Emotionally Stunted

Mission Driven, Not Rule Bound

I love you, Holly. 5/8/1984 - 12/5/2006

The above photo was shot in my back yard. Joel Moody.

I have gathered some of my thoughts from past years and will organize them on this page. I suppose I should revise and update them as I go, and I should differentiate between fact and fiction and begin categorizing. I think a lot of this thinking represents my old self-- the self that predates Holly's death (not to mention wife and kids). I was necessarily more self-centered and me-focused back then. Let's see if I can polish this rough granite down into something worth looking at :).

November 4, 2010

I find myself writing again on this obscure little blog, just a couple of days after Día de los Muertos.

I put up some remembrances of Holly. I suppose I can post pictures later.

October was also a month to remember my dear friend and co-worker, Tanisha, who as called to glory on 10/26/09. Never her equal shall I meet here on earth.

I am getting better at celebrating these times when I turn my memory back to people who have gone before me, but it is still mostly sadness that I feel. No longer regret. No longer guilt or agony. Just sadness.

In any case, here is a Laura Jansen song that I've enjoyed listening to recently [although I'm certain that I am taking some liberties with the meaning]: Laura Jansen - The End

August 11, 2009

Timeline charting several lives.

October 19, 2008

August 19, 2008

Get the Flash Player to see this player. Here is my daughter acting silly. :P

THIS IS WHAT MY DAUGHTER SAYS: I am being funny. Watch the video. Make up your own video on your camera and put it on the computer if you want to make one. Okay?

July 16, 2008

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September 21, 2004

The only purpose of anxiety is to separate us from the grace of God and His purpose in our lives.

Also, God does not take away our desires, but he offers us the transformation of our desires into a longing for things that are good for us. We can find fulfillment and joy in the purpose that God has given us, as opposed to the desperation we find chasing after our own purposes. We never find fulfillment chasing after our own desires, but in desiring the things of God we can find true fulfillment and can experience the fullness of life-- life as God intends it. We can release our anxieties and obsessive thoughts and impulses to our Creator, and in that release we find ourselves able to access the true beauty of life, even in the midst of its messiness, because we have released our spirits from the clutter of our natural human stupidity and entered the current of God's purpose and therefore we ride through life on His strength and His joy.

This is basically a reiteration of Philippians, Chapter Four, so go and read the original . Don't take my word for it.

July 12, 2004

This bears repeating (I also posted it on my MySpace profile). However, don't confuse yourself by thinking this is my real, literal life-story. I have taken certain liberties with the tale, and my information is spotty at best. So take it for what it is:

I grew up on a wooded patch of delta at the mouth of the Eel River in Northern California. We were a mile from the ocean and surrounded by water. My family was packed into an old ranch house on Cock Robin Island (yes feel free to giggle at the name... okay stop giggling now) which is accessible only by a one-lane bridge. The school bus couldn't cross this bridge, and we were about four miles from town, so I had to walk or ride my bike for a mile or so each morning to catch the bus-- starting on the second day of Kindergarten and continuing till my last day of High School (of course, by then I was often riding my bike the straight 12 miles to school, cutting out the madness of the bus ride, cutting out the middle-man).

We were a family of seven, with three daughters and two sons (myself included). I am the oldest. I have a different mom from the rest of them. My dad married two women who went to High School together in Lawrence, Kansas. They knew each other, went to the same youth group, had art class together, were both into my dad who was, at the time, the youth group leader. My dad was in his long-haired hippie phase and was in from California after a bad Christian Commune experience (they burnt all of his books while he was down in the Bay Area, because, y'know, book burnings were the groovy thing to do, and he wasn't down with that, so he split with a friend of his to bunk up with his pal's previous girlfriend in Kansas).

