The Ends of the Road

I wonder, sometimes, where it all goes to. Nights like this that shine with light some shade of graphite; days like this last that ring out in colors fit for works of second-grade painters. Where do they end up, if only set back into the nooks of our however-many pounds of grey matter? Will today be lost once my blood tires of the long trip and decides to rest? Perhaps they live on, these days which, all tallied, give us the sum of our lives. Perhaps this moment--my girlfriend’s face in the mirror at the end of a long hallway, scrubbing and sopping and rinsing away the makeup and daylight from her face while smells of autumn, bottled and retailed, waft through the house from somewhere—perhaps this will last.

The hope we have is like this, I suppose. The feeling that this moment has been caught in the nets somewhere, and that somehow those nets are larger than the neurological ones explained to me earlier this year by the brain scientist who sat next to me on a plane. It is a question of significance--of worth, of reality--a question of endings.

At intersections, I take notice of one small sign, sometimes at the exclusion of other more important ones. A small white sign which, in black letters, reads “END.” It is often followed by a series of numbers or a type of tree, or by a name—the name of a person—signaling that this or that person’s road has ended, it has all passed, and now another must be taken. There is a sense of completion when I reach these signs, a sense of purposefulness and meaning and definition. As I turn off those roads, the ones with marked ends, I feel a tinge of listlessness, the feeling of a seafaring man too tired to get home, or perhaps just lacking the motivation. But just as that droplet of whatever kind of chemical makes its way through my nervous system, another follows: one of curiosity, one that makes me lean to see around the traffic, one that makes me wonder, “if I could just see over this next hill…this next turn…this next night…”

The Business World

I followed my father into the business world. He made his entrance through a back door, falling into a niche as a property manager in Indiana’s state parks. A winding path corralled him out of property managing into residential real estate development and sales. Now he does deals. His grandest and most recent—a 300 acre parcel of ground west of Indianapolis—has garnered favorable attention from many in the business. His neighborhood occupies 300 acres of beautiful, historic land, rummaged over by ravines, meadows, and streams, by great oaks and thick maples and nasty hickories. It has been ten years since the first papers were signed. He is still working on it, and I work on it for him.

I, like him, did not plan on doing deals. He majored in sociology or social work or psychology—something about fixing people, not things. I graduated last spring. I have a degree; it is not in business, not in doing deals. I majored in Religion and Philosophy. I was in the Honors College. At the commencement, (quite nearly a coronation) I shook the president’s hand and he called me by name. While he was shaking my hand, he told me that the school would miss me. I have been back. They do not. So I have traded in my reading and my thinking, and I am planted, rooted, in the business world. Unfamiliar as I was coming from a degree in the Humanities, I learned quickly that business needs no introduction into our lives. It is already in us; it already (and has always) had us. With the charm of a colonoscopy, money, in its gutters, moves through us, occupying all that we are.

I am now acquainted with this process. You see, I negotiated a deal this summer. “But,” you say, “in the real estate business, deals almost always begin slow, almost always pay off slower, and often collapse into a great cloud of dust.” Yes, it’s true. I grant it, but I have already negotiated my first deal. It is done. With no great grace or fluidity, I stumbled into the “sure-thing” of business lore. Admittedly, I was lucky. One could contend that I was present--that I could not have muffed it up. But most importantly (in the world of business, we reiterate this lesson often): it has come, gone, closed. It has left me to smile and pat my own back. Signed, sealed, delivered. Done.

And this, my fellow graduates—my nay-saying, incredulous, business major fellow graduates—is the story how it came about:

The tractor I drive is a dirty but dependable Kubota, a dusty orange heifer that groans from her haunches as she drinks down the fuel that brings her to life. The groan becomes a roar as she gulps down diesel. She kicks up a small cloud as she starts, and I cannot help but breathe it in, the mix of summer dust and hot black fumes. She’s amiable once she warms. I pull her out of the maintenance shed and out to the road. We usually make the trip without much fuss.

Down past the big houses, we roll over the asphalt on her mammoth rubber tires. We turn right at 100 South, cruise over the big bridge, the giant of concrete and earth that holds up the traffic as it moves between ridges, then up and left into Devonshire. We arrive exhaling and with some cracking of knuckles. Our destination: six acres of hell for which I have been contracted to conquer.

I lower the deck into position with a flick of my wrist, fire up the blades with resilience and a glare, and ride into the thickest of it—shrubs, and battle. We clamber over the craggy soil, bouncing over ground hidden by opaque brush. Behind us, the grass thanks us for its first view of the sun in months.

