Sunday, January 31, 2021

Overheard at Booth 4: S and M "Leaving California Behind"

 

Leaving California Behind

She was a sunshine blonde pretty as she could be

And I never understood what she saw in me

I woke up this morning with her on my mind

Sometimes I regret leaving California behind

 

Riding up the highway wind blowing in our hair

We were young and in love without a single care

I was Looking for something I could never find

Sometimes I regret leaving California behind

 

In my rear view mirror I can see the past

Holding on to something that could never last

I swear I must have been out of my mind

I was a fool leaving California behind

 

 

on the beach with the moon shining in her eyes

making love beneath God’s  celestial skies

I guess I must have been running blind

I was a fool leaving California behind

 

In my rear view mirror I can see the past

Holding on to something that could never last

I swear I must have been out of my mind

I was a fool leaving California behind



Steve Ogwin

2018-0419

Overheard at Booth 3: S and M "St Ursula"

 

St. Ursula

We pray to St. Ursula whose bones line these hallowed walls

May she find peace in the after world and bring solace to us all

 

An English princess swore not to be a pagan bride

Headed off to Rome 10,000 hand maidens by her side

And the road to Roma was toilsome and long

But the trip was lightened by her handmaidens’ song 

 

We pray to St. Ursula whose bones line these hallowed walls

May she find peace in the after world and bring solace to us all

 

And outside of Cologne an army of Huns they met

Ursula and her followers would not submit

So they slayed 10,000 virgins with sword and bow

Ursula forced to watch her maidens dyeing slow

 

We pray to St. Ursula whose bones line these hallowed walls

May she find peace in the after world and bring solace to us all

 

And when the last was dead, with deadly art

An arrow pierced sweet Ursula’s virgin heart

The bones of the maidens and Ursula they say

Line the walls of this Cathedral to this very day

 

We pray to St. Ursula whose bones line these hallowed walls

May she find peace in the after world and bring solace to us all

 

 Steve Ogwin

2018-0409

 

Overheard at Booth 2: Notes from Italy

 


When at the Mamertine Prison in Rome, the lady said that both Peter and Paul were imprisoned there for nine months, but it was hard to tell what was Church legend and what was really fact.  I was unaware that Paul and Peter were imprisoned at the same time, and that doesn’t sound right, because they didn’t travel together.   But this will bear more research.


Overheard at Booth 1: Fragment

 Fragment of a poem


 

each day is an unavoidable madness

every age is an awkward phase

and the point at which you began to be you, even that

              is merely a theory,

a slanted hypothetical.




MR

2018-0408

Overheard at Table 5: The Suns of Various Deserts Bleach All Our Bones

The Suns of Various Deserts Bleach All Our Bones


We are all bitter-boned.

No manches.

We are all at the mercy of the shadows that we have

spun out of our own frustrations, and

woven into our own shape.

 

We can slap the table with the shot glass

and shout “Chinga madre!”

but that will never bring back

the smiles of our brothers

who disappeared crossing la lĂ­nea.

 

We are always silent,

when we stand at the counter,

writing out our numbers,

to send our dollars back home,

so that our mothers can

pay la renta

to the Mareros,

for permiso to cross the street

to the tienda to buy

masa y leche.

 

 

MR

2018-0508

Overheard at Table 4: Sinking Slowly

She hasn't come home for days.

Don't worry.  She'll come back.  She does this all the time.

How can you be so calm about all this?  You're supposed to be her father!

Yeah.  I am.  She's also 23, and she's also always been a free spirit.

But she doesn't respond to my texts.

She never responds to your texts.

You text her then.

She never responds to my texts either.

I hate the fact that you can't make her stay at home.

What do you want us to do?  Throw her in her room and nail the door shut?  She'll just jump out the window.

Then we should nail the window shut too.

Yeah ... I think that might be illegal, honey.



Overheard at Table 3: Notes for Sana Doctrina, Lesson 1 "Cosmovisiones"

 

CREO SANA DOCTRINA

2021-0115

INTRODUCTION

Nuevo Ano, neva tema, pero con el mismo meta: para defender nuestra fe por conocimiento de nuestras creencias.  Hay muchas cosas que Cristianos no saben de la Santa Biblio y no pueden explicar; tambien, los que no creen en JesuCristo como Dios tienen mucha informacion de la Biblia y puede conversar en los versiculos y palabras de la Biblia.

https://www.pewforum.org/2010/09/28/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey/

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/23/6-facts-about-what-americans-know-about-religion/

https://domruso.medium.com/four-things-most-christians-dont-know-about-the-bible-d10f35b12799

La diferencia es: Los que no tienen la aydua del Espiritu Santo, a ellos, la Santa Biblia es SOLO UN LIBRO…. Un texto entre los otros textos sagrados.  A los que creen, la Santa Biblia es un explicacion del VERBO, DIOS MISMO.

