Hi, I'm Josh


I brought cookies


I wrestle with suicidal thoughts

Qui

est Jobe@?

don't you love her madly....

I wanted to write Wednesday's installment of Lost off as sci-fi soap opera filler too blasé to devote my precious time towards pontificating upon. After all, I'm on a mission to save our environment from sediment and flooding and here I sit on the 10th floor of the Prudential Building, staring at a screen saver of a Hawaiian sunset, mind wandering to the implications of a few tidbits of Lostian revelation. What a thrill for People's Sexiest Blank Shooting Asian male to be Sun's baby daddy, too bad the miracle will be at the expense of Sun's life. But this is a show about doubt, deception, hope, faith, and miracles. Whether or not Juliette is evil is still up for grabs, I'm willing to bet she's good and once she and the good doctor skyrocket in flight, Goodwin will disappear from her conscience like a wisp of smoke. In the titillating One of Us, the buxom blonde with a flawless complexion tied a double cross knot; something tells me she's bound to serve Benjamin a taste of his old medicine. But first she must collect pregnancy samples from the horny, copulating femmes fatales of Lostaway camp while informing them of the islands magical super powers on male sperm.

Five times the normal count any red blooded male is bound to benefit from by merely stepping foot on the enchanted land. Post menopausal or not Rose better watch out for Bernard's mix tape smooth talk under a banner of twinkling twilight purple sky majesty. All this talk of sperm got me thinking. Why would an island that was hell bent on destroying new life from being born within its boundaries simultaneously equip male inhabitants with super duper man milk capable of fertilizing Eve's womb? Even better, how could anybody be fornicating if, as Naomi the sexy Aussie multilingual parachutist's claim is true?

Yes, the parachutist's name is Naomi, I've spoiled you. On a biblical aside, Naomi's story can be read in the short and bittersweet novella, the book of Ruth. Naomi, meaning my gracious, pleasant one, lost her husband and sons after he stubborn husband moves to a wicked, Godless land. In defiance of the misfortune God allowed into her life, she changed her name to Mara, bitter one. As life tends to make sense after the fact, it is through this terrible series of events that she comes to return with her daughter in law Ruth to Bethlehem. Ruth takes a leap of faith, leaving her homeland, as Godless and wicked as it may be, with the utterance of the famous line, "for wherever you go I will go, wherever you lodge I will lodge, your people shall be my people, and your God my God." She will not forsake Naomi, and upon that testament in a God she does not yet know, Ruth sets in motion the lineage that will lead to the birth of Jesus Christ.

That little aside out of the way, Naomi the parachutist speaks in many different languages as blood fills her lungs. The strongest theory I've read so far is that she was testing the Lostaway's knowledge of foreign language all so she could utter the words, Eu não estou só, or "I am not alone." Judging by the speed at which a resurrected Patchy ran towards Hurley's oops, Naomi was sent to deliver goods to someone. In true lost fashion, we'll have to wait and see which side she's working for or whether a third, more mysterious faction of rebels led by a one eyed former KGB agent is involved in this murky plot as well. What we do know is that she believes Oceanic Flight 815 was found with no survivors. I'm placing all my chips on the crash of flight 815 being covered up by some truly powerful cats in whose best interest the island's secrecy remain.

But you never know with a show like Lost. Anything could happen. With episode titles like The Man Behind the Curtain and Behind the Looking Glass set to round out the season, all bets are off. Maybe they're stuck in a parallel dimension (lame), or part of a social experiment (lame), or maybe, just maybe, they've stumbled upon the fountain of youth, the ring of power, where the sick can come to be healed and the lame to walk, but which no man may set his rock upon and build his church. Why then they'd be no different than the Pharisees, wicked and covetous of a message or a place where sickness and death can be overcome as long as the patients accept that Eden may be nice, but truly there's no place like home.

jobe.

for the sake of time and a bitter boss, this piece has not been edited. please forgive any and all rambling. mahalo.

You're Gonna Die Charlie......

Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"

Bob Dylan Highway 61

Five years ago, one of my best friends, a man we’ll call B, was engaged to be married to the wrong girl. The wedding was set, planned, and we’ll assume partially paid for. B and his wife to be were weeks from sealing their fate before all who had eyes to see and ears to hear. With less than four weeks to the ceremonies, B called everything off. Now one might argue that such an action was a horrible thing to do, and in some circumstances I would agree. Marriage is the holiest of holy unions. It’s a spiritual covenant, an absolute devotion to one and only one person with whom a man will spread his seed. B’s close friends were shocked and amazed. We’d hoped and prayed for divine intervention, Please O host of hosts, step into this disaster lest B is stuck frequenting beanie baby conventions for the rest of his small town Illinois life. She instilled resignation in him, a kind of “yes honey” attitude about life. Yet he broke from the bondage of a supposed destiny. Somehow, someway, he had the foresight and the cajones to change his life. And the rest is history.