Our adversaries, however, are not pleased. Giant Ragweed, Canada Thistle, and their infantry oppose us with vigor never seen in these parts of Indiana. Their sordid infantry, composed of insectival foes: companies of Striped Horseflies and Biting Midges, with the occasional Robber Fly snooping in as a scout.

Three rows in, and they are swarming. We trudge through, never stopping, pausing only as the Canada Thistle gets especially thick and I am forced to pull her of medium and drop into low. The thistle in front of me opens and yields up a cloud of midges. But we will not stop. And they are on me; my arms are covered; I am being eaten. I slap and rub and slap and punch and pick, and feed more diesel into my heifer. She roars and tears at the thistle, and we sprint for the end of the row. One small patch of Giant Ragweed and we are out of it, onto lush green lawn. I finish off the remainder of wounded midges, my arm-hair showing signs of ugly battle.

I guide my orange giant in an arc, back to the edge of the fight. She is hot, breathing black fumes, ready. But a moment of brilliance overtakes me; I ease her away from the waiting hordes. We back down. My eyes are drawn up, above the tangled burrow, to dark blurs like pendulums above the madness. I squint, sharpening the silhouettes darting through the dust.

I mastermind a deal. Deftly, and without hesitation, I orchestrate an agreement, on-site, with a crack squad of American tree sparrows. We concoct our deal in the heat, in the grime and sweat of the Indiana August. Our negotiations come and go quickly. We make a deal, and it is simple.

They are the sharpshooters, the gunslingers. I am the Howitzer. I feed the diesel steadily into my mount and we run through the field. Pumping engine exhaust under the Ragweed, into the enemy camp, we force the legions of pests out into the crossfire of swooping sparrows. They are efficient. I am ruthless. The bugs are thick but outmatched. With every lap, the sparrows increase in number, and soon the deed is done. The field shows signs of the strain, but the green grass smiles up from its liberation. The sparrows, thick from their gluttony, nod to me, and I to them, until we meet again.


And to think people doubt me when I tell them that philosophy degrees are worth their weight in business, indeed, in all of life.

Welcome back, Luke!

Yes, the rumors are true. I am back. Thank you, it's good to be back.

I was mostly unsuccessful in my attempts to keep updates and pictures posted on my way, but let's not let that get in the way of posting now.

Without further adieu, Cambridge, London, and Paris:

1st--Sydney Sussex (The college we stayed at in Cambridge.)

2nd--Big Ben and assorted London Sights

3rd--Mr. Eiffel's masterpiece

And on towards Madrid!

I love Madrid. A lot. And I love tapas, and churros and chocolate, and old spanish couples that speak no english but run a hostel for travelers. Oh, and Real Madrid ("ray-ahl Mah-dreed"). Salivate, Robert. Salivate, Brando.
Y, hablo espanol. Here are a couple shots. Me gusto mucho.

Cambridge is coming....

I've been a bit tardy. But here's France.

I've been remiss in my efforts to keep you all informed. Here are my attempts to console:

Nice, and their stinky, rocky beaches. No me gusto. Sorry France.

And, Nice and night. Nicer, but not that nice.

En Espana

I´m in Spain. I love Spain. I want to stay, but Paris is rude and won´t be kept waiting. And of course, Cambridge.

Much love and happiness and other things to my friends who have all gotten married. Jon, Amy, Nate, Jen: enjoy.

(They did not all marry each other. Jon married Amy, and Nate married Jen. But they are all living in a small town where no one else lives. Other than my Aunt Jan. Weird, all the way around.)

I cannot upload fotografias from here because this internet cafe uses a Windows platform that predated Gates himself. But take my word, we are all having a wonderful time.

Jen, Phillip, and I are in Madrid, having left Nathan, Annaleis and Megan behind in Barcelona. I am envious of their week(+) to explore this country. With any luck, I will be back. Pronto.

To Family: I will hopefully talk to you soon, but Europe keeps distracting me. I love you all.

Two Words:

Two Words: Harapos Kutya.

Today was a good day

I'm feeling better, after a short bout with snot. The conference is amazing. These are some pictures.

The Magyar

That's what they call it here: Magyar. I think. We arrived yesterday, and today was the longest day (after yesterday) that I've been a part of since...a while ago. "Hungary" as we say it, is "Magyar" in actual Hungary--I might have made that up, but I think it's true. We've had a few translation problems thus far, including the attempt to enter the Hungarian phrase "Scratch off here" as the password for our driving team's cell phones. (Ahh...the password was under the shiny letters...)
I spent about 15 of today's hours either driving, riding, or sitting by vans. I think the grammar is wrong there. Too bad. I'm here and I'll use bad grammar (missed comma) in lieu of exhaustion and a small case of the sniffles.
In any case, things are good here, and more importantly, things are here. We made it. Hello and much love to all back in the states. Peace.

