out with the medicine, "How come everyone smiles at you?"
"I didn't know they did."
"Sure. I had forgotten that. But even strangers smile at you. No one smiles at Mom."
Somebody said, "Especially when they know her. No one likes her and she doesn't like anyone."
"Let's get some medicine in [my daughter] and go relax at that fun castle park." And that is what we did.

It was the last time I saw them. That was the day my car broke down on my way back to Austin. I never could afford another or even to repair.

A year later, in court, when the judge was trying to toss me in prison for daring to seek justice-- me a man in a woman's world, a woman's court with a woman's judge, surrounded by women's lawyers-- what was I thinking? Yet, it was a woman who jumped in to represent human beings.

She saved me from prison, and secured me a reasonable-- although maximum-- child support payment. The deal about finding my children repeated, I asked the judge for their address. My ex- told the judge I was lying and that I well knew where they lived. He asked her to give me the address anyway and she answered with, "I would really rather not do that."

Perjury is not against the law if you are a woman. Neither is assault and battery, nor child abuse. Laws are to punish men, not women. The judge didn't bat an eye.

Three months later, Hurricane Rita slammed Galveston and took away my children's home the AOG had me buy their mother. All of my possessions since before I even met their mother were inside that house-- community property doesn't exist in Texas unless it regards a women keeping her belongings.

The point being, the laws don't do what people intended them to do. They are used to control, and silence and empower a tyrannical government.

So I am driving a bus late at night back in 2009, and this young woman is on her way to have something to drink before going back out to the woods and sleeping under a tree at night. I felt so powerless to help. Before my own tragedy, I would have offered to sleep on my own couch and let her have my bed that night; but a desperate women is no one to try to help. They'll take and lie to take more. I pictured blackmail, cries of rape, or some unexpected subterfuge and even began to doubt her real need. If tyranny keeps coming into one's life in the form of a woman, you would be an idiot not to pay attention to red flags.

Okay, I needed to get that bitterness out.

The young woman told me her story as I drove us downtown. She had her license taken away for a DUI when she was nineteen years old. She failed a drug test while on probation for that, but saw jail as ruining her life, so she fled. She cannot get any services for the poor and homeless without a driver's license and applying for one means prison.

Her life, her hopes, and her dreams died when she was nineteen-- for a stupid teenage mistake. No forgiveness, no reprieve, she is done, living under a tree in the woods of Austin Texas. She is done. I hate drunk drivers. I hate drug dealers. But I know a man in prison for having a pound of marijuana. Yes, he was selling it, but that man is in prison for a long, long time. He'll be middle age when he gets out and his life is done. He is done.

I had a parishioner who lived with his aging and failing father. His father died, and three days later he is served an eviction notice. He loses his father and his home in one week's time. He went out to get drunk that night. He got pulled over on his way home. The cop had no idea that the young man of twenty-one was grieving his father, and mouthed off at my parishioner. The young man took a swing at the cop. They subdued him in no time, and charged him with DUI and assault on a police officer. I believe it was 14 years he received. His life was done. He is done.

Who was there to rescue these persons before their hopes and dreams were slaughtered before their eyes? Where were their families, friends, neighbors, and co-workers?

I know where God was-- God was with them in their loneliness. I ask you, where was the Devil?

He was prowling about like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. He had so many helpers, it was easy.

I am tired of this blog entry. I have worked on it and cannot seem to hold my perspective-- still too much emotion to tell it the way it deserves to be told-- other than for cathartic reasons. I stop. I set it aside, and finalize its place by simply positing it. I don't want to return to it.

The Art of Racing in the Rain

The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein, was given me by a friend familiar with my own situation. Working on my own novel with a working title of Ranger, I was heartened to find a connection in themes, and yet...

And yet, upon finishing reading Garth Stein's novel I was reminded of a few conversations I had with a bartender I used to know. About a year ago, when I was beginning to form the characters needed to carry the plot of the story, I came in after work (second shift, Tuesdays and Wednesdays off-- thus my social life must involve a bar as it is the only gathering place open after work) the bartender greeted me with a pint of beer and a question.