Wednesday’s titillating episode of Lost touched on enough subjects for me to pontificate upon from now until quittin time. Eternal recurrence, Catch-22’s, the Bible, deception, red-shirts , sweaty sex, Phil Collins….it was a smorgasbord of world class story telling. Desmond’s struggle with perception was the spoke around which forty-three minutes of kinetic eye candy spun. Our ever-doubting literal visionary, hero of a thousand lives, has had a tough go about things in his young life. Like my good friend B, Desmond was set to marry a woman about whom he had second thoughts. Doubt crept into his mind and ate away at his faith in his impending marriage to young devout Ruth. Poor Desmond drowned his uncertainty in a series of pints and ended up on the footstep of a monastery: from Desmond the monk to Desmond the drunk in eight pints and a gutter or less. Then on through a vow of silence of which all of God’s chaste chosen men were sure he’d fail. But not Desmond, he’s a hero in case he didn’t know it: Desmond for whom God has much greater plans. “Sure he does,” Desmond quips over a swig of fine, 100 quid a bottle Moriah wine. Like so many deeply tormented heroes of literary past, he doesn’t know it or doesn’t believe it.

Brother Campbell saved Desmond from the gutter and thus from his doomed marriage by taking him into the Abby. Campbell’s name is most likely a reference to my very own American Idol, the mythical guru Joseph Campbell. Joseph Campbell wrote extensively on his belief that all religions and myths point to one source, the liberation of the Christos within each and every man and woman, the infinite, that which has no name yet exists infinitely and eternally. He spoke of following one’s bliss as the source to liberation in life. This coming from a man who practiced what he preached. Through the depression he spent 5 years of his life hanging out in a New York cabin reading books in lieu of finishing his Doctorate. Nevertheless, whereas Joseph Campbell was not a devout Catholic, Brother Campbell was, and no man who professes to be a monk can get pissed on a bottle of rare Moriah wine.

Now where oh where have we heard of Moriah wine? Oh yes, Genesis (catch) 22. Genesis 22 tells the tale of Abraham’s true test of faith. In it, God comes to Abraham and tells him the time has come to offer up his son Isaac as sacrifice. Good old Abe trusts in the Lord and heeds the call. He gathers up his son, two men, a donkey and some supplies and heads for, you guessed it, Mount Moriah. It is on this mountain that God tests Abraham. Slaughter your son and prove to me that your trust is focused with laser like precision on my will.” Is Abe worthy of the promise given to him by the Lord that he will be the father of a multitude of nations? In the flashback, while discussing the Abby’s choice in naming their wine Moriah, Desmond struggles to come to terms with this difficult story. “One might argue that God needn’t ask Abraham to sacrifice his only son.” To which Brother Campbell retorts in a heavy Scottish brough, “Well then it wouldn’t be much of a test, would it?” No sir, it wouldn’t, especially if the reward for such devout faith is a lineage as extensive as the stars in the sky.

Abraham bound Issac and laid him upon the altar in preparation of answering God’s call. The terror both men must have felt is enough to have me shaking in my boots some couple thousand years later. Abraham raised his knife to a blood red sky when out of the lofty blue God pulled a Deus Ex Machina. “Do not lay your hand on the boy,” said the Angel of Lord. Silly Abe, God knew all along that it was merely a test of the Holy Emergency Broadcasting System. A ram was offered up in Isaacs’ place, Abraham passed with flying colors, and from his seed, Jesus, the son of man would eventually be born.

In the setting of last night’s episode, Desmond was convinced that the parachutist he saw in the vision was his beloved Penny. Penny, his beloved was coming to save him. All Desmond had to do was allow all the events to play out exactly as he saw then, including an arrow ripping through Charlie’s throat. Only Lost is about perception. Nerds like me and my Lostie brethren comb frames for clues late into the dark night. Desmond’s visions appear to him out of sync. He sees Charlie helping to rescue the parachutist, an event that could not have happened were he to have allowed the arrow to pierce Charlie’s larynx.

Which brings me back to the Bible, that living, breathing slab of metaphor, riddle, allusion and enigma. Why would Abraham offer up his one and only son to God, and what kind of God would ask for such a horrendous offering. The type of God, I might say, who is omniscient. The type of God who knows what you’re gonna do before you do it, so don’t worry about it and have faith. Anywho. In Genesis 22:5, Abraham instructs the two men and a donkey to “stay here….and I and the lad will go over there (Moriah); and we will worship and return to you.” We will return to you. We, after I slaughter my one and only son, will return to you. Abraham’s faith in God was so strong that he knew Issac would return. How? Shit, God only knows (what I’d be without you, Issac). Honest Abe was so utterly and hopelessly devoted to his creator that he believed even if he were to kill his son, God would have the power to resurrect him from the dead. Sound familiar?