Luke

Bon Voyage

This will be my last post from this side of the pond. I'm headed to the airport at 4; the plane leaves Indy at 5:40 for Chicago; there I'll meet up with volunteers from my uncle's conference; and from there it's off to Budapest (apparently pronounced "Budapesht"). As for now, I'm at the desk in my brother's old room at my parents house. It feels a bit like what I imagine a launch pad would feel like, but that's just the mood I'm in.

I hope to blog while I'm over there, but in light of my failure to blog when I've been at home with a computer and no job...I apologize in advance.

The current plan is this: Eger, Hungary for the missions trip until the 21st; leave Eger, head to Budapest; tour Budapest the 22nd; leave Budapest for Venice the 23rd with five traveling companions (enter Jen); leave Venice for Interlaken, Switzerland the night of the 25th; and from there, the tentative plan is to go: France--Spain--France--England--Cambridge.

Now, we're traveling with six, and my limited experience tells me that none of this trip will follow the guidelines I laid out in the preceding paragraph. And that, my friends, is the wonderful thing about Travel.

Wish me luck!

Time to go pack.

Reflections from Stanley

I'm sitting at the table in the kitchen. It's in the living room, too, technically. This suite has been home to the six of us for the past nine months, excepting the four weeks of Christmas break. We have the kitchen table sitting between the carpeted living room and tiled kitchen. Realistically, only the tile divider separates the two. Piles of trash connect them. My housemates are all still here, the day after campus drained its students from of its dorms, into their cars, and into summer. Four of us are graduating Saturday; the other two will graduate after a semester, or at least soon soon, God willing.

I've never lived with a group of guys like this. I've never lived with guys who work this well together. Five of us have been friends throughout college, but only two of us had lived together. The sixth, RA and roommate Greg, fit in like another spoke on a sturdy wheel. We share life, the six of us. We share faith, friends, food and, FIFA—our video game of choice. The room is dominated by the brown couch that I inherited from a friend after freshman year. The brown couch is almost dead. Josh blames Joe’s—and I quote—“fat ass.” We curse at each other. And laugh together, often in quick succession.

Our room is much cleaner--the wrappers and clothing are off the floor, or at least, they're in piles in the corners of the room. Stanley, my lamp, is watching over the room with his stately demeanor, giving off the healthy shine from his large brass circumference. His lampshade is half-gone; he's a wall-lamp, hugging the wall so tight that his wide base sometims gets in the way. I brought him home from a garage sale during the fall of my junior year. His brass finish is imprinted with a (very authentic looking) body of ornate asian artwork. Stanley's body type is responsible for his name; he was christened in honor of his striking resemblance to the hockey trophy that is coveted, hoisted, and kissed in the NHL each spring. His wide base funnels upward in increments, providing a grip at the neck that requires a hoist and a triumphant shake. His cream colored shade is a bit big for him and, depending on the angle of the sun, can look much like a barrel. People tell Stanley that he is the ugliest lamp they've ever seen. He doesn't mind, because he knows that some of the beautiful things in life must be lived with, must be dealt with, to be appreciated.

Immersion and Ascent

“There is a time for everything…” Ecclesiastes 3

The water in the baptismal rings out, shiftting crystal housed in a brilliant teal, and the church smiles on, encouraging the ruddy, nervous seven-year-old. Barely containing his excitement, he steps down into the green basin. Above the baptismal, a Mother’s Day sun breaks apart as it passes through a round, stained glass centerpiece, streams of light passing through the down-stretched arms of an ascending Jesus.

The young boy sets his folded hands into his father’s massive paws. The father nearly fills out the massive baptismal waders that many men wear up to their chests. From her view in the second row, the little boy’s mother cries softly. With a hand raised, the father asks the boy to raise his, and to repeat the Sinner’s Prayer.

“I believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God…” The recitation comes and goes; the words are lost in the focus of getting it right.

“And now, because of your good confession of faith, I baptize you in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

The boy pinches his nose hard, just as he was instructed by the smiling woman at the door to the pool. The father holds the boy’s wrists powerfully; the boy’s deep breath, almost a gasp, signals that he is ready. The crystal water swims up around him, enveloping him in swirling marble greens, soaking through the white gown, soaking through his shorts, his shirt—soaking through.

