So, I went to the tax guy. Having worked in both Oregon and California last year I wanted to make sure I knew what was what, and instead of using tax software I wanted a professional to check the dependability of what I will be reporting to UnKle Sam. To assay my current situation, I decided to turn to a professional. It’s not a bad philosophy, really. Find professionals and pay them.

This year Jenifer and I stand to shield most of the income from our two jobs, and see most of it go into the mouths of Jenifer’s children, and to clothes on their backs, and fun things for them to do. We’ve come a long way in a very short time. I’m happy about the progress we are making. Jenifer tells me she is happy too.

But it hasn’t been without strain. Looking back usually involves remembering only the good times, but Jenifer and I have had our — ahem — share of difficulties. Some self-imposed through the growth required of two people coming together, it’s been difficult for both of us to make that kind of adjustment, and then, too from an army of ill-wishers who have only given us cause for amusement. God bless (if I only believed…) our enemies — you know who you are — for you have provided us with hours of mirth, and endless amusements. Just when our spirits were darkest, you’ve given us cause to giggle.

And so 2010. Jenifer and I are happy, actively engaged in steady employment, with solid plans for expanding our aliveness, and our prosperity in the coming year. Jenifer is furthering her educational requirements and progressing nicely in the direction she has been taking since before she met me, and I am continuing to write. These are in addition to our paying jobs. Our tax guy is well pleased at the set-up we have, and looks forward to working with us again next year.

To our well wishers, we offer our thanks and we celebrate with you.

To our enemies? Well, let’s just say we are waiting for the next slur, and flow of verbal vomit to amuse us. Imagine Jenifer and I, eating popcorn, cuddling together in the dark, and giggling like high school girls with a sack of dildos, waiting for your next insults to make us laugh even harder.

- –
Okay,

A friend’s father died recently, and I watched him go through it. The man was his mother’s husband, and my friend treated the fellow with all the respect anyone may deserve, and watching this relationship has given me some things to ponder…

The man was in very poor health for the last twenty years of his life. Before that he had been a strong man who worked in the trades. Then something happened. Every year during the cold months he would be prone to seizures. For nearly twenty years he and his wife endured a loving relationship, and a horrible life.

What brings love into people’s lives? I think the people do. If they are open to it. I watched my friend’s father and mother love one another despite enduring things people really shouldn’t have to endure… diapers, seizures, drooling, really quite a mess, and you can imagine enough horrible things on your own. If you can’t, then I won’t frighten you. But they had it tough. Tough as I’ve seen in a long time.

Now he’s gone. Everyone is at peace with his passing. But they were at peace while he was alive.

Peace isn’t something which you do, and then you have peace. Peace is something you bring to a situation, and you are peaceful. It’s like having some candy and sharing it with others. If the others are disinclined to candy, or not peaceful themselves, then the candy will not be eaten, and peace will not be extended. That is not to say candy will not be shared, nor peace experienced.

It’s cliché to understand there is more than one way to enjoy candy. My mother used to love to watch her children playing, even though she was not playing with us. Peace may be extended no matter what. Sometimes we do let go of fear, and still the peace is not ‘wasted’, or lost.

I can’t change anyone’s mind, nor could this man and his family change my mind about life. But being peaceful myself? I may celebrate his passing. Despite the inability to talk, care for himself, or tell those with words how much he loved them, they had peace.

Not a bad end to a fucked up life.

- –
Okay,
Father Luke

Change is when you look at a cool pond on a hot day and hesitate because you know it will give you a chill jumping into the cold. Then you jump.

My eyebrows are getting white. My knees don’t work the way they once did. I enjoyed running. I used to run half a marathon each day, until someone told me I shouldn’t burn my body up like that. So I stopped running. But I loved the long distance run.

I can’t even get out of bed unassisted, now. It’s my knees.

And recently? My right elbow has given way to arthritis. My hair is thinning. My memory is so full, sometimes I just blot out my entire life, not wanting to remember all the places I’ve been (good thing in some cases — although not one part of my life would I change; I really have no regrets — and just a plain waste of life forgetting all the rest…).

I am physically changing in ways that I am able to measure daily, something I have not been able to do since I was in my teens, growing, getting hair, those kinds of changes… .

I’d never given much thought to how I’d spend my “later days”. I imagine I suspected I’d be holed up in the Hotel I associate with my adult life. Sipping decaffeinated coffee, and posturing myself to be a great writer — misunderstood, unpublished, but great none-the-less — and scrambling to some piss-poor job to pay rent, thereby furthering the tortured writer personae only my friend Dr Zen has the wherewithal to kid me about.

And here I am. Living in Portland, with a woman I love, her kids, whom I adore. Really I do. Jenifer amazes me with her depth, and resiliency in some new way each day. The kids seem to be growing as I watch them… .

And here I am. With people who only know me as a guy who can’t get up from the sofa without help. A guy who has always had white hair. A guy who … . But they have no history of me like those I grew up with have a history of me.

Those who grew up with me know me as having found a family, now. A family that loves me.