"Where you been?"
"Hiding. "
"From?"
"The world. It is mean and nasty out here. Actually, I started work on a novell--"
"You're a writer? I didn't know that."
"Yes and no. I write, but almost always just for myself-- stuff I need to articulate so that I can understand it-- or try to."
"Published anything?"
"I wrote for a small town newspaper as a reporter for a few years, if that counts. It doesn't count for me. I have never tried to get any of my fiction published. I was required to for an assignment in college, but I sent in a crappy piece I didn't care about." With a grin, I added, " the stuff I like is too personal to risk either publishing or rejection."

He laughed, and then asked (it was a slow night at the bar), "What sort of novel is it?"
"Well, if it gets written, it will be a tragedy."
"Wow! Why a tragedy?"
"Because it is based on a real story, my own, of course, and real life doesn't have miraculous happy endings."
"So I have noticed. "

He was pouring two shots of bourbon, and then slid one against my hand while offering the other in his own for a toast. I smiled and accepted the gift, amused that he, too, was partaking. I lifted my shot glass and said, "To beautiful women..." then grinning toward Sara who was closing someone out at the register, I added, "on both sides of the bar." Sara looked up at me and winked. When, as the custom has been in the neighborhood bars, we tapped the glasses to the bar before drinking, the bartender offered, "And to tragedy."

We downed the bourbon and then he raucously and gustily proclaimed to the whole bar, "Real life is tragedy, people!"

Back to me in a normal tone with no sign of the drunkenness he had just exhibited, Dan pried some more. "So, when are you going to publish this novel? I am intrigued that someone wants to write a tragedy."
"As a matter of fact, I fear it may never get published for that very reason. My guess is publishers don't want tragedies-- they want happy endings. I'm writing it anyway. As far as when I will finish, I don't know-- I have never even tried to do a novel before. Right now I am working on the characters based on some pretty interesting historical people I have been researching-- they are unknowns, but did some impressive things with their lives-- good souls, good hearts, real heroes, and no one knows of them."
"Cool. So if the publisher says, 're-write the ending?'"
"I've thought about that. My story is nothing unless it is a tragedy. I'll publish on the web for free, if I can't sell it. It needs to be told. Broken people don't need happy endings, they need to be encouraged despite tragedy, not to be led to believe that everything works out in everyone else's life."

About then some friends came in, patting my shoulder and saying hi as they passed to go out to the patio out back and smoke. I was still holding a cigar in one hand, because I had intended to get the beer and do the same. A few strangers bellied up and Dan needed to tend to their orders. He slapped his hand on the bar and leaned toward me to say, "Promise me something?"
"Sure."
"Don't let anyone make it anything other than a tragedy?"
"I promised myself that already."
"God bless you."
"And you, Dan."

If I ever am able to meet Garth Stein, I am going to ask him for his original ending-- the one he had in mind before he wrote a happy ending. I appreciate that he acknowledged how rare such miraculous exonerations are and suggests, rightly I believe, how such redemption must take place in the rare instances in which it happens: It requires a tragic figure to redeem another from tragedy.

Moreover, he prods the reader to consider what it may take to be a source of that salvation for another. It requires a rare heart and a rare soul to become tragic, and it is even rarer that such a person survives the tragedy. Most rare of all are those who are ever redeemed-- in this life.

To quote Garth Stein's character, Denny, "Sometimes, I believe. Sometimes I really believe."

For me, unredeemed, a stranger in a strange land, a sojourner...

I am not sure I can again find myself in that place where my car is skidding because I intentionally put it into a skid-- and that because I know how drive in a skid. I was doing that when a teammate intentionally took me out, ruining my career.

I can still race in the rain better than anyone, but it is the lack of a teammate that has been my end.

I wait on a Sponsor who will never call upon me. I wait for a teammate that will allow me to finish the race-- but such teammates don't exist in my life-- they are too broken from their own crashes to race with me, and I am too broken to race without them. For that matter, no one needs a driver who can race in the rain-- nowdays, they just call off the race.

We've all had days like this.