The descent ends and he is underwater. The pause lasts only a moment; firm hands bring him steadily back. Now a steady rise. The feel of passing water ensures him that he is moving up to the surface, ascending. He breaks the surface, but the surface stays with him, and he is still rising, the feeling of falling up and falling away. And he is with the stained glass and with the Mother’s Day sun.

The surface breaks, and he is wet. His father loves him, hugs him, and the church’s uproarious applause meets him in the sparkling wetness. The boy smiles wide at them. He turns to glance at Jesus ascending; he knows the feeling well. He sees his mother and she is happy but not smiling. Her eyes are closed, her face tilted up, reflecting the light off Jesus and the sun.

* * *

I sat in Mr. John Rott’s fourth period Conceptual Physics class, hanging on to his teaching, never by much. He conquered Indiana’s all-male engineering and aeronautical school, earning a 4.0 GPA en route to becoming the painfully overqualified teacher of my remedial Physics course at Brownsburg High School. “Conceptual” Physics—not to be confused with—“Theoretical Physics.” Philosophy and genius makes physics “theoretical.” Rounding and pictures makes physics “conceptual.”

The teaching methods of choice, rounding and pictures, turn 9.81’s into 10’s, show Stick-figure Jack and Sally throwing balls off a balcony to Stick-figure Steve, the path of the ball, a red dotted line. And I struggled—standard procedure for science classes. Natural sciences were always unnatural. My only niche in the scientific world was “The Debate.” God vs. The Bad Guys—The Dumb Guys. Creation vs. Evolution.

Somewhere in my childhood, I took an interest in the all-pervasive Evangelical Proofs. These pillars of the faith protect the fold from the prowling wolves, enclosing them in a high, three-runged fence. The first rung—the unassailable perfection of the Bible. The second—the incontrovertible fact of Jesus-as-God. The third—a clear refutation of Evolution.

The non-denominational churches in our area denominated when celebrities came to town. Celebrities like Ken Ham, the patron saint of stopping Evolution. We all piled into one of our sister churches to listen to the Australian who looked frighteningly like Abraham Lincoln. The crowd was pleased, convinced once again that our schools had been infested by an insidious sham, a sham started by a small, God-hating scientist club, presided over by Darwin himself. “Evil-lution” t-shirts sold hot. Books that hit like an uppercut were gobbled up. My mother bought Ken Ham’s opus for me—The Lie: Evolution. I gobbled it up, impassioned, excited to show the world what Ken Ham and I knew.

The nightstand next to my bed supported an obnoxiously large, round lamp, and also, my nightly reading material. Ham keynoted my nightstand for years; he faithfully provided rounds of ammunition for my conversations with my friends (acquaintances, really) of liberal dissent.

I was familiar with a fair number of the arguments, having proven Evolution to be a farce at least twice during junior high school with stunningly conclusive papers. So during class, when Mr. Rott mentioned the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics, I honed in. He wasn’t talking about Evolution, not even remotely, but I stayed after class to break the news about The Lie to him.

He disagreed, and he explained why. And he was smart, and he made sense. And he knew more than I did. And he was nice about it. I was confused.

* * *

I kissed girls in high school. I spent my weekends trying, and sometimes succeeding, always just for fun, always innocently. The summer before my senior year, I decided I shouldn’t do that. After all, I was still a Christian, even if I had some pretty serious doubts about some of it. I swore off girls for three months.

Three months later, I had succeeded. It was late fall, nearing winter; I had kissed no one, flirted with a few—nothing grievous. The following weekend the state student council convention descended on our high school, and with it, my demise. Girls, everywhere, thinking I was important. Three months were up. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid.

The next weekend, I went to watch my cousin Jordy play in his sectional final. I went by myself, certain that I would find someone to sit with, knowing many of the people in his small Christian high school. After the game, I went milling around, smiling, shaking hands, enjoying the friends, the crowd, and the cool night. My friend Phil was also there. Phil was always talking, almost always to a girl, usually an attractive one. He was talking across a small group to a gorgeous brunette, so I approached and intruded.

“Hey Phil, what’s the homework in that Chemistry class?” I was not in Phil’s Chemistry class.

“Oh, I don’t know just some problems in the book,” he said and kept talking to her. I stood in silence, half in the circle, clearly not introduced. She was stunning. The group dissipated and she left with them.

“Who was that?!” I asked, surprised that I hadn’t met a girl that pretty in such a small circle of towns and churches.

“Her name is Meagen; I think I’m gonna ask her out.” I knew Phil. He asked everyone out.

“No way, man,” I shook my head and smiled at him, “that one’s mine.”

A few weeks and a few failed attempts after that game, Meagen and I went on our first date. Almost all of our friends were mutual; we lived in the same town; we had almost met countless times.

