Zenderville

MY CAUSE WAS SLOTH

2006-07-13T14:47:00.000-07:00

That I have stopped walking for two hours every day does not mean I have stopped exercising. Because to stop exercising would be to begin dying. Yes, I know I’m dying whether I exercise or not, but a soft body is its own little subdivision of lifelessness.

The longest I’ve ever stagnated is two months. And that’s since December of 1974.

It was on Christmas Eve of that year that I tried to lift one of the large presents under the tree with my name on it—you know, so I could shake it a little. Well, not only could I not shake it, I couldn’t budge it. I couldn’t raise even a corner of it off the floor. It was then that I said to myself, Holy smokes, Dad has gone and got me a weight set.

How could he have done something like that? What was he thinking? I went into my room to figure out how to let the old man down gently. Maybe I would open the present, look surprised, say, “This is really neat!” and then quickly ask for some eggnog, or grab a handful of tinsel and throw it around the room and yell, “Look how light and shiny this stuff is!” Or maybe I would ask how many Christmas cards we had gotten. I would ask if we broke last year’s record. Then I would say to my mother, “I bet it’s hard getting Christmas cards out every year. I don’t know how you do it. Do you ever get writer’s cramp? You’re amazing, Mother.” Then, after all this, I would let my eyes wander back under the tree and find a present for someone else. “Oh, look, Father," I would say. "Here’s a present for you. And look! I can lift it! It bet it’s not a @%!$# weight set!”

Honestly. What made my dad think that a fifteen year-old would want to lift heavy things for the sake of his health? I’d be better served, I thought, with a television for my room.

The more I thought about it, the more troubled I became. How could anyone lay such a burden on another person, let alone a loved one? Let alone an innocent youth? It was like giving someone a puppy. “We just thought we’d get you a little something to love and feed and worry about for the next fifteen years. We hope you like it. Please pass the fruitcake.” It was like giving someone a Mount Everest expedition. “It was such a great deal, we couldn’t pass it up. You’ll be flying to Katmandu on January 6th to acclimate, and the climbing party sets out in late April. Hey, open the one with the blue bow next—it’s your ice pick.”

I drove my head into my hands and paced my bedroom. My family would begin opening presents in an hour. I had to be certain of the justness of my cause; I had to believe wholly in it, for only then could I convincingly defend it.

My cause was sloth.

I paced and groaned and considered. I thought of my dad’s feelings, but most importantly, I thought of my feelings. But then I thought of my arms. I thought of my dad’s feelings again, in order to forget about the feeling I'd just had about my arms. Then I thought of Christmas cookies. Then I accidentally thought of my stomach muscles; then I accidentally thought of girls. I thought of my shoulders then—by accident. I tried to think again about my feelings, and succeeded. But then I thought of Mt. Everest—don't ask my why; I really didn't mean to think of Paula Mareno, but in she came, right after Mt. Everest. I thought of my dad’s feelings again, in the nick of time. But then I thought of my calves; hmm; what calves? I thought of resistance and the audacity of fighting it; that was a much better thought, and helpful. But then I thought of Laura Anne Williams, who sat next to me in Algebra—not helpful. I thought of my dad’s feelings again, but this was interrupted by the thought—the accidental thought—of removing my shirt in front of Laura Anne Williams; then—God help me—I thought of removing Laura Anne Williams’ shirt—I assure you that this was a complete and utter accident. For a diversionary tactic, I tightened my abs; nothing happened. I looked in the mirror and tried to find my stomach muscles. Lord Jesus and Santa Claus—where are my stomach muscles? In a panic, I looked into my eyes; I stared at myself. This was a big mistake because, as I stared at myself, I heard a strange voice, and the voice spoke clearly to me—inside my head—and the voice said: I think you want to do this.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I left it there. I walked from my room into a strange new world. Some would call it a darkened hallway leading to the place where the Christmas tree was, but I knew it as a new world. I understood then that climbers leaving Everest base camp felt more alive than other people. With every step toward that heavy box, I ascended a good slope. It was a slope of the simplest beginning. I knew then, for certain, that a man could change his own life.

I lifted those weights three days a week, religiously, for an entire year. I did not miss a single workout—not one. I found an inner strength and a personal resolve I never knew I had. It began on Christmas Eve, 1974, and sustains me to the present hour. I have applied it to all other aspects of my life. It is the second most amazing gift I have ever received, and it is all due to my dad.

My dad died two years ago, but he lives in me now, through everything I accomplish.

I am who I am because of him.

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NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON’T

2006-07-12T08:56:00.000-07:00

Every year after the Fourth of July Fireman’s Festival, I do a strange thing. I wait a day or two until all the rides and the concessions have been packed up and put away, and I go to the grounds and try to imagine that a festival had so recently been there.

On Sunday night of the festival—the last night—our family stays late for the fireworks. Usually we sit down at the edge of a large tent at the main eating place and watch the fireworks together. By my slowed-down standards, this is a heck of a good time. The lights of the midway, the smell of the food, the darkness, the teenagers ambling about, the leftover heat from the day, the good feeling of shared experience, American independence, family togetherness, the smell of French fries, community under the tent, the festive weight of the air—all these things combine for a delicious feeling, bittersweet at the same time because the feeling cannot last. Fall will come, the teenagers will go away to school, winter will come, some of these people will be gone from the earth, and nothing can ever be repeated exactly as it was.

So I return to the grounds to wallow in this, to take stock of it, and to try to imagine how it could recently have been what it was but is not. Early morning may be the best time to do this. The early morning after a nighttime festival may be the prime wallowing time for those so disposed to it.

This year I determined to record it.

Early evening Sunday I went about with my camera recording scenes, people, lights. I played the last two games of Bingo with my son Jefferson, photographing him in the warm and cozy light of the tent—a perfect moment in time.

Snap, snap, snap I went again, all over the festival grounds, recording it as it was so that I could record it, for you, as it is, and demonstrate for you the competing miracles of being and not being, and the terrible nature of change.

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My friend Charlie and I have agreed to meet, in the coming eon, at the site of the small brick patio next to my house. We were sitting there late one evening a couple years back—drinking coffee and looking up at the stars—when we decided that sometime during the thousand years of peace we would return to earth and meet at this precise place and marvel at how it had been, and how we had been then. We would be celestial beings, but in full possession of memories, knowing well how it was during the time of our humiliation. This present earth would remain for a thousand years subsequent to our change, we knew, being destroyed only later and replaced with a new earth. For a thousand years, then, the precise coordinates of any location on the current planet would be known. We would certainly know where this porch had been, and we would come here. And we would marvel and ask ourselves:

Is this really the place where we once sat, marveling and wondering at the stars? Was this truly the site of a wooden house in which the greater part of a man’s life was played out, where he loved a woman, raised a family, shared joys and shed tears? Is this truly the place? Could this really be it? We know that it is—we know that these are the precise coordinates—yet it does not seem possible that it could have been here. It is all so different. We are so different. And yet—confirm it—this is the place. We sat precisely here in wooden chairs in our bodies of humiliation, staring up at a world that was then so foreign to us.

I finish now with a photograph of this coordinate. It is know among the celestials by a name other than that given it by mortals. They know that we will return here. I believe that, since Charlie and I made a pact here and that we shall one day be seated at the right hand of God, it may well be a grand event. I want you to see how it is now. Look at it and remember it, for you shall see it again as it shall be, from the perspective of a future change soon to be spoken of in the past tense.

Present; future; past. What are these? Stare at this photograph and sear it into your mind in case you one day wish to find out.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

JOE COKE IN THE PURGATORY OF PORK

2006-07-08T08:21:00.000-07:00

I love the Fireman’s Festival and Fourth of July parade. This grand weekend always occurs in July, a month that is famous here for warm weather. It isn’t always warm, but we’ve a better chance of it now than on Christmas, New Year’s, Thanksgiving, Easter, or even Memorial Day, when the last of our vast snow piles melt.

Like any good pagan, I cherish the sun. I cherish anything that brings people together and makes them happy, or makes them think they’re happy. A person eating cotton candy on the Fourth of July falls victim to this, including yours truly. I reserve my fluffy passion for this weekend, and generally buy two bags of 100% cotton candy, sometimes three.

Cotton candy is a piece of heaven come to Earth. Sugar, I think, is a scaled-down version of something divine. The earthly version is deadly sweet and so pleasurable that it eventually kills us, while it’s heavenly counterpart—whatever it is—gives life. Whoever dreamed of converting sugar molecules to this light, airy substance outmarveled Einstein. An angel touched this clever individual, I do believe that. God inspired a modern-day prophet to turn the miraculous substance blue and yellow and orange and green, and another spiritual pioneer, unnamed, thought to twirl it onto a stick.

The parade is only a part of the greater festival, headquartered at the village reservoir grounds behind the old high school. It is here that the Ferris wheel scoops up its waiting passengers, the ponies tramp patiently around rings of sawdust, and a matronly woman in an apron becomes willing—for only two dollars!—to measure the speed of your best-thrown baseballs. Guess the speed of your third pitch and you win a prize worth seven cents. A miracle akin to cotton candy occurs here: people bartering two dollars for seven-cent prizes walk away winners.

Besides the parade, the best part of the festival for Melody and me has always been manning the Coca-Cola trailer. We are asked every year by some of the firemen’s wives to man the Coke trailer. I cherish it. It is such blessed relief from my regular job.

For 364 days of the year I am an evangelist akin to Paul, suffering evil as an ideal soldier for the sake of Jesus Christ. For one day of the year, I sell Coke. It is a glorious day. Why? Everyone wants Coke. Everyone wants ice-cold carbonated sugar water. We are gods of this eon, Melody and I, whenever we sell the premier product of the Coca-Cola Bottling Company. Some people do this for a living; I can hardly imagine. I can hardly imagine the crush of accompanying love. “For God so loved the world that He sent them a sweetened beverage colored with caramel and flavored with phosphoric acid.”

I once asked a man who worked for the Coca-Cole Bottling Company: Have you ever been persecuted? He said no. Not even by Pepsi people? No, not even by them. One day out of the year, I taste this blessed state of belonging.

No one approaches the trailer to question our doctrine. For our doctrine is merely this: Drink Coke. No one questions our motives: Just why are you selling this carbonated beverage? No, we never get that. Who dares to attack the virtues of Coke? No text of any kind is ever brought against us to refute our position. For our position is merely this: Drink Coke. We are spared even the effort of announcing our evangel. Our evangel announces itself: ICE-COLD COKE HERE. This alone brings us more disciples and worshippers than we care to count. We are the friend of man, woman, and child. I never realized before manning this trailer how fond I could be of unfeigned love, respect and acceptance. If not for the shortness of the shift and the gig (three hours, once a year), I would give up everything and travel the country in this trailer. God, in His mercy, curtails the joy. But never so much as this year.

This year, Melody and I got overlooked for the Coke trailer. I was devastated. “They want us to make pork and beef sandwiches at the main building instead,” said Melody. I thought she was joking. I thought she was telling me a Coke joke. But no. There would be no Coke trailer for us this year. This year, we were damned to Pork and Beef Purgatory. I was damned to it, that is. Melody got assigned to cake and pie duty, leaving me to my torments.

I walked into the building after the parade and announced to one of the firemen: “Here I am. Do with me what you will.” He set me in front of several vast vats of shredded pork and beef. Some of the vats were pork, some were beef. Beside the vats were piles of hamburger bun packages and sheets of foil. The fireman showed me how to hold the bottom of the bun, scoop on the meat, top it with the upper bun, and wrap it. “Good luck,” he said. I asked if I would see him again, and he said, “No.”

I did my work as unto the Lord. I would become the best sandwich maker ever. With God as my witness, I made sandwiches as fast as I could. It was barely sufficient. Demand was great, for we fed the after-parade crowd, precisely at lunchtime. I scooped and bunned and wrapped with singular purpose. It was hot work; I did not care. In the midst of the battle, I caught myself dreaming of the Coke trailer. Each time the fantasy came, I banished it; I could not afford a pause, not even a refreshing one. I went back to work.

From my pork and beef purgatory, I caught brief glances of Melody. She carried pieces of cherry cheesecake, Texas sheet cake, apple pie, and many other kinds of delicious pie. She grinned and laughed with some of the other women. I dug my big metal spoon back into my meat vat and slung another load of muscle onto the round, white bread. Five hours later, it was over.

(Below: the building in which I slung my meat.)

“Did you have fun?” Melody asked.

“No,” I said. “No one loves me. No one loves the sandwich man.”

“I love the sandwich man,” she said.

I touched her hair and looked into her eyes. “I bet you say that to all the sandwich men.”

“I do,” she said.

We walked around the festival grounds and remembered being there when our kids were little. It was bittersweet—to think of the kids so small—and we were ready to cry, so we bought two large Cokes from the lucky person in the trailer and went to see how fast I could throw a baseball.

I walked away a winner.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

THE VILLAGE PARADE

2006-07-06T11:53:00.000-07:00

Our Fourth of July parade here was fun. It always is. The police shut down traffic on the state highway for the Saturday event, and I always feel bad for the first car or the first trucker stopped. By the time the parade is over, the traffic stretches clear out to Kat’s Iron Skillet to the east of town, and Eastman’s Funeral Home on the other side. I personally believe that these two businesses are in cahoots, but that has nothing to do with this story.

There is not one traffic light here on Main Street. Main Street is the state highway. It is busy, busy, busy. My office is on Main Street and ordinarily I am busy as well. For one glorious day each year, however, Main Street becomes the parade route and the only thing occupying me is getting folding chairs out to the sidewalk and jockeying for the best spot. Being a Main Street businessman, I have an inside track. Not that I need it, but it’s fun to think that I do.

Three quarters of the town’s residents come out for the three-quarters of a mile parade. That sounds like a lot of people until you consider that the town contains less than 2000 people. In fact, this is not even a town, it’s a village. The difference between a town and a village is Kat’s Iron Skillet.

The parade is probably terrible by any standard other than ours. The entries that always stick out in my mind are the little baton twirling girls and the flag squads. No two girls are ever doing anything in unison. Not ever. It is as if the adult leaders of these groups tell their charges before the big event: “Here’s how it works, girls. It’s every girl for herself. Try to stay with the group, if you can. If you can’t, then we’ll see you at practice on Tuesday. Just move your flag around, is all I ask. Use it to swat flies, twirl it, scrape it along the road, scratch yourself with it, it doesn’t matter. Just keep moving. Those of you with batons, make sure you drop them every fifteen seconds or so. Throw them and drop them. Got it? We’re going to be aiming a Bob Seger song very loudly at you from the back of a pick-up truck for no apparent reason. Now move out.”

Lots of people throw candy during the parade, either from firetrucks, old cars, or tractors. In fact, this should be called The Candy Parade. It’s candy, candy, candy, non-stop for an hour. The candy comes flying in at your feet in waves so that you don’t even have to leave your seat to snag some. There are Tootsie Rolls, Smarties, Bit-O-Honeys, Fireballs, Sweet-Tarts, Pixie Stix, Dum-Dum suckers, and every brand of hard sweet known to man. Some of the local businesses on floats throw Frisbees. With a little planning and luck, you can snag a Frisbee first, then use it as a plate for your candy. This is the ideal, but few people obtain it. I have never obtained it. But I know that it’s possible.

The out-of-town marching bands are usually pretty good. For some reason, our local marching band is never good. The kids blow through their instruments and beat their drums, but no music comes. I remember the time the director wanted my son Jefferson to play trumpet in the fifth grade band. Jefferson wanted to play drums, but the director said she didn’t need another drummer. She said that what she needed was brass. She said she could train monkeys to hit drums. I had heard her bands, and I asked her when she would be teaching the monkeys to hit the drums at the same time.

Local firemen put on the parade and festival, so there is always a Fireman’s Queen, and she is always young and beautiful—this year was no exception. I do wish, however, that someone would some year teach the Queen to wave from the heart and not from the wrist. I’m not saying that we spectators want “howdied” like farmhands, but we would like to see something other than the standard mechanical parade wave. You know it well: the fingers are cupped and glued together, the hand rotates slowly from the wrist as if on a swivel—thirty degrees to the right, then thirty degrees to the left. And always the parade smile, tattooed on the face and sincere as the glossy façade of a teen mag. What we would not give some year for a living Queen, a genuine waver, a heart-inspired shower of teeth, a Queen who possesses her beauty as well as capturing those of us sideliners wanting to worship her. Until then, we look to the politicians—and avert our eye.

The politicians drag their kids and spouses from bed at 7 a.m. and drive them here armed with balloons and pens and buttons and flags. “Vote for Bill Reid, County Commissioner,” says a plastic trinket. I don’t even know what a County Commissioner is. If I did, I would not want it to be Bill Reid. I would vote for the man wise enough to stay home on the Fourth of July with his family, or take them to a parade they could watch and not prostitute themselves in. How dare Bill and his ilk use this national celebration for political advantage. I always hope that the politicians step in the fruit from the equestrian entries. If any politician on parade wants my vote, he or she can at least enter early and throw a Frisbee. I need a plate for my candy; I need a County Commissioner who cares that I get a plate for my candy.

The parade ends as it begins, with firetrucks blaring. The sirens are super loud. Kids stare google-eyed and dogs bark. The firemen are showing off their vehicles and their sirens, as well they should. I believe they wash their vehicles every day twice a day before the parade, because you have never seen anything so shiny as a firetruck on the Fourth of July, with the possible exception of the top of a politician’s head on the Fourth of July. The firemen deserve our homage, and we give it to them while our hearts move at the behest of their sirens. Our hearts are always moving, thanks, in part, to the firemen.

The truckers coming through after the parade are always somehow in a good mood. This is nothing less than a miracle. I guess they give up and give in to the parade. Most can’t see it, but they all get candy handed to them through their windows, which they gratefully accept.

Well, it’s the Fourth of July in the United States of America.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

FIRE TRUCKS, AMBULANCES, PLASTIC BAGS

2006-06-28T11:49:00.000-07:00

A couple days ago while I was editing a ZenderTalk, the fire squad and an ambulance raced down the street because a nine year-old girl here walked her bicycle across the highway five hundred yards from my office and didn’t see a truck. So the truck cut off her leg and drove three of her fingers up into her hand. The medical people put the leg in a plastic bag. I don’t know what the girl did because I have not been told. By the time the mother got to the scene, her daughter’s leg was already in the plastic bag. The mother fainted (someone told me) because her brain turned away certain oncoming images, sending blood to other body parts unburdened by sensory perception.

I woke up at 2:30 this morning in a sweat of concern about everyone’s spine. I had a bad dream about my son and a chair and a truck and his spine. God surrounded the spinal cords of humans with bone pieces, but the arrangement is hardly good enough. God forgot to pack the world with Styrofoam peanuts. So He made fire trucks and ambulances and plastic bags. And does He ever know how to divert human blood.

Never go back to sleep if you have to be disturbed in the middle of the night. I follow my own advice and get out of bed before much time passes; boiling three eggs is easier than thinking.

I had to kill a spider. He (or she) walked across the edge of the counter while my eggs boiled. It was bad timing for the spider. He or she might have lived to inject venom into the bloodstream of a family member, so I had to choose death over life for the spider. I hastened the death of spider and did not like any of it. I notice that the longer chicken eggs boil, the farther and farther away they get from the lukewarm liquid form they assumed in the uterus of the chicken. Apparently, female chickens have periods once a day. I do not know if the spider had a family. I hope not. The goo of spider life is smashed in a napkin right now. The goo had life in it (or was life), but now it does not.

The girl is in stable condition. There will be no funeral this week; the funeral men can wear their casual shoes today. The girl lost the bottom half of one leg; the leg cannot be reattached, so I guess they’ll throw it away, with or without the shoe and sock. I am going to walk down the road now and take a photograph of where the girl lay in the road bleeding to death before God sent the paramedics. I think it was also around this area where the mother fainted. You will be able to see the skid marks. The road will be bathed in morning light because I look out my window now and the new sun looks orange. The truck driver said that he would never drive a truck again. The old man who first cradled the little girl’s head walked away with blood all over him. Human blood is similar in consistency to the brown goo of spiders. The man has yet to walk across the edge of God’s counter, but his wife died twelve years ago. The spider, unfortunately, died this morning.

Many women in this world have ceased ovulating, lucky them.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

LIGHT BULBS IN WAITING: JUDAS AND THE MENNONITES

2006-06-27T11:52:00.001-07:00

My last fitness walk occurred on Monday, May 22. On Monday, May 22, my plan to walk to Pittsburgh died like a bird against a windowpane. To put it yet another way, Monday afternoon, the twenty-second of May, 2006, became my last eight-mile ramble into the rolling countryside. God withheld His new plan for my life until I saw the sign of condemnation planted by the Mennonites.

The Mennonites. Thank you, Menno Simons. Just what we needed: another religious sect wearing strange headgear. I had always hoped that condemnation could one day smell like horse poop—alas. And thank you, Jakob Ammann, Amish patriarch, for taking the religious severity of Simons to the highest methane levels possible. Your clippity-clop testimony to the world is: “We’re pleasing God and the rest of you are going to hell in a handbasket. Can we interest you in a pie?”

Several Mennonites in this area have become fond of driving condemnatory religious signs into the fertile, flowered soils of their property. The posts are wooden and uniform of grain and girth; they are birthed, apparently, at the same shop of carpentry. The signposts are as sturdy as the cross that Simons and Ammann crucified Christ upon. The most ingenious feature of the sign is the part of the post holding the epistle itself—it’s a slot, actually—allowing for interchangeable messages of varying degrees of spiritual harm. Oh, and guilt. I almost forgot the guilt.

The menfolk in these parts pound these posts out near the road so the hell-bound, driving past, might quickly imitate the Mennos and save their souls from perdition. Some gospels I have read in the past include: ■ BE YE PERFECT ■ CEASE FROM SIN ■ THE MEEK SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH ■ GOD SHOWS MERCY TO THE MERCIFUL ■ GOD’S WORD: HEED AND OBEY ■ THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH.

While these self-righteous salvos—in one form or another—are scripture based, the references are divorced of context and married to the distinct scent of threat. I have not seen a positive message yet. There is nothing of what God has done for humanity. If the cross of Christ has benefited anyone, free of charge, the gratuity is not mentioned, or even hinted at. Those parts of Paul’s letters full of grace, peace, thanksgiving, and the wonders of race-wide vindication, are ignored in favor of those parts deemed by the Mennonites as favoring them and damning the rest of mankind: CEASE FROM SIN. All right, I will. Cross my heart and hope to die, I will. But can I start Monday? I’d like to enjoy the weekend.

The sign in this particular Mennonite yard—located at the two-mile mark of my round—had for months read: GOD SHOWS MERCY TO THE MERCIFUL. True enough—as it stands. But this was an Old Covenant deal between God and man, void of the present grace. The question I wanted answered—directly from the horse’s mouth, as it were—was: What happens to the unmerciful? I often dreamed of asking. In my fantasy, I knock on the Mennodoor in search of a happy sequel. A plain woman answers. Her head is covered, she is aproned, and several Amlets duck and hide behind her skirts.

“Hello,” I say. “My name is Martin Zender, a sinner. Yes, I said, a sinner. I do not even own a hoe and—God help me—I eat cream puffs on the Sabbath. I bathe daily and tumble-dry my clothes. Forgive me; bear with me; have mercy on my mustache. I have read your wonderful sign for many months now, hoping to earn my way into heaven. ‘God shows mercy to the merciful,’ says your wooden headline, and I thank you for it. You are good people, merciful people, reaching out to a sinning man like me who has never once baked a single loaf of bread or fertilized a carrot. May God have mercy upon your household and curse mine in hades, naturally. But before I depart for the underworld, I must know, from a sanctified lip that has never been rouged or glossed: what happens to the rest? What happens to the unmerciful of our sorrowful race?”

In my fantasy, the Mennoness calls up a holy humph from deep behind her epiglottis. At the same time, she snatches up a firepan and a golden snuffer from the altar of God, next to her spatula rack. She then bangs me with the firepan and smites me with the snuffer. It hurts, but I know I deserve it. It is my penance for driving a red car. The Amlets giggle, bite me in the knees, then run away to play on their acacia wood swingset. Things look dim for me, but alas, I shall not return home void.

“The rest?” says the Mennoness. “The rest?” Imitating her favorite Old Testament Prophet, the Mennoness smites me a second time. “The rest?” she says again (She says it a total of three times, the third time accompanied, in my fantasy, by the third smite of the sacred snuffer.) Three more humphs emerge, each one holier than the last.