              Vamos a empezar con LA TRINIDAD, porque es la mas facil, pero todavia la mas compleja, de las doctrinas cristinas.

              As we go forward, we will continue having these via ZOOM until such time as Redeemer seems it good for in-home meetings.  Tonight’s meeting is from my house, but I hope that going forward, we can start again with having the meetings at the church for those who want to attend in person or over ZOOM

 

RELIGIOUS WORLDVIEWS

Slides - worldviews and how to recognize them.

 

TRINITY – without the Trinity, God will always be distant, separate, and cold.  With the Trinity, God is both superior AND intimate with humanity, and it is the doctrine of the TRINITY which is both the most often attacked, most easily attacked, most easily misunderstood, and hardest to explain to those who have not accepted Christ and thus are filled with the Holy Spirit.

 

MEMORY VERSE

MATEO 28:19 – Go then and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.

BAPTISM OF JESUS

Baptism by water and its importance for redemption of humanity runs throughout the OT

Noah/Moses/Joshua/Jonah  https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/behold-escalating-bible/

JESUS Baptism has the Trinity explicitly in THREE of ALL FOUR GOSPELS

              http://theologyontheground.com/the-trinity-in-the-baptism-of-jesus/#:~:text=Jesus%20is%20getting%20baptized%2C%20the,Father%20is%20speaking%20from%20Heaven.&text=Among%20the%20passages%20that%20rather,with%20the%20Baptism%20of%20Jesus.

 

 

MAIN QUESTIONS:

1)      TRINITY NOT A WORD IN THE BIBLE

a.       Progressive revelation

b.       Old Testament – God protecting them in the middle of polytheists. Needed to cement the concept of ONE GOD

c.       Paul letter that describes the progressive revelation.

                                                               i.      https://www.blueletterbible.org/faq/don_stewart/don_stewart_1203.cfm

                                                             ii.      Colossians 1:25-27 25 I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness— 26 the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people. 27 To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2)      ARGUMENT = too difficult to understand.  Makes no sense.

RESPONSE = not everything has to make sense.  WE must at times be satisifed with knowing that our limited brains cannot completely conceive of the concept

 

Jehovah’s Witnesses

FIRSTBORN

Colossians 1:15-17 5 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

 

 

Overheard at Table 1: Notes From National Emergency

 Ok, so now that the national emergency that began on February 15, 2019 has been ended by the new President Joe Biden, I now have an end to the beginning, so there should be nothing standing in my way of taking all the notes that I had for each day and fleshing them out into a complete work.

707 days.  If I put each "notes" on a page, that could almost be the size of a Russian novel (page size, that is, since most of these entries are a mere 280 characters, tops.

I do have to admit that I was beginning to falter near the end.  I had vowed to write one note a day until the Emergency Declaration was ended, but I hadn't really made any entries since mid-November 2020, so I still have almost two months' of new writings to begin.  

However, this does give me a specific timeframe in order to encapsulate the work.  Now I just need to get it done before it becomes a forgotten bit of ancient history ... OOPS!  TOO LATE!




Overheard at Table 2: Soul (2021)

Seriously? Did they really need to make this movie? Haven't we had enough of movies about the afterlife being a joyous romp and a white light that we all will just quietly go into? And new souls being just bouncy babies on clouds waiting to come down to Earth? Did the Mormons write this movie? This smacks of Mormonism. And then the insufferable "Be true to yourself!" and "Find your purpose!" and "Follow your dreams!" My God I am so weary to my core with all these movies about just going after your dreams! It sets everyone up for disappointment, and it's a big fat lie. What people don't get is that most people who follow their dreams never even get to the point where this guy gets at the age of 55, which is some small gig in some small Jazz club. Most people don't even get that. These kind of films are feeding into a culture which does not prepare people to weather disappointment. And it's just simply silly.

Thursday, January 28, 2021

Overheard at Booth 4: Euphoria

Euphoria


The euphoria of first love,

like Spring, the buds bursting


into bloom, shaking off the dew-droplets

of wintry snow, a fine spray,


a mist that fills the senses

and every cell to bursting, ah!


yes, the magnificent explosion

of color and sound and life!





MR
2021-0128

posted from the prompt from #Erotica280 493 Euphoria

Wednesday, January 27, 2021

Overheard at Booth 2: Pillow Talk


 

Margaret of the red hair and light blue eyes, sunlight smiles and summer kisses, drinking coffee in the morning (one cup, no cream, no sugar), always with a gaze toward the adventures that lay ahead for the rest of the day.  Margaret was peaceful for the moments in the morning, a gathering of the energy that she would release in a slow-motion explosion across every hour that crested across the firmament until sundown.




