Rob Krabbe's Blog: From a Krabbe Desk, page 5

Time's Illusive Rest

It spins, now, like a

pendant from a silver chain.

Time is a dangerous lover.

"Watch the face of the disc,

and imagine it never moves,"

says the spirit of time passing,

"allow yourself to relax . . . relax

. . . become one with me."

It goes faster and faster now,

spinning my life out, dancing

my salvation. My life story, a

fantastic web, a living tapestry

God can see it as if it hangs on

His wall, even the moment when

life's final gift, greets me.

Death: a perfect truth, always

faithful beyond human sensitivities,

thankfully cares not for our plans

and schemes, but mercifully embraces.

The faces of incredulity, amazed,

no one believes that I remember

that first remarkable day; that first

shocking moment.

There were no words then.

No way to greet or say good bye

or to explain what I experienced as pain,

when you sent me away.

I screamed and died a thousand

deaths as featureless faces swirled

around me; demons.

Why had you left me here?

Sent me away?

Then . . . faithfully, remarkably, the

night came back to me like a lover.

Ah yes, my oldest friend, slipping around

my body, my skin on fire, to the touch.

So much unexpected joy, while intimately

embracing my fears, covering my tears, and

hiding me from all that haunts my soul.

Unfeeling time, do tick away, my warrior,

while darkness the flavor of death consoles me,

protects me, and holds me

so close I can smell her breath.

While you come and go, she whispers,

"embrace me, lover, but

don't hold me too tightly.

Celebrate the madness.

Mark everything with laughter,

all of your days, and I promise:

I will meet you here, under this tree

in this very special place, and

together we will tell melancholy

stories of adventure, passionate nights,

and endless songs of praise."

Time's Rest

It spins, now, like a

pendant from a silver chain.

Time is a dangerous lover.

"Watch the face of the disc,

and imagine it never moves,"

says the image of time passing,

"allow yourself to relax . . . relax

. . . become one with me."

It goes faster and faster now,

spinning my life out, dancing

my salvation. My life story, a

fantastic web, a living tapestry

God can see it as if it hangs on

His wall, even the moment when

life's final gift, greets me.

Death: a perfect truth, always

faithful beyond human sensitivities,

thankfully cares not for our plans

and schemes, but mercifully embraces.

The faces of incredulity, amazed,

no one believes that I remember

that first remarkable day; that first

shocking moment.

There were no words then.

No way to greet or say good bye

or to explain what I experienced as pain,

when you sent me away.

I screamed and died a thousand

deaths as featureless faces swirled

around me; demons.

Why had you left me here?

Sent me away?

Then . . . faithfully, remarkably, the

night came back to me like a lover.

Ah yes, my oldest friend, slipping around

my body, my skin on fire, to the touch.

So much unexpected joy, while intimately

embracing my fears, covering my tears, and

hiding me from all that haunts my soul.

Unfeeling time, do tick away my warrior

while darkness consoles me, protects me,

and holds me so close I can smell her breath.

While you come and go, she whispers,

"embrace me, lover, but

don't hold me too tightly.

Celebrate the madness.

Mark everything with laughter,

all of your days, and I promise:

I will meet you here, under this tree

in this very special place, and

together we will tell melancholy

stories of adventure, passionate nights,

and endless songs of praise."

Margins

Margins. 

Breathing; extra deep breath.

Waiting; nothing.

Three seconds without a single thought.

Margins.

 

Margins.

Walking, stop in my tracks, frozen in time.

That moment past a moment of mine.

Mental defibrillation; back to the grind.

Margins.

 

Margins.

Prayer; only the God of gods, knows.

When it all goes, it goes.

Time . . . is on my side, yes it is.

Margins.

 

Margins.

_____

_____

_____

Margins.

What kind of worship does God really like?

I learned a lot about worship and love, when my daughters or son would come up to me when they were little and hand me a special piece of artwork.

Artwork created just for me. Their eyes were bright with wonder and love, and they would offer the simple child's love that comes free and trusting.  An offering that asks for nothing in return.  Love and faith, and a joy so simple and pure it just needs to be expressed and celebrated. When they would look up at me like I was some kind of superman, and hand me a drawing that they had done.  Some crayon sketch of something they saw in their hearts, and wanted to share with me.  There were usually trees and hills, and a house with a smoke stack, and stick figures of the family.  Yes I was usually the fattest one, but I had a great smile, and I knew all they intended was expressing their love. Then there at the bottom, sometimes with a practiced writing of their name, as if the offering were a class assignment, scratched in shaky and wavering fragile penmanship, the simple words "i love you daddy."

