when my classmates will gather for our 30th high school reunion. I’ll not be there.

There’s a lady at my parish who’s ill and needs to be visited, and people, perhaps, to see on the way down to LaCrosse. There are services to tend to and apparently a neighbor who’s put their fence too far on to church property. The stuff of life. Real life.

High school is like a dream, a far away three years that occasionally reaches out to touch you but for the most part is lost in the mists. In the old days, perhaps, the people you went to high school with were also the people you grew up with, childhood friends from a hometown you remember but now in these mobile days this seems to be more rare. High school is a stop on the way, and the relationships that matter are more often to be found outside its doors in whatever life lies ahead.

The truth is that I live less than a half hour from my high school but its a world of time, places, and experiences away. I care for those people who were with me in those days, but I don’t long for them or that time. I wish them well, and pray for them often, but my life is now and any nostalgia is only about what could have been and not what was. My best days are now, always have been.

So, if somehow a member of the Mahtomedi High School class of 79 stumbles onto this blog, know that I wish you all the best and my prayers and hope are that life has been good and kind to you. Be well. Be blessed. May you find every happiness and more than that may you always know God. But tonight I’ll be at Vespers with whoever comes through the door. I need to be there for more reasons than you can possibly imagine but I won’t forget you either.

Rip em up, tear em up, give em hell Zephyrs…

or are there others out there who are as sick and tired of TV commercials for “enhancement” products for men as I am?

Can’t I watch a move in peace without someone telling me about their new found prowess? I don’t care, really, take my word for it and I feel sorry for parents have to try to explain to their five year old about the grandpa on the screen with the funny smile.

And, by the way, as a musician I wouldn’t be caught dead sitting around with a bunch of geezers singing “Viva Viagra”. Here’s your check, thanks for singing, we’ll give you back your pride when we’re done with it…”

End of rant.

There is a glorious rain falling in eastern Minnesota this morning. Slow, steady, lasting, somewhere between the rain that passes just quickly enough to ruin your car wash and the torrents that rip the siding from a house.

It’s been a dry summer here along the Mississippi River, they say we’re about seven inches under normal, and the skies have been the beautiful, unforgiving, blue of a drought. The old trees can make it because their roots are deep but the lawns, wide and shallow, have become brown and the beauty of flowers has been stunted.

I have many things planned for today. Places to go, people to see, tasks to be accomplished. But it’s raining in eastern Minnesota today and the weather trumps everything in this part of the world. Frankly, I don’t mind a bit.

After years of hearing it you can recognize the voice on the phone, regardless of who it is, and you know what’s coming next.

There will be no magic words. There will be no quote from the Fathers that provides illumination. The sacraments will help but they will not take away the coming gauntlet. There’s a cry for help and if you answer it you’ll not escape a piece of the trauma because to help means that you, too, must go with and through.

While you never seem to quite get used to it over time you come to accept it, the terrible intimacy of holding the hand of someone walking through dark places. You get used to the helplessness, the reality that all of your skills matter little and you, your presence and your ear on the phone in the small hours of the morning, matter most. When words fail, and they often do in the face of mortality, all that’s left is a whisper “I’m here”.

So it’s okay, you’re not a bother, call me when you need to and I’ll do my best. Don’t, though, expect a miracle or lights shining down from heaven or an instant answer. If that happens glory be to God but if not just know that I’m here.

I have memories of dill smells
and the living room’s piano
where a mouse made a nest
and I learned my passion.

There were stairs to an attic
with young boy hidden corners
and a basement, dark and cool
relief in the summer.

Our room was a shared one
two beds and one window
at night we would listen
and hear the floor’s creaking.

It was brick, on a corner
as strong as Gibraltar
and it carried us through
the storms and the quiets.

Still time took us away
we left in the winter
houses change in an instant
drifting thoughts, though, they stay.

I’m nearly fifty now
the house close to a hundred
a lifetime away from me
and still I remember.

This is something probably only an Orthodox Christian would think about but “Why would a hermitage have a web site?”.

Twitter is gone. If people really want to know want to know what’s going on with me they can call or email. Or better yet we can go out for supper some time and talk.

My electronic planners are on the way out. I’m going back to a book, with paper. The next cell phone will be just that, a phone, and if I need to find my way I’ll open an atlas first, GPS second. I’m even working my music backwards and away from the plugs. I want to hear sounds made of wood and steel, breath and valve, stick and skin.

There are simply too many devices around telling me what to do, where to go, and how to communicate. I remember reading once, it was fun as I recall. I remember as well what life was like without the need for a constant supply of batteries. Many years ago watching a thunderstorm was entertainment from the safety of a front porch and when I wanted to experience nature I actually went outside.

No, I’m not a luddite. I’m keeping the computer and the blog and I’m not keen on the idea of cutting the power lines to the house. It’s just that too much is too much and I’ve reached my own personal saturation point. I like pencils, music on the front porch, sun in my face, and hanging out in person. I have this image of myself as a pale, emaciated, creature with large eyes staring at a screen while a tube feeds nutrients in one end and evacuates waste in the other and I’m choosing to rebel against that future.

And it all started with pot. Yes I did “inhale” in high school because I was 17 and at the height of my personal stupidity but that’s decades gone with no regrets. It was more about an incident some days ago when a musician in the acoustic jam I attend talked about how he sometimes smoked a bit before coming to play. My response was that I preferred to be alive, awake, and yes even nervous before I played because I wanted to feel everything as it really is.

Then it occurred to me. There are too many times when I, clean and sober for years when it comes to chemicals, still hang out way to much in a fantasy e-world. I started thinking about whether all those buzzing and whirring devices, the plugs ins and screens, were becoming my own personal “weed”.

And just in case I’m going cold turkey.

and the muscles around my neck are feeling the strain. For over three hours tonight music poured out of me as it does once or twice a week and has from the time I was a child

It’s not that I’m the best. I’m not even close. Yet if my life were a movie there would be a soundtrack and it would be way better than the picture. There is always, has always been, music inside, around, over, and above me. Some time before I was born the spring was wound and the music box has yet to stop.

Now some people swim in a sea of numbers, others in facts, others in tasks. I swim in music and even my words are their best when they sound like lyrics. My life is a song I hope will become a hymn that never ends.

So my fingers hurt, bass strings are like wires, but every other part of me is awake, aware, and alive even as this day closes and the next arrives in my sleep.

You never really know how dirty your carpets are until you buy a new vacuum cleaner.

Found that out this morning. Pulled up enough hair to make a third cat. I’m not that dirty. Really.