And so it is. Life sneaks up on us. John Lennon was right. Life does happen to us as we make other plans. Snicker at the pop culture of it. But he who laughs lasts, laughs best. And life gets the last laugh.

Now I know how my grandfather felt when my mom and us four kids moved into live with my grandmother and him. An old man, not really understood. But perhaps loved, certainly remembered. But old.

- –
Okay,
Father Luke

http://alistapart.com/articles/survey2009

Basically I told them that things are fucked, and that life, as far as employment goes, sucks.

I remember doing a website for a guy once. He asked me what I’d like for compensation. I needed a printer at the time, and asked him to get me a printer. It was a cheap, and basic printer. He agreed, and I built the site.

How do you like it, I asked when I was done.

Fantastic, he said. Only problem is that my wife doesn’t think we should get you the printer.

I took the site down. Fair is fair.

Most of the work I do on the web is like that. Most of the work I do, period, is like that.

Okay. Enough of my kvetching.

- -
As ever,
Father Luke

http://deucecoupe.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/no-place-to-hide/

I think Scot has a print edition of collected stuff coming out soon. I sent some things in, and I hope to be included. I’ll keep you in the loop.

Things have been a shit storm over here. . .

Basically you have six people learning how to live together in a new environment:

Kids losing baby teeth
Stray cats that come and go – and the resulting heartbreaks
and the mysterious rising bills

So, yeah. I’m still writing. Still getting older. Still breathing, fuckers. I ain’t dead yet, which means there is every chance you may yet be paid back for what I owe you.

Count on it.

And okay to all that.

- –
Okay,
Father Luke

What’s a New year without the same old disappointments?

Here’s to a new year. Whatever it may bring. I’ve seen fifty of these suckers.

– –
Okay,
Father Luke

Nice review of my work here: http://outlawpoetry.com/2009/11/11/todd-moore-the-gold-cane-van-goghs-ear-and-the-gun-in-the-casket-wandering-down-this-crooked-road/

And okay to all that.

- –
Okay,
Father Luke

Every year at Christmas time I open my heart to the endless possibilities of human kindness, and the benevolence of the universe. I’m also a baseball fan, and the San Francisco Giants are my heroes. Fortunately Oregon doesn’t have a Major League Baseball team, so I can retain my cherished Giants roots.

In both cases, baseball heroes, and the benevolence of the universe, and the endless possibilities of human kindness every year at Christmas time, I am predictably disappointed.

I try. Really. I cast aside resentments. I wipe the slate clean, and I shake the dust out of every rug I’ve walked on in the previous year, and I wait for the goodness that is scheduled to arrive. Predictably I am disappointed.

I don’t hate Christmas, and the Holiday Celebrations this time of year anymore than I hate the San Francisco Giants. The truth is that I love the Giants. Every year the Giants will lose in some new way; they will fail to win the Championship in some fresh, and unpredictable manor. I love the Giants. With all my heart.

I love Christmas the same way.

http://fatherluke.com/holiday-wishes

– –
Okay,
Father Luke

A sense of home. I’ve felt it on occasion. It usually has come as a surprise, and it completes me. I felt it for years in Santa Cruz, as I wrote small poems, and fragments of thought which would later make me a darling of the small press. Those fragments of thought, and poems, by the way? They were merely thoughts I set down before going to sleep after a too long day. We all do that, right?

I felt it this morning, that sense of home, as I lay in bed waiting for the children to wake up as Jenifer was taking the older boys to school.

I have come from a place over 18 hours away to be with a woman who loves me, and whom I love dearly. She has four children, all of whom are fine, and creative children with endearing qualities, and each with charms all their own.

We both work, and we both have hopes and dreams for the future.

It really doesn’t get much better than this.

And so, I am at home here. I am fifty years old. This shall be among the last times I get to know home. And I am very glad.

– -
Okay,
Father Luke

On Monday, November 23rd, 2009, the family van, with two baby seats in it, was stolen from the apartment complex where we live.

The situation is that the thieves drove up in a stolen car, abandoned it, and drove off with our family car in plain sight of an eyewitness. The theft was taped by surveillance cameras in the apartment complex where we live. A full physical description of the thieves was given to Portland Police by the eyewitness.

Six days later our family car was found abandoned within the neighborhood. The car’s battery and radio had been stolen.

And then the family van was stolen again the next day.

Can you help us to determine why a stolen car with fingerprints, physical descriptions of the thieves given by an eyewitness, surveillance video, and a another stolen car by the same thieves was never investigated?

According the apartment complex manager this has happened on several occasions. And according to residents in the neighborhood where our stolen family van was found, that spot is a “drop off site for stolen vehicles.”

There are descriptions, video surveillance, stolen vehicles with fingerprints and evidence, a history of thefts in the apartment complex, a drop off spot for stolen vehicles, and a recurring theft of a vehicle. Why is this happening? With the amount of evidence, and the number of thefts in this neighborhood, why isn’t something being done?

- -
WTF,
Father Luke