Poor poor Desmundo is caught between a Catch-22 and a hard place. If he saves Charlie from the deadly arrow, he risks changing the vision. If he lets Charlie die, he faces a serious moral crisis of Biblical proportions. Yet to save Charlie means sacrificing the one thing that gives him hope in the f’d up world of Lost. To cause correct the future means to choose between action and inaction, destiny and fate. It wouldn’t appease the viewers if poor Charlie died, nor would it appease the Island Gods. Instead, Charlie is saved, he’s a believer now more than ever in Desmond, an apostle of sorts.

It’s interesting how such a concept bleeds into reality. It is only by our actions, our exercising of free will, that we shape our destiny. Nothing is written in stone within the realm of space and time. At any point we have the power to intervene or to sit passively. We are gifted with an inability to see the future, but the courage to change the things in life we believe. But like most humans just trying to get along, we become tripped up is in that devil spawned realm of doubt. I’m the king of doubt. Captain Doubt himself. I have a penchant, like so many of my brethren, to want to run away, as if moving further south down the coast would make any difference. Yet as the great Brother Campbell informs young distraught Desmond over that bottle of Moriah wine, maybe “you just spent too much time running away to realize what you may be running toward.”

While re-watching the episode last night, I couldn’t help but think of the unbelievable courage it took for B to back out on what was supposedly his fate in life. As I saw Desmond struggle to find his purpose even after what he perceived as a series of failures, I felt a certain kinship. Those very “failures” led Desmond to the one woman who truly loves him in the world. Desmond, having just been fired from the monastery, meets Penny while loading cases of Mount Moriah into her Range Rover. As the late great Kurt Vonnegut might say, “It happened as it was meant to happen.” That moment was the start of a race around the world for Desmond to reclaim what was right in front of him the entire time.

Hopefully my perception of this mad-hatter wonderland of a show is somewhat on point. Desmond will realize that the tests he’s passing, the sacrifices he’s making, the love he’s forsaking, are all for the greater good of Jack Shepherds herd of Lost sheep. I want to feel the same warm and fuzzy feeling about this story as I did when B married the girl of his dreams this past January. They met almost two years ago by happenstance or divine chance. Had B not stayed the course in his decision to leave the wrong girl behind, His-story would have changed the course of time. B found the woman he loved. I believe it was an act of God. He’s still trying to figure it out. I suppose it’s all about perception.

I’m off to make a mixtape.

Jobe?

neverendingstory

“You take away Kraft out of Altria and you are left with a balance sheet that is extremely strong,” said Charles Norton, portfolio manager at the Vice Fund, a mutual fund that invests in tobacco, gambling, alcohol and military contractors. Altria is the fund’s biggest holding. “It’s just a cash cow. The free cash flow on this business is just tremendous.”
from the New York Times, January 31, 2007.

Such bold rich and greedy men sharing their fatal personality flaws with an indifferent majority. What can we do as a people or even a nation when those in control operate on such a philosophy ? Wealth accumulated via the slow death of those hooked by peer pressure or advertisements. Oh well. It is our choice after all. They didn't put their lethal products in our mouths, nor did they light them for us. It was our weak will that brought the cancer, the breathing tubes, a premature death. Besides, we sanction cigarette sales...we elect the politicians who accept oral favors from lobbyists. National Government looks the other way while the state governments fight for the health of the commenwealth. Let us turn our jaded eyes on epidemics festering within, after all they're a byproduct of our own inability to resist temptation and sin. And if it makes money, by all means, invest.

I look to the great Martin Luther King Jr. to wipe away the filth I feel from reading a truth broadcast every day on every station from here to Timbuktu.

All I'm trying to say is our world hinges on moral foundations God has made it so! God has made the universe to be based on a moral law...

This universe hinges on moral foundations. There is something in this universe that justifies Carlyle in saying,

"No lie can live forever."

There is something in this universe that justifies William Cullen Bryant in saying,

"Truth, crushed to earth, will rise again."
There is something in this universe that justifies James Russell Lowell in saying,

"Truth forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne.
With that scaffold sways the future.
Behind the dim unknown stands God
Within the shadow keeping watch above his own."

MLK Jr. from Rediscovering Lost Values

is this the real life, is this just fantasy.

so some of you gracious peeps out there have inquired, quite patiently, as to the nature of that which consumed my eager, distracted young mind during the long month du Novembre. This is but a scent, raw, natural, completely adulterated and ripe for the pruning. Such is life, though.....



as always

merci pour avoir lire.

jobe.