I looked at these children with the love and wonder in their eyes, and knew that the love they were expressing was as pure and boiled down as it came, and I was melted with their love into a quivering stupid heap.  Nothing at that moment really mattered, and finally I understood what everyone had only tried to tell me.  There is no way to prepare you to understand what that feels like, when someone simply and perfectly loves you, chooses you, expecting nothing in return.  With all the other distractions in their lives they took a moment to express love to their father.

Worship.  As sophisticated as we get in our worship styles, talents, traditional or contemporary, emergent, outreaching, well groomed and skillfully expressed, our love just really needs to be that simple doesn't it? To the God of the universe?  Is not our best worship, in light of the sovereign God of the universe, more like a crayon drawing of a tree, and a house, with flowers and stick figures, to the father, who just loves our expression of simple love for Him?

With our organ and choir, or our worship band.  Our tattoo so the congregation knows we survived a past, our projectors with motion video server, and worship software, silver communion set from 1875, whatever we like all good stuff, but idolitry without it all being for God himself, even our best music if offered for any other reason, is idolotry . . . but all this is just not important either, if we just want to love and enjoy God.  That's all there needs to be.  The other stuff is good stuff.  Party in God's spirit, do great worship.  But is it about and for God?  That is a simple question.

I think about that a lot. I have violated that, as a worship leader from time to time, and I don't want to do that.  Like Paul I do the very things I hate sometimes.  We need to offer our best in worship, but more we need to offer ourselves first.  Is God so very impressed with our abilities if our hearts are not full of authentic worship?  If we are, full of authentic love then he accepts our silly drawing as if it were the best and most lasting piece of art.

Sometimes I think I have become a good worship leader.  Maybe, but mostly, in light of the full glory of God, and being able to stand in His presence, and lead people to be in that place with me.  I just want to point to Him with awe.  I need to remember who I am.  As sophisticated, as I get as a worship leader, and musician.  I am . . . still . . . a child.  A child of the King—a child of the father who reaches down to accept the drawing, and looks at it, because it makes Him feel appreciated and loved too, and smiles, and pulls me up onto His lap.  Sappy?  yes, I know, but it's where I am this day, September 22nd, 2011.

 

Smoke and Mirrors

I'm in good company,

going through the motions.

 

Occasionally I trend to the existential, sure.

I get all Ecclesiastes,

and wonder if there is any point.

Did the counselor know,

so many years ago?

Is it all smoke and mirrors?

 

No, not all.

 

I'm in good company,

considering all the poses.

the questions of life

and of meaning.

 

It's not a bad thing to think,

to consider, or to have thoughts

of why, and what

and when.

 

No, not all.

 

On the scales however,

on the whole, the balance,

it's a far better thing to take

a breath from all this melancholy.

 

 

Consider the things

that truly matter most.

 

Friends, and family,

good memories and bad, but true.

 

The creation, we wipe our feet on.

 

The things that don't really fade.

Not everything is smoke and mirrors.

 

No, not all.

 

You're On the Air With the Jazz Doctor

The gravel chewing velvet voiced Rebel Bowling Alley Don Juan come 2 A.M. radio announcer, chain smoking insomnia, and spinning vinyl smooth jazz old school, lips caressing every cheesy winking word, finger-points his Dollar General wisdom like dice against a gold framed black light velvet Elvis.

"Hey Yous Cats"

That was the "Tom Cat Five. That, yous cats, is the smoothest extremest nimble cerebellum numbing Zen jazz this side of a circle. You got the doctor, on smoooooothe Jazz 105," he barely growls the words through his gigantic yellowed coffee-teethe, as he coughs up a piece of lung he thought he'd had removed the year before, and wipes the saliva off of his face with his remaining dignity. "Babies, I got me a jones for some Miles, here's a little thing called 'Bitches Brew' you dig?"

What is it about smooth jazz, that seems like a politician promising truth through gold teeth, while rubbing pork fat on his diet vegetarian soy bean heart healthy dinner steak, or a 65 year old gay retired fire eater from Brigham and Burley's traveling birthday party extravaganza losing his job after developing the nasty habit of occasionally striping down to women's panties in front of the children, and hitting the deck, rolling around like he was on fire, while yelling "it's the cong man, every bitch for herself!"  The saddest factoid was he was not even born yet when Saigon fell, and Billy Joel hit number one, singing about a war he'd never been too.