He married one of these young hotties from his youth group, conceived me (my Grandma Dorothy at times wolud take me aside to impress upon me in private that I was conceived in Kansas City during my Great Grandfather's funeral and that I was in some sense his reincarnation and so I better get on it and be a credit to his legacy). Within the year his young wife had completely lost it, seemed to be cheating on him, and they divorced. It was my Grandma Aileen who noticed that her daughter's behavior was beyond passing strange and who tried to get her some medical help. My mom was diagnosed with schizophrenia, upon which she grabbed my 1 and a half year old butt and took off with me so they couldn't steal her baby and lock her up.

My dad caught wind of these events and drove his VW Beetle out to Kansas in a panic, trying to save me. He just thought she was selfish and adulterous. He had never suspected insanity. His car barely survived the trip so he began scouting around the Lawrence, Kansas area for someone to help him. He found my step-mom, fresh out of nursing school, and she offered to help him with transportation. They chased my mom out to California and back. She kept moving due to paranoia (albeit justified paranoia) that people were after her.

My dad and step-mom were still travelling back from California when the police located me and my mom back in Lawrence. The police spent an hour searching the premises for me, trying to extract info from my hysterically sobbing and delusional mom, and were about to give up on the search (they figured I was off the premises and they were going to have to search the neighborhood). Near the time they were about to leave a young cop searched the basement again and noticed that if you squeezed behind the central heating unit, pressed against the wall, you could get to a defunct closet that was under the stairwell. The central heating had been installed in such a way that it blocked this closet. When he wedged himself in there and opened the door a crack he found me playing with dust-bunnies and the remains of an old mop. My face was not wet. I had not made a peep.

See, the cops had almost given up because they were certain that a two year old, left alone, would be crying after an hour of isolation. I guess I was used to it.

However, I was in good health. The cops turned me over to my Grandma Aileen. She handed me off to my dad when he arrived. On his trip he and my step-mom had had time to reacquaint and bond and they were already engaged to be married.

So most of the excitement of my life happened before the age of two.

May 13, 2004

Despus de los exmenes
El viento corre por el cielo
Y todo el mundo se cae en dormir.

No s si sirve como poema, pero creo que tiene posibilidades.

April 23, 2004

The picture above is the work of an eight year-old artist from Oakland, California. She was removed from her family because of an abusive situation and lived in a group home for several years. While she was with us we did our best to give her the tools to succeed and thrive despite her circumstances.

Her art is also featured in an article in the SF Weekly from January of 2004 (go to the article).

April 7, 2004

This is an example of a story snippet, the kind I come up with at random times. I just save them up and hope one day to fit them into a bigger story.

Setting: Ehido, City of Bahia Blanca, Pichihubi Train Station

Visual Focus: Homeless Man

"Suddenly great, enormous wings erupted from his back. His coat was cast aside, his arms stretched as if strained from the armpits to the fingers into where they joined with their new enclosing feathered sheaths, the wormlike threads from the sheaths creeping integument-by-integument into his skin-- his back arced upward as if pulled to the sky with cords-- as small rows of non-flight plumage sprouted out in curves from his upturned elbows back to where his axilla and deltoids had been and large primaries flashed out from where new tissues gloved his wrists and fingers, turning in a slight inward curve, and in the sunset light gleaming a blackened shade of bronze.

"Still surprised, I stared. 'Sometimes it makes a frightening sort of sense,' I said to her, 'The wings, the homelessness, the flight.'

"Leaving his crumbling hunk of cheese half-eaten, he ran down the platform, sunset light gleaming in his panicked eyes as he lifted off, arising from the ground, arcing left above the approaching train-- suddenly free.

"'They usually just die after that.' she said, sipping from her tea and wishing (I could tell) for sugar."

April 6, 2004

This is another story snippet.

Setting: California, City of Oakland, The Hills

Visual Focus: Toyota Corrolla, Gray

"While I was driving the other day, not too far from my home, one car just swerved off to the side of the road, curled up into fetal position and lay there sobbing-- her hazard lights blinking dolefully.

"The rest of us just kept on driving."