Monday, January 25, 2021

Overheard at Table 3: Unloading Trailers

I couldn't get Jesus and Luis to unload the trailer by the hour, so I had to go get day labor  to get it unloaded.  I spent $300 out of my own pocket to go find guys at Home Depot to unload.  The temp service wouldn't send anybody for 48 hours.   I got another load of blow coming tomorrow, and a batt trailer the day after that.



Saturday, January 23, 2021

Overheard at Table 3: "I'm Looking Through You" by Eleine

 




Eleine "Enemies"

I heard this and after that, my feed came at me with The Beatles "I'm Looking Through You" and I suddenly had the idea for an anthemic metal cover of that song.

Hear me out!

The deep throat guy growl sings the part "why tell me why did you not treat me right?  Love has a NASTY habit of DISAPPEARING OVERNIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!"

This could work.




Overheard at Booth 5: Serf and Terf

Cy Berk Riminal: TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN!

Ching O'Madre: That's not what their Y chromosome says.



Thursday, January 21, 2021

Overheard at Table 4: Notes from a future SC "The Brilliant Dance"

 from whatever Salinghetti Chronilce this song winds up on...


Dashboard Confessional

"The Brilliant Dance"


"Find a peace pick it up

all down

that's what they say

    but they lie."

Breaking is a finest find that 

burned this morning

down.



MR

2021-0121

Wednesday, January 20, 2021

Overheard at Table 2: The SeeSaw

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/seesaw-installation-at-us-mexico-border-wins-design-of-the-year-award


Day 706

 

Some build walls.

Others build see-saws to bridge those walls.

 

True power is in adaption.



from NOTES FROM NATIONAL EMERGENCY


Tuesday, January 19, 2021

Overheard at Booth 3: idea for song

 

Every Dawn

                D                             C                                 G

They never knew you worked for years to get us here.

 

Walking twenty miles a day to sell your wares.

 

With a needle and the thread long past midnight

 

And every morning that dawned you would start it all again.

 

 

And then the dawn came and finally you escaped.

He bought a house where you could stay

Your hands they slapped the masa into three meals a day

And you nietoes grew up in the language of this strange place.

 

And then one day you broke your wrist and everything changed

The body you once knew began to fail.

-

-


[need last two lines]

keep at three stanzas, no chorus


MR

2021-0119

 




Overheard at Table 3: Lucky and Otis Discuss the Youngest Poet at a Presidential Inauguration

 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jan/19/amanda-gorman-youngest-poet-to-recite-at-a-presidential-inauguration-joe-biden


Lucky Moran: Did you hear NPR this morning?

Otis Redwing:  Nah.  That's why I have you.

Lucky: Biden's gonna have the youngest person ever to give a poem at the inauguration.

Otis: That's cool.

Lucky: Yeah ... except when they were interviewing her, I heard her mispronounce Harris's name. She said, "Ka-MAH-la" instead of "KOM-a-lah"

Otis: and ...

Lucky: Just wondering when when she's gonna be called out for micro-aggression.

Otis: Dude, don't be THAT guy.

Lucky:  Too late!  Already tweeting it!



Monday, January 18, 2021

Overheard at Table 2: Grit to Great

 



Grit to Great: How Perseverance, Passion, and Pluck Take You from Ordinary to Extraordinary

by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval


You will know them as the advertising agency behind the AFLAC duck.  There is some interesting bits about them explaining that it was a team effort and took months to finally come up with it.  These things don't just spill out of a person's head in an instant (regardless of what you see in movies, other ads, and self-help guides).

Currently, after reading a few of these books and having worked for over 30 years, what I've observed is that success comes from a mixture of three main factors: Talent, Endurance, and Luck (or, good Fortune/the stars aligning/whatever you wanna call it).  This book focuses on the need for Endurance (or, as they call it, "Grit").

A few notable sections include:

    Page 24: General George S Patton famously defined courage as "fear holding on a minute longer."

    Page 26: World-renowned cellist Pablo Casals, asked the age of ninety-three why he continued to practice three hours a day, replied, "I'm beginning to notice some improvement."

    Page 28: The quote that opens Chapter Two" "Talent is cheaper than table salt.  What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work." - Stephen King

    Page 36: A passage focusing on Dave Thomas says that "He would quote [his] Grandma Minnie's sage advice decades later, after he had become a grandfather himself, 'Hard work is good for the soul,' she would say, 'and it keeps you from feeling sorry for yourself, because you don't have time.'"



