I've got the pistols, so I'll take the pesos

I spent last week down in Reynosa, Mexico at the Josias y Betany Children's Home. This is an orphanage tucked into a bad part of town just by the river. It was named after Keith Green's kids, Josiah and Bethany. After Keith died, his wife Melody donated about $35K to start the orphanage. I learned a great deal of the history of the orphanage and the history of some of the children

I've been there three times. This trip made the deepest impact on me yet. I was sick on the first trip, so my interaction with the kids was minimal. The second trip found me doing a lot of work outside of the orphanage and away from the kids. But this time, I spent a lot of time simply talking to the kids (whom I now know have learned a great deal of English). I became particularly attached to Carlos. Carlos is 15 (though he looks 12), and is in seventh grade. He had a stroke at birth and his right half of his body does not work very well. This trip, I found him without a brace on his leg and making good progress in his studies. But he doesn't get around well at all, and he's behind all the other kids his age. And I saw the flame of hope among the hopeless in him, and that was truly the biggest heartbreak of all. I saw Carlos in the kitchen, being helpful as usual. He was washing dishes singing Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy on me. And that was the straw that broke me open. I saw him there singing along to this CD - Michael W. Smith I think it was - and his head was sort of bowed and his eyes were closed as he was scrubbing dishes. It was this beautiful, sincere prayer. When do we ever pray that sincerely? When do we really need to? It's really hard for me to put into words what I felt at that moment. A shame welled up in me, but also a love for this guy. I mean, I don't cry that often. But when I think about Carlos, it's automatic. When I was around him, it was automatic.

Elisaura was always a strange girl. She had this long blonde hair and a deformed-looking upper lip. I found out that she was born with a cleft pallate. When she was a young child, the previous orphanage director kept her in a dog kennel. They only let her out to play when government officials would visit to see if they needed assistance. That previous owner was later found to a child molester. Anyway, that guy was fired or arrested or something. I don't remember, because the person telling this had limited English. Elisaura now has had three surgeries to fix her cleft pallate. She needs a couple more, but she's doing much better. And I found out that she's only a month younger than me!

But Lord have mercy on us. We pray for so much tripe and ease. This woman who was with us prayed that we would not be stopped at the border going in and out of Mexico. What was the harm of that I wonder. That it would take up time? That people would seem a little suspicious of us, stop us, and find that we were law-abiding citizens on a mission trip? It just seemed like that typical American prayer. Of course I've talked on about how much I dislike the health and wealth doctrine for years now, and this is related I'm sure. So I'm not going to get into it much. The woman who prayed that surely has a beautiful relationship with God, and I am only making an example of her to illustrate what Christians do all the time. A couple people got sick on the trip, but it passed quickly and much hard work was accomplished. We faced some minor trials overall, but I think it was a very smooth trip. But how decadent of us that we lose hope here!

I read this book, A Grief Observed, while I was there and this was a great passage. I wish I could put it better in my own words, or come up with some handy epigram to not bore you to death:

"From the rational point of view, what new factor has H.'s death introduced into the problem of the universe? What grounds has it given me for doubting all that I believe? I knew already that these things, and worse, happened daily. I would have said that I had taken them into account. I had been warned - I had warned myself - not to reckon on worldly happiness. We were even promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accepted it. I've got nothing I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not in imagination. Yes; but should it, for a sane man, make quite such a difference as this? No. And it wouldn't for a man whose faith had been real faith and whose concern for other people's sorrows had been real concern. The case is too plain. If my house was collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards. The faith which 'took these things into account' was not faith but imagination. The taking them into account was not real sympathy. If I had really cared, as I thought I did, about the sorrows of the world, I should not have been so overwhelmed when my own sorrow came. It has been an imaginary faith playing with innocuous counters labeled 'Illness,' 'Pain,' 'Death,' and 'Loneliness.' I thought I trusted the rope until it mattered to me whether it would bear me. Now it matters, and I find it didn't."