“Why, the rest are damned for eternity,” she says, “in hell, of course. Do you not know anything?” In comes the firepan, again, to my forehead. In spite of the ensuing headache, I manage a smile. The Mennoness intends to send me away happy, and she does. She concludes her sermon with a kick to my buttock area and a verse from the book of Exodus, chapter 38, verse 22: “‘Now Belalel, the son of Uri the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, made all that the Lord had commanded Moses.’ Go and doest thou likewise!” With the slam of the door, my fantasy is sadly concluded. I have not even received a gardening tip!

Back now to Monday, May 22, just past noon. My fantasy is not only dissolved, it is dead. For in the place of the MERCIFUL sign is a new sign that makes the old sign look like a peace sign:

Dear God, Moses, Abraham, and Lot. Why me? Why must I suffer so upon this vale of tears? Is it fair that I should have been made a modern-day apostle, a sent-one, a teacher, a bearer of the glad tidings of God? A light in the midst of the darkness? A fine-tuned discerner of all things dark? And what darkness! Poor Judas, a man, set apart by God from his mother’s womb for dishonorable use, chosen by Christ Himself, possessed in the end by none other than Satan, steamrolled by the God-machine of divine inevitability, freed at last from the demonic oppression, remorseful, self-loathing, hanging himself, burst open at the belly, disemboweled, buried, only to happen upon—today—this rude disinterrment, dragged from his peaceful sleep, hung from a new tree, used, abused, his same tangled bowels rearranged upon a Mennonite signpost for the admonition of moderns who could not—ever—offend the Deity in a like manner as he.

And Acts 1:25? Dear God, take me now.

“And praying, they say, ‘Thou, Lord, Knower of all hearts, indicate one whom Thou choosest, out of these two to take the place of this dispensation and apostleship, from which Judas transgressed, to be going into his own place.”

“To be going into his own place”—a simple euphemism for the grave. To the hell seeking Mennonite, however, it is synonymous, in the case of their favorite whipping boy, with eternal separation from God. That this is their proof text exposes both the state of their scholarship and the state of their hearts.

It exposed, for me, the course of my next sixty years.

The sign affected me deeply, powerfully—not in the way the Mennonites hoped, but in a way aligned with the purposes of God.

God, my father. He has called me, in this life, to defend His character. He has no need for such human assistance, but he condescends to inspire and accept it for the sake of honoring those called to it. I defend Him neither for reward nor for honor, but because I have to. It is woe to me if I don’t. It is woe to me either way, truth be known, because I feel the heartache God feels when He sees this sign. I have sympathy pains. The message harms me. I have a problem with it. The worldly man ignores it, the religious man applauds it, but the man standing stock still now in all his useless walking gear feels it grinding in his gut.

To unscripturally condemn a man to an unscriptural hell for an unscriptural eternity is to condemn the man’s God along with him. It is to condemn the One Who created him in His own image, for His own glory. The apostle Paul said of the Jews in Romans 2:23-24, “You who are boasting in a law, through the transgression of the law you are dishonoring God! For because of you the name of God is being blasphemed among the nations, according as it is written.”

Think if Paul had met the Mennonites.

It is true that Judas Iscariot disqualified himself, relatively speaking, from the glories of Christ’s millennial kingdom. The thousand years of peace will find the human betrayer of Christ still in the grave. He will rise at the great white throne, however, to be judged and adjusted by God for his sin. This adjudication does not satisfy some divine vindictive streak. Rather, it is for Judas’s own good. Here before God’s majesty, Judas will apprehend, at last, the glories that eluded him on earth. And yet God has not appointed him to live for the eons, so he is returned to the grave: the second death. Is this the end of him? It cannot be, for God is called, in 1 Timothy 4:10, “the Savior of all mankind.” Unless He saves all mankind, the inspired appellation is a joke.

The inspired appellation—I assure you—is not a joke.

The Apostle Paul, by divine inspiration, wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:26 that, at the consummation of the eons, death is to be abolished. For those in the second death, this means deliverance into life. The Apostle John, also inspired by God’s holy spirit, quoted John the Baptist in John 1:29, “Lo! The Lamb of God Which is taking away the sin of the world.” Did he mean all the sin of the world, or all sins except that of Judas?

Take a guess.

If you can’t get it right now, don’t worry. You will. You’ll get it right eventually. You’ll figure it out in a high place on a future day when you hear a voice louder than all others praising God for His wisdom, patience, mercy, and love—and worshipping the One he necessarily betrayed—worshipping Him for His plan, His purpose, and for dying, yes, even for the likes of him.

As for me, standing and shaking before this blasphemy in flowers, I realize that I am still not doing enough. With so much darkness in the world, I must make better use of my time. There are other paths to fitness besides those requiring a quarter of a work day. It is time to reclaim the era and take God’s light into every place.

Except here. This place already thinks it has it, so its eonian course is set. So I shake the dust off my shoes, finish my walk, and devise ten new ways to publish the truth.

The Mennonites? I leave ‘em to their fantasies. Their spiritual light bulbs ain’t coming on until Judas’s does.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

THE ALTAR OF THE SINK

2006-06-22T09:20:00.000-07:00

You want to know what happened subsequent to the Gold in the Cave Wall entry, and of course I’m going to tell you. Obviously, I am still alive. But am I solvent? Is my family once again consuming generic pancake batter?

Things got worse before they got better—I made certain of it. Whenever things head south financially, I always do the irrational thing: I give money away. I think I probably do it to give God sport. God loves the impossible, well do I know. It’s only fun for Him if He can make a feast appear from a kid’s two-bit lunch, or make lame people walk, or make blind people see. David conquering Goliath is only fun for God if David is a seventh-grader and Goliath shaves with the blunt edge of a sword (or, better yet, not at all). As long as Goliath has every conceivable physical advantage—size, sword, helmet, shield, and full medical coverage—then God is ready to go with the uninsured shepherd boy. Same with His Son. As long as Christ is pinned helplessly upon a cross with not one thing left to His name but faith, then God is ready to unleash Satan and conciliate the world to Himself.

“Become, then, imitators of God.” Galatians 5:1. Okay, God. You asked for it.

I went to a Bible study the weekend following Gold in the Cave Wall. My new paperback, The Really Bad Thing About Free Will had just returned from the printers, so I took a handful of copies of that, along with my other paperbacks, along with How to Quit Church Without Quitting God, along with my CD, Part-Time Sinner.

The hostess had not so much designed this gathering as a Bible study, but as a time when I would talk and other people would listen. I always pray before these things, acutely aware of my weakness. I know it is my weakness that God uses, not my strength. My prayer, then, is that I would always remember that.

The first time I ever addressed a public gathering, I was so scared that I knelt at the sink in the bathroom of the hall and prayed for a miracle, which ensued. Ever since then, the continuous miracle is that, when God prods me to open my mouth publicly, He grants people knowledge and understanding. I’m no longer scared because I know from experience that God speaks in spite of me not because of me, but I still put myself, mentally, at the foot of the sink.

The same thing went on at this “Bible study.”

I talked, answered questions, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. The hostess served pizza, the miracles occurred in the typical nonobservable fashion (I would hear the details later), and Melody and I prepared to leave—but not before I metamorphosed into a sort of celestial Santa Claus.

I felt the urge to give away as many books as possible. So before I left, I reached into my “Santa’s bag” and pulled out copies of The Really Bad Thing About Free Will. I talked a little bit about the book, and then handed out copies. Then I did the same thing with all my other books. Everyone was laughing, because all these books kept coming out of my bag like the loaves and the fishes. As the books flew out of the bag, I said crazy things like, “Bless you, my child,” and “Your troubles are over,” and “I hope you want these, because here. Here. Here. And here.” I worked so hard I could have used a couple elves.

The hostess walked Melody and me to our sleigh and eyed me with genuine concern. “Good God, Santa,” she whispered. “You gave away a couple hundred dollars worth of books there, at least.” She knew about my situation and slipped me a twenty for the reindeer. I gratefully pocketed the bill and said, “I know. But I loved it. It was fun. It felt crazy. Ho, ho. Need a book?”

The next day, I received a check in the mail from a supporter that made me whoop right there in the kitchen. Later that afternoon, a friend I had not heard from for 4 ½ years called out of the blue to tell me that he was “back on board” and ready to assist the ministry again. The evidence of this arrived six days later, satisfying the people at the phone company, the electric company, and half the people at the mortgage joint.

God rescued me, once again, via the Body of Christ.

This cycle will repeat itself for the eon, I suppose. I would like to foresee a time when I’m comfortable, when I’m “rolling in it,” delivered from the stresses of financial free-fall and recovery. But somehow I think that God will continue to stun me with timely miracles, and provide givers—givers including myself—with even more opportunities for greater blessing. Perhaps; perhaps not. In any case, I’m still on my knees at the altar of the sink, praying for miracles. God? He’s rubbing His hands together and smiling, scanning Earth for the helpless among humanity.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

LET THE GAMES BEGIN

2006-06-21T16:01:00.000-07:00

When it is so light out so late, all I want to do is play with my kids and not go to bed. It is true that my kids are 19 and 17 and 13 years old, but the statement still stands.

My oldest son Artie got me a small leather, triangular-shaped football for Father’s day. “Footballs” like these are ordinarily made of notebook paper. The athlete folds the piece of notebook paper over and over in the manner of an American flag prepared for storage. The football is not stored, however, but rather flicked across a table by the facing competitors. The object of the tabletop game is to get any part of the football to hang over the table edge without falling off. This is a touchdown and is worth six points. For the point after touchdown, the athlete “kicks” the football with a flick of the middle finger through a set of “goalposts.” Just as in real football, a successful kick is worth one point. The goalposts traditionally consist of the competitor’s thumbs touching horizontally and index fingers extending vertically. But tradition gives way to these modern days.

Welcome to the 21st century. The “football” Artie got me for Father’s Day is genuine leather, and the goalposts are genuine plastic. And when I played my son Jefferson yesterday morning, I got genuinely drubbed: 50-28.

When Aaron got up, he, Jefferson and I played Triple Solitaire. This is just like single Solitaire, only three times as fun. Instead of one person playing his or her own cards on top, everyone can play on everyone else’s cards. If all three players uncover the two of hearts at the same time, for instance, it’s a race to see who can get the two on top of the ace first. The game does not ordinarily draw blood, but bruised knuckles are common. I usually win because I’m so mean and fast. I’ve never let my kids win at anything. Because of this, they are all competitive and very good at everything they do. They know that when they beat Dad at Ping-Pong or Monopoly or basketball or Triple Solitaire, it’s the real deal. Aaron finally beat me in Ping-Pong one day last winter for the first time in 200 or 300 games, and you would have thought he had won an Olympic gold medal. It was great! (I hated it!) I played the national anthem for him and he wept.

We all had to go to work. Aaron had to weed-whip for an elderly woman in town, Jefferson had to mow our lawn, and I had to get some ZenderTalks in the can. But there we sat, playing Triple Solitaire. It worked out this way: Aaron won one, Jefferson won one, and I won one. None of us were too badly injured, so we all went to work. “See ya later,” we said.

After returning from work at about seven in the evening, I found Aaron and Jefferson and Aaron’s friend Heath golfing in the yard. They were inventing “holes” that included a tree trunk, the burn barrel, the metal barn roof, the well pipe, and the natural gas tank. I didn’t want to play, I just wanted to watch. I wanted to be the gallery. So I stood behind ropes and followed the golfers around. I applauded politely whenever someone “plunked” the burn barrel under par. I only got hit in the head with the golf ball once, but even then I applauded politely. I consulted the leader board frequently. I carried my own lawn chair. I drank bottled water.

Soon after, the sky turned purple and black; a storm brewed. I love severe weather; it’s so much more interesting than normal weather; it’s more exciting, more severe. Artie came home just then from work and we all knew what he was going to do: set up his video camera. We were right.

The two older boys and their associates are filming a movie this summer. I’m not allowed to tell you what it’s about. I am allowed to say, however, that it will include purple and black cumulonimbus clouds.

I love watching Artie compose. The clouds performed weird gyrations above his lens. The clouds roiled and boiled over our heads. They looked near enough to touch. The mien of the clouds was deliciously frightening. Aaron thought he saw a funnel forming in one of the black clouds. I wish he had. I have always wanted to see a tornado. Readers who have actually lived through a tornado will hate me for saying this. So be it. I still want to see a swirling vortex.

Not a single vortex came, however, not even a swirling one. Just rain. And did it come! The storm made the house so cozy. At the start of the rain, everyone crammed into the house. Outside was dark blue and wet and cold, but everything indoors was orange and warm and familiar with all of our breath. When the storm died down, the outdoors became sullenly inviting again and Heath and Aaron invented a new game beneath the electric wire draped from the telephone pole to our house called “Throw a Rock Up Above the Wire, and Make the Rock Hit the Wire On the Way Down, but Not on the Way Up, and The First One to Do It Three Times is the World Champion of This New and Stupid Sport.” (I have since learned that the new sport is now called “Plim.”)

I watched Aaron and Heath struggling to make the rock hit the wire on the way down. Heath finally got a hit, and then Aaron got one. It took a long time for them to get one apiece. I doubted it could be so hard. Let a real man toss and see what happens, I thought. And so I announced into the rainy twilight: “I can do that on the first try.”

It was raining steadily, and increasing. Heath and Aaron kept handing me the rock—and handing me the rock and handing me the rock and handing me the rock. In the meantime (when I needed a rest), Aaron got his second hit. Then Heath got his second. Aaron kept getting large drops of rain in his eye. My shirt was starting to stick to my skin and it was getting darker and darker. I kept throwing and throwing, missing each time. Neither Aaron nor Heath could fathom that a person could miss so many times in a row while trying so diligently. And yet I continued to accomplish the unfathomable. Aaron and Heath kept giving me tips and hints: “Stand directly under the wire.” “Keep your hand in the center of your body.” “Try to hit the wire on the way up.” “Don’t throw so high.” “Throw higher.”

Nothing worked. In the meantime, Heath became World Champion. In order to comprehend his victory, I continued to miss and miss and miss. My many attempts and many misses bordered on the miraculous—the absurdly miraculous. It was astonishing how many times in a row I failed. Aaron said, “I won’t be able to sleep tonight until you do this.” Aaron had become the adult, I the child. “Concentrate, Dad,” he said. “You can do this. Go slower. Think about it. Concentrate.” The wire was only six or seven feet above my head, but my story remained the same: miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, and miss. I cursed the rock under my breath; it was shaped like a peanut. Darn the peanut, I thought to myself. It was raining too hard. It was getting too dark. I was too tired. I was dehydrated. Satan hated me.

Finally, it happened. Quite by accident (I assure you), the rock “ticked” the wire on the way down. I ran across the lawn with my fists in the air, yelling like Tarzan. I felt like I’d just won an Olympic gold medal.

Aaron played the national anthem for me, and I wept.

I do love summer, at times.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

TILTING TOWARD THE SUN

2006-06-20T14:05:00.000-07:00

Someone asked me how frequently I’ll be blogging. The answer is: When I move to Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America during early, mid, and late June, when the sun—bobbing up only occasionally over the Antarctic horizon—is rarer than a llama sirloin on a blue Patagonian fire, then I suppose the blogs at this time of year will come more bloggingly, and the words more frequently.

You already know how hard it is for me to write under the duress of sunshine. Yes, I know I’m a contradiction. I admitted as much on ZenderTalk a few weeks back. I like what the sun does for the thermometer, and I like how the planet leans harder toward the mother star now and makes me not need a coat. But this daylight business has got to go.

If only something could be done about the wattage.

But look at me this morning. I am in fine fettle. It is just past five and I have beat the sun out of bed for the first time in three weeks. The result? I have amassed, already, 200 words, including a new one: “bloggingly.” In addition, I have paired the words “llama” and “sirloin” in the same sentence for the first time ever. I have striven for this so many times over the years, only to suffer near misses. There was always something wrong with either “llama” or “sirloin,” or both. I had no idea, settling in here twenty minutes ago, that this would be the day of the breakthrough. And people say writing is boring!

I hope that, by this time, everyone has been able to catch up to the goings-on in Zenderville. I would like to thank Heather Dannewitz of Arizona for naming this blog. Heather is a regular to my website and one day e-mailed me with a link to her own blog. Believe it or not, I had never even seen a blog before. I saw photos from Heather’s wedding, and some Arizona sunrises, and I read some of Heather’s upbeat prose. I thought to myself, Hey, Martin. Blogs are pretty cool. Don’t you wish everyone who visited your website and read your books had blogs and sent you links to them? Then you could put faces to names and the people would become more real to you. Then when you wrote new books or did new ZenderTalks, you could picture the people and know a little bit about them. You could see who they married and what their dogs look like. Why write or talk to a faceless audience when you can write and talk to Bill With The Mustache, Wanda With The Heart Condition, Alan Of Exxon-Mobil, and Sue In Jail? Everyone has a life—everyone.

The thought occurred to me then: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

I want to be known. I fear becoming a non-entity behind a teaching. “Teaching” is a cold word. Human beings, on the other hand, are warm. Human beings teach; human beings learn; human beings touch. We do not learn in order to become smart; we learn in order to become better at living. The teachings given by God to humanity are not lifeless, and neither am I. And neither are you. The Words of God are for humans, not craniums. The inspired Words should make us wake up differently; they should make us smell the roses and the coffee knowing more intimately about roses and coffee; they should make us look at one another more closely in the eye and say, I know you. We are going through this together.

I was going to call my offering “ZenderBlog,” but Heather told me as gently as she could that the title sucked. She suggested “Zenderville,” and I instantly zoned it residentially.

I am building this town to be inhabited.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

GOLD IN THE CAVE WALL

2006-05-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

The financial situation is so freaky here now that there is no situation. When you can’t even locate a situation, you know you’re in an interesting place.

God loves interesting places. He loves trouble. He makes it. Then He fits it so as to dunk me into it. Then He 1) waits, 2) grimaces, 3) checks His watch, and 4) gets me out of it. It’s a rhythm; a pattern: God loves, makes, fits, dunks, waits, grimaces, checks, removes. Just like planting a wheat field, baking a cake, or beating a person with a stick. Thus, God demonstrates His power. The awful cycle weakens me in body yet strengthens me in faith. That's one of its purposes. You are already aware of my world-record faith.

I may be an idiot. I have analyzed this from all angles. As soon as I think I may be an idiot, something tells me I’m a genius. Listening to the latter voice is idiotic, however, so I am back to square one. The best way to stop the mental mayhem is to consult the current balance of one’s checkbook and 1) read, 2) weep, 3) rejoice.

This is one of the few times when we’ve really had to watch what food we buy. It's an up-and-down business, folks. Two days ago, we couldn’t buy any—food, that is. I know this situation will eventually change, but I'm in "dunk" mode now, so I'm going to revel in whatever lessons it has to teach. To one of the few people on the planet dispensing the true gospel, this is a chunk of gold in the cave wall. It’s neato to suffer for the sake of Christ. I hope my kids understand it fully someday. Most of what they think nowadays is, why don’t we have this in the refrigerator and that in the cupboard?, and so on and so forth. I’m not sure they’re now grasping the God Principle, which is that not having money for a particular length of time in this present eon may be a sign of God’s favor, especially if the pinched individual dispenses, for a living, the true gospel.

Jesus did not have much money growing up, and especially not during His public ministry. Judas Iscariot kept the books, if that tells you anything. Jesus didn’t even have a home. Not even a house. He probably strung a hammock between olive trees on the Mount of Olives. He swayed in the breeze off the Sea of Galilee. He got up early before everyone else and went to the mountains to pray. These were the best times for Christ during those years of public ministry. He and the disciples made campfires at night and knocked back draughts of herbal coffee. Imagine the Bible studies going down at that time, if you can. Money didn’t matter. What joy. (I may be there.)

There is something exciting about traveling so lightly through this life, with nothing but a copy of the scriptures, a body, a hammock, herbal coffee, and a well of faith gushing up through the bedrock of trial.

Over these last thirteen years since trading a well-paying job at the Postal Service for suffering-filled vats of evangelistic evil, I have abounded and been abased in the legal tender department. Some months, I cannot even tender things legally. Other months, Melody and I are off to Red Lobster. Whenever God sees fit to abase, it no longer scares me. I used to worry, but I have not done that in years. God has trained me to relax in the midst of peril. Relaxation is my normal reaction to peril now. Friends don’t get it. They tell Melody, “I don’t know how you do it.” This is a backhanded slam at me. I take it and smile. I choose not to make dolls of the people and push pins into them. That would be immature. What these “friends” are really telling my wife is, “I don’t know how you live with that man.” Some have put it this bluntly. Other bolder ones have inserted colorful adjectives before the noun “man.”

Yet these people could not muster faith enough to salt a Wheat Thin. Do I lord it over them? No. Do I mock them for not having faith? No. Do I brag about the absurd amount of faith I have? No. How can I brag about something given me by God? So I just take it. I simply read my newspaper on the wire God strings for my family and me across the mouth of the great cataract.

This does not mean I do not cry. It is possible to be humiliated and free of worry simultaneously. I do it all the time. Then I think of Christ on the cross and realize how far I have to go. It comforts me to realize that God would not ever take another human being that far. It is unnecessary now. Our sufferings now are so small compared to the sufferings of Christ. God has taught me to be rejoicing in my sufferings, inasmuch as I am “filling up in my flesh, in His stead, the deficiencies of the afflictions of Christ” (Colossians 1:24). How Christ could have come away with any deficiencies of afflictions is beyond me. But He did, and others and I are catching up to them.

Well, on second thought, Jesus never had to explain to His kids why something as inexpensive as a box of generic pancake mix could suddenly not be located in the bottom cupboard.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

JED CLAMPITT OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER

2006-05-16T08:10:00.000-07:00

They call me Doctor Faith. I am the Doctor of Faith.

I have no money today, and it's interesting. People think I’m rich just because I write books. That’s a nice theory until your employer is God, Who controls all monetary sense and nonsense. Sometimes I have money, sometimes I don't. God has plunged me into an erratic line of work. Some days God sits me on His lap and pets my head. Other days I feel like an anvil, and God is the nose of the hammer. I hope that these two weeks, or however long it has been, will dispel forever the ignorant notion that just because I realize God is behind evil and will eventually bring good of it does not mean I greet it with a conical hat. If I told you what I said to God this morning it would shake your faith, so I will refrain. I would hate to have anyone stumbling over me. I can say and do and live without stumbling, but that is only because I have severe amounts of faith. Severe amounts. I am overloaded in the faith department.

If this were the day when faith moved mountains, I would be playing chess with the Himalayas. But this is not that day. This is the day when faith can only barely be bartered for peace with not being at peace. I have boxcars of faith, and it is the only reason I get away with what I say and think and dream and hope and tug and tunge and drag o’er the hearth toward the cave where He lay for three days before rising. I’m not even bragging. But honestly, this is the longest three days of the last two weeks of my life, and “tunge” isn’t even a word. This ought to give you a clue as to my faith. It is as advertised.

When I speak of my faith, I do not boast as if I have originated it. As Paul says, what do you have that you have not obtained? I have not originated, but obtained. And I obtain and obtain and obtain. I am telling you, when the first boxcar of faith passes the chambers of my inner being, it is no big cause for worry, because there’s another boxcar behind it, and another one behind that, and another one behind that. I have more faith than sixteen boxcars have coal briquettes. In fact, I need rid of some. Were I able to give some away, I would. I would render unto each of you a boxcar’s worth—and have plenty left over. Left over? I speak an outrage, for I obtain a trainload’s worth of faith every hour, even while testing the limits of all things Godward and making up words like “tunge.”

This, too, shall pass. I know this comes to pass. It all comes to pass. Nothing comes to stay in this eon, but to pass. Thus the saying: “It comes to pass.” Great saying; one of the best ever; one of the better ones. The rain and the clouds and the death come to pass. The fear of losing all my loved-ones comes to pass, and even the losing of them would also come to pass. See? What did I tell you about my faith? It is completely god-awful. It is a burden to be given so much. I have no idea why I am the world record holder in this department. I am not even glad of it. It only is. I can only bear it. I cannot help for a moment my singular possession. I cannot change it. It does not even show most of the time, this faith. If it did, I would be world-famous: Fifi the Celestial Poodle Leaping Through a Hoop of Flaming Planets. If I could barter faith for money, I would be Jed Clampett of the New World Order.

