Not Quite a Technophobe, but Close

It was not just the trip that our family took to Ligonier that started my fear and disdain for technology or the dangerous commercial addictions and misguided actions of both consumer and maker alike, it started about the same time that I first read Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 way back in Center Junior High School.

We were to meet friends in Ligonier - a quaint town though being a sleepy lil' village (which we needed), seemed hipper than most western Pennsylvania towns. We had gone only a month prior to one of the local and very well-known fun parks, which too had showed a knack for being really cool without the modern hoopla and over-abundance of mechanical enhancements, indeed some spots were rickety enough to cause some consternation on an otherwise thrill seeking man, such as myself.

We borrowed a GPS from my parents, a wide-screened piece of equipment which if plugged and programmed properly could probably take you through the wildest parts of town through the bitterest traffic patterns very easily - and it did just that.

"The lady" - that is to say the digital voice from inside the system bid me hello with a happy little "ding", which must have resulted from some Pavlovian understanding, because as soon we heard that "ding" sound, my wife and I immediately shut our conjoined brains down. And the lady sent us careening down route 65 towards Pittsburgh in Friday construction traffic at an approximate speed of 5 miles per hour.

In my head, only five minutes into the trip, I am uttering phrases and epitaphs that could only be described as coming from a Tarentino movie, because I realize that I could have hopped onto a road that would have very easily taken us out of the hell that we (the lady and I) put ourselves into.

"What are we doing?"

Grumble. Grumble.

"Why is she taking us this way?"

Grumble. Snort. "Duh. I dunno-."

My wife - the woman I love that most, the flesh of my flesh, my best friend - found my short fuse, and I, in turn, found hers, because I was cheating on her with a GPS system that after enduring the biggest, snarling beast of a bottle neck in suburban Pittsburgh, in an automobile whose very structure may well bounce into oblivion was thought to be infallible in my dullard state of being.

"She knows all - duh."

A one and half hour trip to a weekend of rest in a Mayberrian Utopia with close friends. The children, prior to getting in the car, were bouncing pleasantly in the evening sun, filled with colors of the on coming evening. All gathered at a feast, reserved at the local 4-star restaurant. All this in my vivid imagination, but in truth the hours ticked by with unadulterated speed and my boiling point was reached.

"ETA 7 VIA GPS." My wife texted to her friend, already in Ligonier basking in the grapy glow of a sultry red wine.

Texting. More texting.

I remained hot and quiet.

"Change the reservations for dinner?"

Text.

What ever happened to actually talking to one another?

Then it hit me. After finally making it through the Monroeville tunnel with angry people listening to their radios, their GPS, their talking texts, my wife and I realized that we could have looked at the map or even better, could have talked to someone - our friends who have been there numerous times, and then we realized that they - two very intelligent individuals - did the same damn thing; they plugged in their GPS. They shut down their brains as though dogs salivating at the sound of a bell. They wished their children asleep with music and texting and "the lady" to guide them into the same stupid drive-home-traffic.

Keep in mind we've been there. They have been there numerous times. An hour and half - TOPS.

No one talks anymore. They fear their own intelligence or a potential challenge to it by someone else, by feigning interest in it claiming they are too busy. Texting is a way to commune how much we are afraid to go into deeper water with someone. I married my wife and kept the TV off because we both like the high-dive in the deep end. If we want to be careful in a subject of discussion, we stay out of it until we are ready, or we wade in, shallow side first into the deep end – always.

 part 2

The Bronze

She came home tired and huffing, having run a great distance, carrying all that she had.  Her belly hung heavy - low.  Her lips and teeth covered in the catch, feathers clinging to the crimson crusts around her mouth.

She placed the catch on the dirt floor of her little hovel and wondered about the single dwelling five feet from the surface, until her feet would no longer support her.  She bent her legs and lowered herself down onto the bird, placing her head gently on its neck. 

It was covered in blood - still warm.  Not for long.  She waited as had always been the case for it all to become cool. 
Inside, the little one moved.

Soon, the Bronze - Blacksock, would be the only provider.