"Bridge-players tell me that there must be some money on the game, 'or else people won't take it seriously.' Apparently it's like that. Your bid - for God or no God, for a good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity - will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it. And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high; until you find that you are playing not for counters or for sixpences but for every penny you have in the world. Nothing less will shake a man - or at any rate a man like me - out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself."

Anyway, I thought that was really a sensational explanation for pain and suffering in our lives. Oswald Chambers suggests that we never pray that one ought to be healed from sickness; rather we ought to pray that God's will be done (whatever it may be) in that situation. Perhaps one should be healed immediately, or over time like nature often does. Or perhaps one should die from the illness. Perhaps the last of these is best at times. Perhaps our own houses of cards must be knocked down. People say here today that the early Christians, being thrown to the lions in the Roman coliseum, were the best. They had true faith. But do any of us want to go back there? I think in our heart of hearts, we all know our answer.

About midway through the week in Mexico, some of us went to this church service in a park. Around 150-200 people were there, and all of them were there to hear the gospel and receive day old bread and old clothes. Many were sick and afflicted. I saw a girl who looked about ten. I couldn't tell if she was starving or pregnant. It was a rough sight even for me. Our group stood up on this stage and sang a song. Ken, our leader, spoke the gospel message to all of them. When he was done, I stepped off the stage. And immediately, I was caught in this flood of people asking to be prayed for. So I helped this man pray for people. This elderly lady asked me to pray for her, and she put my hand on her stomach. She had a large tumor. So I took some oil in my fingers, pressed them against her stomach and prayed as hard as I could. I was just amazed. I had never seen people so hungry for God or for prayer. And I thought that maybe this was what it was like for Jesus in the temple square or whatever. Praying for people. Healing people. Playing dice with people. I dunno. It was kind of neat to be a part of a place where God was working and where real work needed to be done. It was also that same experience where you get perspective. That's what you get out of a mission trip. Hopefully the people you're serving feel some love and some mercy.

In other news, Mark quit the band. We are currently writing a lot of new stuff and looking for shows.

I quit smoking. Been two weeks. The Life Aquatic was pretty good too.

Let it ride

Tennessee's my brother to my sister Carolina...

My music is up on download.com. Check it out.

I have Ryan Adams's new cd, which is great. Sort of a Whiskeytown meets Gold-era Adams.

Feeding the Ducks

Been tired lately. Not a lot going on. Not writing anything interesting. Not writing at all.

Download.com accepted my music. So go to the link ye see over on your right. Not everything is up as I post this. Mainly just the user profile. The songs and picture ought to be up soon. Also, check out Greybyrd lyrics and news

I update shows and lyrics and whatnot. I wrote a new song. You really ought to make a point to read the Greybyrd blog. If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm not a writer. I'm a musician. Well, I put some music to some words I had kicking around last summer. Nothing to write home about.

Well, I did have this dream a few weeks ago. So I think I might write a story about it. It's pretty epic - lengthwise. It's called Train Soul. I think the dream had elements of the movies Spirited Away and Masked and Anonymous and the book, Ladder of Divine Ascent, by Saint John Climacus. The story is very post-apocalyptic, yet human and relational. It was a dream, so the whole idea is sort of sketchy at the moment. I'm trying to find some purpose in it. I still remember the dream itself vividly. I feel like I need to say something with it without falling into cheap allegory. I just need to find some time to write it.

I'm also thinking about writing an analysis of FLCL. It's a very strange series. It's a lot of fun. I know there is not a lot of interest to most people who read this. But for my own pleasure...feeding the ducks, in a literary sense.