I wish I could dispense it. Would that I could. I would not charge a nickel for it, not even a penny. It would not be like my books, which come hard. Having so much faith is like having too much iron in the blood: you get heavy and bloated and your veins turn hard from constantly plying the parameters of not seeing anything. I would hook up a fire hose to my head or my heart or to whatever spiritual ventricle supplies faith, and I would heave open the valve and souse you with a flagon’s worth every minute. The tap could run all day and leave me none the worse because, in the interim, I will have been reloaded with two more times again the dispersal, immeasurable in human flagons.

I do not even work at it. Work? I blaspheme. I do not even play. In fact, the less I work the more I get, and the more I play the less I don’t get. I say again: Would that these were the days of moving mountains. But power these days is hardly manifested as men (or women) would manifest it. Men and women looked for power in the time of Christ only to see a man on a cross trying to get comfortable in His spikes and groaning unutterable utterances to Himself. They look for power nowadays and all they see are mountains sitting where they’ve been since the disruption of the world. The mountains won’t move a whit, not even to save an oxygen-deprived yak on the South Col of Everest. But in the coming kingdom, anyone with a tenth of the faith God has given me will send comets out of orbit with a random thought while gathering summer figs in the south of Lebanon. The rings of Saturn? Gone before breakfast.

There is a time for everything under the sun except personal glory. If sun is what we have out there and it is advertised with such coronal exuberance, then it should disrupt more of our cellular communication. And yet it does not. I do not doubt for a moment that I am a target of the Adversary. Everything on this dirty planet now is like a chisel that chips iron off the horseshoe of surviving another ping of God’s weeping little hammer. (I apologize for that sentence; it was uncalled for. It is just a longwinded, downgraded term for the Adversary.) And that’s without the fire, even. Add the fire, and it makes you want to take megavitamins. Or eat carrots. (Not that any of this would help, but then that’s where faith comes in. When carrots make your eyesight worse, that’s where faith comes in. If rabbits see so well, why do they run pell-mell into oncoming cars? Trucks? Campers? Where are the rabbits' heads? Why, I know: their heads are detached from their bodies! And this: When you pull on your undershirt and get the tag in front after trying so hard to get it in back, where it belongs, don’t you think that, too, is of faith? And also when you’re out of jelly? And milk? And bread? And apples? And patience? [Do you think patience is of faith? Recant of it, miscreant; impatience is of faith.]

It could perhaps be that God is gearing up for the Super Bowl of Revelation. The glory knob I spoke of on an earlier page occupies all-time world record lows, lying (or laying—who the heck knows or cares) in the lowlands of that famous dial. Not even pancakes can cure it. Not even pancakes packed with syrupy fruit can resurrect this knob from its “death bed.” Not even new brain chemicals, real or artificial, can make the glory knob rise from its slab. (Same with Christ; God roused Christ.) What about local honey? Forget it. Bees don’t live long enough to regurgitate that much glory. I doubt that a local honey would cure it, either. Mark this: Fun in this eon causes misery. Study it. Fun Houses—with all their wacky mirrors and slanted floors—make you sick. (What a paradox. But don’t look at me; I didn’t invent it.) The only peace available in this eon is to be at peace with not being at peace—that is the only cure for this present eon. In France, it would be known as “le curé miraculiare” and you would pay a million francs for it. Hear what I say. Appreciate what I have just dispensed to you, nearly by accident. It is as I told you. I have merely blown the foam off the top of my flagon, and that with no more cost to me than an exasperative exhalation. I dispense to you faith in this way, without cost; I blow it nearly inadvertently in your direction. Just like that, faith in your face. Now—can you imagine my burden?

You used to say live and let live. But if this ever-changing world in which we live in makes you give in a cry, well, then live and let die.

You can always resurrect in the coming eon.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

F15718

2006-05-10T07:40:00.000-07:00

You will never guess what happened to me yesterday afternoon. Given a hundred years you would still speculate wide of it, short of it, everywhere but on it. Were you to eat three helpings of salmon and chase it with broccoli and green tea, the goings-on of moi on the afternoon of yesterday would ne’er come nigh your tent.

I fell asleep on my walk.

Well, not exactly on my walk, but during it. You see, I usually sit down for two and a half minutes at the seven mile mark of my daily round. This brief respite makes the final mile back to my office less of a strain. The two and a half minute sit is long enough to leave me refreshed and ready to go stale again.

I have a favorite telephone pole (F15718) that I think fondly of and lean back against as I bring my knees to my chin to enjoy the sensation of not walking. The pole is on an agreeable, grassy little hump. The thing yesterday afternoon was that the weather came fair and the winds spindly, so I closed my eyes. Next thing I knew, two cars passed the pole simultaneously from opposite directions, creating enough of a whoosh to startle me into consciousness. It was then that I realized I’d been asleep.

I don’t wear a watch, so I looked at the sky and unsheathed my sextant to make sure I hadn’t accidentally slept for, say, five hours. It was not like me to fall asleep at all in the middle of the day (except for lately), but I thought I’d check the sky anyway. I didn’t want to have missed supper. The sky looked just the same; the sun was where it was supposed to be. That relieved me at first, but then introduced a troubling thought: was it possible that I had slept for 24 hours? What if I had just spent the night with my back against F15718?

Well, ha-ha, of course I knew that was impossible because I didn’t remember brushing my teeth. Besides, I looked down at myself and noticed that all my clothes were still on. Plus, Melody had not kissed me. Plus, I had not said goodnight to the kids. I was relieved for all of this, to say the least.

I once fell asleep while riding a bicycle. So momentous was the occasion that I remember the year: 1991. And the season: winter. I had set for myself the goal of riding my bicycle the 23 mile round trip to my post office job on as many days as possible between October of 1991 and March of 1992. In other words, through the winter. Any idiot could do it through the summer, I thought. At least I think I thought.

The problem (one of the many problems) was that my job necessitated my presence at 5:30 a.m., and the post office lay 11.4 miles to the west. This necessitated my rising at 3:20, eating as much food as possible, and leaving the house at twenty past four. I remember my breakfast in those days: one large bowl of Malt-O-Meal, two huge blobs of grape jelly supported by two pieces of toast, a Slimfast breakfast shake, orange juice and a cup of coffee. Melody (such a good wife then, and always) would get up with me, help me burp, and send me down the road with a cheery, “You’re nuts.”

For some reason, I loved it. I loved the dark and the cold. I loved that no one else was around. I trumped the world in this way. I blinded the dark and the cold with science. I blinded it with a high-tech lamp (NightSun) clamped to my handlebars, a windshield (not kidding, manufactured by the Zzipper Fairing Company), electronic foot warmers (Hotronic), down mittens that resembled hockey goalie gloves, a black Lycra face covering, and ski goggles (Scott). I looked like a citizen of Pluto. I pedaled like a citizen of Pluto, just to make heat. No sun in my universe shone or even suggested the phenomenon. I was usually so awake it was ridiculous. But on one particular morning, I wasn’t.

I was pedaling up a hill one morning (up a hill, for God’s sake) with the snow flying and my nose running and my legs pumping as usual, and it just happened. Nitey-nite. Next thing I knew, I was in the ditch; didn’t remember going there; never would have steered there purposely; never favored snowy sidegrass as a premier route choice. My adrenal glands squirted their protective juices and I remained upright and heaved myself back to the pavement. I was awake for sure now. I related my adventure to my work crew while missorting mail. I was legend already, but this cemented it. Another time I almost hit a deer, and this was commemorated with a plaque next to the postal coffee pot.

Yesterday was weird. This whole two or three weeks has been weird. I can never sleep during the day. I sometimes try, but hardly ever can. I have trouble shutting down my mind. I never tell you any of this. You don’t know the price I pay for being me. You don’t know what my brain does to me. It hardly ever considers my feelings. It lives a Bohemian lifestyle that I, myself, could not possibly bear. It tortures me, though I have never been anything but kind to it. Perhaps you do not know what it is like to always be at work. If you do, forgive my presumption. Writers never clock out. A writer is at work even when he or she is looking out a window, or leaning against a pole, or dumping the sandy residue of cat waste. There is no stopping the onslaught of information and the brain’s innate need to record it—my brain, anyway. But I got back from my walk yesterday, worked some more (yes, I do work; I swear I do; I think and read and write and talk into my microphone while staring at you through my wall [ZenderTalk], and my mind never gives me a break, but these are not the lowlights of my day; I relate the lowlights for the thrill of exposure and the potting of my plant in the universal peat; everyone works, but not everyone accidentally sleeps against a telephone pole or flushes out a deer in the middle of the night with the high beam of a NightSun bicycle light, so that’s why I relate these. I also saw a dead dog yesterday on Route 9, a little dog I greatly admired; he walked with a larger, older dog; they barked at me halfheartedly but never bothered me because they were too busy on the farm; they were the Bobsie Twins, Laurel and Hardy, I loved them; the little one was so sweet walking behind and trying to keep up with Old Bess, or Old Roy, or whatever the older one’s name might be, but there was this little one alongside him always, or sleeping next to him, or looking up at him, his big buddy, but now here on the side of the road away from me and away from his older friend in swipes of blood—unfair blood—I had to hope it was not him, but his little head was too brown and the little body was too white and blotched in too soft brown for it not to be him, so I choked back tears and looked ahead to something and walked on faster and breathed in the sunshine, because you know what death does to me and how much I love animals and how rarely the sun shines here; I knew that the owner of the farmhouse would come and get him because the owner has a young boy [I hope the lad is sensitive, but not overly so like I am]; I could not go get the dog myself or anything like that; I just could not do it; I wonder now if the older dog realizes it yet; I could only turn away from what used to be my friend and walk forward pretending not to see him, pretending that life goes on, pretending that the eon has already ended), and then I laid down (or lay or lie, I never know which; I always have to look it up; I never learn; I never want to learn because the rules are so ridiculous) on my sofa when I got back and took my pants off and you’ll never guess what happened next. You would never guess how I found relief then. In a million years you will have ventured and ventured and reckoned your head off reeling off a million guesses without ever nearing the truth.

I took a nap.

I was so happy when my mom called later yesterday to tell me that the pollen count has been astronomically high due to the non-severity of this past winter. Wow. So that’s been my stupid problem. So at least now I know that I’m not dying. Ah. It’s life that’s killing me.

All I need then, is a large jar of local honey and a big spoon. Forget the dumb bees from Argentina. California bees do me no practical good. It’s the local bees that go out and gather all the specific pollens (the local stuff that is killing my mom and me) that torment local sufferers. And they carry it on their little bee feet to whatever hive they call home. Then they digest the pollens with their inner syrups, regurgitate it as a sort of vaccinative elixir (called “honey”), surrender it to the bee man, witness the man’s wife—through the translucent hive walls—glean their nectar through plastic nipples in jars shaped like bears—or, better, in fat glass jars dubbed “Mason”—for the innoculative rescue of sufferers like me and she who bore me.

All this will happen, God willing, tomorrow, if I can scrape up seven dollars left over from the price of gasoline.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

THE FLIGHT OF THE DOOPSIE

2006-05-09T07:31:00.000-07:00

If death is such a bad thing, then why did Jesus—in the case of Lazarus—compare it to sleep, and why does it feel so good to turn out the lights at night and feel the soft covers come up over one’s naked body, and feel the Reaper snuggling up against one’s chin?

It is 9:30 a.m. and I have just eaten my third 3 Musketeers bar. That’s a total of nine musketeers in less than five minutes. Death is nigh my tent, but I am pleased of it. My fingertips are gay in the archaic sense because they are shaking like paint mixers. I could eat three more 3 Musketeer bars—but halt. While nine musketeers may be company, eighteen would be a crowd, a nougat-filled crowd. I have possibly just now entered musketeer heaven (as I write) because I am feeling quite good about m-m-myself. (M-m-my brain is tricking me. Sombody, p-p-please help me.) My bloodstream is licking its chops. This good feeling will go away in about ten minutes, and I will feel like shit. Is it a good trade-off? You bet it is.

I did my eight-mile walk yesterday. The weather was favorable and I was not eaten by a dog. I just sort of walked. I didn’t do anything else, really. I did sip my fruit punch Gatorade through my blue bite tube. I may have had one or two thoughts. No, wait. I just remembered that I was on Base Line Road heading due east when a high-flying bird took a mid-air doopsie. I saw the blob of white doopsie emerge and I visually followed it all the way to the ground. I have for years seen the results of avian digestion, but never the process. The sky was so blue and the field was so green and the doopsie was so white that my eyes got so big. It took the doopsie nearly four seconds to hit the ground.

This doopsie reminded me of the time I saw a space shuttle launch and watched the two white solid rocket boosters jettison just short of space. The boosters were just tiny white dots away up there near space and I had to squint and shield my eyes from the Melbourne, Florida sun to even barely scratch out the pencil-shaped side rockets, which to me looked like tooth-shaped dots. (Imagine being where the boosters were. Imagine being close enough to them to rub a flat palm against their great sides as they whirled and twirled and flipped end over end through the air over the ocean before their chutes popped. [What violence!] Imagine the sound of the air whipping around the boosters and the sun reflecting in the leftover heat of the main shuttle engine—the big red thing. Imagine the size of the boosters and how cool and smooth the shiny ocean-side of the boosters would be to the caress of the open palm, and how far away I looked to those boosters, standing, as I was, in a motel parking lot shielding my eyes from the same sun glinting them.)

Well, it was the same thing with the doopsie.

Birds flew automatically for thousands of years before humans learned to “imitate” them with killer engines and landing gear the size of semi trucks. Men stared at birds out their windows after breakfast and figured that if a being that small with a brain the size of an avocado pit could fly, then so could they. Why, with the proper amount of feathers and a hearty strap or two, they could fly as well as any purple-bellied finch. So the men built wings loaded with feathers and straps loaded with little sizing holes. The men strapped the wings to the tops of their arms and cinched, each, the others’ buckles. Thus the men proceeded to make fools of themselves before their womenfolk and the more discerning neighbors.

All women back then pooh-poohed air travel. For one thing, the women would not fain soil their dresses. For another thing, the women had to clean up from making breakfast for the men. For another thing, the women kept birds as pets and the birds filled them in. Even the birds were smarter than the men, but the women were for sure many IQ points ahead of their penis-wearing counterparts. For another thing, the women foresaw overcrowded coach seating and twelve-hour flights to Sydney. Said one to another over a sink full of earthen pots: “Let us simply invent the minivan.”

I had to live forty-six years before God allowed me a vision of freefalling bird poop. For some reason, I have been mysteriously repeating to myself this week: “Complete life’s work, then die. Complete life’s work, then die.”

Another domino falls, I fain concede, with yesterday’s flight of the doopsie.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

ANTLERS ON A FRICKIN’ MOOSE

2006-05-08T07:23:00.000-07:00

I was tired all weekend without knowing why. Yesterday was the first Sunday since January that I stayed home from a long walk. I could not imagine myself walking down the road yesterday. Falling down it, yes; passing out on it, yes; fainting, yes; sleeping in the ditch, yes; getting run over by a truck, yes; walking, no.

I woke up sneezing and sniffing again. In an exasperative fit, I took a dose of Nyquil. That will teach it! I thought. But it taught me. Thirty minutes later, I was back in bed for a two-hour nap.

The drug wore off at 1:30, so it was time to proofread the digital text proof of my latest paperback, The Really Bad Thing About Free Will. This book is now at the printers and they are poised to print, but they are awaiting my sovereign approval. So I sat on the sofa to read my own book. I hoped to like it. I hoped to not find any typos in it. But better to find them now than later.

An hour later, I finished. I think this is a fine book. I wonder how I wrote it. There is a mistake space, looks like, between numbers in a verse reference, but who cares? So what? One unnecessary space—I can live with the void. I won’t send in a new disc just for that. Let the space be. Let it be a space. All I want to do is sign off on the project and be done with the gaggle of technoburdens. I want to breathe the unspoiled air of a virgin project. Thus, I make friends with the space. I see it as a destined space, and a permanent part of the book. So God bless the space, and the probably one or two other typos I missed.

I wish I was a prima donna writer who just wrote a book and then gave it to a clean-up crew. I want the same thing for my life. I wish I was a prima donna liver of life. I want to create and run, create and run. I don’t want to be God and sit by all the fires I’ve lit. I want to light the fire and run to the next tinderbox. I want to lay cloudbanks and scurry to another blue sky. Let angels watch the paints on my rainbows dry. But I’m a small “g” god; I wear too many hats; there are too many lenses on my retina: introspection, exospection, omnispection. I am writer, editor, proofer, sulker; husband, father, son, brother; citizen, taxpayer; person who refuses to litter; person wishing to live free of regret; person who strains to make a bed in accord with his wife’s standard of bedmaking.

On a day like yesterday, I could not imagine being the author of so wonderful a book as The Really Bad Thing About Free Will. I got caught up in it—a good sign. I read it as a reader, and it affected me. Whoever wrote this thing, good for him. He has done a service to mankind. Now he can drive to the grocery story, sit in the parking lot, listen to classic rock, and eat three chocolate bars while staring at a dilapidated storefront because he feels like a piece of stale bologna in a hot jar this day. He should be out walking, but instead he is sitting in this car getting fat, so he listens to Joe Walsh and eats a Hershey bar, a Kit Kat, and a Three Musketeers bar, in that order. He should stop the carnage, but chocolate coats his world and Joe Walsh owns a vehicle that does one-eighty-five, but he lost his license and now he can’t drive.

You will not believe what happened when I got home from this eating/listening/staring frenzy. In thirty years you could not guess it, so I will tell you. Are you ready for it? I doubt you are. Go away until you’re ready. Go away, then come back better prepared.

All right, then. When I got home, I took a three-hour nap.

I know some ninety-two year olds who have more energy than me. I think my days of getting up at 2:30 a.m. have taken their toll. Perhaps I’m now paying the toll for waking against my will for a week straight at an hour when not even owl heads rotate. I’m driving up now to the glass booth and they’re punching my sleep card. I’m handing all my change to the smiling person on the other side of the window, and I’m falling asleep at the window while the world honks its collective horn at me.

I drank a two-liter bottle of Gatorade yesterday with nothing to show for it. I ate whatever I wanted all day with nothing to show for it. (“Nothing to show for it” means, “no means of burning the calories.”) The only worthwhile thing I did was proofread the new book. For that, I burned a calorie a minute. Whoever wrote that book, good for him. He did a good thing. He capitalized on the wave of inspiration when it came. A wave of life crashed his way and he balanced atop the crest and rode it for all it was worth.

I went to bed at nine o’clock and fell right to sleep. Next thing I knew, it was five thirty this morning. The sun is shining today, so far. I must stay off chocolate, for a while. I’ve got to walk my eight miles today, no matter what. I faxed my approval to the printing company at 10:00 and I pray now that I’m finished with The Really Bad Thing. I must don a more agreeable hat.

Taking into consideration my professional and personal life, I have a hat rack that resembles the antlers on a frickin’ moose.

Perhaps it’s this rack that explains so much of me these days.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

HOW TO WRITE/HOW TO LIVE

2006-05-05T07:19:00.000-07:00

Morning is the best time to write because the world isn’t up yet. I’m not just talking about a.m. in general, but about 2:30 and 3 and 3:30 and 4 and 4:30 and 5, and even 5:30. Things get shot when the postal workers come to work beneath my office at 6, for then I hear the rumblings of practical work. This, along with the rising sun, ruins everything for me.

I woke up at 2:30 this morning—again. You cannot believe how tired I am by 5 p.m.

It is only good for a man to be alone when he is writing. How can writers collaborate? In the world of words there is room for only one mind. Charge it with a little caffeine and see what happens. Turn on an electric fan so that the white noise of the fan merges with the white noise of the brain, and see what happens. I cannot imagine being unable to track down a thought stream at 3 a.m. with a cup of coffee and a fan running. At noon, it’s another story.

Writer’s block is simply performance anxiety. It is worrying how you sound and how you will be received; whether you’re good; whether your wife will like it; how many people you will offend; whether or not you’ll sound smart; can you compete with Henry Miller?

Some people live their whole lives chained to performance anxiety. You know them by the hospitals they are in; they get ulcers and die early. They never do anything original. They only do what they think other people want them to do. And if they think they can’t do something better than everybody else, they don’t do anything. (This is too common. People forget that they are unique. It is important to learn to embrace unique imperfection. The alternative is a long and miserable life. The world’s great people boldly publish their self-perceived failings.)

There are two modes in which one writes, and these are 1) creation mode, and 2) editing mode. (I think many of these lessons will work for life. As we go, apply these things to your living.) A writer is both creator and editor. The editor must sit on the bench while the writer writes—and vice-versa—and this is the secret to breaking through writer’s block (and to living life).

A writer in creation mode cannot afford to fret over how the words come out, just that they come. Sitting for minutes staring at a wall in search of the perfect word is fatal to the Muse. There will be plenty of time later for second-guessing. In creation mode, forget the perfect word. The important thing is to come close.

Turn off the dictionary and thesaurus and turn on the mind. Loose the mind from its cage. (If you can do this after the sun comes up, more power to you.) The mind will rub its eyes and look around, hardly believing it’s free. (How often do you let your mind out? We take our dogs for walks, but not our minds. We let our dogs pee on anything and we relish the tail wagging, but not so with our minds.) A free mind is a happy mind. It is a tail-wagging mind. So many filters in life stop up the mind. The key to writing honest prose (and to living an honest life) is to dispense with as many filters as possible. I understand that we must employ filters to function in society and avoid jail time, but the secret of the filters is to leave them off until editing mode. In creation mode, go with the stream of thought without filters. Jump into the stream with whatever words you know and paddle like hell after the thoughts. It helps to know how to type.

Winston Churchill painted. One day, he couldn’t start a painting. He stared at his canvas, unsure how to begin. Just then, a friend drove up, a woman, who was also a painter. She asked what the trouble was, and he told her. She said, “May I?” and he said, “By all means.” She grabbed a brush, sloshed it in some blue, and just like that started streaking the canvas with it to make sky. She hardly gave it thought. (Well, the woman pre-dated the Nike Company. Her motto was: “Just do it.”) Churchill said it was the last time a blank canvas ever intimidated him.

This is why I have a little piece of paper taped to my printer that says, “When in doubt, do it.”

Oh, and have something to say. Otherwise, you’re screwed.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

LONG COOL WOMAN AIN’T HEAVY

2006-05-04T07:14:00.000-07:00

Our great God appears in unlikely places. He has range. He kills and He makes alive. He kisses and removes the gore. He slaps you funny, then slips you away to blue skies and greenery.

Perhaps the most perfect rock and roll song ever written is “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress.” It is by the Hollies. Strange. My favorite group of all time is the Beatles. I should not say this about the Hollies. There is no comparison between The Hollies and the Beatles. I cannot properly defend what I am writing about, but neither can I ignore men gathered on two momentous days in recording history so vitally and unconsciously plugged into their own Maker that they define humankind by writing and performing such disparate perfections as “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress” and “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.”

And in the same lifetime.

This Godlike feat performed by a silliness called “The Hollies,” beats everything. I would like to know where I was on the occasions of these two recordings, and what insignificant thing I was doing when the cosmos confessed to a silliness called “The Hollies.” Where was I when the men picked up their guitars and nodded to the sound technician? What was the sun doing? Who pressed the “record” button after the count-in? What foods were in the stomachs of The Hollies when they dipped humanity’s secrets from so vast a cauldron of time as this eon? How long before the final echoes from the final notes died, and who had the wisdom to note them?

I do not know these men, or where they came from, or wither they are going, or where they went, or if they went, but were I of their number and had laid down the Beginning and the End of Humanity, I could lay down my burdens in peace—retire in perfect peace—for, as a musician, nothing would remain. What more could I accomplish when in less than five minutes I had sealed for the world the breadth of the cadence of man?

The Lord speaks in mysterious ways.

On two separate and miraculous occasions, The Hollies became as the Deity.

The Deity can speak through music, and He spoke through The Hollies in a recording studio on two separate, disparate and miraculous occasions. It is a record of the reach of man in this eon.

The Hollies. I know nothing of them except for the last will (“Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress”) and testament (“He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”) sealed into grooves, pressed into plastic by technicians unaware of what they handled, and delivered every day, like the sunrise, on Oldies stations.

