Cheese!

Have you ever found it curious that humans are the only species for which a display of teeth isn't typically a direct antecedent to mortal combat? I'm not sure what this means, but it seems important to me.

Quality

If you were into So You Think You Can Dance Season 2, you already know these cats. Otherwise, just enjoy the show.



Fire up a bowl and grab yourself a phial of absinthe for this little ditty.



British humour . . . it does exist!

Success!

There are a couple components that go into making Thanksgiving my favourite holiday. The season starts early for me with Fallstravaganza. Then comes family time on Thanksgiving day, followed closely by Lone Star Showdown Friday and Kill a Tree for Christmas¹ in North Fork, CA. It's a rare occurrence when all these cogs fall into place; either the Ags loose their game or weather in North Fork is crummy or family is grumpy . . . there are just too many variables for things to come out perfectly. This year, however, has gone off about as well as could be hoped for. Fallstravaganza '07 went swimmingly, I had a very enjoyable Thanksgiving day with my in-laws in town from Dallas, the Ags beat the HELL outta t.u. and we got a sweet tree on an idyllic afternoon in North Fork. Check, check, check and . . . check. I hope yall had awesome Thanksgivings.


¹Kill a Tree for Christmas is a Jensen/Qualle family annual event which just celebrated its 32^nd year. Our good friends the Jensens own several acres above North Fork and from its bounty a fresh incense cedar is cut for each family. Below is a photo of this year's Qualle II Family Christmas tree.

Summer Magic

I was slumped up against several tons of luggage piled high in black military duffels like so many body bags testifying, the result of some great catastrophe. It was my second time to London in as many summers, and if I’d had known it would be my last for at least eight years I probably would have been out enjoying the experience. As it was, however, I had spent the lion’s share of my time in London this time around loading, unloading and transporting the several tons of luggage two teams of 20 people required for almost three months in Africa. Needing to rest my jet lagged legs, I crumpled down next to the wall of rough textured Teen Missions International duffels to be refreshed by the company of one Maryka Lier. A red-haired befreckled girl from Andover, Mass, she was everything one would hope a red-haired befreckled girl from Andover, Mass could be. I assume she read Dickens, listened to Radiohead and ate stew at least once a month during the winter months while somehow managing to make loose-knit sweaters fashionable. Expertly tight-roping the razor of wit and cruelty with an encyclopedic knowledge of movie quotes, Maryka had been delightful company for the first two weeks of our acquaintance and would prove to be increasingly excellent as our stint in Madagascar unfolded.

There had been some discussion about how to pronounce Maryka’s name before she had made her way from comfortable suburban Andover deep into the Florida jungle to join the rest of Teen Missions International Team 99007 to Mahajanga, MADACASCAR for our two week training course near Cape Canaveral. Armed with now-battered rosters with small grey-scale photos, the few early assemblers ventured guesses. “Mary Kay, definitely,” started Sarah, seated on a ten gallon laundry detergent bucket. “Mareeka?” ventured Grace. “I betcha it’s something like ‘Charles,’” I responded, lounging in a wheelbarrow. When Maryka showed up, she had set us all strait: It was pronounced ‘muh – `rahy – kuh.’ That afternoon in London, another guy from another place took a crack at it. I don’t remember his name; he was on the other team traveling with us from Orlando to Johannesburg. They were heading to Zimbabwe to ride dirt bikes for Jesus in black leather jackets; we were headed for Mahajanga to build a school in purple hardhats. Like I said, I have no clue what his name was now, but we’ll call him ‘Rosco.’ It seems to fit with my recollection of the man.

A rangy, bow-legged kid from Anywhere, Georgia, Rosco was just Maryka’s type. “Howdy,” he drawled out impossibly long as he almost gracefully splayed his legs out in front of himself, dropped down next to Maryka and cocked his camouflage John Deer hat back on his head.

“Hey,” she responded, raising her eyebrows in a passable imitation of interest.

“What’s yer name?” he continued, seemingly unperturbed by the general lack of reciprocity so far in the conversation.

“My name?” she said, and I could feel her skating the razor’s edge. She chose grace. “My name’s Maryka. What’s yours?”

“Oh, I’m jus’ Rosco,” he said, scratching the back of his neck. “Muh r-eye kuh,” he strung each drawled syllable out to its extremity, a kid with their first piece of salt water taffy. “Say, Muh-reye-kuh . . . yer red hair sure is perty.” This just keeps getting better I thought to myself as Maryka swallowed a snigger in my direction. “It reminds me of that Anne of Green Gables girl, ya know?”

“Oh,” said Maryka, and pursed her lips ever so slightly. “Thanks, Rosco.”