Our first date—a double date with her best friend, who happened to be one of my eight elementary school classmates—ended on a couch, watching a movie, but mostly flirting. I was going to kiss her. She wanted to kiss me. She asked me to wait, to leave our first kiss for a night that we knew each other better, so it meant more.

I drove the minivan back to my house, wondering what it feels like to find the person you are going to marry.

Her father was a pastor—a Charismatic pastor, at that—and she loved Jesus like I did, or at least as much as I did. We talked about God sometimes, but we spent most of the time staring at each other, wondering how we ever survived before we met.

Through Meagen, I met John, a teacher at her school. He became my mentor, and through John I met Luke, one of my sister’s friends who asked me to help teach a Bible study. They called the Bible study “Phish,” because they liked the band and because they were sophomores in high school. I became the senior leadership. We met in Luke’s parent’s basement and attic (depending on the part of the service), and God shook their house with passion and with bass.

In six months, God revealed Himself to me—not many parts of Him, but parts of Him that were true enough so that I knew I could never forget them. I spent those six months as a single note in a grand symphony, certain that everything before had led to that point, and everything after would crescendo to glorious completion.

I met God through Meagen, but she never met the same “Him” through me. The meeting of a person, a Person, is a finicky process, one in which both parties have to be actively participating.

At the end of six months, I would dismiss Meagen, breaking her heart, feeling certain that I must, feeling led by the warm and tactile love for God that I had learned, somehow, through her.

* * *

College students are said to change their majors, on average, six times. At the end of my senior year of high school, I had declared a double major of Economics and Business Administration, sure that I would switch once I found what I wanted. And I found it, even before classes started in the fall. A man named Francis Schaeffer wrote a lot of books that convinced me that religion and philosophy were the weightiest stuff around, the stuff most worth my life. I entered college as a Religion & Philosophy major with a leery eye on the writing program. I had, after all, gotten to know God the previous spring.

Studying religion turned out to be much more like a biopsy than the deepening of a friendship, and philosophy—philosophy began to look like my faith’s bigger, braver brother. By the end of the first semester, my mind began to itch. I had followed a few trails, looking for answers that I needed but couldn’t find. I found myself thinking about losing myself, and hoping that a bigger, stronger brother to philosophy would turn up. And I found myself wondering about the God of the spring and about the God of my mother.

There’s something you should understand: My mother loves me. She loves me with the irrational kind of love, the strong kind of irrational, the kind that doesn’t care what you think or why you think it. The kind that psychologists purse their lips and nod at, and the kind that reminds me what it felt like when God met me.

In the spring, I decided to start over. I decided that Ken Ham wasn’t a real scientist and that my faith had more frayed ends than I could live with. So I dropped it all, told God that I wasn’t to be trusted, and resolved to figure it all for myself.

* * *

A young man sits on the edge of a comfortable hotel bed in Sopron, Hungary. His brother is sprawled out across the far side, mouth open, snoring softly. The young man is leaning over, elbows resting on his knees; his hands hold open a small book with a springy binding. His legs drape off the bedside. He is tired. He is reading because he is tired, exhausted by eighteen months of unmoored drifting, exhausted by questions piled on questions, exhausted by giving up on his mother’s God. His brother mumbles and shifts, taking up most of the bed.

The young man is alone, familiar with the deadened void left behind by a lost relationship. This conference has brought him to Hungary, to Hotel Pannonia, for the second time. This time his family has come. His mother and father are in an adjacent room, asleep. The hotel is filled with Christian philosophers and theologians. Down the street, the conference center sleeps as it prepares for the coming day. But the young man has not found his answers.

The room’s high walls look down on him; gaudy patterns on the wallpaper seem to stare with Soviet eyes. He checks his watch, double checking the date, and flips to the corresponding page—a small book, called a daily devotional, written by a man named Oswald, who died young.

The young man has read this page before. At least twice. But it does not matter. The page arrests him, and a voice pierces him, and it starts the beating of his dead heart—

“…At the most unexpected moments there is the whisper of the Lord – ‘Come unto Me,’ and you are drawn immediately. Personal contact with Jesus alters everything. Be stupid enough to come and commit yourself to what He says.”

And it was a familiar voice that pierced him, nothing like the cold prongs of his philosophy; almost as if a knife had been imbedded, dormant but warmed through the cold years, suddenly cutting loose a warm flow.

The room’s Soviet eyes soften, the hotel shifts, and the feelings of ascension stir. The young man is not okay—with himself, with God, or with the boy—but he is alive again, and almost ready to breathe.