Oldies stations, for God’s sake.

What an innocuous noun (“Oldies stations”), and what an innocuous name for a group (“The Hollies”) that soundtracked, in less than five combined minutes, the Alpha and Omega of our eonian experience.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

MELODY RETURNS FROM NASHVILLE

2006-05-01T07:10:00.000-07:00

Melody returned from Nashville today, so God is merciful to me. She and Jamie broke three hours for the half-marathon, finishing in 2:50. I finished nothing in 2:50. I did not even finish the laundry in 2:50. I did not complete raising the children in 2:50. I can’t even breathe well in my home because of the dirt caused by me not cleaning it. I think our dog had a stroke yesterday. It rained for Melody between Nashville and Columbus. It did not rain here. I prepared nothing for anybody while I was here. I only watched the extras on the 10th anniversary CD edition of Sling Blade. Besides that, I slept and walked.

I walked 23 miles today. I sneezed and hacked the whole way. I slept six hours last night. I willed myself down the dark road this morning and knew that Melody was still in bed in the too-expensive hotel room. Nashville is the Country-Western music capital of the world. My home is the Depression capital of the world. Crescent Road is the Dark-Before-Dawn capital of the world, and the well in Fitchville is the capital of When to Stop and Look Down an Embankment into a River Where Naked Indians Used to Mate and Shoot Wolves.

Nothing tastes worse in the pre-dawn dark than a bread sandwich coated in peanut butter, honey and wheat germ. Maybe I am allergic to honey. I could not possibly be allergic to wheat germ. Too many raisins stir too many farts from too many people, including the writer of the current paragraph. It is no excuse to stop growing raisins, but a damn fine excuse to stop eating them.

My kids and I did nothing for each other; Jefferson mowed the grass and emptied the trash baskets for his mother. We all existed in a weekend void of vacancy except for ourselves. I did not know where the other people were and they did not know the location of me. This is somewhat metaphoric because I am a responsible person. I told Jefferson that Melody is the hard drive and I am the floppy drive. Jefferson ignored the computer analogy and said that Melody was the engine and I was the windshield wipers.

I don’t even want to know.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

I MISS MELODY

2006-04-30T07:07:00.000-07:00

Without my wife, I would fade. I would still do what I do, but it would be a fading do. I miss her. For all our differences, her presence somehow preserves me. It makes me a better man than I would be without it. I have wondered if I would sacrifice my kidney for Melody. My first reaction is that I would want two kidneys. There are lots of poisons in my body that I need rid of. I value ureters and all tubes leading to my bladder. Scan the scum off my blood, is what I say to my body in prayers at night. But how could I not give a kidney to preserve my beloved? How could I not sacrifice an organ for the organ that is my completion? Nothing is the matter with Melody’s kidneys. I speak out of fear. No one gets dialysis here. My selfishness only goes so far. I would give Melody my heart. I am tired of living anyway. I am tired of all the things I do in Melody’s absence. I am tired of the way my heart quivers like a frog when Melody is not here. Yet I would request anesthetic. Yet they would never bring me out, and neither would I would them to.

Melody could then do a half-marathon maybe five minutes faster.

I would never give her my thoughts; I love her too much.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

MELODY GOES TO NASHVILLE ALONE

2006-04-28T07:01:00.000-07:00

Melody left for Nashville this morning. I took a sunny picture of her and kissed her good-bye. I set her up with a CD player adapter for the car, and all the old ZenderTalks from 2004. She has her shoes and her money and a cell phone and books about happy women and a new feminine hair ribbon that she tied back parts of her hair with. Melody looks good in the sun and in the moon.

I waved to her as she drove away. I had made her coffee, and she took that with her. I wrote her a card that she won’t see until she unloads a book from the car in Nashville. Larry and Jamie will look after her.

Melody likes to drive by herself. A car is a private place for a person to think in. A person in a car can easily imagine that he or she controls his or her own destiny; look at all the controls that are in the car. Cars are relative paradises of relative control, what with all the knobs, the switches and the tiny levers. Airline pilots must feel like gods. It is control we lack, so it is control we look for, even if it is only a treble adjustment or a flap switch. Turn down the treble and retract the flaps; see what little it takes for a Deity-like feeling. But see, as well, how hard it is to manufacture it: plastic factories (or plastic factories) come, lots of heat comes, labor unions come.

I loved my wife through the window as I waved at her. I hope she comes back. I don’t want her to die. I drove past the cemetery on the way back to work and I thought, What if Melody dies? What if she gets in a car crash and dies? What if that was the last picture I ever took of her? What if, thirty years from now, I am still looking at that picture and kissing it and telling it that I love it?

The tears came, but I pushed them back. I don’t understand why I pushed them back, because I almost always let them come. I am not one to push back tears. Maybe it is because I think that Melody will have a good time. I am glad the car is sunny and that I made Melody a good cup of Folgers and poured it thoughtfully into her green, plastic mug. She will listen to ZenderTalks and music and will be happy. She will be proud of me for making the ZenderTalks. She likes that I love God. It is the most important thing to her, to have a husband and children who love and honor God. Women need men to be something in this world.

If a man hopes to attract a woman in this world, he cannot hang out on a street corner and watch them. He must do something to make a difference in the world. A woman will notice when a man lives from his gut. (It helps if the man keeps his shoes clean.) A woman always notices a man with a purpose. Women do not care for the male ass as men care for the ass of the female. Women appreciate a man with good solid rump, but women will go first for the man of purpose. If the man of purpose has a splendid ass, then so much bonus. It is all bonus. It is a bonus for which women ought to thank the Deity.

I was walking through the grocery store dressed spiffily one day when the cashier girl said, “You look like a man with a purpose.” I was so flattered. I’ve never forgotten that. It had the same effect on me as the effect on a woman would have should a man say to her: “You are so beautiful.”

I discovered Melody in 1982 through her eyes and, later—when she first came down the steps of her home—through her ass. These led to deeper chambers. I love most of the chambers. I know who Melody is now, and she knows me. This is comforting on a level that I have not named. On another level, it is disconcerting; the name of this level is “disconcerting.” Other people have named it “baggage.” The baggage level works in concert with other, more pleasing platforms. Levels and platforms: this is the mix that every married couple celebrates and endures. God has arranged it thus to build character and to warm a fire in the fireplace.

I hope my wife does not die.

Melody has told me, “If something ever happens to me, I want you to remarry. I want you to find another goddess.”

Why would I want to talk or think about that? I guess for the same reason that crazy people pre-buy grave plots. Melody is trying to leave me something in the terrible wake of her absence. Something like a legacy or a will. But I cannot think about that on top of what I think of as I drive past the cemetery this morning, ten minutes after waving good-bye to my beloved partner of twenty-four years. Tomorrow morning, my partner will walk and run 13 miles as fast as she can with her friend Jamie during what meteorologists are calling to be a thunderstorm. The drama should end in less than three hours. The thunderstorms of tomorrow will contrast with the sunshine of today to make a pattern of the eon for we who appreciate fireplaces.

I’ll probably die first anyway.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

THE MARTIN ZENDER DRILLING COMPANY

2006-04-21T06:16:00.000-07:00

In case you do not know it, today is National Drilling Day in Bosnia. This is a Bosnian holiday only. Only in Bosnia do people celebrate this day. People in Bosnia will be drilling today, you can bet that. And not only dentists, mineworkers and army sergeants, but everyone. Everyone will be drilling something, even if it is only a 52-foot well.

If this day is not marked on your calendar, then you must return your calendar to its place of purchase for a full refund, demanding that no questions be asked. Tell the vendor: “I am returning this calendar because it has failed to alert me to National Drilling Day. You see? I am now pointing to the twenty-first of April, and it is nothing but an empty white square with nothing written in it except the number ‘21.’ Does this seem right to you? Does it seem thorough enough for me? Does it seem politically correct to anyone? Shah! Do not even think of asking a question! A globally aware person such as myself must be kept abreast of the ways of other peoples and their ceaseless miseries, and not merely of the phases of the moon or when Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving.”

National Drilling Day did not become a recognized holiday until 1986, which is why I did not know about it as a third-grader at Saint Bernadette School of the Burned Martyrs in 1968. For it was then that I began The Martin Zender Drilling Company.

The Martin Zender Drilling Company consisted of me, a pencil, and a desk. I remember the day I began The Great Hole. I gently sat the sharpened point of a number two lead pencil against the surface of my wooden desk. I held it there between my two palms like a Saturn V rocket poised for the moon between two giant palms. But instead of launching it, I began rolling my “rocket” back and forth between my palms in the manner of an upright lathe. That’s how it all began.

I told my friend Brian Malinowski, who was seated next to me, “See here, Brian. See here what I’m doing. See what a genesis is here. I am beginning a hole, Brian, but not just any hole. No, but this is to be The Great Hole. Are you comprehending it? From the looks of you, I must wonder. Shake yourself from the stupor of unbelief! Comprehend the era! For in less than two months, I shall have drilled through this entire desk. And yet this is the beginning of it—right now. You are here to see it, to witness the inauguration of it. This is bigger than Lincoln’s speech at Valley Forge.”

I paused to look around me. Mrs. Ditchwald busied her silly self writing ridiculous-looking numbers on the blackboard. All the other students were either minding the numbers or dreaming of bologna sandwiches. The clock clicked another minute into my promising future while a strange gaseous residue hissed from the coils of a green-silver nozzle on the bottom coils of the heater thing by the window. I lowered my voice. “It is not an auspicious beginning, Brian, I grant you that. But it will be auspicious when you see the results two months from now.”

Each day I patiently drilled The Great Hole. I drilled and I drilled. Brian Malinowski told other students about it, and they all came by at different times to witness my progress. Some whistled in awe. Others asked to see my pencil. “You mean my drill?” I would say. Most classmates had at least some hazy notion of my genius. Others openly acknowledged it. More importantly, each and sundry admired my spunk and pluck. One girl even said to me, “Martin, I admire your spunk and pluck.”

Fortunately for me, it was at this precise juncture that I required a secretary.

“Kelly McGowan,” I said. “You are an extremely intelligent girl. And you wear pastel-colored skirts several inches above your knees. Better legs, I have never seen.”

“And you are Martin Zender,” she said. “Driller of Holes and Failer of Math.”

“Driller of The Great Hole,” I corrected. We both looked down at my speedily-rotating drill, and at the considerable sawdust accumulating faster than Kelly’s puckered, red lips could blow it away. “It’s coming along,” I said. “But things are getting complicated now.” I tried to sound grim and optimistic simultaneously. “This is week three. I’m still five weeks away from blasting through this puppy. But I’m finding it hard to drill and at the same time mentally write my next screenplay. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“No.”

“It’s a strain on me, Kelly, to push The Juggernaut of Creativity, along with this pencil. It’s all metaphoric, I fear. I fear I may be going mad. It’s getting to be too much for one man. I’m only human here.”

“What are you saying, Martin?”

“I’m saying that—Would you like to be secretary of The Zender Drilling Company?”

Kelly blushed from the tip of her auburn hair to the frill on her little white socklets. It was so gratifying to see. “I am looking for part-time work,” she said. She looked down and blushed even more. “I do appreciate what you’re doing, Martin. I believe in you.” Without warning, her head snapped up. “Do I have to take dictation?”

I put down my drill and lit a cigarette. “No. I only need you to file reports. I may need you for publicity. You’ll have regular hours and full benefits, I promise.”

“Paid maternity leave?”

“Of course. I’m covered for that.”

She looked down again. “It’s just that things happen.”

“Kelly. I know. Forget it. I already told you: paid maternity leave.”

“What about holidays?”

I put the top of a crooked index finger beneath her pretty chin and brought her head up to look at me. “Never, Kelly. Do you hear me? I promise. Not one holiday, not even St. Francis of Assisi Adopt a Sick Bird Day.”

Kelly let a smile escape her luscious lips. “Okay, Martin. I’ll do it. I want to do it. I think about you all the time. I believe in you. I believe in what you’re doing. I’ve always been fatally attracted to boys like you.” I had a good command of the bottom of her chin, so Kelly looked over at The Great Hole with her eyes only. “I think you can finish this in four weeks, if you put your mind to it. But listen. You have got to promise me that you won’t let a word of this slip to Mrs. Ditchwald.”

I let go of Kelly’s chin, rolled my own eyes, and flicked a long ash from my cigarette seventeen feet into a golden watering can, where it hissy-fitted out. “C’mon, Kelly. The success of this whole project depends on Ditchwald’s ignorance. But why would she even care about The Great Hole? Look at her.”

We both looked at Mrs. Ditchwald. She wore the long cotton dress of a math person, and flat shoes.

“She’s a pawn of the system,” I said. “And look at those ridiculously flat shoes; she could heat up the bottoms of those things and iron shirts with them. She’s an institutional schlep. All she cares about is her crazy math problems and not appearing sexy. Do you think she has a boyfriend? Do you think Janitor Fife ever gives her the look-see?”

“She’s married, for God's sake.”

“Such petty minds as hers I will never understand. Will you? Do you care how many apples Bill has left if his father gives him sixteen but then takes away three?”

“Actually, Martin, yes, I do. It is imperative that I know. I’m trying to get straight A’s in this class.”

I thought of rolling my eyes again, but decided at the last minute to control them. I could not afford to offend Kelly. I took another long drag from my cigarette and looked up at the brown underbelly of a light fixture, where I blew a large cumulonimbus of smoke. “What could a person such as Mrs. Ditchwald have to do with something as stupendous as The Great Hole?”

Kelly looked up to see what I was looking at. I suppose she thought it was a spider. Actually, there was a spider now, a small brown one, descending on a strand of web; I mentally named it Vaughn Spindlenuts. “Oh, I don’t know,” said Kelly. “Maybe she’d be mad about it because it’s her math class and you’re dissing it.”

Oh, how Kelly McGowan could work the italics function! I flicked another ash, harder this time, sixty-nine feet out the open window and into a thirty-gallon vat of holy water, where it hissed, vaporized and died. I looked down to pet my hole. I slowly stroked it. “Kelly. Your tone has changed. You know it has. Do you know how much that hurts me?”

“Martin, please…”

I needed a fat lie just then, and it came to me. “Ms. McGowan. I don’t need you, you know. I can do this by myself. I’m offering you a job, and a good one. If you don’t see this as history, then think of it as regular employment. Think of it as another entry on your resumé, if that’s what it takes for you. This is a job, and I need a secretary. Case closed.”

I had hurt her feelings. I instantly regretted my words, instantly wished I could take them back. I would get on my knees and beg Kelly if I had to.

Just then, something snored. As I located the source, inspiration struck. I gestured to our right, where Brian Malinowski made the obscene noises of an unconscious dork. A string of drool hung from his bottom lip, seeped over the round edge of his desk, and reached to the floor where it formed a lake that reflected his fat face. “Look at Brian there,” I said. “Do you think he knows how many apples Bill has left?”

“No way,” said Kelly, returning to her old self. “In fact, he told me yesterday that he thought Bill had bananas. Can you believe that?” Kelly shook her head and sighed. “He’s a fricking moron.”

I dropped my cigarette to the floor and fatally injured it with the toe of my loafer.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” I said. “And I think he might be addicted to pornography. He was with me at the beginning, but now look at him. He couldn’t stay the course. He forsook me, just like the disciples forsook Jesus. In fact, look around you, Kelly. They have all forsaken me. No one understands—not one! Only you know what I’m about.” I stared hard at Kelly’s awesome blue eyelids. “You alone are left.”

Kelly came aboard that minute, and did things ever change in my drilling speed. In four weeks, the hole was finished, just as Kelly said it would be. To this day I do not believe that I could have finished The Great Hole a week ahead of schedule were it not for the support of a woman, for the belief of a woman, for the inspiration of a woman.

Brian missed us passing through the last centimeter of desk, as did every other moron in my class. Only Kelly was there. She cried, as did I. It was a moment to remember. We held the pencil together and drilled, Kelly and I, palms pressing palms as that final eight-sixteenths of a centimeter disappeared beneath the lead of our pencil/drill.

Mrs. Ditchwald pulled me harshly from the room the next afternoon, pulled me by the tender apex of my right ear into the hall, and down to the office of Sister Dominna. It is possible that a boy jealous of my relationship with Kelly tipped off Ditchwald—but who cares how she found the hole? Sometimes a person cannot feel pain. And sometimes, if the high is high enough, a person can even smile through it.

“So many students sit in that desk throughout the day!” spat Dominna, cracking her pointy black knuckles. “And yet Ditchwald tags you.” She narrowed her eyes. “I have insight into you and that little hole of yours, Zender. May I salvo a query into the hows of your arrest?”

“I think that you already know, Herr Dominna. So say it. Say it with all your might for the benefit of all my readers through the eons of time. Say it with gusto before the commencement of my sacred punishment.”

“Gladly, Master Martin: You signed the damn thing!”

Sometimes, if the high is high enough, a person can smile through any sort of temporal discomfort.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

SLEEPING APART

2006-04-18T06:14:00.000-07:00

It has traveled through the grapevine that some near and dear ones want Mr. Zender to go to Nashville with his wife.

Some people believe that married couples should sleep together every night of their lives. I was once among this contingent. This belief is due to the supposed moral necessity of couples feeling miserable apart—even if the respective parties wouldn’t. This false moral necessity is a smokescreen for a fear of oneself and of one’s own thoughts. It is fear that one may not be happy in one’s own skin or, worse, be temporarily relieved by the absence of one’s lover.

Contrast this with the true moral necessity of fearless happiness. It is my present opinion that those incapable of solo contentment are incomplete humans. And two incomplete humans do not a single person make. Instead, they make snide remarks about one another. Or one is made impatient while the other grits the teeth; or one makes cuts while the other bears the wound. The two become one, yes, but sometimes only one check mark on the right side of a marital statistic. Each wishes the other to become what they can never be; what fun. (Don’t try it at home, kids.) Many couples keep sacrificing until nothing remains but Emerson’s hobgoblin: foolish consistency. So thank God for that ever-reliable distraction:

Grandchildren.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

PRETEND YOU’RE UNCLOVEN

2006-04-14T06:09:00.000-07:00

I don’t know if this has anything to do with the arrival of my new hammock and the netted wombness of my new personality, but Melody and I have decided that she should go to Nashville for the half marathon with Jamie and her boyfriend Larry (on the 29th of this month) by herself and leave me at home. Maybe it was my suggestion. I am getting the feeling that Melody needs time by herself. We all need that. I am very sensitive to a woman’s moods and feelings, especially when that woman vents through her God-given vents. Do not think badly of Melody. I yell and cry as well, but usually in the sanctity of my office. When I try to put my fist through my door at various times and for various reasons, it is a sanctified time. I must have quiet and the angels in attendance. I must have a somber and holy place in which to heave pocket change. It is within the confines of my priestly vestibule only that I throw potatoes against walls and clean my desk with my forearm. Remind me to tell you sometime, in detail, about how I clean my desk during times of great stress. It is a most rapid and most efficient method—involving the forearm—and I am thinking about utilizing it at all other times, due to its rapidity and efficientness.

I would not want to be a woman in this life unless I could do it while preserving my male understanding of sex. But neither would I necessarily want to line up with 23,000 other people in Nashville to be segregated into “bins” and walk 13.1 miles over a carpet of paper cups. I love my wife and I need her, just as Jamie needs Larry and Larry needs Jamie. Larry says that Jamie is “so beautiful,” and she is. Jamie is beautiful. But Melody is beautiful, too. The first thing that attracted me to Melody was her eyes, but that was only because the first picture I saw of her framed her neck and head. Had she been framed from the neck down, my eyes would surely have gravitated toward her ass.

My wife has a beautiful ass. It is better than Jamie’s, I think. Does that offend Larry? Does it offend Jamie? Does it offend my readers? Does it offend the Maker of the Female Ass?

(It will offend Melody, I'm sure. She did not approve the use of this photograph, and did not pose for the sake of this blog. I talked her into this shot a year and a half ago for inclusion in my marriage book, Shagah. I was studying the waist/hip ratios of women and the effect specific ratios have upon males. Hey. Somebody had to do it. Melody eventually nixed the photo for inclusion in the book, and so did my agent at the time, who was a woman; she was probably jealous. But I'll be darned if this photograph is going to collect dust in a box in the closet.)

No doubt Larry will say that Jamie’s ass is better than Melody’s. That’s fine. Of course he would say that. He must say it. Is it true? I don’t know. I admit that I have not analyzed Jamie’s ass. To do so would be improper. I have a feeling that it's probably terrific. I do not wish to call in an objective party. If I did, I would call my friend Jim. But he thinks that his wife has the best ass, so there you go. To each their own asses.

Or, if you wish, you can choose not to discuss it. Or to appreciate it. Or to write about it. You can go ahead and call your own ass a “hindquarters.” Or “a butt.” Call it "a tush," if you want. You can call it an Oreo, for all I care. You can call birds “women.” You can call women “birds.” You can call chipmunks “birds,” if that’s what hangs your hammock. You can eat lots of food and make your ass grow to the size of a zeppelin, if that’s what you want to do. You can refuse to exercise your God-given ass and park it instead on a couch for the remainder of your transfatty days. Or you can pretend that you don’t even have an ass; pretend that you’re uncloven back there; whatever. Pretend that God didn’t cleave you there.

Go repair a lawnmower, if that’s what empties your sweeper bag. Inject cream into Twinkies with a cream gun, if that’s what wrings your sponge. Call the cream gun “a cream gun,” if that’s what you want to do. Or call it “an orange peeler.” Or call it “a Kirby vacuum cleaner,” I don’t care. Make up whatever euphemism you want for the cream gun. Pretend it doesn’t exist, for all I care. “There are no Twinkies in the world.” Fine. Repeat that like a mantra and fall asleep to it in your own personal twilight, if that’s what forks your hay.

Work on lawnmowers for a living, for all it matters to me. Analyze the different sizes of spark plugs, or whatever. Laud the gasoline engine, for all I care. Work with grease and poop. Catch the poop of cows into a trailer and sling it into fields with automated forks. Write about the spark plugs and call them “spark plugs.” Or call them “gangplanks.” If you’re that removed from reality, why not go ahead and call cow poop, “manure.” Whatever. Whatever it takes to untangle your Slinky, go ahead and do it. Or don’t call the poop anything, if that’s what strains your beets.

Or don’t even write about it. Or don’t write about anything, if that’s what you want. Don’t record anything, for all I care. Leave everything alone, if that’s all you can take. Unhandle the untouchable, if that’s what you can’t touch. Or touch everything. Or don’t touch anything. Or record everything. Or don’t record anything. Or leave everybody to guess, if that’s your God-given bent. Or dip people into their common humanity and make them face it, if that’s what frosts your honey bun. Or become a surgeon and lay out the intestines; somebody named the duodenum, you know. Or join a religion, if that’s what cores your pear.

Do what you will under this great sun of ours because it is imperative that you do so.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

TENDER BABY IN A NEW WOMB: THE HENNESSY ARRIVES

2006-04-13T06:05:00.000-07:00

In a flurry of brownness, the UPS man came today with a package so small that it could not have been my hammock. But it was.

I held an impossibly small black bag with white letters on it and a diagram on the back, also in white, showing the proper way to lash my new pet to a tree. I held the bag in my hands and lifted it up and down and up and down, testing its weight. It tested light. I smiled and looked down on my new home. I benedicted it with my eyes. I removed it from its bag. It rewarded me with nylon and mosquito netting and a smell better than that of a new car. I cannot tie knots, however. I have not yet begun, in this life, to lash. So I went to www.hennessyhammock.com to watch a tying/teaching video by someone who used to be or still was a Boy Scout.

You can watch this amazing video for yourself under the section titled “Set-up Instructions.” It is rated “R” for language, violence, and adult situations. You can see for yourself how easy the procedure is. You can see for yourself why it would take a normal person thirty seconds to understand and perfect the procedure. You can see for yourself why it took me an hour to understand and fail to perfect anything near the procedure. Thank God for the pause button. Thank God for rewind. Thank God for the Boy Scouts. Thank God for popcorn and Good ‘N Plenty.

I took my pet to the top of the woods behind our house and lashed it between two trees. I liked it. My pet liked it. The bark of the trees liked the feel of the webbing strap and the tautness of that strap against its rugged skin. The sun and the breeze liked the new smell; they wafted it proudly about the woods and then up toward the tiny puffs of cloud.

