I'm just really numb and surprisingly, a tid-bit angry right now. I'm grated when someone whines on the bus. So I bark at them. I'm huffy when someone calls. I'm non-plussed when someone doesn't. I'm started because I have so much left. I'm flustered because I am wondering why I don't have enough. I'm pissed that I'm pissed and edgy and cantankerous right now, and in the grand scheme of things, I can't find any corner in this known universe that grants me the right to be. I feel a bit of sickliness coming on again. At night time I've been dreaming of climbing mountains and wrecking in cars, flipping several times and walking away, lamenting and weeping over the fact that I survived the un-survivable.

I am brooding over the realm of death, not as one frightened, but as one curious to know what my friends' existences are like now. What are they thinking? What are they looking at just this moment? What are they planning to do? Who are they talking to? What are the parameters of their consciousness? What was the transition like from this abode to that next one? How deep was that valley?

I am also taken in by the sustaining graces beautifully displayed by Amy, the LP community, Renee and her family and am grateful to be in the vicinity of these examples treading the path we may all take one day.

So I ride around in circles for a meager wage and this is the life? Funny how we all go about living as if we won't ever die. Myriad are all the ways we laugh, joke, assume this or that, without fathoming our impending demise. I just hope I am not found living my life as if I'm on death-avoidance. That kind of living just ignores the important things....like this moment, right now, like connecting with my wife on a deeper level than I have tonight, like bearing some hurts out to a friend and finding he feels the same. There must be a solidarity and unity of purpose to this semblance of a life I have and it must be spent soberly and wisely, fully cherishing my path and the trouble (both real and perceived) entertained. And I get to do this with the people I have now and the Lord I woefully don't fully appreciate as the connecting thread of meaning and vitality through it all.

But the compulsion of the Christ directs me to live not headlong toward debilitating death-mindedness. That is hogwash too.

It was said (I think by Heidegger) that until we have contemplated the fact of our own deaths, only then can we truly know how to live. Well, on second thought, here is what he actually said, and even though he is considered atheistic, the following applies with one caveat (below the quote):

“If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself.”

The first part is our responsibility. The anxiety and freedom part....well, that belongs ultimately to God insofar as we bear our anxiety and pettiness to him. That must be the realm of freedom from ourselves and our circumstances.

If it is possible to sift a bit of the tilled soil of people's lives Mark has touched by viewing the 149 comments from Amy's last 2 posts....her first two since Mark's death.....Kingdom seeds are literally germinating from all over the world.

And on it pours......

Mark Palmer passed today. As crumpled as I feel, I know it does not approximate those who have truly and more intimately lost in this day.

I guess we got the Fight Club going on the other side. Looking forward to ambling up to the circle and joining my friends already at the feet of the Master.

We cry out to you, God.......where the heck else are we going to go?

Since It's Spring Break....

Go play Mad Shark. It's pretty freekin' luscious. Makes you long for Shark Week on the Discovery Channel this summer.

KIMMZLY ADAMS UPDATES HERE

Tha Kimster, ca. 2004

Whilst Kim is trekking on the Appy Trail, Jared has informed me that he will be giving us updates on Kim's blog as he corresponds with her by mail. This, as common sense would rule it, is a pretty sweet thing.

No Better Way To Put It...

The weekend Chad died....the same weekend Palmer also took a turn for the worse....was the very same weekend our regional/national collective of communities were to covenant with one another our mutual support in this journey of following Christ. In so many ways, we were expecting an infusion of the Spirit to flood over into our local places once we returned from the experience. No one planned on death. Not one of us. That weekend was to be about Life. God was unequivocally faithful to our expectations, but in his own inimitable way.

That weekend was more about Life than we might ever know on this side.

While I am only able to begin to put words to it, Kelli from The Landing Place eloquently peels back- well, nails back, actually- the veil a bit and helps focus my gaze upon the calm Christ at the center of this whirlwind. Go, and see for yourself.

I Can Mobily Post....

...is that a word? Methinks not.

But Ill have to contend with the pissy Yahoo footers
for now, since thats where I am posting from...

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NORTHERN ROOM

I had been fairly deflated since Jacobstone broke up, but lead singer Andrew Jonathan and keyboardist Tony Olla have coalesced a bevy of music-dudes to form Northern Room, a quintessentially Jacobstone-y sounding band that is by all means, quite pleasing. It does have the ambience of some of Jacobstone's earlier recordings (i.e., Glass Top Ships and Chambers and Volumes), though it's not as ethereal as Regions, Jacobstone's last LP.

Jacobstone had a song featured on Dawson's Creek a few years back and ascended to the "A" list on demodiaries.com for one of the best songs of the last five years and also had two songs in the top twenty on garageband.com.

Northern Room recently won the "Have A Nice Gig" contest on a local Milwaukee radio station and opened for Bon Jovi at the Milwaukee Bradley Center. You gotta "start" somewhere, I 'spose. The Bon Jovi part of this equation would have been enough to infuse my wife with pubescent giddiness.

This past February, Northern Room released their EP, Last Embrace and I am giving it a listen-through after ordering it from Northern Room's promo site.

I was a fan of Jacobstone's ambient gleanings with 2001's Chambers and Volumes and with all lyrics written by Jonathan on the current project- with wistful and reflective longing- Jonathan pines away again.

At only twenty-eight minutes long, the tracks are smooth, carefully produced and crafty soundscapes that can be listened to again and again. The catchiest tune- "Dutch Radio," (the first on the EP)- seems to recollect a jilted lover's search for patience amidst a relationship with someone whose grand aspirations rose above those inherent in that relationship. It might seem wickedly ludicrous to assume a musician writing a song about his relationship with another musician with similar(?) ambitions is exactly what this song is simply about. Or is it? While most of the songs are umambigiously about relationships, conflict, patience, stardom, failure and just trying to make sense of it all, you are left with a longing for some liner notes detailing a bit more about the motivation for some of the lyrics. But it generates interest.

If you are into ambient rock a la the Verve, Radiohead and Violet Burning, then give these guys a try.

Tonight, it really solidified in me that Chad was gone. I didn't get to see him in the hospital and the whole thing transitioned from "conceptual" to "real."

What a fantastic family it is that surrounded Chad on all sides; those by blood, by law and by Spirit. I am supposing the life I/we have remaining will be spent recollecting, resonating with and applying the ways we have been etched by Chad's time with us. I can't help but think so after hearing the stories and assessing the finished work of his physical life here on this planet.

Much is churning inside.....lots of speculation, evaluation and concrete resolutions. Uncanny how, in my feeblest inattentiveness, I require tragedy to center me and train me on what our "being" is all about.

Directly to your right you will see the button linking to the Chad Canipe Memorial page. Please go there if you feel inclined to learn about making a donation to support Renee, Colin and Aidan. Moreover, peruse Chad's blog to learn about how solid and inimitable a man he was.

You are profoundly missed, my Fight Club friend.