The Brilliant Smells of Zygon

I cradled the football in my left arm and sprinted down the lit field. Cars provided sidelines; headlights cast jagged, horizontal shadows across the players, across the soccer-turned-football field. Our annual co-ed football game; the Night Game. My friend Peter, the farmer’s son, caught up to me. He always tackled like a girl—never with his shoulders, but with slapping, flailing hands. His left arm swept around me like a frightened cat. He clung for a moment, allowing his right hand to swing in—a stupid, frantic tree branch. He caught the bridge of my nose, the septum, and blood rushed to meet him.

My friends kept playing; I blazed a trail of blood—a rich red—off the field, on my dad’s car door, and then out to the lit barn. Peter came with me, and we assessed the damage. There was no pain, or very little at least—more like the dull soreness of being hit in the head, and less like the sting of like splitting skin. Peter advised pinching the nose; I refrained though—I’d heard reports of drownings.

I hung my nose over a trash can, trying to stop it, trying to drain it. Soaking tissues and napkins began to accumulate, the faucet stayed on. Peter and I made small talk—the barn was new, and nice; the sweet new four-wheeler; the impending second year of high school. He grabbed a few Cokes from the barn’s stocked fridge. Drinking and bleeding proved difficult. Outside, the game continued. Inside, my nose clogged and shut.

The doctors didn’t tell me anything because I stopped the bleeding and decided not to go see them. It bled one more time, thick mucous blood that seemed like it came straight from my brain. After that, I was fine.

---Ž---

The philosophy department at our school is a one man band; Steve Horst; The Big Show. There are thirty of us, his young and eager and budding philosophers. We own our philosophy—and take our futures lightly. We are not well respected. We do not get into big programs. Our future is a tooth tied to a doorknob and we love it. Some left our group, and we hated them, dismissed them, and gathered back to ourselves, muttering about turning back, about not having it. I love philosophy. Philosophy answers questions. Or at least, it asks sharper, pointier ones that prick and poke until you have to wrap them into different questions. We love our philosophy major because we find out what and who is wrong, and because we become sensitive, finally and above all, to truth.

We went to Chicago last weekend. Five of us attended a lecture series at the University of Chicago honoring Arthur Peacocke, a pioneer in the dialogue between modern theology and modern science. He spent his life arguing that Religion and Science could be friends again. The Zygon Center for Religion and Science hosted the event. The Zygon Center. I was half-expecting (and fully hoping for) aluminum foil helmets and Kumbaya. I was only slight disappointed. Philosophers and scientists—brilliant ones, in particular—have earned their stereotypes. To be charitable, “tousled.”

---Ž---

Five years after the night football game, my nose still cracks like a knuckle. The sound is a mix between a light switch and the click of joints popping. Most people don’t believe me. My uncle does a very convincing nose-pop rendition with his thumb and teeth. Mine is real; it really pops, cracks, or snaps—whichever sound I think is most appropriate to a particular setting. Most people cannot deal with my nose. I asked my Aunt Elaine, an RN of twenty-five years, for advice. She shrieked “Eww! Eww! Eww!” as she ran out of her kitchen. Anyone who knows me well has heard my nose—and most hate it. I find myself playing with it a lot. Not on purpose, but often. The bridge of my nose can be maneuvered to the right or left; I do this to take a deep breath, or smell.

---Ž---

The University of Chicago houses the Center and acts as a beacon for the big names in the field. We took the biggest name we had—our school’s resident genius, Dr. Willem Van De Merwe—a first-rate physicist, and an aspiring philosopher. The Defense Department ships him to Washington, D.C. a few times a year for debriefing and things. He was the sail of our ship, and the recipient of a $10,000 grant from the Templeton Foundation. In the field of Religion and Science, “Templeton,” is a big name. Sir John Templeton began giving his money away in 1972, encouraging the dialogue between science and faith. As we scrolled down the accolades of the conference’s presenters, we realized that our ship and sail were undersized; many of the people present had received Templeton prizes up to the $1,400,000 award for the best overall contribution to Religion and Science. Two of the girls in our group had their picture taken with a little reptile-looking old man who wrote their textbook. At the Zygon Center, smarts are cash; only brilliance earns celebrity. The five of us meandered through the crowd of giants: little old men, and a few spunky women with big brains and self-confidence. We gawked at them, wanting to know how they learned, how they found out—how they knew.

