Then I was whisked off by my ever-more-delightful family into the western night for a happy Thanksgiving weekend with the grandparents. The second annual pheasant hunt was afoot. We got six this year, and I cleaned my first bird, a surprisingly bearable experience. Though Uncle Paul washing his bloody birdhands off in the toilet bowl was a little less bearable.
Ah but the manliness of it all, the predation, the killing, the subsequent blood & feasting & football. The day Paul joined us we got 4 pheasants and the Huskers upset Colorado 30-3. It made me want to belch & howl & pummel my chest expansively all at the same time.
And in another vein it was so nice getting to reknow my brother & sisters. I feel Ed and I are closer than we've been in years, probably since our boyhood summers hunting butterflies together. My sisters are growing up too fast & I must face that. Lydia is a teenager now, is tall and beautiful, and there are no older brothers to beat up any evil-minded teenage boys (which is all of them) that may appear on the scene. Rebecca is not far behind. They are both transforming, and it is both exciting & frightening to watch.
And to this of course add love of my parents & grandparents & aunts & uncles & cousins as I come to understand them better and realize all those things that are so essentially them. Before going off to bed my grandpa walks around with his belt buckle undone, a thing which he has always done for as long as I can remember, except I never noticed until now that I do it too. How many more thing have they given me that I'm not even aware of yet? I too am essentially them.
Congrats to Andrew & Jamaimer who finally tied the knot two weekends ago. The wedding was a pure formality of course--I can't think of a couple better suited to one another, and for whom marriage was such a natural & foregone conclusion. Had it not occurred there would have been something seriously wrong with the world & I wouldn't want to live in it anymore.
Thanks also guys for renting that killer jazz quartet for the reception which made the lack of booze bearable. (Some pictures from the reception are over on Wes's blog).
For the most part I had a great time at home in Lincoln. I rediscovered the wondrousness of Joe . 8th and G, former home of JakeJoeAlan, has finally peaked, thanks to new residents Chris & Dave and to the continued Joeness of the place. A detritic layer of thousands of colored cottonballs was augmented by 3 days of tinfoil parties culminating in a monstrous foil organism hanging from the living room ceiling extending tentacles to the couch, TV, into the dishwasher, and into the various compost piles of cottonball / beer cans / stuffed animals. The first night we made armor & helmets and I guess things got progressively more abstract from there.
Wearing a tinfoil helmet with a spoiler on the back (which by the way ensures that no matter how fast your head is moving, your heels stay grounded) I went to Luke & Heather's new gig night, and actually got to play with them, a rare and unexpected treat. They have a new drummer who I remember meeting at Lincoln parties years ago, a cool guy who spoke of the mysteries of the stuffed albino gorilla lodged in the Studio 14 marquee. (Stop reading this blog. Go retrieve it. Now.) Luke & Heather are the same great people . They are still driving my old Ford Probe, amazingly, and it still has my "Unix is Power" sticker on it. They are by the way engaged now, which is good, and pleasing to the Lord.
In addition to satisfying my longtime yen for a head spoiler I also finally got a game of gourdball together with Joe & Kim. Them gourds didn't stand a chance, nope, we blasted them into tiny pulpy gourd bits. Oldtime wooden baseball bat connects with soft explosive seasonal spheres and you feel so good inside, like Robin Yount must have when a breeze tickled his mullet and he knew, he knew.
Overall I had a much better time in Lincoln than I've been having in Seattle, which is confusing.
You said you'd been having headaches, blackouts. The three of us were at the diner if you will recall. Suddenly I looked over and blood was running out of your nose. Your brain was bleeding. It had reached a point. You got up without much ceremony and went to the bathroom while I meanwhile stared at the big scarlet drop floating in your syrup. It bloomed slowly.
A few days later you took the Greyhound back to Lincoln, much to everyone's relief, yours included. It was sad for us on many accounts of course, as the end of a chapter. But not the last chapter thank god. The choose-your-own-adventure continues. We haven't died yet old pal.
Today the Seattle gloom gave way to a sunny fall day and, accordingly, I hit the trails for a nice strenuous bike ride. The world was full of color again--not just grey and sickly streetlight orange. I dug it. An older cyclist passed me on a hill, and as I passed him on the downhill he looked over & said derisively, "gravity." It had not occurred to me that this was a race. It became one though, and I forgot about the colors and gave chase.
Funny how easy it is to get dragged into the game. You may not be playing the game, or want to play the game, but as soon as someone says "I'm winning the game," it becomes difficult to explain your conscientious objection to anyone but yourself. "I'm beyond the game" or "I'm playing a different game" sound like "I'm a loser." No one wants to be a loser, right? So you play the game.
Does this explain subdivisions, big cars, and my child is an honor student? Do people get tired of explaining the oddball game they're winning in their own little way & start playing the mainstream game?