My wife called her friend Jamie when I left the house and they began talking about me. I think my wife is proud of me. I think she is excited for my new hammock and me. I think Jamie respects me. And so I cannot understand why Melody was laughing and whispering. I cannot understand why Jamie was looking out her window with binoculars and laughing as I walked across the field toward our woods. Unable, was I, to interpret what appeared to be Jamie’s mirth.

The bottom of the hammock has a slit running halfway up its length. I poked my head through that, sat down toward the back of the hammock, pulled in my feet, and that was it. I was in. I was in the Hennessy Hammock. The entrance Velcroed itself closed behind me and every mosquito in the woods became instantly stymied. I, myself, became ensconced in nylon and netting. The trees benedicted me with their eyes, and bravely sustained my weight.

Do not ever laugh at—or artificially magnify—a tender baby in the new womb.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

TO BE A DUCK

2006-04-11T05:23:00.000-07:00

I told you some time ago that if I could be any animal, I would be a duck. I told you that someday I would tell you why.

I do not like where my eyes are. I want eyes at the sides of my head. And I want black eyes the size of small marbles. But what I want most of all is a bill.

I want an orange bill. A bill is what I want, and it must be orange. I want a bill with which to eat and preen. I would let people call my bill “a bill,” but never a beak. Never a beak, or “a hard nose,” “a preening blade,” or “a saw-toothed nibbler.”

My bill will look so fine beneath my small, duck-shaped skull. The best part about billdom is the purposeful expulsion of quacks from it. All the livelong day: expulsing purposeful quacks.

The greatest noise in the kingdom of animals is the quack. It comes from the bill of the duck, and nothing else. The word itself is worth a fortune: quack. It is spelled like it sounds and is savory. I would quack all day. The quack is rich and self-explanatory. Every answer to every question, statement, or quotable quote, would—from me—be a quack.

“How is it, really, being a duck?”

“Quack.”

“What does a woman want?”

“Quack.”

“You know your house payment is due.”

“Quack.”

“Seventy more soldiers died in Iraq.”

“Quack.”

“These are the times that try men’s souls.”

“Quack.”

“Your nostrils are in your bill, evenly distributed.”

“Quack.”

“It’s time to save the planet.”

“Quack.”

“Your bill is not a preening blade.”

“Quack.”

“How much money do you have?”

“Quack.”

“You’re kind of cute.”

“Quack.”

“From your bill are expulsed many and purposeful quacks.”

“Quack-quack.”

“Are you warm and dry?”

“Quack.”

“This pond is drying up.”

“Quack.”

“Quel heur est'il?”

“Quack.”

“Simplify.”

“Quack-quack.”

“I know people at the pellet company.”

“Quack.”

“The sun will blow up in a million and sixty years.”

“Quack-quack.”

I would quack (and quack) all the livelong day.

As I duck, I could do it all. I could and I would do: it all. I would swim and fly and walk. When I wanted to walk, I would walk out of the pond and walk. When I wanted to swim, I would walk into the pond and swim. When I wanted to fly, I would fly out of the pond and fly. Or I would walk out of the pond and fly. Or I would fly out of the pond and walk. Or I would swim out of the pond and walk and fly.

The best part about flying would be landing in the pond. I would coast to the pond and backpedal with my wings to land with a green and foamy splash in the pond. The landing would be soft and nearly silent. Then I would just paddle around like it was nothing to me, which it would be. Unknown, to me, would the wiles of fatigue be. I would take off and land in a foamy splash and paddle the circumference of the pond looking sprightly—a hundred times a day. People would throw me pellets. I would consume pellets like a nibbler. I would land for pellets and walk for the littlest nibble. I would walk on my webbed feet toward the weedy-colored food.

I want webbed feet that are orange. My feet must match my bill. I would invite the masses to touch my marvelous webbing.

“We will throw you pellets if we may touch your webbing.”

“Quack.”

“The webbing is marvelous to touch. No other duck lets us touch it.”

“Quack.”

“You’re kind of cute.”

“Quack.”

“You are such a unique duck.”

“Quack.”

”We want to be you.”

“Quack-Quack.”

The two best parts about being a duck would be 1) the location and placement of my nostrils on my bill, and 2) my willingness and ability to stick my butt in the air out of the water, very high, while the rest of me is underwater searching for food or simply letting people see my orange, webbed feet paddling hard to keep my butt in clear view of everyone while I open my black marble eyes underwater and look through the murkiness at anything I want to, including the people who see my smooth butt so high up in the air, and how the water runs down my smooth butt, and how my legs match my feet that match my bill which works so hard quacking underwater and making bubbles come up until I fly away when I want to at a right sprightly clip.

Oh, to be a duck.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

LAST LAUGH IN AMISH COUNTRY

2006-04-08T05:17:00.000-07:00

I walked 32 miles last Sunday, 21 of it through Amish country. I have a fantasy about Amish women, thanks for asking. I imagine that they are all sexually repressed and ready to blow. All my fantasies are duds, however. When the pin is finally pulled, none of my fantasies ever explode. If you want the truth of a thing, analyze my fantasies and believe the opposite. The truth of this Amish matter, therefore, is that Amish women are happily asexual and ready to weave a blanket.

I passed through a small town, Vicksburg, named after the historic Civil War battle. The town was old enough, I believe, to have known the smell of gunpowder. Walking through, I expected to see General Lee himself galloping out of the morning mist. Hand-painted lettering on one of the wooden buildings said, “D.W. Coburn, Horseshoer.” Coburn, no doubt, fought for the Union. At this early hour, he was probably still in bed.

I sipped some Gatorade from my drinking tube and slapped myself back into the 21st century. Turning a corner out of town and heading north on Gimbly Road, a string of Amish buggies came down a hill toward me at two-hundred yard intervals. If you have never seen such a thing, you should. It’s a postcard on a squeaky iron rack in a sausage-scented restaurant. The sight slapped me back into 1865, only this time I expected John Wilkes Booth to hobble from a barn.

I waved to the occupants of the buggies as they passed. I saw some of their faces. Who were these people? I considered jumping into one of the buggies: “Who are you people?” I would mount the vehicle, nudge open the door, snuggle in beside the happy (?) couple and begin querying them, beginning with the woman.

“Excuse me, ma’am. Are you sexually repressed? Don’t mind me, I’ve just always wondered. Oh, hello sir, yes, thank you for hitting me. I thought you were all pacificists, but I see that another Amish fantasy of mine has failed to detonate. May I have a word with your wife? That hurt, you know. My name is Martin Zender. Hello, ma’am. You are happily asexual, I presume. Is this your blanket?”

But I only waved. One young man wore round glasses and was laughing. The man was laughing. What was he laughing at? What else but me? He and his wife no doubt found humor in my Amish fantasies. Are they that transparent, my fantasies? They must be. The horses clopped toward church, I knew. If the riders were to laugh at all this day, now was the time. Chuckles, at church, get buggy-whipped to the sod, where the pews are screwed in and the hobnailed boots of the congregants scuffle. It was now or never, and here was the opportunity: a stupid-looking walker with hilarious Amish fantasies. Oh, they were laughing at me, all right.

When the last of the buggies passed, the bell of a distant church tolled. It tolled again and again—for me, I knew. It sent a shiver down me. It was now 1837 and the rote of a dark tradition overcame me. I had to get out before General Washington showed up. Or worse, a contingent of the British.

I stopped for a break at an old cemetery and sat down to put my back against the wire fence and eat an orange. A car went by. Then two. Then three. I peeled a sticker from the orange that said, “Sunkist.” Slowly came the world again, the one I had known. Straining, I could no longer hear the church bell, or the clop of a single horse. I got up and stared for a long time, behind me, at the crumbled stones. Beneath these markers, they all lay still. Not a soul laughed. I was humbled and ashamed of myself. They had all once heard the bell that had tolled so recently for me. I strained in my mind’s eye to see the Amishman again. I would not be so rude this time. I would bow, courteously, to his beautiful wife. He was laughing at me, yes—at me and my time.

To some, there is no time, and these are the Amish, the church bells, and the citizens of the grave.

And the only ones of these three able to laugh, do so.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

A BROTHERHOOD OF CREEPIES

2006-04-05T05:11:00.000-07:00

I used the money from my tax refund to order the Hennessy hammock. What a day it will be when the Hennessy arrives. I’ll be waiting for the UPS man like I used to wait for the mailman when I ordered X-Ray glasses from comic books and the “super magnifying” telescope from Cap’n Crunch cereal.

The idea of stealth camping is growing on me. I like the idea of never again paying twenty bucks at a crowded, noisy campground for the privilege of leasing patches of sod infested with sticks and rocks. On my daily eight-mile walks I see beautiful woods with straight, tall trees that I would rate as highly hammockable. I pretend that I am coming upon them on my walk to Pittsburgh. But there are large yellow signs on many of the trees in front of some of these woods, and these signs say, NO HUNTING, NO TRESPASSING. I ask myself what I will think when I see signs like these on the walk to Pittsburgh. I answer myself: I will think, thank God that I will not be bothered by either hunters or trespassers this evening.

At first, the thought of sneaking into a woods at dusk to spend the night alone hanging between two trees creeped me out. But then I realized that I was on the good end of the Creep Factor. I will be the creepy one. It has been my theory since embarking upon self-propelled adventure thirty-three years ago that creepy people leave other creepy people alone. We creepies are a brotherhood, you see. We only creep other people out, never ourselves. We creep out people who live the whole of their lives avoiding creephood at all cost. (This includes most people.)

I plan, on the Pittsburgh walk, to enter the woods at dusk and vacate before dawn. Let’s say there is a person walking down a country road in Pennsylvania at 5:30 a.m. Suddenly, the person hears something large wandering out of the woods, and that something is clearing its throat. Now, which phantom of the dawn will be wetting pants, the one on the road, or the one emerging from the woods?

On one of my eight-mile training walks last week, I walked into a woods off Route 9. I’d had my eye on this tract for weeks, pegging it as a good one to hang in for practice. I had yet to order my hammock, but I wanted to scout this potential campsite in broad daylight, just to see what would happen. I wanted to pretend to be on the Pittsburgh walk, just to see how it would feel to duck into a cluster of someone else’s trees.

The nearest house was three hundred yards away. I waited for a lull in the traffic, then walked in. I went in twenty-five yards, found two beautiful trees spaced perfectly apart, and stood there. There were no alarms, no dogs, no cops. Holy cow, I said to myself, this will be easier than I thought. I pretended to tie my hammock to the trees. The woods felt so peaceful; cars swished by on the highway; I took a leisurely leak. I watched the drivers’ heads through the trees, to see if any were looking at my leak. None of them looked at the leak, not one. Why would they? “Oh. Harold. I’m going to check all the woods between here and Broomsfield to see if there might be anyone hammocking in them—or possibly leaking.”

I was good to go in more ways than one.

My only other concern was the critters of the woodlands. I like animals, but I do not want eaten by one. In this part of the country, however, there are few man-eating beasts afoot. There are, however, beasts that walk through the woods at night and make twigs snap. They scurry and forage and snap twigs, these beasts, and I do not want to hear them. Of course it’s a deer or a possum or a raccoon—but what if it isn’t?

My son Jefferson and I were in the car one evening when the car started making a strange noise. “What’s that noise, Dad?” asked Jefferson.

“I have no idea, son,” I said. “You may as well be asking me for the secret of the universe. But actually, I do know the secret of the universe. But cars and engines? Sorry.”

Still, I could not let the opportunity pass to offer fatherly wisdom to my son. “Whenever your car starts making noises, do what I do,” I said.

“What’s that, Dad?”

“Turn up the radio.”

I plan on applying the same principle to the problem of snapping twigs: I will wear the best pair of foam earplugs money can buy.

Everything is now in order, all problems solved. And so, Come quickly, UPS man.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

WITH A BUTLER ON THE LADDER AND A PHIPPS IN HAIR

2006-04-04T05:01:00.000-07:00

I was driving my thirteen year-old son Jefferson home from baseball practice yesterday when we (I) decided to flick on a classic rock station. On came Led Zeppelin’s Livin’, Lovin’ Maid. Did that ever bring back memories. Naturally, I had to tell Jefferson about the time I lip-synched the song in front of my entire fourth grade class while wearing green and white checkered pants, a yellow shirt, a Daniel Boone vest, saddle shoes, eating a cherry Tootsie Pop—which served as my microphone—and guessing madly at the lyrics. I hope I did not make a mistake confiding this indiscretion to my youngest son. Jefferson left home this morning with a bag tied to a stick slung across his shoulder, so when he returns home (if he does), I will ask him.

The year was 1969. The occasion was a fourth grade lip-synching contest. What sort of manic teacher would conduct such a competition, and for what purpose, I do not know. But now, in a bout of remembrance, I do know. It was the infamous Miss Clouse.

I remember the day Miss Clouse first walked into our classroom. Actually, she ran. She was late, and our first vision of her was of mincing red heels. She had hair that rose above her forehead in a That Girl pompadour. The hair was Harlow gold, however. Lips: Sweet Surprise. Her hands were always cold; she had Rumplestiltskin eyes.

Each student was to bring a record and be prepared to humiliate him or herself to it. Miss Clouse was the Mistress of Lasting Embarrassment and stood ready at the turntable. Today, I hope it was worth it to her. I hope, at least, that her children are unharmed by the events of that unforgettable afternoon.

Classmates before me did acts like The Rhonettes. They lip-synched to singers like Bobby Darrin and The Everly Brothers. One crazy kid did Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue.” He wore Buddy Holly-style glasses but he looked ridiculous in them because he weighed two hundred pounds and his head was the size of a Swiss exercise ball. He did the “…Peggy Sue-a-hoo, hoo-hoo-a-hoo-hoo” part, and everyone laughed. Everyone thought it was ridiculous. But no one had seen ridiculous yet.

My aforementioned clothes (the pants, the jacket, the shoes) were not only a part of my act, they were part of my regular school attire. For me, every day was an act.

I had begged my mother to buy me the green and white checkered pants. Something about the pants reflected my soul at the time (it was my Green and White Checked period), and I wished to display that to the world. My mother, however, wanted denim for me. Her idea of normal was blue jeans. This clashed impossibly with my idea of normal, which was green and white checks. My mother said, “Why don’t you want to wear a regular pair of pants like a normal boy?” I answered that normal-boy clothes did not reflect the current state of my soul. Mother had no answer for that, so she bought me the pants. Winning this argument was easy compared to the time I wanted saddle shoes—that battle took time.

“Saddle shoes are for girls,” my mother said.

“Not really,” I said. “I saw a picture of Uncle Jim in saddle shoes. He’s a famous writer and he lives in Hollywood.”

“Your Uncle Jim is strange.”

“What if I’m the artsy type?”

“Then I’ll probably have to take you to a psychiatrist.”

“Oh, look! Here’s a swell pair of saddle shoes. And they have my size!”

My mother bought me the shoes and I became the talk of the class. I was obviously a trend-setter. It was not my fault that no one followed my trends. At least I started conversations. I got people to thinking. Kids actually wanted to be seen with me. I was a ten year-old Happening.

I got the Daniel Boone jacket at the Myers Lake Shopping Plaza. A
men’s clothing store there was giving them away. In fact, they were giving people a quarter to take one. Once again, my poor mother was at my side. I said, “Look, Mother! They’re giving away Daniel Boone jackets! In fact, they’re paying people a quarter to take one. Have you ever seen a sale as crazy as this one? Have you? Look at the cool fringe hanging off the jackets! I sure wish I had one of those. I could settle Kentucky in one of those things. Can you imagine how I would look in that Daniel Boone jacket and my checkered pants, and my saddle shoes? Why are you stopping? Mother, are you getting dizzy? Look! That man is handing us a quarter!”

The shirt I procured later was the color of the Beatles’ submarine, only yellower.

The Swiss ball kid sat down to resume his life of doom, and it was my turn. Miss Clouse dropped the needle on my 45, and I was off to another world. It was a good world. I liked the world.

Most of my classmates still remember my performance. For some, it was a pivotal moment in their lives. One has since said, “Martin, when I saw you do Livin’, Lovin Maid, it opened doors for me. I realized then that anything was possible. You were outside yourself; it was like you had no self-consciousness, none at all. None of the things that normally hold people back affected you that day. And you kept eating that sucker! It was the way you ate it. And how you licked it like a lunatic at the end when Robert Plant does that crazy thing with the ‘L’s.’” My friend got teary. “You changed my life, man.”

But it was another boy who gave me the “thumbs up,” through the glass, as I sat alone in the principal’s office.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

CURLICUES OF A WICKED EON

2006-04-01T04:53:00.000-08:00

My oldest son Artie and I went out this late afternoon to film depressing scenes for an edition of ZenderFilms. Depressing scenes are so easy to come by here. All one need do, really, is aim the camera any old where and press the record button. But Artie and I wanted to create something. He is a filmmaker, I am writer; we would put our heads together—and probably get them wet: it was raining.

Have I told you about ZenderFilms? Looking back now, I see that I haven’t. I want to create a series of video vignettes that will teach small but monumental kernels of scriptural truth. I’m talking eight to ten minute episodes in the reality television vein.

One of the pieces I have in mind is a series of depressing, outdoor shots, accompanied by a somber voiceover (mine) describing the nature of this current wicked eon. Evolution? No, my friends. The earth is in a state of de-volution, and so many things in this world conspire to take us down with them. The piece will teach the futility of certain brands of human escape, while heralding the benefit of others, such as sleep. Eight hours of sleep, you know, is a pearl of great price to me, and one of the most gracious gifts bestowed by God upon the sons and daughters of humanity.

My son is a serious filmmaker and has invested in a $3,500 video camera. He was afraid of getting it wet, so insisted I take an umbrella and hold it over him while he shot. I was happy to do it. I loved this idea of us being a film crew. It was only him and me, but that counted as a crew to me. Off we went to make something out of nothing.

The process of creation thrills me. I was born to create; God planted a small piece of godhood in my breast. To make an abstraction concrete touches sensitive chords beneath my rib cage. The artist has a thought, or a dream, or a lesson to teach. He or she perceives, in one moment, a sliver of universal truth. But, like the primordial earth, it is without form and void. It is invisible. This light of revelation exists only in the head or the heart or the soul of the one chosen by God to articulate it. The things exist now only in the way the artist’s hand shakes, or in the way the heart beats, or in the way the artist sees light where no light is, or shadows where light washes everything.

The challenge and the torture of the artist is the God-imposed necessity to bring forth into concrete existence the abstract thought. Even God records truth for human consumption. Truth, to be appreciated, needs seen, or heard, or read, or touched. God mercifully provides the media. This media is dug from quarries, or mined, or ground into pigments, or stripped from the bark of trees, or fashioned into hollow pieces of wood. If the artist is a sculptor and the medium is marble or clay, the truth takes three-dimensions. If the artist is a musician and the medium is music, the truth speaks via certain notes played a certain way in a certain order at a certain time. The art not only resides in the notes, but in the inspired spaces between them. A piano keyboard articulates one truth, a violin another, a human voice yet another. If the artist is a painter or photographer, he or she captures a moment of time with pigment, with color drawn from the earth’s native hues, or with light on loan from the sun. The filmmaker captures moving images. The writer places letters side-by-side, in the right order, at the right time, cajoling the letters, belaboring them, marching them en masse toward a desired effect.

As we set out, I felt large. Artie and I were gods. Yes. Small ‘g’ gods, enabled by the capital “G” God, graced with a mood-capturing medium, energized by the goal of bringing His light to the world. What was this but a fresh crack at Eden? It was a means of rectifying the temporary desecration of man.

We began at a place on my walking route where a county crew hacked away at a new bridge. It was Saturday afternoon, however, and the crew was gone. But there was plenty of mud, plenty of grease-soaked chains, plenty of brown watergurgles running nowhere.

Near the site, a trio of gray gain silos rose above a farm through the mist and into the gray sky. “Let’s get that,” I told Artie, and we hopped from the car. I extended the umbrella while Artie’s medium recorded an eonian moment headed for the past. The silence was somber and holy. The silos and the silence, and my son and I—these things impressed me. God was teaching me a lesson about the wicked eon.

We filmed odd tree branches, some weeds, and some slabs of concrete from the unfinished bridge. It was growing dark. Satisfied with our work, we headed home. On the way down our road, the property of a neighbor suggested itself.

“Stop here,” I said to Artie. “Let’s get that.”

“They’re our neighbors,” he said. “What if they see us?”

I had to think about that one.

“We’ll tell them, ‘Please excuse us. We are filmmakers looking for depressing, broken-down garbage typical of an evil eon, and your property provided us a cornucopia of opportunity.’”

Artie laughed. I laughed. We took three shots and drove the short distance home. Melody had hot chocolate on the stove. The curling swirls of steam rising from the pan of chocolate spoke a new language. It was a new form of art I had not considered before. I stared at it. The steam went to heaven in curlicues, then disappeared.

It went to heaven in curlicues, then disappeared.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

SHAMEFUL WEALTH

2006-03-30T04:49:00.000-08:00

I still cannot get over the fact that, when I turn a little knob in my kitchen, water comes out a pipe. The strange thing is that the water gets magically drawn from a well beneath the ground, and it comes up. People in the know tell me it has something to do with a pump, but I don’t care for the details; spare me them, please. I only care that I am in awe of water that comes up from a pipe and into my home when I want it to.

Historically, it was not always this way. There was a day when people had to travel with buckets to a community well, draw, take the sloshing container home, pour it into a cistern, then return to the well maybe sixteen more times, depending on how often the family planned to run the dishwasher. People bathed in rivers back then as well—which reminds me!

There is a miraculous little cubicle in my upstairs bathroom, enclosed by a curtain, containing a nozzle such as the one in my kitchen, only bigger and higher—situated over my head. The nozzle is unique in that someone has drilled lots of little holes into it. But you haven’t heard anything yet. There are two knobs in this cubicle, same as in the kitchen, and when I turn the left knob to the left, hot water comes from the nozzle. Hot water! Hot water with which I bathe! People in the know tell me that this has something to do with a water heater and, once again, a pump. But once again, I do not care to hear about it. It’s a miracle, and that’s the end of it.

Do you realize that, in days not long past, not even the palaces of kings contained such amenities? But if I told you of all the other luxuries in my home, you would blush. It is nearly sinful, what I possess.

My family is spared the trouble of gathering bits of wood to light fires under black stinky pots for cooking purposes. That’s right. Instead—are you ready for this?—we have a flat area on our countertop that, when other little knobs similar to those which operate the water are turned, make various parts of the countertop heat up. And the heated parts light up in the exact shapes of the bottoms of our pans. And the heat is hot enough to cook on!

I can no longer be quiet about any of this; I am too aroused by it all. Concerning physical, tangible blessings, Scripture says that with food and shelter we should be sufficed. So you can see that, even with the little I have told you about, I am blessed above and beyond measure. I will say no more. For if I told you of the means by which I answer nature’s call—indoors—and evacuate it from the premises—you would simply not believe me. You would hate me.

I am too ashamed of my wealth to tell you about it.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

EFFECTIVE CURES FOR DEPRESSED WOMEN

2006-03-29T04:45:00.000-08:00

And now, naturally, I am being asked by the women how they might cure their depression. It is amazing to me that women experience such a thing. It is like learning that the butterfly despairs of the magic flying powder dusted by God on its wings. I know, of course, that women are depressed. Married women are depressed because they live with careless, sleepy men. Some women feel they don’t have a purpose in life. Others are certain that the endless details of maintaining life will soon kill them. Women are multi-taskers, but they take it too far. I understand why, though: no one helps them. But just because a person can do everything, doesn’t mean a person should.

As a short-term fix, the woman who is at least well enough to leave the house should do so immediately, and take a friend. If she cannot find a friend, the Hershey Company provides them, wrapped in silver foil. That is correct. The first thing the depressed woman must do, with or without a human companion, is buy and eat lots of dark chocolate. This will take the edge off her immediate pain. You see? I do not give the same advice to the women as to the men. It does not help women to log onto the Internet and look at pictures of men in boxer shorts, even if such sites existed. There are no such sites for women on the entire World Wide Web, and neither should there be. There are several sites for chocolate, however, and for good reason.

