The Raft

Johnson County Will Be the Death of Me

Lord, don't let me die in a car on Bluemont Avenue;

Johnson County plates in front of me,

SUV to the right of me, Jeep behind,

When Johnson County slams on the brakes to make a left turn;

I have claustrophobia; no use bringing jaws of life.

Lord, don't let me die at 14th and Fremont,

When I just have the courage to turn left,

And Johnson County soro girls have no choice but to crunch me.

Air bags are useless in my old Nissan;

It's too sad: you can almost see the campus from there.

No, if i must die in a car, let it be on 17th Street, Linder's neighborhood.

Lulled by the primordial beat thumping in the frat houses,

As I watch Butters the squirrel hot-footing it across the power lines,

Ever meditative, and I never saw the other guy coming. 

Or, let me die in Johnson County.

Old folks, cremation, and The Five Mile Rule

This is round two about my favorite "third place" in the Pacific Northwest.  It was written just before we moved to KS.--LA

May 23, 2003

Written at the Mukilteo Coffee Company in Mukilteo Washington.

I am going to miss this “third place” where I am writing today.  This café is amazing for its gaggles of dusty-feathered senior citizens who cluster here every Monday morning.  No one ever seems to order more than a cup of coffee (I use that term generically, Northwest-style, to stand for all types of coffee drinks, from Espressos to Granitas) and a bee-crumpet, you know, bagel, banana bread, or biscotti.  Occasionally, when young couples file in with hip Ichiro glasses, backpacks, and baseball caps I can see the surprise of the next generation on their fresh faces.

Is there any other coffee shop on the Sound that shelters so many old people?  Seven of the most ancient ones crowd around a beat-up round oak table that looks as if it belongs in an antique auction barn rather than in a hot drink dispensary.  Their nasal, rapid, and often interrupted conversation spans from the virtues of roast turkey and ice cream to the cremation experience of one denizen’s mother-in-law.  They are engrossed with the latter topic today. But be at ease, absolutely everything they say is hilariously funny. Finally, he who looks to be the eldest of the group, and thus the one who is “next in line”—if you’ll pardon my insensitive expression—remarks that he is absolutely not going to be cremated.  He insists he is going to be put in a box when he dies.  When his companions ask why the whole room becomes quiet, and he says, why it’s because he’s only going five miles from his home when he dies.  Well, it was the quip of the day and with a chorus of delightful shrieks other pairings of coffee drinkers around the shop join the circle table in the delicious enjoyment of a memorable remark on life—or death—by one of those that seems in the moment to offer the most eloquent observation within the recent time frame of an intellectual drought.  Nevertheless, it is one of those things that is incommunicable to others—you had to be there.  One of those things that is only funny to those who have sat and sipped in this temple of Java—this Mukilteo Coffee Company, with its ridiculous eggplant-colored walls covered with reproduction gas station signs and as visited by these sages in woolen sweaters.  Making merry for tomorrow they die.

Writing as an embodied act

Julia Cameron says that writing is an embodied act.  I take it that she means that many passions are pent up in our bodies, so that, when one writes they are unleashed onto the page and thus one frees oneself to greater creativity and more writing that is less thinking than it is the release of a squirming captive.  It seems to me that a corollary to this is that if a writer is able to touch her readers, she must distance them as much as possible from their own culture without compromising the readers’ ability to actually touch the writer.  This distanciation, non-distanciation, like a one-way mirror is facilitated by a kind of creative “mapping” that happens when an author is fully descriptive of the environment.  A Kansas farm kid dreams of the ocean he has never visited and so takes up the absurd task of attempting to read one of Melville’s novels, so that he drops off to sleep with the taste of salt on his lips and dreams that the ropes burn his hands.

Mukcoff, Bogie, and Bergman

A friend recently reviewed the coffee shops in Manhattan, Kansas and asked for opinions about which place was best, and why.  I am still waiting for something akin to a coffee place I frequented in Mukilteo, Washington until it was bought out by a larger company.  Would someone please build a place like this here (right after a real bread bakery).  I found this piece that I wrote about it in 2002.  What was I thinking? I obviously had had too much caffeine. --LA

Twice a week I endure ferry coffee, sparse but smoky as a liquid appetizer that whets my appetite for something more: the java that fulfills my platonic quest for the ideal, or at least something a little better, in the way of a cup of coffee at the Mukilteo Coffee Co.  The quest takes more effort than the twenty-minute sailing from Whidbey Island to Mukilteo.  After the ferry ride I climb a hill that is about three blocks high and seems steep, but you must remember I live, love, and write at sea level, from which Mount Rainier appears as formidible as K2.  I'm not sure the dark roast, or Mukcoff, as one of my friends calls it, served up at my destination greatly exceeds the quality of the ancient Starbucks brew available on the ferry, but there is something about the atmosphere of the cafe serving it that preserves the body and aroma in the memory: You must remember this...