And then the three of us just sat there in awkward silence for what seemed like hours until Maryka got up and muttered something about how nice it was to make Rosco’s acquaintance and how she was sure they’d run into each other soon. Things continued on like that on our team for another three or four weeks; awkward approaches at flirting, coy ripostes and the gamut of stereotypical teenage intersexual transactions until something magical happened under the Mahajanga mango groves. For the first time in my life, for about six weeks, I stopped seeing people and started experiencing people. Mike and Simon and Tom became as beautiful to me as Bronwyn, Brandt and Debbie. There was no male, nor female. We were all Greeks and one another's slaves. It didn’t last for long, and it didn’t happen for everyone, but it happened for me and at 17 years of age it was a mystical experience to commune with the selves and not the personas.

Lions, Tigers, Et al.

The first time I clearly remember it happening, I was in World History summer school between my Freshman and Sophomore years, but I have a feeling I've been doing it my whole life. I zoopomorphize people; I see them as their animal equivalent. It's not that they even really look like the animal per se, but to me they somehow exude that animal's flavour, it's feel, it's impression. Odd, I know. In high school it was a girl from Clovis West named Caitlyn, and she was a sea otter. One minute I was gazing vacantly around the room and the next I was struck by the resemblance which would grip me for five more weeks until we went our respective ways and I was left with noting more than a colour coded map of Africa's several dessert regions. I can do it with most everyone if I try hard enough, but there area few that strike me and I see them more as their animal avatar than I do as people. Last week at the Gold's where I work out, while I lay panting under the bench press, Water Buffalo said to Lion, "Can you believe those f**kin' Dodgers?! They're gonna pay Torre 13 mil, and they're talkin' 'bout signin' A-Rod! F**k!" Lion, gloved paws on his hips, just adjusted his shades and shook his mane.

Finally

It's about time people starting taking this stuff seriously. Seriously.

He Returns!

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Editor's Note: This post marks the 100^th post on The Texafornian. Thanks to all of yall who read. May the next 100 be as random and relatively painless as the last!

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Taking stock of his impossibly limited options, Liam knew he didn’t have much time. The door to his suite had already sustained what sounded like an astonishing amount of punishment, far more he ever would have imagined the ragged portal could absorbed, and it was far overdue to buckle and admit his gentlemen callers. When it did, he was confident the proceeding pleasantries would be anything but. Sifting through the pile of loot from Cwik’s pocket, he quickly spotted what he was looking for. Liam flicked an opened Trojan condom wrapper aside and grasped the small but wicked looking knife. He opened it with a smooth *snick*, a whisper of encouragement against the cacophonous tribal beat upon the door.

With the pistol in his right and the small black knife glinting in his left, Liam pointed at Cwik with the later. “Here’s how this is going to happen, Ricky,” said Liam in a low, tense voice, barely audible over the drumming on the door. “You talk, you die. You bolt, you die. You cross your eyes, you get maimed. You say you know me, so you should know I’m not playing games here. When I cut you loose, you’ll stand up and wait for me to tell you what to do. You’re gonna be my lil’ puppet,” Liam finished, giving Cwik a mock jab under the chin. Working quickly and carefully, Liam stepped on Cwik’s feet as he cut the cord holding them, leaving his hands still bound. *THOOM-AArrrccckkkkk!* protested the door, and on the other side the shouts of two men became slightly more audible. Sliding the blade upwards along the side of Cwik and stepping back a pace in one quick movement, he instructed Cwik to stand up. Spreading his feet a bit, Cwik attempted to raise himself from his bonds and only half managed the feat before falling heavily back to the chair. Redoubling his efforts, Rick staggered to his feet as the door finally surrounded its courageous battle with the intruders and spat splinters into the room as it flew back with a loud crack and settled drunkenly on mangled hinges.

Two men in nondescript clothes piled after each other into the room, pistols drawn, and came to a crashing halt just a few paces from Cwik’s demonic scarecrow frame in the cramped room. The cool air now being gulped into the room reminded Liam he was still in his boxers, only increasing his sense of vulnerability and apprehension. Keeping Cwik between himself and the men as much as possible, Liam all-to-comfortably gripped his Berretta and knife in their respective hands. He couldn’t have been more than five paces from the other men, but with the furniture and people clogging the interior there was little room to maneuver.

“Ah, shit,” said the one in front after quickly surveying the situation. He was smaller and lighter than his counterpart, but not by much. He had small, hard eyes that seemed to be looking everywhere and yet nowhere at once. Liam could see those eyes efficiently search Cwik’s face, but what was said or what was understood was impossible to discern from his vantage. Both men now had their pistols up and leveled at Liam.

“Let’s just be cool,” said the other man. His eyes were malicious. Not quick, not stupid. Just mean, and Liam didn’t like them one bit.

“I’d be a lot cooler with you guys walking your asses right back out of my suite the way you came," said Liam levelly. He was shocked to hear the confidence in his own voice. Cwik stood swaying ever so slightly, but Liam still couldn’t see his face.

“Liam, man. You know we can’t let you go. Your pop’ll have our foreskins if we botch this,” said Hard Eyes.

“We’re both already circumcised, numb-nuts!” spat Mean Eyes.

“Well then his pop’ll grow ‘em back and cut ‘em off again, Charles! Only this time we’ll be old enough to remember the process!!” snarled Hard Eyes, now turning to meet Charles’ glare.