Upon ingestion, dark chocolate improves the mood. It also releases hormones that simulate intimate dinners for two at fancy restaurants. It also unleashes boatloads of antioxidants that do mean but necessary things to boatloads of oxidants. It also slathers the soul with incredibly warm sensations; it smooshes in the mouth and makes the breadth of the oral cavity feel creamy. It doesn’t simply go down the throat, it flows down it like a dark, sweet waterfall. Hard chocolate crunches in the mouth (it feels good to the teeth), while soft chocolate melts there, enrapturing the tongue.

Next, the woman should go shopping. If she has any money left over after the chocolatefest, she should buy herself a new article of clothing. If she has no money left, she should at least feel the new clothing. Shopping does not necessarily mean buying things. The woman should pet the clothing over and over again (and perhaps rub it against her cheek), then try on new shoes after smelling them.

What if a woman is too depressed to leave the house? This woman should, first of all, comb the house for chocolate. If no chocolate can be found, I recommend sleep. Unconsciousness is a gift of God to both sexes. If one is dead to the world, one cannot be depressed. A further recommendation: close the drapes and engage a large electric fan. Waking up is a bitch, which is the reason for the drapes and the fan. Now, for the long-term solution.

Sigmund Freud stroked and stroked his little white beard trying to understand what women want. He never did figure it out. I figured it out two years ago. All women want is to be adored, appreciated, cherished, even pedastalized. For married women, this begins with the training of a husband, whose days of cherishing, I assume, are long behind him. Ah. What a waste of a good piece of meat: the husband. There is so much potential here for help, work and comfort, all lying dormant before the computer and the television. In a book titled Shagah, I instruct women how to train their men to cherish them, adore them, and help them uncomplainingly around the house. Women will be surprised to learn that men want this training. Though they are usually the last to admit it, husbands want directed by a benign feminine sex force. Shagah offers win-win relief, in the depression department, to both marriage parties. For those who apply its truths, Shagah marks the end of marital misery. Sorry now to have to tell you this, but you will have to wait until either Fall or Spring or Summer for this book.

For the depressed unmarried woman with children, here is my recommendation: Come Fall (or Spring, or Summer), find yourself a good man. (An average man will do.) Buy my book, train him, and live happily ever after. In the meantime, eat dark chocolate, shop in moderation, drink lots of water, sleep eight hours a night, and take long, slow walks every day, no matter what the weather.

For the depressed unmarried woman with no childr—

Hm. As soon as I meet one of these, I will advise.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

NUCLEAR WAR AND THE BIKINI CURE MALE DEPRESSION

2006-03-28T04:41:00.000-08:00

A single guy I know gets frequently depressed. He lives in Northern Ontario—sorry for the redundancy. He lives where the sun is rarely seen and the roads are so muddied and pot-holed that the local car dealership has three moon rovers on the lot.

This guy was once so depressed that he wanted to kill himself. He called me and fished covertly for an immediate remedy to his mental difficulty. Why did he call me of all Earth’s mortals? I am the great Martin Zender, confidant of God, holder of the keys to people’s happiness. Good thing, then, that I did have a remedy at hand. Some day people may recognize my wisdom and make me their first resort rather than their last. So I said to the man, “Go on the Internet and look at pictures of beautiful women in bikinis. Not pornography, just beautiful women in bikinis.” There was silence on the other side of the line. “The bikini was named after the atoll in the South Pacific where the first atomic bomb was detonated,” I continued into the silence. “When atom bombs are falling, people forget how depressed they are. It happens all the time. Imminent nuclear war and two-piece swimsuits take the male mind from all other problems.”

My friend was taken aback at first, but then warmed to the idea. Oh, but this wasn’t an idea—it was a cure. I told him that my simple solution would relieve him instantly. It would make him want to live again, at least for the rest of the afternoon. It was the free, legal, God-inspired solution to his problem. In some parts of the world, I told him, the sun actually reported for celestial duty. In some parts of the world, I said, beautiful women wore extremely small bathing suits.

He said, “You know, I do feel better when I look at a beautiful woman.”

Well, duh. Do I have to tell you to eat, too? Must I instruct you to bathe? To breathe?

The annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit expedition embarked upon by my two older sons and me raises the eyebrows of embarrassed/horrified people who may, in their lifetimes, have discussed sex once—with the obstetrician. The embarrassed/horrified people had sex because they have children, but “the dirty part” came and went in the dark and lasted as long as it took to disrobe and disburse seed. And God forgive all parties for what made the seed come out. And God forgive Himself for having invented beauty in the first place.

It is stupid, in my opinion, for fellow testosteronians to pretend among ourselves that we could take or leave the bikini and its inhabitant. The cover of this particular Sports Illustrated is an anomaly in the midst of an evil eon, for it opposes everything we know so far of this damned winter. I praise Jesus for that. To refuse to look at such respite is to spit in the face of God. It is to slap away a reasonably priced escape ladder dangled by the Deity’s celestial helicopter.

I will have no awkward moments with my sons. I refuse to allow into my home the time-tested “ignore sex/screw up your kids” syndrome. I refuse to slip on the divine banana peel (the bikini and its inhabitant) and then pretend that I didn’t. My boys are looking anyway, so why not accompany them, foot the bill and get shrimp out of it? The more normal I make it (and it is so very normal), the less powerful its pull. The bikini and its inhabitant will always pull, but one can diffuse the freak side of the power. Religious people habitually make normal things freakish by silently (or vocally) condemning natural inclinations. This is a recipe for the production of criminals. The criminal starts and may finish in the closet. At worst, he wreaks mayhem among the less religious (and thus, the less peace-loving) citizenry. I prefer a nice quiet trip to Waldenbooks—followed by cheese rolls and shrimp—to abandoned carnal mayhem followed by an i.d. check at the state penitentiary.

Some very ingenious people designed the swimsuits worn by the SI models.

In some other corner of the world, the sun, apparently, has escaped its box.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

HOT SOFT CHEESE ROLLS

2006-03-27T04:37:00.000-08:00

My two older boys and I enjoyed our annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue date last Saturday. On this annual date, I drive them to the mall, buy the magazine, hand it over to them, then drive to Red Lobster while they take turns perusing the pages and not saying much. When we get to Red Lobster, we ordinarily wait forty-five minutes to an hour for a cozy booth in the non-smoking section. This is precisely what happened. The wait only enhances the satiation of hunger. Hot, soft cheese rolls in a wire basket covered with a napkin make mortals lose saliva from the corners of their mouths. Lift the napkin and cheesy heat wafts into the lantern-style light fixture. This is accompanied by iced teas and a black decaf served in a heavy, earthen mug.

While waiting for our table, many odd people filed past us. Some people in this world are beautiful, while others carry extra flesh and are misshapen. Three crippled souls rolled past in wheelchairs, one of whom rolled over Aaron’s foot. One poor chair-bound female stared out toward an invisible ocean and mumbled strange sayings while making wild gestures with her hands. Aaron said, during dinner, “Many people in this world are not right.” Artie said, “We are so blessed.” Aaron agreed with him, as did I.

There are so many different kinds of people in this world, and my sons and I are blessed to know the One Who made them all.

Together then, we thanked God and broke His bread.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

NPR ANGEL

2006-03-22T04:34:00.000-08:00

If a male angel lived in a heavenly palace and looked into his sleeping cubicle in the morning after returning home from his early session in the clouds to be with his little angel offspring and read Acts to them, and his angelic wife was lying on the bed doing dumbbell bench presses in the nude with an NPR show playing lightly on the radio, then that male angel would know that there will come days better than those gone before (before the disruption of the world), and that it may be one of those today as the winged Being wafted him by God now stretches the hamstrings in the backs of her legs and by some miracle has a celestial sort of side meat already sizzled from the stove and cuddled in a “napkin sandwich” to remove all the hellish earth-grease from it.

“Even so,” says the celestial messenger to a compatriot at the commissary, “come quickly Lord Jesus.”

© 2006 by Martin Zender

DAY OF BITTER COMPLAINT

2006-03-21T04:31:00.000-08:00

Oh, that my vexations were actually powdered by the pestle, then laid in the grave together with my iniquity. For then it would be heavier than the mantle of the earth and the starfish of the sea and the skeletons of mariners.

My words are rash and quick, for the arrows of the Almighty are inside me with their poison tips in my liver; my spirit quakes at it. The terrors of God are arrayed against me. The jackass brays over his grass and the ox wails mournfully over his meal of bone, but tasteless things go down without salt; the white of an egg bloggs in the bowl. Such food makes loath against days much brighter than this.

Oh, that my request might come to pass, and that Gould would grant the whim of the will; would that God were willing to crush me in a moment; that He would loose His hand and cut me off and break this, and let me get this off. But it is still my consolation that I rejoice in unsparing pain and that, in the lake, I have not denied the words of the Holy One; these are His words.

What is my strength that I should not eat rust and drink poison, and what is my end that I should wait to tiptoe on the inside of grace? Is my strength the strength of granite or is my flesh of silver like the metals that crush miners? Is it that my help is not inside me and that the deliverance of my God will wait another day?

For the despairing man there should be kindness from a braying cloud or a dollop of sun, lest he forsake the fear of the Almighty and suffer the death of another day like this one. My brothers have acted deceitfully, like a dry river in the desert, like the torrents of dry river dust that vanish before they appear and are turbid because of no dew. No person scrapes the dew into snow. But the blessed man sees not the trouble of this Spring, for he has passed along another way, the way of death.

The rivers, for those gone, become more desolate still, more waterless; they become bare and soulless. When it is hot they vanish yet more from the places appointed them. Then the paths of their courses wind along the corridors of deferred hope, they go down into the valleys of hope deferred where they suck and stink and defer everything forsaken by God, where they piss a storm of wail.

The caravans of Tema looked like crap; the travelers of Sheba hoped for crap and got it. But they came there and were blown away by the nothingness of everything they saw there. Indeed, You have now become such as them, this day, save for young men who stand tall like the oaks of Mamre. You see a terror and You soil the pants of people who are not You. It is not as if I have said, “Make me rich,” or, “Offer me a babe from Your storehouse,” or “Deliver me from my organs,” or, “Redeem me from the insipids who deem this life so lightly.”

Teach me and I will be silent and watch Curb Your Enthusiasm; and then show me, after the show, how I have erred. How painful are honest words, and You’ve got an eon’s worth of them. But what do Your honest words prove? Do You intend to reprove my honest words? Then go ahead. You may as well—I like it—I die for it—I like pain—I die. But You know these things already, so what am I telling You?

But why, when the hours of one’s despair disappear on the zephyr of cloud that discourages all the living, do You then not come right away but seven months hence, if at all, and then so lightly? You would roll the dice for the orphans and barter over Your friend. Gore is something You tolerate blatantly, though you have spared me thus far the gore I feed, house and clothe—and for that I worship You. And now, please look at me, and see if I lie to Your face. Because I’ve looked up to You even while tied to the boards of Your threshing floor. And the night continues, and my flesh continues but is clothed with righteousness with skinny worms sewn in, but I am still looking up tied to the threshing floor of Noah, and of the archangels Who created Earth, Who are always all around You.

Desist now, let there be no injustice. Ever desist; my righteousness is yet clumped up. Is there injustice on my tongue? All right then. Cannot my dump-mouth discern calamities and give vent to them in the wind of the first day of the rest of this dung-infested time period?

All right, then. So be it. Amen, and come quickly.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

MELODY WHITE VS. MOE & COMPANY

2006-03-20T04:25:00.000-08:00

I did a bad thing last night while Melody was berating Aaron for staring down a teacher. Aaron is a high school Junior, and this particular Mistress of Numbers has something out for him. Or in for him. Or maybe he has something out or in for her. Or maybe math has something out and in for all of us, which is my conviction and has been since Freshman Algebra.

Aaron must take care because he’s working on straight A’s (from seventh grade on), and this teacher needs coddled, not outstared. It is true that she may be lacking in the ways of education, but so what. I had teachers like that, too. I was not so careful with language back then and would come home in a huff to announce, “Miss Clouse stinks.” I’m pretty sure that, between 1966 and 1978, I was perfect and nearly all my teachers, including the nuns, were hopelessly screwed up.

Melody said I should discipline Aaron. That is, she wanted me to tell him how to be a good young man.

Melody grew up on a farm. In such environments, character gets pounded into you like a three-pound pancake. Melody got up before dawn to feed chickens and milk cows. Good young men were as plentiful as sprouts of alfalfa. Melody’s real world was Laura Ingall Wilder’s fiction. As a young man, I loved purity and hard work, as long as I could write mis-rhyming poetry about it from a safe distance. Melody regrets this about me. It is the part of me she wishes she could change. I sometimes tease her and tell her, “Well, maybe you should have married Mike Hartz.”

Mike Hartz was everything a girl could want in a man. He was a stand-up cutout dude from a catalog, replete with polished shoes and a nice haircut. From a practical standpoint, Melody loved everything about Hartz. His goal was to become a History teacher. His life was planned out, right down to the kind of grass he wanted in his yard and the church he and Melody would attend. He would give Melody a three-bedroom house, a two-car garage, and a Lazy Susan in the kitchen. The guy pressed his own pants, for God’s sake. He knew how to wash his car—including the whitewalls.

Because Melody was so darn cute, Hartz wanted her for his own. Who wouldn’t? Melody was so much like him, too. She was willing, in her heart, to succumb to the two-car garage. The problem was, Melody kept calling him “Martin” on their date. (I still wonder why, after going out twice with me, she still went out with Hartz. She told me she was going to do it. “Is that okay?” she asked. “Of course it is,” I said. Then I got off the phone and cried and threw jellybeans.) At the end of the date, Melody refused to let the sex-crazed Hartz kiss her. She told him a week later that she couldn’t get “this other guy” out of her head. Hartz, the ever-practical idiot, said, “You mean I spent all that money on you Saturday for nothing?”)

While Melody built barns, planted trees and baked pies, I watched Three Stooges and Gilligan’s Island re-runs. My parents made sure my sister and I had endless supplies of Popsicles, pop, Pop Tarts, and Sugar Pops cereal to serenade our television watching. My parents did discipline us: sometimes they bought us cereal without sugar and made us watch Jacques Cousteau specials. (I’m talking about cereal like Bran Flakes, Special K and Product 19, and Cousteau specials like the one about plankton.) But my parents loved us. I can’t help it that I grew up in the suburbs. My only knowledge of farm life came from Lisa and Oliver Douglas, and Mr. Haney and Eb, on Green Acres.

I did receive real discipline on occasion. I remember Mother chasing me—and rapidly—with the hairbrush. She did make contact two out of seven times. I did get grounded for innocent childhood crimes such as forgetting to do homework, forgetting to pull weeds, forgetting to clean my “pig sty,” and forgetting to go to bed on time on school nights. (I was a forgetful child. Well, I forgot things.) I remember getting my mouth washed out with soap, and to this day I cannot say what this was frickin’ for, or how I could possibly have deserved such humiliating doses of hell in my own stinking house. Nevertheless, I succumbed to all this parental treatment; I considered it par for the childhood course. Then I grabbed a purple Popsicle and wondered if the next Stooges episode would feature Curly or Shemp. (I hoped it was Curly, but I would learn in my teen years to appreciate the genius of Shemp.)

I’ve always been a do-it-yourself discipliner. With the things that really mattered in life (learning to write, staying fit, reading, obtaining wisdom, caring for family, seeking God), I was harder on myself than others could hope to be on me. Thus, I believe that while you can influence others and set a good example, you cannot live more than one life at a time—your own. This principle is especially true of the relationship between my two oldest sons and me. They are nineteen and seventeen years old. As with my youngest son, I trained them as best I could. I spanked them early with love and intelligence (and a spoon of some kind), I carried them on my back, I hugged them (still do), I got onto floors with them, I read them scripture and many Dr. Seuss accounts. I loved their mother, supported my family, spent every spare minute giving them God, fun, and organic raisins. Now I’m tired, and I believe I deserve a rest. I want to reap now the plentiful fruit of good parenting and shrug off the rare thorn. You can lead a horse to Advanced Algebra, but you can’t make it not stare down a crummy teacher—that’s my philosophy now at this stage of the game.

So right there in the kitchen, in the middle of the berating, I started to laugh. It was the worst thing to do, at the worst time. Poor Melody. That she was so technically right and I was so technically wrong proved too much contrast for my funny bone. It was the farm versus strawberry Pop Tarts, Laura Ingalls Wilder verses Larry Fine, Product 19 versus Kellogg’s’ Fruit Loops, Melody White versus the Marx Brothers. That Melody was so serious while I experienced flashbacks of French class drove me over the back of the sofa in tears. I hated myself. The more I told myself not to laugh, the more I dripped spittle and snot. The healing of it was absolutely horrible. (I realize now, upon reflection, that my laughter was not of the healing variety, but rather a self-defense mechanism against the false accusation that I was somehow, in this case, a poor father.) Aaron just stood there, wondering what would become of his legal guardians. (Our youngest, Jefferson, had run away—in titters no doubt.) Then Aaron had to laugh himself; it was two against one now. You’ve got to feel sorry for poor Melody. She tries so hard to make us good people. God has withheld from her a daughter, a princess, a normal human being. Instead, he gave her Larry, Curly, and Moe. Melody will read this and dislike that I have written about it. If you are reading it, I am wondering how it is possible.

Upon reflection, I know. It is because my wife is the kindest, most forgiving, most well-rounded, well-meaning person on the planet.

Eat your frickin’ heart out, Hartz.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

ROAD MAN

2006-03-18T04:20:00.000-08:00

It is already the following weekend, and I have yet to tell you about my walk of weekend last.

On Sunday the twelfth, I walked 27 miles. It was easy.

I awoke up at 5:00 a.m., excited to begin. It was rainy and dark, but warm. I love the pre-dawn dark because I own the day then. By the time the sun comes up the world is alive—I prefer it sleeping. Jesus rose early, before the sun, and walked into the mountains, alone, to pray. Self-propelled motion becomes a prayer to me, and each step a thanksgiving to God that I am alive.

I lightly boiled my three eggs, sprinkled my oatmeal with ground flaxseed and wheat germ, slugged down a double-strength cup of black coffee, drank four glasses of water, poured two liters of lemon-lime Gatorade into the bladder inside my Camelback Blowfish pack, hung a plastic sandwich-bagged whole wheat, wheat germ, natural peanut butter and honey sandwich from the waist strap of my pack—and was away.

I floated. I walk a nine-mile block: three miles up, one and a half across, three down, then another road across like the first. All the miles, this morning, are floating. Feeling fresh from a day off, I am hydrated like a lake: the key to success.

The rain comes lightly and my raingear works: it’s called Rainshield, the brainchild of the 3M company; Gore-Tex is sievey compared to it; remember that. Inside my hood, I feel indoorsy. The black galoshes keep unwanted roadwater off my socks and out of my shoes. Roosters crow, the rain does not stop them. They are my companions across Crescent Road, these crazy birds. I never see them, but I like what they do when I don’t have to live by them. They cry out of nowhere; I like their language.

I sip Gatorade through my drinking tube. It is a wonderful thing, this tube. The modern pedestrian need not stop to fumble with old-fashioned bottles. The tube of the bladder is blue, snaking from the back o’ the pack o'er my right shoulder. There is a bite valve, which is blue and yellow; the materials are clear. A marvel of science, all this is. I stick the valve in my mouth and return both arms to their work. I bite the valve and suck. The elixir, still cold from the refrigerator, comes in peristaltic rushes. The elixir is lemon-lime Gatorade, which I imagine to be cotton-candy syrup. I think this in my mind: I am drinking the syrup of cotton candy. Ahh, that is so good—and at the same time it replaces electrolytes and renders the perfect combination of calories, carbs, sugars, water, and sodium, unto my system. Gatorade, the elixir of the gods. Had it been available in first-century Palestine, Jesus would have drank it for sure.

I sit down at a well in Ritchville, same as Christ. This is a drinking place at the Ritchville rest stop, but without loitering women. There is a rusty green-handled crank here instead, protruding from a metal pipe stuck far down into the groundwater. A person toting his own Gatorade, however, eschews such primitive refreshment. So I sit and rest for two minutes, get up and go. It is still dark, thank Jesus.

North up Route 9 now, when I will eat my sandwich. There are not many cars on Sunday morning. I walk on different sides of the road, depending on what the cars do and how loathe I am to die, which is pretty loathy now that I’m happy on the majority of days.

I imagine that my sandwich is a maple-filled creamstick. It is not that I crave such a thing (though I used to, many of them, the icing wet with condensation from the plastic wrapping), but that the sandwich actually tastes like this, to me. I misspoke to say I imagined the taste; I take the taste it gives, which is that of a product of the bakery I just mentioned.

My legs work independently of me, or so it seems. It is so, even at seven miles when turning off the highway onto Snyder Road toward home and the end of the first nine-mile loop. I am my own passenger, sitting atop these amazing appendages with shoes attached, watching them work. They are transporting me—that’s how it feels. I am only looking out the windows, thinking of other things. I am thankful to be whole. (I am thinking of you, Sheryl, who have lost parts of your body to cancer. I am thinking of you this morning; I envision your wheelchair and I want God to give you joys not requiring legs; there are many such joys; I want you to have them; this is my prayer for you.)

The first lap ends, and I’m back home. I stop in to kiss Melody good morning. I make another sandwich, drink four more glasses of water, and top off my drinking bag: another liter of Gatorade. It’s a twenty-minute break in all, then back on the road, and happy to be there.

Starting the second nine-mile loop, I’m as fresh as at five-thirty a.m—how does that happen? The sun has come up (behind clouds, it only brightens things a little), but everything else is fine.

At thirteen miles, I cannot believe the walk will be this easy. At fifteen miles, I think the same again. Seventeen miles arrives, and I’m still waiting on the tiredness. The rain has stopped, and the warm air feels so good. It is so unlike the winter I’ve been walking through on my weekly eight-milers. My training is paying dividends now.

Eighteen miles is in the bag (there is no more Gatorade there, however), and I’m none the worse for it—in fact, I’m better. I’m high. Aaron and Melody are in the living room, and I babble at them. I laugh and say things, but just what things I don’t know. High, am I, on endorphins, inebriated in the afterglow of gentle, extended exercise. (I have walked all eighteen miles in under fifteen minutes a mile. The time, less breaks, is four and a half hours.) All my bones feel greased. Nothing inside me cracks or creaks. I have not worked hard, only walked correctly. There’s a flush to my face. “It’s the Gatorade,” says Aaron.

I go to bed and try to take a nap. My plan: two laps in the morning, nap, attend a birthday party, walk the final nine miles at 4:30 in the afternoon.

Sleep won’t come. Melody’s nightwear hangs on the doorknob. The varying endorphins fight friendly brawls within me, utilizing armholds and legholds never before seen. The covers of the bed shroud all this, and keep it humid and loose, away from other mortals. Perhaps this is what life in the womb was like, when outside sounds came muted through the membranes.

Two of the boys’ cousins turned certain ages over and under ten—can’t remember which or for whom—but my sister-in-law Mindy made a fabulous red soup containing vegetables and pasta pieces that resembled stars. I eat two bowls, drink coffee, and look forward to the four-thirty lap. How will it feel? It has been twenty years since I have covered so much distance on foot.

It’s crazy. I’m as fresh at 4:30 p.m. as I was when beginning at 5:30 a.m. When will it hit? The sun finally shows itself (it’s 5:30 p.m. now), and sets everything east of it aglow. I’m thankful for the sun, but not for the people. There are people out now, in their yards and in their cars. They are strangers to me and I cannot fellowship with them. But one man waves, and I wave back. I liked it better in the morning, though, in the rain. I owned the road then, and the roosters were mine. But now I’m a part of everything; I guess that’s okay if one embraces the everything.

Stopping again at the well, everything looks different. Was this the same drilled hole of thirteen hours ago? It has an altered personality now, it’s less mindful of me. I am not as fond of it, and I leave it within two minutes of arriving at it; I have walked twenty-three miles.

At twenty-five miles, the feet finally feel something. That, and a small twitch goes up my right hip. These things are nothing, really. I’m still moving easily. It does not seem like work.

My house has come now, and I stop in front of it. My wife is in there, and so are all my kids. I’m happy that they give me this freedom—to be apart from them and with them simultaneously. Home is a joyful place when one has been away at wells, and fellowshipping with roosters and people who wave. The roosters are fine, the well does its work, the waver tends to his yard, but there is no place like the space in front of one’s own refrigerator, and near the drawer where Melody stores the amazing zip-locked sandwich bags, recently purchased by the family patriarch.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

ST. PATRICK’S DUH

2006-03-17T03:50:00.000-08:00

I love Irish people. Some of my best friends are Irish. God bless the Irish and their homeland, Ireland. Lucky Charms is the best concoction of oats and sugar ever poured into wax paper bags and sealed into colorful cardboard boxes with plastic prizes at the bottom, wrapped in cellophane. But St. Patrick’s Day is the most asinine holiday on the calendar.