Driving home from class, Y’s mind raced. Why can’t I focus. I don’t want a job. I’ll live off unemployment. I’ll do yoga and side jobs. I’ll find meaning in my life and break from the machine too. Look at all the people in this world who have done so. I too can do it. I’m certainly smart enough, bachelor’s degree in engineering, master’s degree in pondering, my imagination finally realized. For a full twenty minutes he thought in this manner. The effects of a near two hour yoga class had long since wore off. Anxiety took over and mixed with his once vivid imagination to produce manic delusions of a life less ordinary. Creditors files were full of methods by which Y would find meaning in his life. Credit Card statements read of laptops and vacations, rounds of shots and Triple Five Soul hoodies. His lungs too could speak of years of physical abuse. Y was forever quitting pot, weed, the sticky icky, wacky tabbaccy, waui maui, happy plant. His body was allergic and his ears had been through 20 plus infections, but his mind craved the magical mystery tour that came specially packaged with two puffs off the magic dragon. The otherwise cruel cold world of nine to fives and corporate cocks disappeared with a little help from his friends. He drove into the underground parking space, locked his car and raced up the stairs. His roommate asked about his day as he headed directly for the bathroom. Too busy Mia, he responded. She wasn’t about to come between him and the object of his affection. He marched for the bathroom, flipped the switch and shut the door. Heart racing nearly as fast as his mind, he reached for a glass jar in a sink drawer. He popped the cap and lifted the jar to his nose. A smile spread wide across his face as his anxiety begged him for another breath of liberation. “This is what heaven smells like,” he’d say to a group of close friends as he waved purple and red buds in front of their noses. And they all agreed. They’d toke the chronic leaf and grow giddier than a bunch of school girls. “This is what heaven must feel like,” he’d opine. Certainly the state of no obligation, a heavy clean buzz, and a mind racing with visions and delusions of the art which he could create with his own two hands was enough to make any man think heaven lay in THC’s magical grasp. Y filled his corn cob pipe with a soldier’s helping of illegal delight, sat on the toilet seat and held the lighter just above the mary jane leaves. His gaze focused intently on the flame as it licked the white crystals clean. He took a deep breath as the taste of blueberries filled his throat. Blood vessels in his eyes swelled in irritation. He coughed loud three times and spat in the garbage can. Laughter filled the air as he finally achieved his buzz, his release from the certainty of suffering in the here and now. He leaned back and let his head fall to the tank while he continued to puff away on the pipe. Sugar plum fairies spelled the path towards fulfillment in his mind’s eye. First thing tomorrow he’d set sail for contentment. The alarm would ring at 6 AM, he’d pull out a pen and paper and start plotting a course for financial independence that led right through grad school, liberation from the ties that bind.

buddhist, moslem, atheist, hindu, christian, or jew: lobby for those who may believe different than you.

with five days left for nanowrimo, I'm stuck at 35K words.Go figure.A purported amateur writer doubting his style and God's grace, denying the call, downing alcohol to save face.

here's a couple of quotes from the excellent After the Ecstacy the Laundry....it's amazing how human beings don't see that problems we perceive as being complex have simplistic answers....love thy neighbor, do unto others.my grandmother taught me these lessons when I was knee high to a grasshopper and yet they're the most profound guiding posts one could ever ask for on the road to a peaceful life.Is the terrain treachorous?Yes.Is the call to carry the occupation soldier's pack two miles humbling, ego shattering news. Of course it is.

3AM Saturday morning after drinks and good times, a car full close friends witnessed the aggression of testosterone & ego. A group of six twenty somethings punched, kicked, wrestled, and attempted to dominate one another.We called 911 and were mocked. Certainly there are more important emergencies in this vast city by the lake than a group of adolescent assholes defying lessons learned in kindergarten.Luckily for the 911 operator who took our call, the violence didn't escalate beyond fisticuffs.Instead, the drunken desire to display male dominance led to a few bloody, broken noses and a couple shattered ribs - proof that violence solves nothing. Life begets life as strife begets strife. A deed indeed saves the whole world, in time.Do unto others and pray for those who persecute you.

namaste

From After the Ecstacy the Laundry: How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path

..

in the author's words....

Without understanding the source of suffering, human beings strive to gain happiness by possesiveness and greed, through violence and hatred. We act out of delusion and ignorance, creating pain as an inevitable result. Our grasping, our agressive entanglemen in the world brings with it unavoidable struggle and loss, yet all is done purportedly to seek safety, to find happiness.

a nun he quoted......

Then Jesus was there in my body, and we were holding it together, the suffering of the world.And I could see that to hold it in mercy was divine. It broke open my heart.It became the holy pain that opens the heart. This is God's purpose for our sorrows, to connect all our heats.There is so much mercy.Mercy within mercy.

..

better to face it.

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.
Benjamin Disraeli

The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off.
Gloria Steinem