Sunday, January 17, 2021

Overheard at Booth 3: We Remember

We Remember


But do we really?


Or do we remember
slantways?

What happens when there
is none left to remember the smell
of the body of those who threw 
themselves against the electric 
fence?

What then?

There will be nothing left
but a child's drawing.



MR
2021-0117

posted for #mentalhealthprompts 2021-0117
in honor of upcoming REMEMBERANCE DAY
commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz


Tuesday, January 12, 2021

Overheard at Table 3: Today Going to Work

The couple meet each other at the Zen and Tao Acoustic Café and slide into Booth Three.

The husband smiles and says, "I saw a beautiful woman today."

"What?!" she says, ready to get jealous.

"Yes.  She drove by me today on the highway on the way to work.  She was driving a slick Infiniti."

That's her car.  She smiles and says, "Well, I saw a cute guy on the highway, too."

"Oh really?"

"Yeah," she says, "I was coming up on this guy going slow and I thought, 'God what's this grandpa doing out this early in the morning?' and as I passed by I saw that it was YOU!"

"Ha. Ha."



Monday, January 11, 2021

Overheard at Table 3: Comedy

 

Lucky Moran:  All the world's a comedy!

Otis Redwing: Some are the setup ...

Lucky Moran: ... and some are the punchline!





posted as #Storyin12 2021-0111


Thursday, January 7, 2021

Overheard at Table 1: DC Breach

 
DC BREACH
(after Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold)
 
DC is calm tonight.
The streets are full, the moon lies fair
Upon the Capitol Building, the boys, proud
Move freely through the streets,
Taking selfies with the Capitol Police.
 
Come to the window love, sweet
Is the night air.  I have the sign, half-ripped
From Nancy Pelosi’s wall.  We will wave it
Wildly above our heads, let the others spray
Their cheers and go, rambling across the
Capitol steps.  There is no one to stop us now.
 
General Lee long ago
Heard it in Virginia, and it brought
Into his mind the back and forth struggle
Toward ultimate victory; we also
Can find in this sound tonight,
What we hear from the waters of the reflecting pool,
The sound of our righteousness.
 
A Sea of Faith
Was, once upon a time, something that all Patriots
Carried in their hearts, the way they wore
Their powder in their packs.
But now I hear it come roaring back,
Back into the fore
Ground of our minds, the Faith that
Our leader, more mysterious than the night-wind,
More powerful than Everest, will
Only move us forward, never
Retreating, until we shear down these
Vast edges of the naked
Pansies of the world.
 
Hey babe! I’ll be true
To you if you’ll be true to me!  The world is
At our fingertips.  The Libtards can’t stop us now.
You thought it was all but a dream, but
This, this is the American Dream, the dream
That if you want it, you can take it, come!
Come and take it, babe! Let’s do it, right here
Right now, window open, displaying ourselves
To the world, like our proud, strong, firm Revolution
Sweeps across the city and takes flight,
While the ignorant Congressional folks argue long into the night.
 
 
MR
2020-0107

Wednesday, January 6, 2021

Overheard at Table 2: Inherit the Moon

 


We do not all inherit the moon.  But most of us are bathed in its light.


Overheard at Table 4: Kindness


  


Kindness



The way her hands moved over him in the dark.

She knew he hadn't been with a woman in years, not since the death of his wife.

Her leg over his legs.

Her fingers, cautious.


It was a kindness, really.

This sharing of the sadness, 

reawakening of the body




MR
2021-0106

written for #Erotica280 Prompt 472

Tuesday, January 5, 2021

Overheard at Table 3: Plagiarism

 

 

Niall: Man if people are gonna plagiarise, they should at least just change every word.

John: Wouldn’t that just be like writing it themselves?

Niall: Neh. It’d be a cheap copy, but at least they would have put some work into it.

John: T.S. Eliot salutes you.



Overheard at Booth 5: A Christian Husband

And he was saying, "anybody who believes you can 'just be yourself' and 'it's OK if you're not perfect' has never been married to a Christian woman, I mean one who prays daily and reads her Bible.  Trust me, she is all 'You are the head of the household' but by God you better be perfect, I mean do EVERYTHING perfectly, SAY everything perfectly, make sure the kids LOOOOVE Jesus, because by God if you don't she is right there to tell you that you screwed up and you don't love God enough and you don't pray enough and you never led Bible studies enough and it's all your fault because YOU were the 'head of the house'."



Overheard at Booth 5: Imagism

 Imagism


"Let your life be like poetry," she said.

"Confusing and unclear?" I said.