Any true Irish person—any noble Irish person—distances him or herself from this absurd day. It is named after a person who, at sixteen years of age, got carried away from his homeland, Britain, by Irish marauders. He passed his captivity as a herdsman near a mountain called Slemish. He saw visions (uh-oh) in which he was urged to escape to the north coast of Gaul and become an ordained deacon (double uh-oh). The encyclopedia does not say who spoke to him in the vision, but one can only assume that it was a leprechaun.

leprechaun (lep re kon), n. Irish Folklore. A pygmy, sprite, or goblin.

ST. PATRICK: What are you?

LEPRECHAUN: I am a pygmy and a goblin, but you can call me a sprite. Yes, I prefer that. A sprite, if you please.

ST. PATRICK: What do you want me to do—sprite?

LEPRECHAUN: I want you to escape to the north coast of Gaul and become an ordained deacon. Become learned in the ways of institutional religion. And don’t forget to condemn people and look for relics.

ST. PATRICK: At once, Sprite! Is that all?

LEPRECHAUN: (becoming furious) Well, of course not! I want you to begin experimenting with compressed marshmallows and geometric figures!

ST. PATRICK: Yes, my Lord!

LEPRECHAUN: Yes, my Sprite!

ST. PATRICK: Forgive me, my Lord!

According to the encyclopedia, “[St. Patrick’s] use of the shamrock as an illustration of the Trinity led to its being regarded as the national Irish symbol. A strange chant of his, called the Lorica, is preserved in the Liber Huynorum.” That the Trinity is a false doctrine unknown to Scripture makes me wish for the shamrock a more noble beginning. (Fun game you can play at home: Guess the root word of “shamrock.”) Can’t we just say it illustrates the number o’ people able to make sense o’ St. Patrick’s Day?

Speaking o’ o’, without this famous contraction in “the luck o’ the Irish,” we are left with: “the luck of the Irish,” which is too literal, too sad, and too untrue for anyone’s palate. The Irish are no luckier than any other peoples. In fact, if the Great Potato Famine and the long history of bloodshed mean aught, the Irish are unluckier than most. This contraction, ‘o, is paramount to the furtherance of the Irish myth. It’s the grammatical equivalent of pixie dust. Anything becomes possible when you drop an “f” and apply yourself stupendously at the pub.

Which must be how the famous Blarney Stone came about. At Blarney Castle in the town of Blarney in County Cork, Ireland, is an inscribed slab. No ordinary slab, this. Did you not hear? I said it was inscribed. Are you still not in awe of it? Then I unsheathe my ace: It is “near the top of one of the walls.” (!) According to legend, one who kisses this stone is thereupon endowed with the gift of eloquence and persuasive flattery. This answers, for me, a mystery. Whoever convinced our government to calendarize St. Patrick’s Day and make Irish and non-Irish people alike wear green clothes and send each other hokey cards, must have smooched that rock smooth.

My youngest son came home from school today and said there was a new tradition: anyone not wearing green became susceptible to a pinch. “A pinch where?” I asked.

He said, “Anywhere.”

I apprised his clothing. “You’re not wearing any green. Did they pinch you?”

He said, “I’ve got it covered, Dad,” and he unveiled the tops of his boxer shorts, which were covered with palm trees.

“Happy St. Patrick’s Day,” I said.

“And the same to you, Pops.”

© 2006 by Martin Zender

IN LOVE WITH MYSELF

2006-03-16T13:24:00.000-08:00

A practical example of what I wrote yesterday came to the fore in the kitchen this morning. Melody asked if I got sandwich bags at the grocery store. I said, “No, I forgot. I got them for my office, but not for the house.” Then I decided to add, “I was looking out for Numero Uno.”

I’ve said that to my family more than once. I’m half joking. I’m not sure they get me, and I don’t strain to explain myself. My actions speak louder than my words to them, I think. My family knows that I give them everything. I have given my soul to them and thrown my last literal dollar toward their welfare. And yet when it is obvious to them that I’ve done something for the Z-Man first, I play it. I play the part of the quintessential cad and chant the mantra of the eon: “Looking out for Number One.”

And yet it’s a scriptural concept: “Love others according as you love yourself.” If you do not love yourself first, you cannot love others. If you do not take care of yourself first, you cannot take care of others. Loving and taking care of oneself is not an end (that’s the world’s concept) but a means to an end, namely, doing the same thing for others.

Not many people grasp this. In the interest of “selflessness,” people lose their peace, their minds, their spouses, their kids. By working tireless for others at the expense of their own happiness, the so-called “superperson” harms instead of heals. When you have too much to do and not enough time for it, you yell. When you desperately need rest but never get to bed on time, you cry. When your own health fails because you live for the health of others, you die. Screamers, weepers and dead people—these we do not need. Might I suggest: 1) disappoint at least three non-family members four times a week, 2) go to bed before nine thirty on a nightly basis, and 3) rise before the sun and take a long walk.

When the sun comes up, then for God’s sake, 4) buy sandwich bags.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

PASTOR DISASTER

2006-03-15T12:55:00.000-08:00

Life goes on, even for non-pastor types. Remind me to tell you sometime about why I am a teacher and evangelist and not a pastor.

Very well, then. I’ll do it now.

God gives different gifts to those in the ecclesia. Some are pastors, some are teachers, some are evangelists, some are jerks, and so forth. I am a teacher and an evangelist, but not a pastor. I have checked all my bones, and not one of them is a pastor bone.

The word pastor, in Greek, is poimen, and it means, “shepherd.” A shepherd is one who tends sheep. A shepherd has to hang around sheep all day and all night. He has to lead, feed, water and guard the sheep. He is burdened daily and nightly with the care of the sheep. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I do not have it in me to guard, feed (literally feed, with food) or water you. It is all I can do to guard, feed and water my family. I water them well because I bought a Culligan reverse osmosis water filter for our home. But I cannot buy a Culligan reverse osmosis filter for your home. I can’t even say, “I wish I could, but I can’t,” because I do not even wish I could. It is simply not in me to stretch myself this thin. I do hope you get one of these filters, though—I do. I want you to have good water, but I shall not be concerned and burdened by the thought. I simply cannot afford to lose sleep over your water condition. But do look into the Culligan filter, not for my sake, but for yours.

I’m too tired to lead you. To lead you, I might have to stay up past 8:30 p.m., which I am unwilling to do. To feed you, I would have to go to the grocery store yet again, which I already go to about three or four times a day because the four other members in my immediate family need different things, all at different times. It’s all I can do to keep my own family in milk. Everyone drinks different kinds. And they all run out at irregular intervals. If I screw up this milk situation, then I’ve really blown it in life, and I don’t want to do that.

I thank God that I’m not a pastor. Lots of pastors I know neglect their own families. The fact that so many pastors do this makes me think that the people are not really pastors. If they were really pastors, God would give them supernatural ability to care for their families first, then shepherd the people of God later. Real pastors must be able to survive on scant sleep. That isn’t me; I get up at 4:30, but I go to bed at half past eight. I do okay on seven hours, but anything less makes me want to nap or die. Real pastors must have broad shoulders and sturdy backs. That isn’t me; I do do resistance training to build my deltoids and latissimus dorsi, but this is so I will feel good and look sexy, not so that I can shepherd you and your kin. I’m sorry. Please don’t take that personally.

I do feel the burdens of the world, but in an impersonal way. I weep for the miserable occupants of this planet, I do. Disasters tear me up. When I read in the newspaper of a fatal car accident, I’m troubled. I can mourn for days over people I don’t even know. I weep for the race, but this does not necessarily make me send a card.

I do not cook spaghetti for the sick. Maybe I should. I thank God that not everyone is like me. Thank you, God and Jesus, that so many people do not think like the person I have become. If I was in the hospital, I would want spaghetti cooked for me. (No meatballs, please, just plenty of marinara sauce.) Perhaps this is real lack on my part. Maybe there is something wrong with me. I’m willing to admit that there is. Or maybe it’s simply that I’m not the pastor type—I am much more willing to admit to that.

I pray for people constantly, but with inarticulate groanings rather than with formulated words. Whether this helps people or not, I don’t know. I suppose it does, only because the spirit is praying instead of me. I do formulate words on occasion, but not that often. When people are on my mind in a general way, then I consider that praying for them. People say, “Pray for so-and-so,” and I say “Surely, I will,” and then I’ll think about that person for about thirty seconds or so, and count that as praying for them. After that, the spirit takes over. The apostle James would scold me for this because he says what good is it to pray for people if you don’t bring them warm mittens in the winter? I believe I’m paraphrasing the man. Well, if you really need mittens, I’ll send them to you. If someone approached me and severely needed mittens, I would surely render the mittens. I am a decent human being that way.

I heard another teacher, Ray Prinzing, tell a parable of the torrentially running river and the ocean. He said that the torrentially running river isn’t much practical good because you can’t put a boat on it, you can’t fish from it, you can’t swim in it, and so it goes. But the river is doing something, that is, it’s rushing to the ocean. In fact, it’s rushing because of the ocean. When the water of the river gets to the ocean, it can bear the greatest of seafaring vessels. Ray said that he was like the roiling water of the river, rushing to get to God. Not much practical good now, but just wait.

The sooner I get into God, the sooner I’ll be able to make James happy.

I still do some good now. People get blessed by my writing and speaking. Teaching suits me because I can drop a truth and run. Instead of giving you fish and giving you fish and trying to hook you another big fish, I can hand you a pole and go home. I give you principles. I make tapes or CD’s, or I write things, then I go away; I love doing this. It’s a fantastic method for me because you can learn about God from my pen or my voice while I’m home sleeping, or eating spaghetti at the hospital.

It takes special skills to pastor, but also to teach. The teacher must be able to ignore people and not consider their feelings. This is hard for some people to do. Some people never can learn it. My wife, for instance (God bless her) can neither do nor learn it.

I am willing to help people, but I like for people to be able to help themselves. I love to be appreciated and complimented, as long as no one asks me to pastor or boil pasta. I love to be hugged and kissed, but all within reason. (Melody is the exception to this rule, of course, and for this very reason I am considering shaving my facial hair. Melody pulled out a dish brush the other day and scrubbed my lips with it and said, “How do you like kissing that?” And I said, “Well, it didn’t feel very good, but I am becoming emotionally attached to the brush.”

I told Melody that I would shave off my facial hair, if it meant that I could begin kissing her unreasonably. Melody said, “But I love how you look with it.” Sigh. What am I to do? This is another topic entirely, so I will forgo it for now. But do you see? I can’t stop talking about my situation. I would make a lousy pastor, due to this. Pastors must talk incessantly about you. I do want to help you with your situation, but I can do that best by writing books for you, and talking to all of you at the same time on a tape or a CD. In this way, ZenderTalk works for me. It works better for me than visiting each of you individually, buying each of you a water filter, or constantly running to the grocery on your behalf, or fending off your many kisses with my bristly face.)

In all this I am trying to justify myself for not visiting the nursing home to see Herb.

Looking back, I see that I haven’t done it.

Damn.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

THE DEATH OF HERB DIRKS

2006-03-14T12:52:00.000-08:00

I just found out this morning that Herb Dirks died.

God sent Herb to the Earth via Germany before the Second World War, and he suffered during that conflict and never recovered from it. He saw people burned alive and took a rifle butt to his head. He was a good boy, but he stuttered and became a prisoner of war as a youth. God drew him to Himself through much pain. It is through much tribulation that we enter into the kingdom.

Herb came to our Bible studies when we held them at our home. He was big and thick, like a tank, and powerful with his accent and that ferocious stutter. He wore his hair in a crew cut, or grew it out white like a wild man—these two styling options. In the wild phase, his hair stood tall like Wolfman Jack’s. He would not have known The Wolfman, however; he strove to know nothing but Christ, and Him crucified.

Herb shaved irregularly, and this, combined with his other traits, frightened nearly everyone. He talked loudly and inadvertently spit. I met him in his latter fifties. Herb slapped you on the back with tears in his eyes and loved you like a bear; he cried so easily. He prayed for you always and followed up by bringing you things. When my family was struggling, in he would march with a watermelon, or pop, or a bag of groceries—always crying, always pressing toward you, forever loving you.

No one loved God more, or cried more, or felt more. Herb was like Jesus, so sensitive to the world was he. Every moment throbbed with meaning for Herb. He was unfathomable because of this, and, unlike Jesus, occasionally overbearing. We sometimes fought. He commandeered Bible studies. When Herb took the floor, the floor disappeared. Simple questions had Swiss-gearing answers, beginning in Genesis One and ending somewhere in Revelation. Herb drove me crazy. He spit on our rug. He inadvertently insulted unfortunate guests. (This came from knowing only Christ, and Him crucified.) There was nothing to do but sit back and sigh—and try to stay within grasping distance of Herb’s train. If you heard only half of a Herb Dirks speech (the national average), you prospered. You visited the sanctuary of God and met Christ.

I told him I stuttered, and we fellowshipped around that. He loved me for confessing it, and wept for my confession. It was Herb who told me minutes before my first public address: “Get up, speak up, shut up.” He saved me that day. That was thirteen years ago, but I recall that mantra still, whenever I approach a podium.

Herb mourned the adulthood of his daughters. There were no earthly beings more precious to him. He took his young family to so many scripture conferences. He missed that so much when his daughters grew up and married. He hated it when they all got jobs that took them away. He pined for the days when those little girls needed him, when they held his big hand. Herb’s wife, Barb, had diabetes and seemed tired all the time. She was never that well when we saw her, which was rarely. She preceded her husband in death by three years.

Herb must have died slowly in the nursing home. Three years in a nursing home, thirty-five miles from my home. Thirty-five miles, and I never once visited him.

And so I go to my bedroom now, and cry.

God have mercy on me.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

TOWN JUNK

2006-03-13T12:26:00.000-08:00

My town is junky with weak stabs at civility, sometimes painted gray and Bahama blue. But mostly the paint is peeling and dilapidation sings songs that sound like animals croaking, especially frogs.

Up over the signs through bricks and agecracks, red leaves appear in plaster as in the days of Roosevelt.

Nothing loves Crescent Road except pick-up trucks and roosters—and saws run by chains, and dismembered fingers.

What do people have against wood here? Against fingers?

The water tower fumes; the stones blame the track, but the tower points backward, and the track clacks heavily under trans-Atlantic bins. People admired the sidewalks, circa 1953. This settlement had prostitutes, but they depressed themselves and left in the early 21’s.

Two cops shot a bank robber in 1925. They stood him up in the corner so that little girls could wave pansies at him. They dressed him in a funny hat matching the gurgle he left Earth with. I think about him often, when the bank temperature fades.

The town here is Still Life with Weeds Growing Up. The smith makes shoes off the nail in the sod over the handle of his saddle-whapped horse, then leaves. The only cure for depression here is bananas, freshly peeled. Stare at the virgin banana flesh; stare. Off-white banana meat makes such happy eating. Devour the meat; it could never be nourished here.

No one cries for mercy in this town; I alone do that. People buy white bread and the cancer sticks of camels. I do not buy white bread and cigarettes. Interesting.

The trains come barging through this town, do they ever. Fat, stupid trains; lumbering crapyards laden with coal. Rusty tipbins, dory-sized, and ‘numdrums, too. The trains bangle bridges and fart out their hopes. They knock out the canopy people and pass o’er graffiti. They blast from their chutes and dangle where they are. Down go the dead cars past bins of recyclement.

Nothing recycles here, though; nothing at all. Everything is old and stays old through the weather. Loose dogs mangle down the sidewalks like monkeys. Cops cruise through dishevelment to inspect the crumblings; their speeding faces wax cherubic in the rainlight of “discovery.”

The wind blows, always.

People knife people here, and shoot people, and hit their brothers, then lumber through the woods on four-wheeled escape buggies. Twinkies sustain them on their branch-infested getaway. Someone won the lottery once—eight miles away.

The ice cream stand is God, and sundaes are Jesus. Some women should not wear sweatpants, ever. No woman should ever wear pajama bottoms in public. Men should and do wear sweaties and sleeperpants whene’er they let doors fall into the faces of fat mamas. Birds continue to crap here when they fly o’er the traincars. The band marches past the Independence Day puddles, and e’er out of tune are they—e’er out of tune.

I wish they had fixed up the robber in ‘jammy pants. The girl wanted him wrung on an ATV, but her mama got him whapped on his stubble with Marlboros. Cover him, I say, with ice cream that is soft. Bury him in snow-colored bread that is old. Suffuse him with bologna that is perfectly round, and discount his milk, no, not ever.

Soon, it will be over, and it will probably be windy. God will arrive; He’ll destroy all the quirkies when He’s finished with Babylon.

Come quickly, one world religion, thank you. Thank you, God, for placing me here, for I do like the statuary and the discounted milk. One woman wears miniskirts, and there are lights on the poles. I like the gas and electricity; I like cats. No one will ever find me here, no, not ever. I like all the roads where the cows shit bran flakes, all done freely without benefit of pants. The smell of the wheat dung justifies my tenure here; the wind brings it to my nose. It returns me (the wind) to memories of Jerusalem and the Bethany Road, when Barrabas shot the bank robber and dressed him in a Sponge Bob hat.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

FROM THE TREES SHALL COME MY HELP

2006-03-07T12:04:00.000-08:00

So I thought to myself, How can I get smaller and lighter? From whence will come my newest portable shelter? Am I destined to sleep in bubble wrap? Then so I shall!

Well, no. I didn’t want to sleep in bubble wrap. I still don’t. Try to imagine that. The wrap would be comfortable, yes, but every time I rolled over I would pop and wake myself up. And not just one pop, but dozens of them. Rolling from my side to my back, I would sound like the Fourth of July; Independence Day in the middle of the woods; the crackle of machine gun fire; Jiffy Pop that can’t sleep. What I needed was a bivy bag.

“Bivy” is short for “bivouac,” which, according to the Rand McNally Collegiate Dictionary, is “a military encampment made with tents of improvised shelters, usually without shelter or protection from enemy fire.” Soldiers camped in open spaces require proximity to the ground; jutting into the horizon even a foot could spell the loss of a foot, or another vital appendage. The bivy sack, then, was not a tent, but a glorified bag encasing the sleeper, shedding rain, fellowshipping with the groundlife. Because campgrounds on the Pittsburgh walk might not appear when I want them to, I felt I needed stealth camping capability. (That is, trespassing capability.) And nothing seemed better suited to that than a bivy.

Stealth camping is not my method of choice; I would prefer a bonafide campsite. I have never stealth camped in my life. Okay, I take that back. My friend Jim and I stealth camped in the Mojave Desert once, near an on-ramp to Interstate 15, outside Barstow, California. My wife and I stealth camped in a cemetery. (Yes, we did. Scenery Hill, Pennsylvania. September, 1984.) And I stealth camped at a rest stop in Utah once, in the woods behind the restrooms. I also just remembered that my same friend Jim and I “stealth” camped on a bench at a shopping plaza in Monroe, Michigan. We also “stealth” camped on the town green in Hemet, California. And Melody and I “stealth” camped on a town green in Fresno, Ohio.

I put “stealth” in quotation marks in the above examples because it’s not stealth camping when you’re in the middle of the middle of a town beneath an orange halogen lamp. This is bold, stupid and thus, perhaps, brilliant. No one bothers you—at least this has been my experience. People assume you have permission. No one is so bold to camp in sight of the world unless they’ve consent from the police, the mayor, and a majority of city council. But now that I think about it, camping in shameless places may be the best option yet. The choices become limitless: restaurant parking lots (tough to drive stakes through), schoolyards, churchyards, the post office, the library, next to the civil war cannon (or, for solo campers, in it), between the pumps at the BP.

I want nature, though. I want simplicity. I crave a degree of remoteness on this trip. I don’t want to hear mail sorted, or the clanking, through the night, of book and video return chutes. I do not want shot from a canyon, nor do I wish to mingle with the demons of the churchyard. I should not reek of wiper fluid in the morning; I should not want my oil checked.

I could lay my bivy bag anywhere in any woods—if need be; that is, if no proper campgrounds manifested themselves.

So I went online and googled “bivy bags.” I may as well have googled “death shrouds.”

Might I say: these products lacked size. Occupied, they resembled large and very uncomfortable caterpillars. (Struggling caterpillars, even; hurting and discouraged caterpillars.) Some of the bags had a small pole at the head that formed a hoop the circumference of a basketball. This feature kept the top of the bag three inches off the camper’s face. This was what I wanted, for sure. I wanted that kind of luxury. I wanted to be able to blink and stick my tongue out if I wanted to. I wanted to be able to itch my nose. These models were advertised as “SPACIOUS!” “ROOMY!” and “BIG ENOUGH TO SNEEZE IN!” This was for me. Still, I kept looking for something better.

Two days ago, I found it: www.hennessyhammock.com. A hammock! Look at this. At only 32 ounces, it rolls up smaller than a package of hamburger. It includes a rain fly that is strung just above the mosquito netting and staked out for total rain coverage. Two trees, and you’re up. Smooth, level ground? The hammocker doesn’t need them! The hammock takes three minutes to hang, four if you’re an idiot. You enter it by poking your head up the middle; yes. There’s a slit at the bottom, running halfway up. You poke in your head, turn around, sit down, bring up your feet, lay down, and your weight makes the slit disappear. Magic!

In pleasant weather, you stare through the mosquito netting at the stars while no insect on earth, no matter its size, disturbs your reverie. In windy weather, you rock gently to sleep. Position yourself diagonally and the hammock lays magically flat. There is room to spare at both your head and feet. The netting rests taut, a foot off your face. You may thus eat, read, or play pattycake with visible planets.

Suspended in the air! My realm is inherent among the celestials, so what better way to sleep, for me, than suspended off the ground? No terrestrial soldier, I! Son of the living God; my God! He, Himself, is enthroned on high in the company of angels. Besides, I don’t want to be trampled by deer, mice and rabbits.

I have pictured myself in a driving rainstorm at night, high and dry, a small electric lantern clipped to an interior hook, reading a book, snuggled into my down sleeping bag, dipping at leisure from a bag of pretzels; at one side my glowing blue Sirius radio—a Christmas gift from my sister—the antenna snaking up the tree at my head, dutifully receiving signals from a satellite in space; at my other side a cell phone, connected to Melody with whom I am whispering through a tiny headset—all while suspended between two trees in the middle of a Pennsylvania woods; I want this.

Hammocks, I have discovered, are as old as man. The Mayas used them exclusively; you would never catch a Mayan on a cot, or a Sealy Posturepedic. They napped, overnighted, made love, birthed, lived and died in their hammocks. It is probable that our Lord, while asleep in the fishing boat on Galilee during the storm, lay ensconced in a hammock. Mariners have utilized hammocks for centuries, stringing unused sails between masts and enjoying a restful night’s sleep no matter the waves.

According to a testimony on the website, a sixty year-old man, a nature lover, thought his camping days were over. He suffered hip pain, back pain, pain in his shoulder, pain in his pain. Simply contemplating a night in a tent on the unforgiving ground made his joints throb. Then someone told him about the Hennessey Hammock. He tried it on a short camping trip and—Glory! For the first time in four years, he awoke feeling fine. The guy was so excited that he came home, pounded two giant eyebolts into posts in his living room, and strung his hammock there. Now whenever he wants assured of a painless night’s sleep, into the Hennessey he goes.

I intend now to save up for the backpacker, ultralight version. In the meantime, I dream about it: a bag of pretzels, calm nights, stars or rain, swaying to sleep in a gentle breeze. With sustenance and shelter we shall be sufficed.

And now, “May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble! May the name of The God of Jacob set you securely on high!” (Psalm 20:1).

© 2006 by Martin Zender

VENTI EXPERIENCES AT THE BOOKSTORE

2006-03-06T11:40:00.000-08:00

I’m still going to tell you what I found on the Internet yesterday, but I must review now my trip to MallTown Friday, and what happened at the Barnes & Noble—before I forget.

