Fortunate

"...Those now dead I declared more fortunate than the living. And better off than both are those who never existed, for they have not seen the wicked work that is done under the sun. Then I saw that all toil and skillful work is the rivalry of one man for another. This also is vanity and a chase after wind."

-- Ecclesiastes 4:2-4 (paraphrased, probably)

--

My dog is lying on his side on the coffee table, asleep again at a quarter to eight. It is morning. My sister woke my other sister to take her to volleyball practice, and that sister in turn woke me up. It was five-thirty. We all woke the dog. Ajax stumbled, sleepy, up the stairs to watch us depart, one by one, hurrah-hurrah; then his eyes dropped and his body followed, mind and weight pulled by gravity to carpet fuzz. When I came back, he followed me to the basement, where the attractive coffee table waited. He grows chubbier with each breath, flopped there on the red wood, his mirror self reflected in the plastic glaze, his tail thumping at the sight of some phantom mongrel.

It's my last day at home. This time tomorrow, I look to traverse happy Iowa, with all its soppy, stinking fields, a country sunrise shooting massive windmills of goldenrod in the reverse twilight of cornflower-blue dawn, green tractor stacks, pale paint peeling off billboards, road signs for "Smokestacks and Silos National Heritage Area," "James Garfield's Birthplace," and "The World's Largest Truck Stop" at Exit 284 (the highway's halfway house).

And cheap, cheap gas: under $3.40, in most places. Smirking and maybe singing, I will drive for hours.

--

What does it profit a man to be religious? I like to think I'm a man of words and not just the Word, a guy who digs the God stuff but passes the stuffing...and all...and the term "religious" always tasted like Saltines to me: stale, salty, common. Sure, my family gave up cable and boycotted Disney in the name of All Three; soon enough, though, we took the TV channels back and stocked up on the classics. While we make an effort to hit our pew every Sunday, we always walk in late and giggle about it afterwards. We don't lift or lay hands, we don't garble into God-speak, we don't show pictures to the passing public outside abortion clinics. I stopped going to youth groups in the ninth grade, gave up prophecy yarns earlier than that, and earlier still, decided that the Greatest Being probably cared more about candor and simplicity of spirit than rituals that rust and formulae of feel-good salvation. Pop your zits, pass the cigs and tip the wine, I say, curse loudly and make love proudly, but remember that the Big Guy doesn't like it when you stomp on other people's toes, so say zippadee-doo-dah to yourself and your buds, love the world and the people you meet, stick to the streets, plant some plants, savor all you see and smell, love your dog and stay awake to take long drives, shit and sleep like everyone else, stare the pit in the eye and find a way to grin, and remember--you ought to be glad, because you're the biggest small thing that ever existed.

That's hardly a motto (sounds kinda like a country song in places), but it'll do.