A self-ordained professor's tongue too serious to fool

“Let Us Not Talk Falsely Now”

Ryan Leng

Bob Dylan is a pretty weird guy. He showed up in a Victoria’s Secret commercial awhile ago (which is weird, but also unassailably cool). He also starred in the movie entitled Masked and Anonymous, where Dylan acted alongside half the cast of The Big Lebowski. (Believe me. It’s weird.) Last year he published the first installment of his autobiographical Chronicles, which explores everything People Magazine didn’t want to know about him (which is baffling, but probably better in the end). So I didn’t know what to expect when I bought my ticket to see him.

I traveled north to Mount Pleasant, where Bob Dylan was playing with his band at the Soaring Eagle Casino. I met up with my friends, and entered into the auditorium. We waited around until fifteen minutes after the show was supposed to start. I got up and went to the bathroom. Then he started playing. I heard from the stall the announcer saying something. The sound was muffled, but the music started and so did Bob. I nearly tore off my zipper in a rush, grabbed my coat from the hook on the stall door, and took off with toilet paper trailing me like a ribbon of euphoria. Now, I’ve seen both George W. Bush and even Ronald Reagan speak in person. That was cool. But that was only a mere blip of excitement compared to the rush I got from seeing Bob Dylan perform. I suppose if I drank pure adrenaline from a human adrenal gland, I could feel the same amount of raw exhilaration.

I calmed down considerably a couple songs into the set. I leveled out and tried to act a little less like a rabid, twelve-year-old Avril Lavigne fan. Dylan himself was not mellow. He’s sixty-four going on sixty-five, but he bounced around like he was fifteen. He looked good, donning his black suit and black, Stetson cowboy hat. I suspected him to look washed up, strung out and generally broken down. But he wasn’t.

The fourth song into the set really reminded me why I’m a fan. He pounded out a heartfelt performance of his “Just Like A Woman.” Maybe it was the acrid pall of smoke hanging over the audience that got me teary-eyed, but I think I know better. “This man is a true human being,” I thought to myself. He was happy, and excited to be performing. He wasn’t out to change the world. No, he’d done that already. Nowadays he is just trying to have fun. He wasn’t weird either. He was completely normal.

The audience didn’t recognize most of what he played. I have a “modest” collection of twelve of his albums, and I only recognized half of his set. But that didn’t bother me. This bothered me: During the encore, Dylan played a scorching version of “All Along The Watchtower.” And this girl on my row asked her boyfriend, “Why is he covering a Dave Matthews song?”... I’ll calmly draw a curtain of charity over the scene that followed. Anyway, that gives you an idea of what the audience looked like. The pouting facial expressions kept asking when he was going to play something they had heard. To which Bob responded by playing “Like A Rolling Stone.” The crowd once again grew ecstatic.

He impressed me greatly with the inclusion of one of his gospel songs. “Saving Grace” seemed like an odd song to throw into the mix, being as he was playing at a Casino for a bunch of drunken gamblers. But this simple, direct expression of his faith once again grabbed me by the throat and throttled me to tears. But for the most part, I just rolled and rocked with his punchier songs.

Dylan played piano the whole set, and he traded harmonica solos with a hot fiddle player and a phenomenal pedal-steel player. Dylan’s voice was on most of the night. Sometimes, I wished he would have enunciated better, because some of his lyrics were lost in the mix. But all in all, it was a solid performance.

Dylan and his band left the stage too fast for my liking, so I flicked my Bic during the encore cheer and shouted until he came back. He re-emerged to play a couple more songs. Then it was over. I had just seen a living legend. I now try to convince to myself that it wasn’t a big deal – that I’m only a moderate fan – but who am I kidding? I ate this stuff up, and it was a “dream come true.”

Dylan is going on tour this summer with Willie Nelson, playing mostly minor league ball parks east of the Mississippi. He is also releasing Volume Two of his Chronicles in the near future. Check out www.bobdylan.com for his May through July tour dates and other news and updates.

