One of Us

I have one of the strangest neighbors on the planet. I've lived here in central Austin, in this venerable old neighborhood for two plus years. I love it...I rent a modest little duplex that fits my needs perfectly these days. It gets a little crowded when the girls are home, especially with one bathroom, but they are constantly gallivanting around the country and the world so it is plenty of room for Cleveland and me. The duplex is on a corner lot and there is a traffic light at the intersection which makes for interesting vehicular noises most of the night, and the train tracks are less than a mile away, so I get some occasional late night rumblings and whistles, but it is a delightful location with mostly older houses, a few of which have been remodeled and gentrified. My next door neighbors are a delightful young couple who are a writer and school librarian respectively. You probably guessed that the wife was the librarian and the husband the writer, but you would be incorrect. We watch each other's houses and they gave me a sprig off of their aloe vera plant last week and I planted it and put it on my porch...it is doing well. They wanted to buy one of the electric companies old electrical wire spools (you can buy one for $5) but they didn't have way to transport it so I took Clementine (my old truck) and picked up the spool for them. They are great neighbors. Directly across the street is a guy who moved in a couple weeks after I did. He is a single parent dad who has his kids every other week so we talk parenting shop fairly regularly, but he has boys, so I have to depend on youth ministry experience rather than parenting expertise to chime in. He's a good guy.

The elderly gentleman laterally across the street is bit of a hermit and I speak to him when he takes his garbage can to the curb, but not much else. I took his recycling out for him a couple of times while he was out of town, but he doesn't socialize much. Then there is the guy diagonally across the street from me. He walks around most of the time with no shirt on, cut off shorts and no shoes. He looks like a refugee from a Jimmy Buffet music video and/or an episode of COPS... and he is loud and profane. He plays music LOUDLY into the wee hours of the night, and has assorted lady friends over, all of whom eventually get into a shouting match with him...usually after midnight. The cops have been to his house at least a dozen times and the EMS folks about a half dozen. Not long after I moved in, a fleet of fire trucks raced to his house, sirens blaring, because he was burning trash Aggie Bonfire-style in his backyard. Several months ago, after an altercation with one of his female companions at 2 a.m., he got into his car in his own drive way and proceeded to sit on his car horn...on then off, on then off, on then off... for 47 minutes (yup, I timed him) until the battery finally gave out, mercifully, at 2:47 a.m. He and I met briefly because he gets upset if Cleveland barks at the postman, but mostly he just goes about his loudly-lost-in-the-70's ways to the chagrin of most of the neighborhood.

So today I took Cleveland outside at 7:00 in the morning to feed him and take care of dogie business, and not surprisingly, bare-chested Bon Jovi boy has got the Hi-Fi cranked up already. I shake my head in disgust, and then stop because I recognize the tune. It is Joan Osborne's "One of Us" and at that moment it reaches the chorus, and Joan's voice is joined by a screechy male voice singing at the top of his lungs, "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, What if God was one of us...Just a slob like one of us...just stranger on the bus, trying to make his way home...". Honestly it pissed me off at first, that he was ruining this great song...and then it occurred to me that, I was the one involved in an adventure in missing the point. A very obvious point at that. It is easy to love my sweet, artsy couple neighbors, my fellow single dad neighbor, and my lonely old man neighbor...but come on, God...this guy is a menace to neighborhood peace and quiet, and he hates my dog. So I softened a little and when he came out and flipped me the bird as I led Cleveland through the gate I tipped my Indians hat in a polite acknowledgement. The next song came on and he was back to screamsinging at the top of his lungs...this time to "My Sharona". It would be nice if God could at least sing on key. It's gonna be a while before I can watch "Joan of Arcadia" again.

Pling...Pling...

dg

Something to Believe in...

I don't watch a lot of television...some of that is by design...some is because I'm cheap and don't have cable or satellite...some of it is because I'm just not home that much. I do love to watch certain sports on TV, like baseball anytime; college football when it involves the Baylor Bears, Longhorns, or LSU Tigers; college basketball in March Madness...the NBA Finals and the NFL Super Bowl...an occasional tennis match, and that's about it. The exception recently was "Joan of Arcadia" (and to a lesser extent, "Everwood") which was so cleverly and brilliantly written that it was cancelled after two seasons. I've been looking for a replacement ever since...I may have found it tonight as I stumbled on to ABC's new show "Eli Stone". It caught my attention because a mild firestorm has been raging in the medical community over the subject matter and the way it has been handled. The show is about a successful lawyer who is faced with his own mortality and imperfection through a series of visions and hallucinations, (including George Michael on stage in the lobby of his office building singing "Faith"...yeah, they coulda been a tad more subtle). The controversy arises out of the storyline, which has this lawyer (Eli) taking on the case of of a mother who is suing a large pharmaceutical claiming that a vaccine given to her son caused his autism. There have been cries of outrage lambasting ABC for allowing this kind of story to raise doubts in some parents about innoculating their young children, to praise from others for ABC having the guts to give a high-profile voice to many who believe that there is legitimacy and wisdom in such scepticism. Aside from the controversy, I actually enjoyed the show...its writing, while not Joan-worthy yet, was very good and Eli's struggle to believe in a power he has heretofore dismissed as fairytale is (with the exception of the awkward, but amusing George Michael sightings) handled with a light and humorous hand. The show even got me tapping my feet as the closing scenes played out with the sounds of Aqualung's "Something To Believe In" which I was introduced to last year by my music-saavy daughter, Calla, who is a bit of an Aqualung fan. (I also have heard the song on my occasional secret guilty pleasure show, "One Tree Hill"...hey you gotta love a show about high school basketball players where the actors really are good basketball players...I'm just sayin').

At any rate, my life lately has also been on a search for something to believe in. Not the God thing, necessarily...just the pieces around it that have been stable, or maybe dormant for a long time, and are starting to wobble, and shake off the cobwebs. My faith in institutions and systems is jaded and calloused...I'm having a hard time caring about them at all. There are a few things that have me exploring the possibility that there are some things worth believing in...like the rise of Barack Obama as a legitimate Democratic presidential hopeful...I listen to my middle daughter Hannah talk with passion and resolve about helping solve some of the problems of the inner city by being a part of the problems of the inner city. I also belong to a faith community that is refreshingly more worried about loving people than building big buildings and monster market shares. I have a new friend in Louisiana, whose 8 year old that she adopted at birth with such extensive medical problems that that they didn't expect him to live more than a few months, begin to speak audible, understandible phrases, and eat solid, regular kid food, for the first time in his life. It was an amazing surprise and gift for his teachers and therapists, but especially for his mom who has been his faithful nurse, daily teacher, and most passionate encourager since his birth.

So Wendy and Blake, Eli Stone, Aqualung and, even I, all have something to believe in... come on, jump in and sing a verse...

Pling...Pling...

dg