Above her, the Domestic - with their snarling and their unnatural lust of obedience to a species that believed itself superior to all others.  The oddness of them wanting to kill her and her kits rather than savor in the natural desire for the bird or the rabbit, which in their own world was abundant enough for her and her entire clan - the fabled Bronze of the Netherwood.

Inside her belly, the young stirred.  The Bronze would grow.
"Thunder."

She smiled coolly.  The Domestic would go soon, losing interest in the Bronze.  Their yelling and screaming cum madness.  Fear of the explosions and the light-flashes and the rain. 

The rain frightened them.  Their coats drizzled wet.  Masters - cowards with black-magic sticks producing death, wait with weak eyes, frustrated by the hunt, by the water, by each other.

She licked her lips and then her paws and chest.  Smiling through her sharpened teeth, she set to tearing gently the bird apart.

Through the great hollow he came, father, hunter, protector. 

The great Bronze males, just short of a Domestic, but lighter, stronger, smarter and deadlier.  Unforgiving jaws. 

The Domestic, once dogs proudly held in the great line, forewent the underground and the hunt above, for companionship with the "TwoLeg", a criminal, selfish species that devoured all it carelessly possessed.  They listened and forgot the language for the sake of scraps that the two-leg provided - granted their bidding was done on command. 

The Domestic rather endured slavery in creature comforts than live in service to instincts.
 

The male, Blacksocks a lovely creature of celebrated fidelity with his mate.  His paws far greater in proportion compared to the slave Domestic, he makes a noise when tired as though the very ground was shaking with each pad.  His tongue hangs low and his mouth like hers covered in the catch. 

He does not possess it, having left it in the middle of the wooded glen above for the Domestic, should they come to their senses - one of their own, left shaking for dead.

"Thunder."

He sniffs the air, finding her over the bird and waiting for him to rest.

She would live and so would the kit in her belly.

The world above now weary and wet, with no sound but the servants, laughing to one another.  They speak beautiful tones as music while the wind and rain breath through the Netherwood and through them.  

He would go out again but not before the birth of his pride.  In rain, snow, wood rotted death, and forage and hunt for the blood.

The slaves, would eat their scraps in the dry cells to stare out of the magic nothing - secretly pining for a chance at his Bronze flesh - and the master's.

As he travels in and out of their pen, with fresh catch, the blood making the great Bronze darker, and more mythological, the Slaves cry.  Their masters - the TwoLeg sit on their honches around their great weapon, drinking the sleeping waters, and staring dead into the moving light bark orders for their silence, all the while stoking their apathy for the Way with poorly processed shreds of food. 

It's Not Ours

It not ours.

None of it.

As a man of Christian faith, I struggle with this – particularly when it comes to our own being. This body and soul that I possess is not my own.

Believing in this brings comfort to some and to others a sense of woe or anger.

You wake up one day only to find that your car has been vandalized, you got laid off, the house payment is overdue. September 11th 2001, the world as we know it changes at the hands of people that most of us have never met – and we find ourselves in the middle of a war that we did not start – as boxes with draped American flags arrive home filled with individuals who believed in their hearts that they were protecting us. Your child, bright eyed and filled with hopes and knowing that there is a loving God above watching over us… dies.

There is no reason for it. There is no explaining it. It happens.

“Why do bad things happen to good people? If God was just and loving He would not do this.”

At times, I wonder that while God sits at his throne with his only Son at his right side, who He sent off to Calvary to die on a twisted old stick – I wonder if He is apathetic, and then I remember all of the wonderful things and how I am the one who is not caring enough.

Am I?

We have taken possession of everything, or so we have been led to believe, perhaps this is the greatest lie we ever were told; that we own ourselves.

We are merely stewards over what we sense. Even the “we” is a vague description of ownership, as though it means something more than it is – a group of similars that is personally recognized.

Both believers and nonbelievers share this common thread that life is the great journey.

I will add one more thing as though it were my own: If life is a journey, then death is the destination.

Funny thing is - death to a believer can be celebrated.

But it is so hard. With tears in my eyes, it so damn hard.