1. To Be Alone With You (Nashville Skyline)
2. I'll Be Your Baby Tonight (John Wesley Harding)
3. Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum (Love and Theft)
4. Just Like A Woman (Blonde On Blonde)
5. Cold Irons Bound (Time Out Of Mind)
6. Moonlight (Love and Theft)
7. Highway 61 Revisited (Highway 61 Revisited)
8. Blind Willie McTell (Bootleg Sessions 1-3)
9. I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met) (Another Side of Bob Dylan)
10. Summer Days (Love and Theft)
11. Saving Grace (Saved)
12. Like A Rolling Stone (Highway 61 Revisited)
    
    encore
13. Forever Young (Planet Waves)
14. All Along The Watchtower (John Wesley Harding)
    

Greybyrd and The Office Call Sessions

Today marks the finish date of my album. My showboatin' name is Greybyrd, and the album is called "The Office Call Sessions." Four songs off this seven song EP will be on Cnet Download dot com. So you can wait for them to go up on that site, or if you want to support me, send five bucks for a cd of your own. I'll put up the lyrics somewhere (maybe here) if people want them, and I'll put the link to where you can download the tunes in my link bar on the side.

Musically, the album is very mellow, running in the same vein as Iron & Wine, Nick Drake, Bruce Cockburn and Wilco. The guitar is mostly fingerpicking with some leads and keyboards. The vocals are soft and (dare I flatter myself) adequate. Overall I'm content with it.

Recording during these sessions wasn't that bad. Much of the album was recorded in one take, which surprised me. Special thanks goes out to Z3R0 (a true badass) for engineering and mixing my album for me. Additionally, Z3R0 did some nice vox and keyboard work and kept me on a strict regimen of T-bell and a crap-load of good anime. Also thanks to the Croe and Broker for support in person and spirit.

Tracklist:

Far Too Much
Across The Border
Falling/Ascending
Buddy Lists, Etc.
Break Even
Rainy Day Emily
Lunita

I plan to record some more in June, so I'll keep you posted. I have new stuff I'm working on all the time.

The Gatecrasher

This was a little inspired by a true story in Gatto’s The Underground History of Modern Education.


John Malanga and I were friends from an early age. We experienced life together, then grew apart as many childhood friends do when adulthood swoops down and peels them apart like the string cheese in their lunch boxes. You grow apart, you know. Growing apart is only half the story, however. Well. Actually, I suppose "growing apart" isn't the story I'm telling here at all, so perhaps I'm spinning my wheels. It's only a cliche deprived of its meaning with repeated use. It has no real application to our particular friendship. So let me say that Malanga and I had never really grown together. I didn’t like him. No, I thought he was a thieving bastard. He thought I was...well, I don’t know what he thought about me. Probably not much. He always seemed glazed over when I tried to tell him something I thought was important. And believe me, I thought I was important. But in reality, he was much smarter than I. Anyway, there wasn’t much between us ever. I’m surprised I spent so much time with him.


But I remember elementary school being rather dichotomous. On the playground at least, you were either athletic, or you were not. I was not. Malanga was not. Consequently, by our affiliation in the “not” group, we became friends of a sort. Yes, yes, I know. In highschool one doesn’t have to withstand such over-simplified social structures. By highschool those two groups filtered down into the usual artists, brains, jocks, etc. But in elementary school, that was the way it was, and that is the only rough and ready way I have to describe to you why we spent any time together. In fifth grade, we had nothing else in common.


For instance his home life differed severely from mine. He had no real filial duties. Well, nothing ordinary. But let's be very clear here: His life was messed up. One example comes to mind. When he was twelve, his mother had a meltdown. Maybe she was fed up with life. Maybe she just needed some better meds. And as if John was dropping off a movie at the video store, he drove to the hospital and dropped her off for psychiatric care. All the while, he kept a cool head on his shoulders. But, as one can imagine, he didn't go to school anymore. It was two weeks before the principal found out that he was living alone at home. (As you may of guessed, his father was unavailable to him.) At this juncture, a state custodian arranged a new home for John: Ours. So he fell under my mother’s care and boarded up in our basement for an indefinite amount of time. (My mother was and still is in the foster parent business. Why she wasn't happy with her own children currently remains a mystery to me.)