---Ž---

Noses, especially human ones, are not imaginative. The senses are not good with “what could be.” They only do “what is.” Imagine a person whose sight is slightly underdeveloped at birth, so that green is never more than dull gray. Their brain will never understand rich Amazonian hues, no matter how long they try. It’s something about categories and possibilities; everything our senses detect must fit into a drawer in our mind. Our minds sort out our senses efficiently, but if there is no drawer for a sensation, the mind discards it.

I’ve learned that drawers can be locked, too—and if enough time passes, drawers can be forgotten altogether. My nose forgot what it was like to breathe. A few months ago, I was fidgeting with it, probably in a class, maybe in church—I pressed firmly on the malleable cartilage, squishing it down and slightly left. I took a breath—mouth closed—and air spilled through my nostrils like an open dam. Exhilaration. I did it again. It worked again. Inhale. Exhale. So that’s how it is supposed to work—and a drawer swung open.

---Ž---

The people who gathered at the Zygon Center did not wear tall hats made of aluminum foil. The second day they did sing a few hymns together, though we skipped out for a quick tour of downtown Chicago; so technically, the hats could’ve come out then. It seemed more likely, though, that deep down, they were just normal people. At one point, they were just like the five of us, now changed by years of study and immersion, made less sensitive to some things (like whether plaid shirts match striped ties), and more sensitive to others (what truth smells like).

I think that truth has a stink to it. It’s slight, but it’s there. Truth is kind of the ultimate drawer—everyone has some sense of what it smells like. I don’t know how so many conflicting reports about truth emerge, why people can look at the same information and come up with such different answers, or why there are always traces of the smells that never seem to lead us to the things in themselves. Some get closer than others, but we never quite get there.

Those brilliant, crazy people at the Zygon Center spent their lives acclimating themselves to the smells, pinching and pushing their noses into place, breathing deeply to catch the tiny particulate matter that is truth. For decades, they tinkered in their respective fields, learning what to look for and how to learn, and as for the five of us, we listened intently, straining not to miss the smells, straining air through our clogged and shut noses.

My Friend Frank ---(Warning: Explicit Lyrics)

One of the best compliments I’ve ever received came in a conversation on a flawless spring day, the kind that empties dorms onto the lawns. After a long winter, a hot sun warmed our skin, and a breeze the temperature of the crisp blue sky sauntered through. My friend Frank told me, “Luke, there are two kinds of people in this world: Those who are full of shit; and those who aren’t. You are not full of shit.”

I do not understand my friend Frank. I tell him this regularly, and he agrees. It was high school that sent us in different directions—perhaps it was junior high—but I left high school polished, socially confident, with an air of popularity. Meanwhile, Frank uncovered himself through music and friends, turned his back on popularity and high school, on the hierarchy of smiles and manicured faces that I had silently lusted after. My friends and I had discovered the joys of being beautiful and being nice. Frank and his friends discovered—created—a loophole, living far from the bright lights of popular society, discovered how to love more and care less.
I entered college with the skills to survive a world of painted Plexiglas—the real world. Talking at people and smiling keeps the world running, and I was learning the steps, finding the cadence. Frank entered on the train of counter-culture, the wind of music, the pride of making it.
We met during our sophomore year; he sat with his friends in the corner of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, talked infrequently and laughed discreetly. Naturally I assumed they were laughing at me, at my clothes and face and inane comments, as this is always the most plausible explanation of laughter among friends.

It took most of that first year for us to become friends. I had heard that all people are basically the same, but I doubted it with Frank. Philosophy had shifted my faith off its moorings and onto nothing, and I needed someone else who was basically the same. My friends did not talk about, nor care about philosophy. But Frank did. Even before he joined the major, Frank read the French philosophers because he believes people should read the French philosophers. We started a philosophy club. I talked to Frank and his friends whenever I could, mostly about philosophy, because that is all we had to talk about.

I recently told Frank my first impression of him and his friends, using my fingers to illustrate three points—
First Finger: They knew something I didn’t, something intrinsic about philosophy and being important. Second Finger: They were all inherently smarter than me. Thumb: Whatever they knew, they weren’t going to tell me.
He used his own fingers to respond—
First Finger: In a philosophy class, everyone thinks they are the dumbest person. Second Finger: —with a shrug—Who knows? Thumb: Well, that’s true.
Frank has never liked my friends, and though he has grown nicer since I met him, he has always been easily offended. Frank swears and has friends who say God is a dickhead. My friends, the ones who are going to be pastors, offend him. He is offended at how easily they are offended. Conformity offends him. Pat Robertson provokes Frank to cursing and tears. The Mormons he invited to lunch last semester were wrong—or at least crazy, and Frank wants people to know Jesus.