"No, silly!" she said.  "Full of rhythm and energy!"

"You just took a class on the Romantics, didn't you?"

"Actually, the 20th Century Imagists."

"Ah!" I said.  


The faces of those in the subway.




MR
2021-0105

Sunday, January 3, 2021

Overheard at Booth 1: Short Story "The Mason"

 


https://www.secret-attic.co.uk/picture-this

https://twitter.com/secretattic2020

Apparently this is a Flash Fiction challenge: write a short story under 1,000 words inspired by the picture.

Below is the story that I wrote this morning:


The Mason

By Matthew Reynolds


Janet said, “Thank you for meeting me here, like this.”

Ben said, “Wasn’t going to come.  But thought about it, so, yeah.”

She shifted her weight on the bench, kept her hands in her lap, “It’s been a year now.”

Ben said, “I know what the date is, Jan.  I know bloody well what the date is.”

“I can’t help it.  I think about him every day.”

“And you think I don’t.”

“I don’t know.  You never tell me.”

He put his hand on his leg and turned to her.  “We haven’t spoken in months.  How am I to ‘tell’ you anything?”

She pulled a piece of lint from her sweater.  “You could phone every once in awhile.”

Ben paused.  “I don’t really know what you’re playing at, Jan.  You kicked me out of the flat …”

“I didn’t kick you out.  You left.”  Then, realising that she had interrupted him, she forced her shoulders to relax.  She tried to slow her breathing, the way she always did.

Then she began again.  “How’s Helen?”

“Mum’s OK,” he said.  “Well, as OK as she can be, all things considered.”

“Shouldn’t you be with her today?  I mean, it IS the same day for her as for us.”

“She’s at church,” Ben said curtly.  And left it there.

They both left it there.  The church.  The memory of the service, and the fire that exploded and then faded to ashes among the lot of them.  As Jan would recall, it seemed as though none of them left out of there alive.  They had all be burnt to cinders, in the same church that she still passed, every day, on the way to catch the bus for work.

“He wasn’t ready,” Ben said at last.

Jan closed her eyes.  She could already feel the slight shift of the sun behind them, making its way behind the row of flats atop the hill.  “I don’t blame you,” she said, because she knew it was what he wanted to hear.

“I knew he wasn’t ready, but he insisted.  He said he had to start making his own money.  But he was just … he just wasn’t built for it.  So I let him join the crew.”

“I told you that I don’t blame you.”

“You can tell me as many times as you want but that still don’t make it true.”

Jan thought about sons.  How many sons does a woman truly have, she thought to herself.  My God, she thought, even now, even now, even after one year, it is all about the Prodigal and the bloody whiny brother of the Prodigal, but this Prodigal will never return, never, she thought.  And then she said, “The truth is that he is gone, and Helen’s constant praying won’t change it, and her accusation over his casket that I pushed him to do something he wasn’t ready for won’t change it, and truly, Ben, truly, I only wanted you here so that, on this day, this one day, we could, just the two of us, look at what we have helped build.”

And then Ben looked across the street.   The new school.  The new primary school, built atop the old.

Ben knew every step intimately.  William had gone to the primary school.  Then it had been demolished to be rebuilt anew.  He had wanted desperately to join the crew, to work like his dad worked, with his hands, hard labour, to build things.  But he had been such frail boy, and scattered.  Scattered, he had been, never knowing whether he was here or there.  And Ben looked at the wing of the building, the wing where the pile of masonry had fallen, one year ago today, and how the men had rushed to dig William out but there was nothing they could do about the frail child that was underneath the pile of stones, and Ben now saw how fresh the wing looked, how clean the paint, how clear the windows, how the sign above the front doors reflected his name: THE WILLIAM R MASON PRIMARY SCHOOL.

And then Ben looked away.  He couldn’t take seeing any more, all that was left of William.

Jan continued to look.  She studied each letter of that name until the sun finally set behind the both of them, there on the park bench across the street from the school, until there was no more light and all that they had was the darkness that separated them.



Overheard at Table 4: Assimilation

Assimilation

It is a hard word, this "assimilation."
It is a task somehow never completed.
You will have children who will never 
    know what you struggle with daily.
Sometimes you may even forget your own struggle,
    until some stranger reminds you,
    "Oh what a cute accent! Where are you from?"
Oh they may mean well (or they may not),
both either way, it is the same thing:
a reminder that you are never fully "assimilated."
Assimilation is a continuing action, a marathon
    with the finish line always stretching further
    beyond the horizon.



MR

2021-0103

Overheard at Booth 5: When Your Mother Dies

 

When your mother dies

You slide into a half-world

No-one else can reach.




MR

2021-0103