"The tired thinking man's music, babies."  He groaned.

For some unknown reason, later on that reefer imbued morning after a double shift at 5 A.M he says, "Hey all you zombies out there, doin' this job is kinda like herding cats." and then he choked up a wheezy cigarette laugh and spun a cut from Mother Focus, called "Oh, I Need a Bathroom."

I only have one question: What kind of an asshole tries to herd cats?

Carnitas and Manic Mango Salsa

So far the only good and tasty "real Mexican food" in the Land of Dixie, is in my memory of some of the best music, cooked up in a melting pot on the front lawn of a rented house on "Avenida De Los Arboles" back in the day before I figured out it wasn't the worst thing in the world to be crazy.

When I lived in the Los Angeles area, I spent a great amount of time trying to remember if I was a criminal or not.  A bread crumb trail of hopes on the orange and green tiled floor so I could find my way back in the angst ridden fog of that dry San Fernando Valley spring.

Not all bad, those days, I used to love the smell of the hot spicy carnitas simmering in salsa over the wood coals in the back of Elena Consuela Alonso's neon blue and orange crumbling-plaster kitchen.

Cumin and green pepper aroma thick like a steam bath in the "Oahu Gentleman's Club," that invariably wafted through the room where we rehearsed Hawaiian party music in an actual "working band" called "The Udda Brown Boys."

I was the only "haole" playing slack-key steel guitar island tunes in a Mexican cover band, with two Mexicans, two Spaniards and a Brazilian, on that side of the San Diego County Line, and me? I lived day by day to get me a lung-full of air, free from tyranny and the mass conspiracy that kept me sleepless, and hunting sanity in the poetry of the great masters.

Ironic.

One day, after a particularly hot set, we sounded so much like the famed "Gabby Pahinui Band," the year they won the Moloka'i Folk Music Festival, that we all thought we had "what it takes." We'd make the top fifty Hawaiian pops, and turn the Polynesian music charts inside out without leaving the mild early-May weather in La Mesa, California.

Turns out, five Latinos, and a white guy, can't get many gigs playing Hawaiian folk music in East LA beer bars, and tattoo shops.  There were of course, a few birthday parties for the legitimate children of the rich Westwood business suits. Just a thin self-medicated line separated me and the entire world that was out to "get me," in those days, you know?

What we did have, sadly, was an ounce of good "Mexican Mayhem," in a bag, bought for less than "street."  What the bag had was a hole in it.

We left, much less high than originally planned, in a rusty back-firing stolen 1970 sun`dried blue grand marquis, a fine and noble automobile, with a trunk full of dreams and almost  enough desire to get anywhere but where we were that day.

I prayed to my darling Lithium, dear and sweet keeper of the gate, holder of the expansive plans to rule the world.  "Accept, then, my offering; the keep of my realities; my tithe and adoration, as I laud yet another random god while chasing a better wounded healer, and running from the one true God as fast as I could.

I had one question at the time, why did my doctor, a tall lanky cotton swab of a man, say "we don't know much about this thing we call a brain," when he was the expert?

He was more akin to a close-to-retired whore in the back pew of a Full Gospel Holiness Church.  He looked at me once and said, "take these pills three times a day," and then he added "we don't know how or why they work but they do," and then "call me asap, if you pass out, seize or go toxic."  At that point I both respected medical science and deplored it, but another random god was dead.

All in all, everything considered, that leaves me sitting here thirty years later, in blessed remission, deep in the forest of the Upstate, between two fall creeks, and lazy kinder gentler rebellion.

My medication now?  Carnitas and mango salsa memories, with baked pita bread chips, and a shot or two of tequila, rocking on the southern front porch.  Occasionally  a bit melancholic for that wonderful funky place in my ghost like past. A tiny greasy hole-in-the-wall located in the Valley of the Winds, just west of the heart of Los Angeles, called "Tico's Fine Mexican Food," with a nice tableside-made-fresh guacamole, and on holidays, some of the tastiest tamales, ponche and rosca de reyes ever made by anyone.

Memories sweet as the southern tea, as I lean back, and think of an old friend of mine named Miguel "Big Mike" Alonso, high on Negra Modelo, in an old cabin in the Big Bear mountains.  He sits down in my memory to play some nice Brazilian love songs on his hand made classical Spanish guitar personally signed by the great Jose Miguel Moreno.

After Thirty Years of Marriage . . . Discovery.

"If you can't have fun, don't go."
Robert L. Krabbe  Sr.  1932
 
 

Like most days, four a.m. came right on time.  Melissa sleeping and like most days I begin to realize I am done sleeping and have been for an hour or so.  

Like most days I notice intermittently my arm or hand folded under some other body part and aching or ironically waking me up because the offensive body part has fallen asleep; I turn and re-position myself, trying to alleviate the discomfort, while trying to keep my mind empty enough to maintain the illusion that I might fall back to sleep and get another hour. This is almost never the case.

Finally like most nights I decide, for me, it's not night anymore. Furthermore, if I keep trying to force a "normal nights sleep," defined by the rest of the population, I will wake Melissa with my tossing and turning, and body-part cramping, shortening her rest, which is more unhealthy for me; I get up quietly and start my day.  Like most days it is 4:30 a.m. and I am rubbing my sleepy-eyes, making wonderful coffee, and stretching out the kinks.

As I wake, I ponder my discovery.  As the smell of freshly brewing Kenyan Microlot Fair Trade (only roasted four times a year by Willoughby Coffee) wafts towards me, I consider the far-reaching implications, not of the coffee, but of the epiphany I experienced that  night before, after my first of two nightly urination breaks (one of the many benefits to turning fifty).   The obvious were AARP mailings,  an excuse for a bad memory when the real culprit was just plain not paying attention, and the real mandate from Father Time: that I must increase my nightly trips to the bathroom from one, to two.  It happened almost on the very day of my fiftieth birthday, and I accepted the responsibility with relative ease.  

The rebellion against that particular change would only postpone the inevitable and could end up with me peeing myself.  Since peeing myself was not supposed to start for a few more decades, I adapted easily.

Usually, when getting up for my "personals" and as long as I don't allow a single thought to enter my head, I can almost sleepwalk to and fro and get right back to sleep, as if I was never awake.  This particular night, Melissa had either started her nightly snoring early, or my first pee was late.  This of course made just slipping back to sleep problematic.

Usually when Melissa snores, she is on her left side facing me, her mouth right about my ear level.  For those of you good with directions, you will now have discerned I sleep stage left.  I'm sure she won't mind my sharing this but Melissa's snoring sounds a little like a very heavy and rusty metal desk being pushed a foot at a time across a sandy, slightly damp wooden and res0nate floor.  Yes, that is the exact sound. Anyway, my usual recourse is to slightly wake her up and tell her lovingly that she needs to roll over.  For 30 years I have gently and ever so considerately touched her arm lightly, a few times, calling to her in my sweet, whispery, caring-husband voice, "Hey, you're snoring, turn over."   This usually takes two or three attempts, and eventually she will get angry (don't worry she doesn't hold this sin against me, there is grace, because she never remembers it), and yet turns over and ceases the furniture moving.

However, as I said earlier, it was later in the morning for whatever reason, and I considered the integrity of this strategy, because, she may very well wake up too much, being later in the night, and I may not get to sleep again anyway, having thought about this a moment too long.  So, would it be worth it?  Beyond that, would she remember my waking her, and thus my sin be handed down to the third generation?   Hold this quandary for a moment, we'll get back to our story soon.

A little background: Time being relative, I am thankful for the extended five or so hours of sleep I get these days.  My health has improved the last couple years as my sleep patterns have gotten better than most of my previous five decades of life.  I have lived most of those years with an hour or two a night.  In a good night, sleep came for 3 hours. I have secretly grimaced at the comments like, "A person needs eight good hours of sleep a night to be healthy."  My favorite dooms me to a shorter life, based on my own average of two to four hours of sleep for most of my younger years. I stopped telling people I had only gotten an hour to three each night, because I have been told it is impossible to live with such little sleep for so long.  So I must be the walking dead.  Some years I slept only by closing my eyes for moments at a time and resting.  Of late, as I have gotten older, I suppose my body has joined the AARP, before the mailings even started, because my sleep has increased.  By the way, I did end up joining the American Association of Retired Persons, because of the wonderfully inspiring ads that promised deals and benefits for being older.

This brings me back to Melissa, and to said discovery.

I decided this fateful night that I would, after thirty years, because of the afore-mentioned complications, just roll over and try to "zen" with the sound of Melissa's snoring.  I flapped the covers, and they floated nicely for a moment, and something really odd happened.  You should know that when a person who is still well over 200 pounds,with bad knees and the natural giftings that exclude grace, rolls over there is a giant wave of sorts.  This is true, in phenomenal fashion, even with those funky special mattresses that promise wine glasses won't be spilled.  Side note:  a water bed is not my friend at all.  Two rolls into our one and only night in a water bed, and the tidal wave that formed to my left flipped Melissa right out of bed and onto the cold floor.  Anyway, I committed myself to rolling over, and did the preparatory roll-over-bounce, you know the bounce that gets a larger framed person slightly airborn, and movement started, disengaging me from the dents that have formed a suction around my body parts holding me to the mattress.  Without this motion of pre-roll bouncing before turning over, I would simply roll the mattress off of the box spring and onto the floor like a wringer in an old fashioned washing machine.  I know this is not easy to understand for you thinner people, but I will sketch the physics out for you later.  This particular night, for some reason unknown to me,  I did the pre-roll bounce, and yet did not move further.  After the bounce I simply lay there, settling right back down into the old mattress.

Suddenly and surprisingly, Melissa grunted strangely and rolled over, and there was dead silence.

What had just happened?  I looked over, frightened.  Maybe I had killed her!  Had I bounced so hard I had broken her neck?  No . . . she was breathing . . . clear, and quiet.  This I had to investigate.  I reared up and did the pre-roll-over bounce again, just the bounce, and watched, as she grunted, and rolled back towards me, and began snoring again.

The angels sang.  Beautiful choruses of praise for my God, as I bounced over and over.  Poor Melissa, who swears now that she slept well so knows nothing of all this, well she rolled over and over and over, snoring, not snoring, snoring not snoring!  Each time I bounced, she turned over after a slight grunty sound.  Every single time I did the bounce, she rolled to the other position, and appropriately snored or not.  This was beginning to be more fun than was appropriate, so I lay back and considered how I had missed this all these years.

This brings me back to my coffee, and my grandfather.  I am now, while typing this, on my third cup and about to make the next pot of coffee, so Melissa will have a fresh brew, too.  I ponder how much fun marriage is.  A lot of people don't understand about a long marriage to the same person.  I can tell you, there is a lot of laughter, and mindless simple entertainment in it, too. I think the key is that I am still quite childish, and that helps a lot. 

My grandfather had a philosophy, which doesn't hold up to a theological unpacking on the surface, but works well once you do unpack it.  "If you can't have fun, don't go."  Then it strikes me.  That simple philosophy is not about not going or being involved with things that are not fun.  It is about our hearts, and how much we enjoy, or not, the things of life, some that are not inherently enjoyable.  It is a wise mandate to have fun.  At everything.  Or don't bother doing life with a crappy attitude.  Now that has wings!  Not a directive to avoid life, but to embrace it, and enjoy it.  For my fellow believers among you, it is a chance to be thankful, and praise God in His glory, not with just hymns and oft times boring religious offerings, but with laughter and joy, and silliness, and childishness.  For my agnostic or atheist friends, well, you are welcome to include my faith as a fun thing, if you like.   Funny, even.  I don't mind.  My faith is funny to me, too.  Doesn't make it less real, but more meaningful for me.  Now that has wings, too.  

A holy foolishness is just the thing to enjoy in the morning with a good cup of coffee.  That and I can't wait til Melissa starts to snore again tonight and I can play bouncy bounce, watching her roll over a few times just for fun.  She is one bounce away from Pavlov.

 

 

 

Bye, Bye Blackbird

© 2011 Rob Krabbe / Originally published on Voxpoetica.com

1929

The malaise of the depression

swings from a long black coat.

Wind flapped duster tails,

his hat pulled down low.

Sailing hands fly suddenly

in deadly circles, hurling graves

as machine guns blaze.

Quells the ravenous republic's hunger

for a hero, swooping down, the majestic hawk

from the clouds with succulent

worms and sad stories of battles

corpses, and conspiracy to the open trembling beaks.

Slaughtering the whole hog,

and laughing from the mud pen.

Manic and frenzied mad hatters

and Hoover's minions, peering through

the eyes of a random helpless god

In a tailored black suit.

Dry and dusty throats mute, stumbling

through the American dream and watch

as the teller dies and dreams fade.

His voice scratchy like 32 ounce wind proof wool

"I'm not here for your money, just the bank's,

put your wallet away."

Gravel weary, grizzled and bleary,

the eyes of an era; the eyes of opportunity

Roll credits and flickering fame in a dark theater

on an award winning newsreel.

Death came all the same.

Closing the chapter, the book

and the eyes of John H Dillinger.

mm

mm