Frank and I are very different. I am tall; he is average. I have long hair and wear a baseball cap; my clothes can be seen on the plastic mannequins in stores. Frank has always worn really torn pants—tight jeans from a long time ago. When it is cold, he layers flannel shirts and zippered hoodies, and he carries coffee. His hair is short, and he has one baseball cap, a blue one, which sits flat on his head; it reminds me of a milkman. I don’t know why it reminds of that, except that it may be from a dairy farm. More often, he wears stocking caps—knit black ones—they remind me that he is in a band. And bands, much more than clothes, make Frank go.

Frank believes in music, lives in it, until it pours from him. I’ve had a lot of friends who play music, even love music, but not like Frank. The music scene at my high school consisted of cover bands and awful bands, and Frank would’ve been offended by them all. They played for audiences, and we cheered because they played songs from the radio. They smoked pot and got jobs at hardware stores after high school. Frank used to smoke cigarettes, but he sucks in music like a sponge trying to drink down the ocean, like a huge, inhaled breath. And every time he moves, it pours out. It pours into his friends’ art, into his new CD; it explains his copies of Heidegger, Sartre, and Baudrillard. I’ve known Frank for three years now, and I’m still trying to find out what he knows and I don’t. He still baffles me, most of the time. We have both changed a lot since then; he loves people better, especially people that aren’t like him. He still has trouble with my friends—with people like me—and I am beginning to wonder if I gave him too much credit—if he ever knew anything I didn’t. I’m beginning to think that he gave me too much credit—that we all, in different varieties—that we all are full of shit.

Writers' Block vs. The Deadline: the Art of Needing 350 words by morning

My fingers sit poised on the keyboard, eager, waiting. As I look at them, they wait with me, one finger twitches, then another, then a flutter of clicks and we stare at the screen together, my fingers and I. Crap. It sucks. BackspaceBackspace. SpaceSpace. And we wait. The pushups I did earlier aren’t helping. My arms are sagging, and the weight of my little muscles pulls my hands from the desk.

It sure is getting late, I say to my fingers.

Yeah, sure is—they say back. You better get going.

Yeah, I better.

The tips of my fingers are restless. The letters are lying beneath them; they’re touching them. They know the letters are waiting to scamper up to the bright screen and shine bright words into my dark room. I’m not sure why the words are not coming tonight. The other night, I wrote two pages, just cause I wanted to.

We, say my fingers.

What? I say.

We wrote two pages.

Oh, sorry. We.

Tonight, it’s just staring, and waiting. My arms really want to fall off, and I don’t think I’d mind too much—pretty original excuse: Why didn’t you finish the assignment? Well, (give them my arms) I, uh, couldn’t.

Unlikely, I think to myself.

Yeah, you’re telling me, say my fingers.

Oh my gosh! I say out loud, in my head.
You can hear my thoughts! I say to my fingers. This is getting weird.

Yeah, they say, but you’re only at 238 words, so I’d take what you can get.

Good point, I say.

So I go back to staring, waiting, twitching. What profound thing can I write about? I think about clouds and mountains. Wait. I think I’m on to something: My fingers, on the keyboard—it’s like I’m waiting, watching for what comes next. Just like life. Senior, graduating, no job—but then I figure out that the keys won’t push themselves; that it’s me that has to type. It’s perfect. I’ll write about that.

What do you think? I ask my fingers.

Sucks. That’s a terrible idea. They say that.

Whatever! I say. What’s your idea, then?

Go to bed, they say. You’ll think of something in the morning.

Whatever. I say again. Fine.

The Final Chapters

College is almost over. Almost, over.

My first night in Hodson 117: a night apart from home and family. My roommate hadn’t arrived; only my RA and a soccer player named Brandon had moved in. The orange lights of campus seemed unnaturally warm, sifting through the blinds into my darkened new home. College was a new and frightful microphone into which I’d sing beautiful and utterly important songs. I had recently caught fire, knew God, and IWU would soon hear my sweet music. Humbly, I would sing, and they would love me.

This night—the East Lodge 202—what happened? Through slotted blinds, the familiar orange glow falls on unfamiliar bricks. My memories are splintered, shattered—a reflection off moving water. My years were never years; they were weeks, days, shards of time, glued together by a miscreant child. And whatever happened to endless possibilities, and what about helping IWU learn all that I knew? I was going to change things—amount to something—make ripples. Didn’t I sing? No—they didn’t hear! Did I sing? And what was it that I was going to tell them, again?

I strain to isolate the memories in the onrushing current; I can’t make them out; I recognize some, others are lost, washed out and away. Stop it! Stop the rush! I’m not ready for this. For this, to float on.