During this period of time, my clean-cut, nuclear family dragged John Malanga to a highschool football game. John and I had no interest in football except on the playground. Whenever the other kids threw the ball into our vicinity, John or I would pick up the ball, shift ourselves 180 degrees from the crowd of kids on the field, and punt the ball away with all might and impunity we could muster. (Which wasn't very far, mind you; but it was fun pissing them off.) Anyway, I digress. Football game. Right.


We were going to a football game, not because we wanted to, but because my dad wanted to. My dad ate, breathed, drank, shat sports and still does. When I told him I wanted to be an artist, I think something inside him died (To use another old cliche, because I'm an inadequate story-teller, and I'm off topic again.), and I smelled it rotting inside his chest for the rest of my childhood. But here we were, waiting in line to get into the stadium. It towered above us, though many things do when you're that age. (And you go back to them when you're twenty, and you go "Oh, gee. That's not so scary.") My parents had entrusted us with our tickets, so I decided to run back to the car to get my sketch pad.

"Stay here, Johh," I said, "I'll be right back."

When I returned, he was gone. My parents were absorbed in conversation about the highschool's new quarterback.

"Yeah, I can't believe they cut our funding though," my dad sallied deeper into conversation with another parent. "Wisniewski's a joke! The kid can't even see straight, and for crying out loud! he's still got baby fat hangin' offa him!"

Blah, blah, blah...I had to interrupt him. "Dad, John's gone."

"Well go find him," he replied impatiently. "The game's about to start."

I trotted off in search of the little punk. I scanned the outer lawn. Not there, where else? I hustled my trot into a jog and then into an all out run. I made it around the stadium twice, and still there was no sign of him. "Why is he my responsibility?" I asked myself. I kept up my search behind the bushes, out in the parking lot, by the concession stand, the cheerleading bus from the opposing team - he was nowhere. My palms developed a film of cold uneasiness at the thought of him running away.

But I found him. I spotted his bleach-blonde rattail haircut, peaking through the back of his ball cap like a snake creeping out of its hole. He was four feet off the ground on the fence by the commentators’ booth, which stood on top of a hill over-looking the field. He was trying to sneak in.

“John! What are you doing, man? Why are you sneaking in?” I inquired of the little gatecrasher. “Come down man! You’ve got a ticket. You don’t need to sneak in!”

He only looked at me. It was the strangest look. He was almost hurt that I hadn’t caught on to what he was doing. But it was obvious to me! Or at least I thought it was.

He climbed down quickly, but said nothing.

“What were you doing?” I repeated.

“Nothing man, nothing.”

“I looked for you forever! I thought I’d lost you.”

“I’m sorry. Dude, let’s go.”

We hurried back to the entrance and proceeded to watch the game. I was confused by his actions for a few minutes, but soon forgot them and became enveloped in sketching some cheerleader. Only now has it really occurred to me the designs of John Malanga’s gatecrashing incident. Though it mystified me at that age, it became quite clear as I began to understand people in my adult life. John was merely thinking ahead. Could the gates by the commentators’ booth be scaled and defeated? And if not, was there a better way inside? And what better way to find out than with a paid ticket in his back pocket. If he was caught, what was anybody going to do about it? It was a perfect plan. Once he found the vulnerability of the entrance, he was free to get in whenever he wanted. But it took me a long time to catch on, of course. Something like that. Anyway, it was cool to finally figure that out. I’ll tell you more about him later. But for the moment, ruminate on that one.

Loaded Questions in an Automatic World

Hugger: "So how is 'Operation Commuter Girl' going?"

Ketch: "Well, I mobilized the ground forces and made a pre-emptive strike in the hall this morning. She responded by saying 'hi.'"


UPDATE: I'm going to see Iron & Wine at Calvin on April 18th. Check it out on the Web.