There are too many baristas for the Monday morning crowd, and servers hide behind the glass counter, which is filled with cinnamon rolls and cheese danishes.  The architects of this space (if there were any) designed a nearly perfect boxy recess in the back of the store, in which the minimum-wage workers are quarantined from the tired patrons. 

This is one of my favorite places, not unlike an updated Rick's Cafe.  Unlike that Casablanca estalishment, this place does not serve liquor (as far as I can tell), and offers piped music from CDs rather than Sam at piano.  There is no Bogie or Bergman here, but the pathos is nevertheless derived from the patrons, most of whom seem to be seniors (at least on Monday and Wednesday mornings).  Fake antique metal signs that advertise extinct or fictional products hang askew on the eggplant walls of this Sound-side sanctuary, but I am not convinced that this has drawn them except for the fact that this "third place" is a wonderful illustration of the triumph of the outsider.  The dusty-haired majority gather here daily to live life, rather than theorize about it.  They speak with humor about its futility, yet do not avoid their fate because they come day after day, almost daring the inevitable.

Elegant cups and plain dishes

It has been a surprising pleasure to leisurely work my way through Augustine’s Confessions again—what a difference a contemporary translation makes!  Today I was struck by his ability to express his longings so timelessly.  He tells the story of being caught as a young man in the Manichaean heresy, all the while having a wonderful curiosity and continually asking questions of the cult leaders, who in turn were quite uncomfortable being questioned.  The cult leaders kept putting Augustine off with promises that when someone named Faustus came he would provide all the answers Augustine sought.  When Faustus finally did come, he proved to be a very compelling speaker and had great charisma, but had no more ability to handle Augustine’s questions than the local Manichaean leaders had.  Augustine eventually concluded that the longings he had could have only been met in Jesus Christ, not the deficient Manichaean god.  Reflecting on the deficiency of Faustus, who masked a profound lack of knowledge of the true God with a slick presentation, Augustine wrote:

But to what avail was a more elegant cup-bearer, since he did not offer me the more precious draught for which I thirsted?  My ears were already full of such things, and they did not seem to me more convincing because they were better expressed; not were they true because they were eloquent; nor the soul wise because the face was handsome and the language eloquent.

But they who extolled him to me were not competent judges.  They thought he was prudent and wise because he was pleasing in his speech.

Augustine’s observation is a comfort because I often feel that my message is not significant in that I cannot express it as eloquently as others.  I am also grieved because I sense an ongoing tendency among evangelicals to seek gurus and to crave answers, moving from book to book and seminar to seminar seeking the ultimate insight.  And why is it so common for me to prefer style over substance? 

Augustine was speaking primarily of those who were in flight from God.  Though they had lovely china upon which to serve their message, when it came down to it the Manichaean dishes were empty.  You and I are not the most handsome, nor are we the most articulate people on the planet, but if Jesus has taught us to be fishers of people we have gourmet delights on offer.   Augustine continues,

From you (God) …I had now learned that a thing should not be considered true because it is well spoken; nor untrue because it came from a stammering tongue; neither true because delivered unskillfully, nor untrue because the language was fine.  Just as wholesome and unwholesome food may be served in elegant or plain dishes, so wisdom or folly may come in either elegant or simple language.  Either kind of food may be served up in either kind of dish.

Father, I am unskilled of pen and tongue.  Thank you that we have treasure in earthly vessels and thank you that you have revealed your profound message to simple, little ones like those who follow your Son.   

Ordinance of Suffering

It was good to be in corporate worship today.  It was one of those Ripley "Believe it or Not" days with both ordinances taking place in the same service!  The three baptisms that took place really moved me.  I find myself getting emotional every time I witness a baptism.  I think it has to do in part with the reality that the baton of faith being handed off to a new generation of Jesus' followers.  God, still at work, something old is something new.  It also makes me think back to the sacredness of my own baptism, when I was in high school.  I followed Jesus into his death, burial, and resurrection.  I am seated in the heavenlies with him.  But baptism is also a bittersweet reminder that I have been identified with an outcast.  And as the apostle Mark reminds us with his picture of the messianic secret, there is suffering before there is glory.  The Secret has been revealed, but the suffering goes on.

I have decided to follow Jesus...no turning back.

Marriage, submission, perseverance

I am exhausted after teaching the Emmanuel House marriage and family course with Precious this weekend.  Exhausted, but reflective.  Each year I teach the course I highlight something new in thinking about marriage.  This time around I thought about how profound is my wife's commitment to my perseverance, and the connection of that historically troubling notion of submission (essentially being the high commitment to her husband's perseverance, doing whatever it takes, even refusing to follow his sinful directions) to the proper marital aim of desiring that our wife or husband be presented to Christ one day, and in that presentation that he or she would receive the "well done."  It occurred to me that it would almost be enough to hear her receive the well done, and that it would be as (no, more) wonderful as if I did myself.  I wonder if this is what Oneness is all about?

I marvel at her love for me.  Why me?