Monday, December 16, 2002

We've started a betting pool at work. Every Saturday, dollar entry, food runners for free, guess what time one of our regulars, and restaurant investor will come in. Last week I cut someone off for the first time. She came in drunk. Insulted the executive chef. She was with our dairy guy, Jim, so we wanted to take care of them. I told her, when she ordered another martini, that I was uncomfortable serving her any more alcohol. She yelled "Fuck You!" when I turned to walk away. Which, the bartenders pointed out, is the ultimate litmus test for cutting someone off. 11:48:14 PM

I was humming along, singing in my head and partially aloud to "O Little Town of Bethlehem" and remembering, experiencing it then, how choked up I get singing hymns at times, emotion coming over me in waves. Those really are my drums, Episcopal liturgy - I feel connected with what I can only describe as the divine, one of many ways. The great dilemma is how to describe that divine. I watched the Leonids last month, and as I saw these pea sized meteorites bursting through the atmosphere, I was reminded that yes, it's almost a requirement of being human, and to have any wonder, to believe that there is something wondrous in the universe beyond our ability to successfully comprehend. And that our comprehension of it is impossible. If you can accept religion as allegory and irony and mystery, and accept it as it is - simply an agreed upon language for discussing and better understanding those crazy meteors burning in the sky, I feel religion plays its purpose well. If you in any way hold the arrogorance that your religion has more answers than questions, you are blaspheming divinity itself, especially when you condemn others with beliefs different than your own.  1:58:51 AM

I am thinking tonight of lawsuits by fingerless children, delimbed by fans, after learning about them from play foam fans. I am thinking tonight about eucalyptus cough drops as the genetic krytonite of a woman, that injestion, while not fatal, raises an adrenal response from her collective genetic history that all of that strength comes to her for three seconds, allowing her to transcend even three dimensional parameters of mass. I am thinking of the thundertube, and what an increble toy and musical instrument and tool and container it would be. That, and a long Scottish kilt, not the short ones invented by a Quaker industrialist in 17th or 18th century to keep Scottish foresters safer from tieing up their long kilts, and a Swiss army knife, a good hefty garbage bag (maybe a couple of those), duct tape, mycetracin and you could survive most things, barring crazy catastrophic events of humans or nature. 1:19:30 AM