Personal Journal

Sunday Sunrise

I love Sunday mornings now. Listening to my favorite radio station over the web, they play smooth, introspective songs on Sunday morning, then at 9 they go to smooth live recordings in their studio. The station is KBCO out of Boulder CO. I strongly recommend it if you have a broadband connection. It's the best radio station I've ever heard.

They also are a throwback to the good old days. They have a modern recording studio, and artists come by and record songs their throughout the year; every year KBCO puts together some of those songs on CD and sells 30,000 copies, all of the profits going to charity (by agreement with the artists - which is why they do those recordings). They are fantastic recordings. Sting, Sara McLaughlin, Bruce Hornsby, Indigo Girls, Blues Traveller, all of these artists have made recordings at KBCO.

Here's a URL (the webcast is free - but I'd pay for it if I had to):
http://www.kbco.com/main.html

Anyhow, off I go into my journal.

I like being who I am.
Decent man
Honest
Intelligent
Highly sexual

I just don't like explaining it - probably even to myself. I do like searching through my own brain to find the source of the wrinkles in the carpet, and to smooth them out or put some furniture over them.

I live my life, in my mind, like I am still a soldier. I don't know how I did it exactly before I was in the Army, but since I joined a little before my 19th birthday, at this point, most of my conscious life is post-Army indoctrination than pre.

And there is a tenant to being a soldier that strikes to the core of the soul that god gave me:
When you fuck up, you step forward and take 100 percent of the blame. You stand alone in the dark light of failure.
When you succeed, you step back, and you give the credit to the people around you for enabling the success. You take no individual credit. You become invisible for light to shine on others.

This is how I think of most things. This is the nature of integrity, which is very very important to me.

I haven't figured out how it relates to my outstanding issue with my sexual identity, and perhaps it does not. But I'm thinking more of the tap on the shoulder I got last night.

What exactly is the lesson involved in what happened in my wanting to give a gift to Danielle? I was reluctant to ask Danielle if I could give a gift, because I had no doubts that someone would think I was one of those 30-somethings trying to capture a young, beautiful girl (and someone did, but that is a story for another time, and one I know will make a good short story, which I MUST get to work on).

I wanted to make a gesture, but I was very concerned with whether my intent would be perceived the way I wished it to. Knowing I couldn't control that perception, I considered abandoning it.

It's also interesting to note "Why Danielle?" I've had 10 different servers there. Danielle was the only one I had twice, and on back-to-back days. Interesting, because she got a haircut, big difference in style, between the two days, and while she remembered me, I did not recognize her (which is rare for me, because I have a great memory for faces). The only reason I decided to make the offer to Danielle is that we struck up a conversation about my not remembering her, and it was slow in the restaurant, so we had a little casual interaction.

But along those same lines - who's to say that god wasn't working out the little tap on my shoulder, starting that first day when I met Danielle and she was no different to me than an ordinary server...

What is the lesson that I'm "supposed" to take from this strange irony? As I write that line, I realize that "supposed to take" is not the proper framing of the question (that's probably god's voice telling me that). The actual question is "what lesson(s) do you WANT to take from it?

Shit, god and his existential questions. You know, god, people READ this journal, and here I am contemplating your existence and mine as your creation, and you know, that's probably wierd for people...

It certainly puts me in a position where that military mindset is not well suited to help me cope. There's no one here for me to give credit to (except god), and there's not particularly any failure for me to step forward and claim.

There's some credit here to be given, and there's no one around here to take it but me. And I'm very uncomfortable with that. Very. It would be easier for me if I were writing this as one of my completely private entries, where Kim and Cheryl and Adriana and Kami weren't watching <gulp>. Yeah - you guys don't look, K? (that's humor, or an attempt)

Okay, so, did I do a good thing in giving Danielle a gift?
Yes, I suppose. I didn't pay her way through college, which REALLY would have been a good thing.
And there's the irony factor, but that's another lesson, and an easier one - about reaching out and doing random acts of kindness to strangers.
This is about me, though, because I CHOSE to do this, and I don't have any reason for my decision to have done it.
Except that I wanted to do a nice thing, or try to at least, for someone.

Because I'm a good man? There wasn't any purpose ... that's not true - I did hope that I'd affect someone such that in 20 years, a stranger might think of Jean and find some motivation to live a better life from the memory of Jean I planted in her. That doesn't strike me as a selfish motive, though (maybe it is).

Otherwise, I just wanted to do a very modest, nice thing for someone who was nice to me through talking to me one day in a restaurant...

One of the lessons of the tap on the shoulder is this:
I think god wants me to acknowledge that I'm a good or decent man.

Alright fine. Maybe I know that instinctually deep down - it's why I don't fear Hell as much as I used to. But look, and this is being said to god: I don't deserve the credit for that. You do.
I didn't "make" myself that way. This is who I am. You put me on a path in life that influenced my mind and soul and you made my mind and soul a device that draws pleasure from being good. You made me this way, and I would rather keep living ignorantly of my place on the good-or-evil scale than to have to self consciously figure out "what it all means." This is a real fucking interruption, you know? And it puts me in the position of having to recognize a certain credit to my self, and like I said, that makes me uncomfortable.

I don't want the credit. I want there to be someone else to give it to, and I want to disappear into the shadows, become invisible so that no trail traces me backward, and I can move forward and do good again in the future.

When I think of the lesson I'm "supposed" to draw from this, I think that I'm "supposed" to recognize that I'm a good man. Fine, but I knew that at some semi-conscious level before. But I don't really want to integrate that or think of what it means about myself.
When I think of the lesson that I want to take from it, I think of the irony in giving Danielle the gift and the timing of it. That's pretty simple. God is good. The sum total of the universe is good, and I'm a positive number in that equation, and that makes me happy.
I did my duty as a soldier in god's platoon. And I feel pretty good about it, but it's time to march on to the next town.

It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn