fable

Once upon a time, there lived a very curious little girl with brown hair and blue-gray eyes. She often found herself tiptoeing toward places she might not should go. When she was eight, her parents moved (with her and her small brother, of course) into a big red brick house on a tree-lined street, in the middle of town. This was a magic house.

The magic house seemed to go on forever, and the little girl found herself wandering around the house and the yard with big eyes, and open ears, imagining that the next little half-door in the wall would take her to Narnia or Middle Earth or someplace she’d never heard of. She was fascinated. Her grandfather, the kind of older man who seemed to have special magic or medicine (or maybe both) with small children, helped out a lot with the move. He also managed to keep the little girl and her little brother out of trouble…most of the time…with very inventive stories.

The previous owner of the magic red brick house, an older man (much like the little girl’s grandfather…he had magic and medicine, too), had dug out an old cellar, to the right of the back door, next to the fence line. Years and years had gone by since anyone had used the cellar, and the ground had shifted and water had filled the hidey-hole. The little girl and her even littler brother were mesmerized by the cellar. You can imagine that had the little girl or her little brother ever actually made it to the cellar, this story would be very different. You may also be asking yourself how two intrepid adventurers ever managed to find the self-control to avoid such a place. In a word…the answer is the mystical, mythical, magical bullagator. Of course, the bullagator in the cellar was repatriated when the little girl’s grandfather knocked the cellar in with his forklift and beaucoup fill dirt later that summer. Little was heard from or about the bullagator until the little girl with brown hair and blue-gray eyes became a big girl with brown hair (and some grey creeping in) and blue-gray eyes and a job at summer camp.

The Good Lord knows that nothing says fun quite like like a tetanus shot or a near drowning….hence, in God’s great wisdom (and the wonderful mind of Poppy’s with good medicine and magic), the bullagator was born. Bullagators are half bulldog, half alligator. And if a child should find herself someplace she ought not to be, a bullagator might magically appear to bite her little nose off. Bullagators are fearsome creatures. Not much was known about the bullagator until 2006, other than their magical business as the guardians of flooded cellars. It seems that bullagators are not only the guardians of flooded cellars, but also stretches of the Guadalupe River and partially collapsed barns that seem to scream “HEY KIDS!! COME PLAY OVER HERE!”

Extensive research has been done on bullagators in the last three years, and that research has borne much fruit. For instance, we now know that in addition to biting off the faces of naughty children who stray into restricted areas, they can lob acidified spit wads at least four feet. The spit wads can cause nasty flash burns, as well as causing rocks (lobbed by naughty children, to check to see if bullagators REALLY are REAL, no doubt) to burst into flame. Bullagators are about the size of Labrador Retrievers. They can be tamed, but only if you can whistle “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes” backwards, with no mistakes. They also really like black jelly beans and Hank Williams on vinyl.

And in case you were wondering, the little girl is still living happily ever after. At least, that's the way I heard it.

mil besos,
rmg

a true story that never really happened...

she's a pretty smart cookie, that one. not much happens that suprises her. oh sure, every once in a while, she has an off-day, but usually, that kid's head is on a swivel. she's the clutch player. she's the go-to. she's competent. and she is deadly efficient. the only caveat to that little rule...this kid only works alone. that makes the job harder, but with the ripping and tearing that she sometimes has to do, it also makes the job quicker.

she hides all the soft places she can think of...hides them very well, most people don't even know where to start looking, anymore. she's approaching solitude, and that both frightens her and kind of excites her. it's like one day, a switch was flipped, and she realized that if solitude was what life was going to throw at her, she would catch it and wear it like a crown. nothing marks her but her, like using a low grade diamond to cut one of a higher grade. she isn't particularly happy about how this feels, but life is too short to complain. sometimes she feels like she's watching it all happen outside of herself, and sometimes that's because even she can't believe what's happening, how it's happening, or even why. but it is. her life is happening. and it's not bad. not at all. not even a little bit.

she didn't mean to lie to him. really, she didn't. he's one of those people who knows the soft places, one of the ones she's invited. she knew better. he's such an old soul. she tells herself that she knows he's not perfect, but she really thinks he kind of is. and is he a trainwreck...God, yes. such a mess and jumblefuck of emotions and manifestos and guitar strings and beer bottles and cigarettes and ghosts of girlfriends past, and she loves him extra because of the mess. but she lies to him regularly. she has no desire to be what she is to him. but it's all she can be, and she'd rather be that than nothing. but she reserves the right to not have her face rubbed in it, which is why she lied and missed hearing her favorite song, and pretty much cried the whole way home.

the weight of that lie gets to her, but she chokes it down with a burning shot of pride, flicks her hair back, and keeps walking. she is pulling away from him. it's never going to be what she wants, and she's to a point that rather than have left overs, she'd really rather have nothing, but thanks for offering. it's past time. about three years past time, truth be told. almost exactly.

she remembers snips and phrases from her geometry class in high school. lines are infinite. parallel lines will always run parallel to each other. they never intersect. she thinks this is a lot like where she is with him. they see each other just fine. but they will never be on the same track. ever. this is physics. this is universal truth at it's very deepest, at least as far as their story is concerned. it doesn't matter what makes the tracks parallel...weight, distance, fright, uncertaintly, wrong hair or eye color, because it all amounts to the same thing...parallel tracks will never be more than parallel tracks. they don't bend, or move, or intersect. they are as close as they will ever be, and nothing can change that. all that fancy talk about it almost being like incest notwithstanding...and it was all just bullshit to make her feel better, anyway, things are the way they are, and ever shall be. it's time to just cut the cord and be done with it, just the same.

she is almost who she wants to be. but the weight of this pulls her back to places she never wanted to see again. cutting ties...tying up loose ends...parallel lines and universes...crosby stills nash and young...buying vinyls...doing yoga...losing fifteen pounds...stopping the clock...she is very tired, but she's getting her life right.

weird story, right...came to me in a dream...

mil besos,
rmg

from the southside, vol. 1

"only love

can bring the rain

that makes you yearn to the sky.

only love

can bring the rain

that falls like tears from on high"

--pete townsend

so i'm sitting at my desk, wrapping up a short day in the office. there is plenty to do to fill this whole day, but i have other things to do. i'm waiting on an email to tell me that caro and alex's little girl made it into the world safely. today is cate's birthday. today is a pretty sweet day. later today, i'll drive across a stretch of texas, so i can attend the funeral of a great lady, with whom i shared my birthday. in a few days, i'll celebrate the birthday of one of "my babies" first baby. next weekend, i'll go spend some time with my brother and sister-in-law, who just lost a dear friend. and in a few short months, two new babies will make their presence known in the world, and just knowing that is coming down the pike is pretty incredible.

life and death are so very intertwined. i say that, i write it, and i think that it's too simple to just say it like that. but maybe it IS that simple. maybe solving the mystery, whistling in the dark, trying to make sense out of something that is so far beyond what we can even start to comprehend is just an exercise in futility. i wish i knew why and how babies really were made. i mean, i get the mechanics, that's not the issue. i wonder why some people can have them, why some people can't, why some people choose to raise other people's babies. at the same time, i wonder why some people get sick, why some people get well, why some people die with a whole life behind them, and why some people die with a whole life unlived in front of them. i don't understand it at all. and i don't want to want to understand it, anymore. i want to just accept the mystery and the ultimate gift that each life and death offers to us. even if i had the answers, who's to say that i would even understand them. they would probably make about as much sense as the quadratic equation, which is none. so, i imagine that's just as well.

God's ways are so much higher than my own. and i suppose that knowing that makes all the difference in how i feel today, a day of very mixed and very different emotions.

a friend sent me a message last week about rain falling from the southside of heaven. i like that thought. it means we aren't so divorced from heaven, after all, and i think that's a good thing. in church, i spend a lot of time wrestling with the idea of the already and the not yet, the Kingdom of God between us, and the Kingdom that is coming. so to think of myself as just on the outskirts, the almost/the not-quite, of heaven, seeing things through a veil, that makes me feel like all the emotional whiplash of the last few days is much less severe.

the births, the deaths, the miracles, the meanings in the tea leaves, and all the different journeys down all the different roads... i am learning to lean into them. and thanks be to God for favors large and small.

mil besos,

rmg