Liam reacted before he knew what he was doing. Cwik’s knife flew from his left hand and whistled past it’s previous owner’s right ear as it buried itself Charles’ right shoulder up to the handle, causing his pistol to drop to the ground with a clatter as he lurched back and gripped the blade now sprouting metallically from his flesh. In near simultaneous concert, Liam’s Px4 quietly exploded twice. One round grazed Hard Eyes across his left cheek and the other struck the clavicle just below and he reflexively squeezed off two rounds which bit into the walls as he spun down clutching at his marred visage. The bite of gunpowder and blood exploded in Liam’s nostrils as he spotted Cwik barreling out of the door, hands still bound in front of him.

Liam should now:

A) Chase Cwik and ditch the Eye Brothers.

B) Leave Cwik and interrogate the Eye Brothers.

C) Cut his losses with both and just try to get the heck out of Dodge.

D) Finish off the Eye Brothers and then try and track down Cwik.

The Even More You Know

The last quote from Johnson's Inner Work was a little weird, I'm the first to admit. I strongly believe there is something to this whole 'unconscious' phenomenon, but "Lady Ingrid" is a little much for even me. The book as a whole is challenging, bizarre and more than a little disconcerting at times, but I thought I would risk another quote which I found much more concrete and helpful.

Ritual, in its true form, is one of the most meaningful channels for our awe and sense of worship. This is why ritual came spontaneously into being among humans in all parts of the earth. This is why modern people who are deprived of meaningful ritual feel a chronic sense of emptiness. They are denied contact with the great archetypes (ie. the Holy Spirit¹) that nourish our soul-life.
- Inner Work, Robert A. Johnson. pg. 102

¹Parenthetical mine

The Few, the Humble

It’s rare for me to encounter someone whom I deem wise; I could have two fingers bit off by a cantankerous Iguana and still count the number of wise people I know on one hand. Don’t get me wrong, I know a whole mess of smart people. I know a bunch of intelligent people. I am even fortunate to know a fair group of individuals whose insight far surpasses what one might call ‘normal’ (these are not the people to invite to poker night). There is a quality about a select few, however, which can’t be quantified and which I label ‘wise.’ It has something to do with living, something to do with loving and something to do with lamenting but I’m not quite sure on the recipe yet. I saw wisdom in my great grandmother. My great grandmother Della was somehow always much more substantial than her wizened frame would suggest, I imagine because the voyage from Colorado Springs to Houghson, California in a covered wagon imbued her with a grit which only showed through more clearly as the years inexorably striped away the insubstantial. By the time I remember knowing her she was always sitting, always covered by one of her homemade quilts, and always watching the comings and goings around her. I heard wisdom when she would crunch her kind face into a smile and say to me at 104 years of age, “Micah, don’t ever live to be this old. It’s isn’t any fun.”

This Thursday, I met another woman who seemed wise to me. Margaret Hudson is a sculptor, painter and passionate pursuer of life as well as a fixture of the Fresno community. The daughter of missionaries, at 84 Margaret is still annually hosting every second-grader in the Fresno Unified School District at her home in West Fresno with the hope of instilling in them an appreciation of their intrinsic worth as well as an appreciation for all things art. She is a survivor of breast cancer, and has chosen to continue her battle with this pernicious disease through natural methods. She in a farmer, a carpenter, and a poet. Peering at our class through large glasses which magnified her eyes right up to the point of comedy, Ms. Hudson welcomed my classmates and me to the grounds of her home on a Thursday afternoon.

In her back yard, an overgrown collection of bamboo thickets, cottonwood stands and crawling ivy with an organic garden at its centre, I stood and listened to Margaret share her soul with our class. With one hand gripping a smooth, hard bamboo shoot I stood listening to Margaret speak and was struck by the dichotomy: the aged bamboo became larger, harder and smoother as it watched the years pass by. Those same years seemed to have effected the opposite for Margaret. That is, until she confided in us about her nearly impossible pursuit of God through the nightmare of loosing her son to suicide. In those interminable few seconds she was larger, smoother, firmer and more perfect than any Platonic bamboo as she nearly shouted with passion, “And all I came to discover was that I really don’t know much. But what I do know . . . I know that God is and that God is real and that God is real to me.” Her hands lifted to the sky in supplication and surrender and defiance and acceptance, she slowly lowered them and turned her magnified eyes back towards our rapt attention. We were 20-some-odd souls staring at another we suddenly realized was naked and unashamed.

I very much hope to one day be considered wise by others, but for now I content myself with being a witness to other’s wisdom.

The More You Know

It is best if we get acquainted with our inner personalities as persons in their own right before we start putting distance between us and them by using psychological classifications and jargon. You will get much closer to your inner feminine if you know her as "Lady Ingrid," for example, and think of her as a special and interesting being who lives inside you, than if you call her 'the anima' and turn her into a clinical abstraction.
- Inner Work, Robert A. Johnson. pg. 77

Just thought you should know . . .