MallTown is my name for the suburb twenty-five miles south of here that contains all the staples of indulgent shopping and fat-filled food. The shopping staples include Staples, Penny’s, Macy’s, Old Navy, Target, Wal-Mart, and such. Among the emporiums of fat are Chi-Chi’s, Red Lobster, Friday’s, Chipotle, Olive Garden, Outback, Cheddars and the like. The only real food in MallTown sits in bun ovens and veggie bins at Subway. Subway is the only fast food in America that has a right to the title, “food.” One may be assured of a square meal at Subway as long as one answers “No, thank you” to the requisite cash register question, “Would you like chips and a drink with that?”

MallTown contains a mall, of course. On weekday mornings only lonely people, walkers, and self-employed writers go there. (Sometimes these are combined into the frankenstein: self-employed, lonely writer/walker.) On weekday mornings and early afternoons, malls are barren of fun, and nearly of life. I encountered a middle-aged walker swigging a Starbucks as he went, and this was the main hive of activity. Old people sat on benches with hands atop their canes. The modern mall may be the geriatric version of the singles bar.

“Hello.”

“I know.”

“Wanna go to the hearing aid store?”

“Oh, I just had lunch.”

“What do you say we date?”

“The thirteenth.”

Mall employees at midway kiosks endlessly adjusted their product. As for me, I sought the Radio Shack; I needed high-bias, metal cassette tapes for the re-launch of ZenderTalk. I walked around so many times looking for this store that I encountered the Starbucks man seven times. It turned out that the Radio Shack had moved. I found out later from my sons that it was on Linwood Avenue now, between Panera’s Bread Store and Pay-Less Shoes, in the shadow of Dick’s Sporting Goods and Target.

Barnes & Noble is the best store in MallTown because the doors are well-built, and there’s a vestibule full of books between the cold parking lot and a cozy reading chair. The ambiance, upon entering the second set of real wooden doors, smells like toasted almond coffee beans. This is due to toasted almond coffee beans.

I make an immediate right to the coffee stand for a Starbucks grande, decaf. The sizing at Starbucks is foreign, even to foreigners. “Grande” is somehow “medium.” If you want a small, you say, “tall.” If you want a large, you say “venti.” If you want to cuss, you say “Blaggerdeepoop.” If you want to know why smalls are tall and larges are venti, you ask one of the young clerks. But as many of them have white, spiked hair, they don’t know. And yet they are kind enough to want to leave room in your cup for cream, if that’s your taste.

I was looking at “New Arrivals” at the front table when a woman (a new arrival in the flesh) came into the store wearing black, high-heeled leather boots.

I confess to you that I really like women’s boots, especially the high-heeled, black leather variety. I like it even more when the boots fit snugly around the woman’s leg, and this phenomenon was occurring here at this bookstore, with this new arrival.

This boot thing is venti to me; it’s not a tall issue at all. The higher the heel, the ventier the experience, to me. Some call this a fetish. I call it a matter of really liking women’s boots.

Someone gave me the impression, many years back, that this bent of mine was sinful. I respected this person’s opinion, so I sought to cleanse myself. (If God hated this variety of female footwear, then I would hate it, too. I wanted to be on God’s side in the matter of female footwear.)

I laid on the floor of my living room and cried and prayed. I was that sincere, in the direction of God. I prayed and prayed for the cleansing. When I got off the floor, I dusted myself and felt the need to test the prayer’s effectiveness. I had to wait a few days, but then I saw her at K-Mart: a woman in tight, high-heeled boots, leather and black. In that moment I knew that God had answered my prayer! I still dug the boots. God answered my prayer by not answering it. Whenever God responds in this way to a high-heeled request—or to any kind of request, for that matter—it is His way of saying, “Until I rid you of this thing, just hang onto it and do your best. If it is fun and relatively harmless, relish it.” In my case it was His way of saying, “I want you to keep this fetish, Martin. Enjoy the boots.”

This, in itself, was a cleansing. Here at the Barnes and Noble this day, it never entered into my heart to biblically know the woman; I did not prefer her to my wife; I did not make myself a nuisance to her; I did not even stare at her footwear, though, were it socially acceptable, I surely would have. I merely glanced and sighed, and felt good inside. It made the gray day better. It made me want to go home and see Melody.

Melody’s boots have a spiked, metallic heel, and they are an inch ventier than those of the tall lady at the not-so grande bookstore.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

THAT MAN IN HIS NYLON PRESCRIPTION BOTTLE

2006-03-04T11:33:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking about shelter lately, and my walk to Pittsburgh. Some people in this world try to see how spacious and fancy they can make their earthly domiciles. I had a guy recently tell me what the square footage of his house was. He was explaining how successful he was, so I assume that the number he gave spelled a very big house for him. I wouldn’t know; I failed square footage in school. Two hundred square feet sounds like a lot to me. I assume that my house has a square footage. I cannot tell you what it is, any more than I can tell you the size of my hard drive.

As for living quarters, I go the opposite way. One of my secret passions is tents. The idea of living so lightly that one can carry one’s home, fascinates me. Turtles have it made. If I could be any animal on this planet, however, I would be a duck. (More on this another time.)

I have carried my own home on several bicycling excursions. When Melody and I did our trans-America tour in 1984, we carried a Eureka four-person Sentinel. Why a four-person tent when there were only two of us? You never know who is going to stop by. I wanted Melody to have a nice place. I wanted her to be proud of her tent. Whenever we stopped at campgrounds, I wanted Melody to be able to look down upon the other tents and their owners. I wanted her to be able to “poo-poo” our tently neighbors and feel superior to them. I wanted Melody and me to be able to stand outside our tent, hands on our hips, and feel proud of our investment.

This backfired on me, because there were more car campers at many of the campgrounds than bicycle campers, and some of these tents you could do jumping jacks in. These tents had parking spaces around them. Some had exit signs. Some had to be pitched by teams of Amishmen. Many of the tents blocked the sun, moon and stars. I tried explaining to Melody that our tent was cozy. Melody said, “uh-huh” and went to take a shower.

While Melody was in the shower, I tried to do a dozen jumping jacks in our tent—just to see if I could. I pulled all eight stakes loose during the first jumping jack. After that, the next eleven jumping jacks were easy.

For a solo bicycling trip in Michigan in 1998, I bought a Eureka Solitaire. I was trying to simplify and minimalize even more, and this was the answer. The shelter weighed only three pounds, and thus it contrasted with our Sentinel, which was like carrying a zebra. It packed so small that I could fit it into one of my panniers.

The first time I pitched it for practice, I crawled in and said, “Uh-oh.” My brain didn’t like it. The tent was roomy at the shoulders, but it tapered down, down, down, toward the feet. It could not be sat up in. Even on my back, I could not put my knees up without them hitting the top. This tent was small. Whenever I looked down toward my feet, I got the willies. So I decided to myself, I just won’t look down toward my feet. This worked! As long as I pretended that my body was only a head and two shoulders, I dodged the willies and their wicked neighbors, the creeps.

I came to love the tent. The Michigan trip was five refreshing days and nights of rudimentary living. This tent offered the same protection as four walls and a roof, but you could fold it up and stuff it into a small sack. In the mornings after packing up, I would hold the bagged Solitaire in my two upturned palms and say to it, “You are my home.” I would say this to the Solitaire. Then I would look up to heaven, as if presenting to God my firstborn, and say, “This is my home.” I was very thankful to God for allowing me the thrill of holding in my arms a temporary home.

Who needed furniture and the like? This was my thought then. I thought to myself, Who needs closets and overflowing desk drawers and high-maintenance beds that require domestic theatrics such as making? This was the simple life. I didn’t have to clean the gutters of my Solitaire, or mow around it. I didn’t have to insure it or tell delivery men how to get to it. With sustenance and shelter let us be sufficed. I’d have needle pointed this saying and hung it on the tent wall, if I’d had one.

The Solitaire was the epitome of privacy. Unlike on the ’84 tour, I did not want guests dropping by. Here was the perfect deterrent to that. No one was going to say, “Let’s go visit that man in his nylon prescription bottle.”

But now the Pittsburgh trip looms, and it’s a walk, not a bicycle ride. So you know what I am thinking: How low can I go? I’ve got to get simpler and more basic. Along this line, you will not believe what I found on the Internet today.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

BLUE HOUR RESCUE

2006-03-02T11:28:00.000-08:00

When my son Jefferson was little and my office was in a tiny room at the house, he used to come in with an apple and sit on a big chair. I would turn my office chair around to face him, and put my feet up on the arms of his chair. In this way, I would enclose him and protect him. We called this time “protect time,” and it impressed on him forever that fathers protect sons. Jefferson is thirteen years old, and we still talk about protect time.

I like wearing sunglasses because they protect me from the harsh light of the world. My house protects me from the rain. My skin protects my bones from becoming bleached in the sun. I love visored hats in the rain because the visor protects my face from the water. A hot coffee cup in my hands, in winter, protects my hands from the cold of my downtown office, before the heater hits. My dad used to protect me, but he died. God protects me every day with an invisible shield. This works in combination with my sunglasses and my skin. I mix frozen berries in with my protein shake; the berries protect me from certain forms of cancer. I go to bed at 8:00, and this protects me from the debilitating forces of stress. Rising before the sun protects me from the mad rush of the eon. The quiet and solitude protect my spirit, and these work in conjunction with God and my skin.

My favorite time of day is when I crawl into bed. I sleep naked because I want to be free. The walls of my home protect me from the wind. If it rains during the night, I am all right because of the roof and the walls. A man needs a roof, four walls and a good wife; with these, he is happy. A down comforter is bonus protection, in the winter. I hope it is unnecessary for geese to die to provide the feathers that insulate my naked frame from the blue of night, which is 4 a.m. Four o’clock in the morning is called “the blue hour” because it is the time when the body comes closest to death. The heart is stiller then, the blood cooler, and the body practices for an untimely demise. If God is merciful, death is deferred for another day. At 4:01 a.m., life begins its slow return. Heat returns to the blood and the heart adds another beat per minute to prepare its home for the stresses of a wicked eon.

Death is dodged for another day, but maybe not tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow I will die. Death hangs over the head daily and by night, and there is nothing for it but food and skin, berries the color of wine, and sons and a good wife. But these, themselves, die. The only thing for it, then, is the invisible barrier of God. But even this flies at the hour appointed for an earthly end. The only thing for it, then, is an expectation for a future beyond the now-visible world. The only thing for it is the knowledge that God will one day abolish death. This knowledge is the feet of God at the arms of the chair, protecting the citizens of this tiny room from despair.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

MELODY’S BIRTHDAY

2006-02-26T11:20:00.000-08:00

Melody had a good birthday yesterday, no thanks to me. I’ve had a cold for about four days. We both got up at the same time yesterday morning (a Saturday), and I was a real drip. Melody sat on the sofa, I sat on a chair, and we just kind of looked at each other. I wished her Happy Birthday, but it was pathetic. I rubbed her feet for her, but I kept having to stop to blow my nose.

“I’m sorry I’ve been such a pain in the ass these last four days,” I said.

Melody said, “That’s okay.”

That’s okay? It wasn’t the answer I was looking for. Melody should have known I was fishing for a denial. She was supposed to say, “You haven’t been a pain in the ass.” It’s like somebody saying, “I’m stupid,” and another person answering, “That’s okay.” It’s not the answer you want to hear.

I gave Melody her birthday card. In it, I explained to her that I couldn’t afford to buy her a present. Instead, I was taking her out to eat. I was humiliated at not having enough money for a present and dinner.

“That’s okay,” Melody said.

A guy downtown stopped me two days ago and asked me for fifty cents. I had no paper in my wallet, but a lot of pocket change. This isn’t the first time the guy has asked me. Sometimes I tell the guy, “Nope, I don’t have it today.” I usually say this, for some reason, when I’m loaded. I’ve given him enough change in the past year that I could tap him once in a while. But today, all the money I had in life was in my pocket, so I reached in, pulled out a handful of change and presented it to him. There was one quarter, a few dimes, and hordes of nickels. I looked at the guy as if to say, “pick it out.” But he looked at me as if to say, “I can’t add.” So I just dumped the whole pile of silver into his upturned palms. He looked like he had hit the jackpot at Caesar’s Palace. I walked away content, realizing I’d given the widow’s mite.

“What would make this eon more difficult?” God asks.

“Freezing cold weather,” I say.

“I believe I can arrange that. What else?”

“A cold. You know, a virus that attacks the body and makes it produce histamine. In practical terms, I’m talking about a nose that constantly drips and agitates a person, and everyone around that person.”

God looks thoughtful. “Oh, I get it,” He says. “Life is hard enough without being constantly cold and having to incessantly blow one’s snot out, but this would make living damn near impossible.”

“You’ve got it.”

And so it was done.

It is an experience of evil Elohim has given to the sons of humanity, to humble them by it —Ecclesiastes 1:13.

“My sister and sisters-in-law want me to go shopping with them on my birthday,” Melody said. “I think it will be fun.”

“Then go ahead, please,” I said. “I’m going to take a nap.”

“But you just got up.”

“Have I wished you Happy Birthday yet?”

“Yes.”

“I meant it, too. Good night, now.”

I thought I heard the door slam as Melody left for the mall.

When I awoke from my nap, there was a note on the counter. It was from Melody. In the note, Melody said that she would like the floors swept and washed, the upstairs bathroom cleaned, and the carpets vacuumed.

Here’s something I can do to maker Melody happy, I thought. So I ordered my three sons to get started, and drove to my office to drink a cup of coffee and eat salted peanuts. I had to get away and relax. My cold was stressing me out. I felt a little better after my nap, but the house was getting to me. But as I sat there in the beautiful silence of my office cracking my peanut shells and drinking coffee, I realized that I had better get home and help the boys. I had to redeem myself on Melody’s birthday.

I made it my task to clean the upstairs bathroom. I had no gift to bring, so I became The Little Drummer Boy, only with a toilet brush instead of drumsticks.

I scrubbed the toilet for her, pa ruh-pa-pa pum;
I scrubbed my best for her (a lie), pa ruh-pa-pa pum, ruh-pa-pa pum, ruh-pa-pa pum.

Melody came home with a sack full of clothes that her sister and sisters-in-law had bought for her. Thank God for those women. Melody was in a great mood because of the clothes. The boys and I had cleaned the house, and it looked great. Melody noticed, and praised our efforts. But wow, what a bunch of clothes. Melody pulled out each piece one at a time, and held them to herself while we men praised her. It was four p.m., and the day was finally shaping up. Better late than never.

Our son Aaron said, “I have a taste for El Campesinos.” This meant that he had a taste for Mexican food, as well as for going out to dinner with Melody and me. Our youngest son Jefferson said the same thing. (Our oldest, Artie, had gone to work.) I had snuffed any spark of romance with my incessant snuffling, so I was all for a family outing. Let’s go together, I said. Melody beamed.

Melody had a happy birthday. I’m so glad she was born. Without her and me together, our children would not be here. We looked at each other at the restaurant and appreciated being together. We visited Artie at his job. We drove home safely, and so did Artie, later.

Melody had a happy birthday.

We have all been born, thank God.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

PHILADELPHIA FREEDOM, 1982

2006-02-23T11:09:00.000-08:00

I’ve been forced recently to think of my 1982 run/walk from Philadelphia to Atlantic City. You would think that a person would remember every minute of something as fantastic as that. A person would be wrong. I hardly remember any of it; I sometimes wonder if it was me who did it.

I recall only small bits of the train ride to Philly. Coming into Altoona, I remember the conductor shouting “Altoona! Charlie’s brother, Al!” I remember riding around the famous Horseshoe Curve, and the conductor saying, “We’re in it. We’re in the Horseshoe Curve.” I remember arriving in Philadelphia, a place I’d never been, and hearing the conductor say, “It is 101 degrees this afternoon in downtown Philadelphia.”

I called a cab and had the driver take me to a hotel near the Art Museum. I have no recollection of checking into a hotel, or what I did there. I must have paid the cabbie, but I don’t remember doing it. I only remember the wake-up call the following morning. A man who sounded very much like Sylvester Stallone grumbled sleepily into the earpiece: “Yeah, it’s 3:45.”

By four a.m., I was bolting up the Art Museum steps, the same steps Rocky bolted up in the movie. I pranced and danced like the underdog boxer himself, overlooking the sparkling city. By 4:02, I was away into the darkness.

I remember seeing people in the shadows of doorways. I ran and ran. I was too naïve back then to be afraid for my life. My safe passage through the worst parts of that city at that hour only confirms for me that crazy people leave other crazy people alone—it happens all the time—and that God has for years protected me from my own stupidity.

At the Ben Franklin Bridge came trouble. A police cruiser pulled behind me, lights engaged: it was illegal for pedestrians to cross the Ben Franklin Bridge. Had I any identification? I reached down for the small change purse attached to my shoe, where I kept a small plastic card with my name and address on it. What in the world was a kid from out-of-state doing trying to run across the Ben Franklin Bridge at 4:30 in the morning?

“I’m running to Atlantic City,” I said.

The cop wasn’t sure whether to believe me or hit me with his nightstick.

“That’s sixty-two miles from here,” he said.

I said, “I know. I should be there by seven o’clock this evening.”

I begged him to let me run the bridge, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He probably considered arresting me for my own good. Perhaps he should have. Instead, he drove me across the bridge, let me out, and wished me luck. This was the last thing I remember until Egg Harbor City, forty miles away.

I take that back. I remember throwing my sweatshirt away in someone’s roadside trashcan. I had attached reflector tape to the sweatshirt and planned to discard it as the sun came up: plan accomplished.

I had never been to New Jersey.

I traveled insanely light. All I had on the train was a) what I was wearing, b) a toothbrush, c) the reflector-taped sweatshirt, which I carried, d) a plane ticket home, e) about a hundred dollars of paper money in my sock with the plane ticket, and f) the aforementioned plastic i.d., along with about two dollars worth of change in the tiny Velcro purse attached to my right running shoe. After leaving the hotel that morning, I was minus the toothbrush. After the sun had come up, I was minus the sweatshirt. All I had now was a little bit of money, a plane ticket, a plastic i.d. card the size of a matchbook, and balls the size of an elephant’s.

I cannot remember eating or drinking a thing, but I must have. I have no recollection of bathroom stops. I remember running through Egg Harbor City, for who can forget a city so named? I patronized a McDonalds there, but cannot tell you what I purchased, or whether I dined in or consumed my banquet en run. But as I sit here writing this, I suddenly see an apple pie. No, wait! I see two! Two apple pies are appearing in my mind! That’s it, then! I must have gotten two apple pies!

Another piece of the puzzle falls into place.

Next thing I know, Right Knee is complaining. This begins in the late afternoon, sometime after Egg Harbor City. I realized later the mistake of attaching the change purse change to my shoe. The purse is designed to be threaded into the shoelaces for short-term use. Employing it for this long-term run, I unconsciously asked Foot to bench-press it thousands of times. By six p.m., Right Foot told the accompanying knee: “Make him pay for this. Now.”

I was forced to walk the remaining distance to Atlantic City.

My fear caught up with my common sense at the same time night caught up with New Jersey. Route 30 became a wilderness as the highway wove around mysterious-looking marshes. But the cars still came, and I was now unable to reflect oncoming headlights. But there were the lights of Atlantic City ahead. Would I ever get there? I walked and walked, but nothing seemed nearer, not even the ocean.

I know I arrived. But sitting here today, I cannot remember doing so. But I do recall the grocery store where I found a phone booth and called a cab place.

The dispatcher said, “Where are you again?” I looked at the street signs again and told him.

“Shit, man, I don’t even like to drive through that neighborhood. Don’t do anything stupid; I’ll be right there.”

I stood very still and followed his recommendation to the letter.

The next thing I remember is a dark and damp motel room with no bathroom. I remember neither going to bed nor getting up, though I know I did both. My next memory is of the Atlantic City airport, blanketed in fog. I remember all of us passengers trundling onto a bus bound for Philadelphia. I have no recollection whatsoever of the plane ride home, but I do have a photograph of me standing next to my fiancé Melody and my sister Kelly at the Akron-Canton airport. They looked happy to have me between them, and I looked happy to be there, which I was.

(I talked several people into sponsoring me-- so much money per mile--and I raised over $2000 for an organization that grants wishes to terminally-ill children. Thus, the shirt.)

The trip to me, now, seems like a dream in the night.

And so will this life seem, when I am finally finished with it.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

ZENDER-SCHMENDER

2006-02-22T11:04:00.000-08:00

Melody and her friend Jamie are doing a half-marathon at the end of April in Nashville. I got talked into it, and will accompany them. I told myself it would be a good getaway. Besides, I’ve never been to a city where they purposely misspell “opera.”

I want to walk the event and finish under three hours. To do that, I will have to maintain a 13.75 minute-per-mile pace. Lately, on my fast Friday walks, I’ve kept up 11 minutes a mile, give or take ten seconds. But that’s for three and a quarter miles only. I will feel primed for Music City success when I’m able to do eight miles at a thirteen and a half minute pace. I could probably do it today with help from my favorite elixir: Gatorade.

The girls did a seven-mile walk/run two days ago, and were tired. Melody told Jamie about my 62-mile walk/run in 1982 from Philadelphia to Atlantic City. The distance sounded so fantastic to Melody as she related it to her friend that she began doubting the distance. Jamie herself thought it a piece of science fiction. So Melody came home and asked me.

It seemed like sci-fi to me, too. Who was that alien of ’82 who tried everything and feared nothing? Yet I confirmed everyone’s worst fears. So Melody called Jamie and said, “Yep. He did 62 miles, all right. He just showed me his route on the map.”

I was flattered by the sudden fuss. Now Jamie is in awe of me. She does not care a whit that I am a writer of books. That the world’s most outspoken Bible scholar lives down the road from her elicits but a yawn. It’s Zender-Schmender, to her. But twenty-two years ago I did something physical that she now appreciates the difficulty of, and today it’s—Way to go, Martin!

Jamie is a Christian who enjoys the socially accepted end of the spiritual well. People who lower themselves via wooden buckets into that well, toward the secrets of Christ, are oddballs to her. Melody and Jamie do speak of spiritual matters, but always on Jamie’s terms. Melody’s terms would cross the border into Weirdsville, where Jamie is unwilling to be seen.

Two years ago, I talked Jamie into doing the sexy, “And now, here’s Martin” line on my Part-Time Sinner CD. I suppose she regrets it. For sure, she has never heard it. I can write anything I want to about Jamie without fear of reprisal—she never reads me. I gave her one of my books, Flawed by Design, because I thought it would help her through a trial. That was well over a year ago, and I’m still wondering about the book’s impression. Being an optimist, I’m assuming she buried it. But never mind that, for I am a god of forward motion to her now; an idol of self-propulsion.

I like Jamie. She is a good friend to Melody, and a good person. I wonder how she would have fared in first-century Palestine. Even if she hung out at the well with the other women, I suspect that the theology of Jesus would have been way too weird for her. But His walk from Jerusalem to Nazareth—now that would have tickled her bones sure.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

MONK IN MOTION

2006-02-18T10:57:00.000-08:00

INTERESTED BYSTANDERS: Was that you we saw walking out on Route 9 the other day?

MARTIN ZENDER: I suppose it was. Unless it was Admiral Peary.

IB: Were those ski goggles or WWI aviator glasses?

MZ: Ski goggles. They really keep the wind out. I don’t care what I look like.

IB: You needn’t have said that. We thought you might be an Eskimo at first, but we couldn’t fathom why an Eskimo would be out on Route 9. Besides, an Eskimo would have been wearing fur mukluks and not New Balance 763’s. We do credit you for that. How cold was it?

MZ: Twenty-five degrees, but the wind was the problem. It’s really bad on Route 9, especially at the top of the hill on the curve before Base Line Road. There’s no wind block. The wind was at least twenty-five miles per hour that day. The wind chill felt like a hundred below. It’s like an open tundra out there.

IB: ‘Open tundra.’ Isn’t that a redundancy?

MZ: If you’re riding in a car, I suppose it would be.

IB: There now. Are you disparaging our means of transport?

MZ: Not overtly. Cars are a necessary evil. If you can stand to drive one, go ahead. I just hope you get some sort of exercise. I mean, not that you need it.

IB: You are exercising our patience. Does that count?

MZ: The exercising of the patience burns only 35 calories an hour. At that rate, it would take you three months to lose a pound. I’m afraid you’d have to do better than that.

IB: Yes, well—How many miles do you walk a day?

MZ: Eight.

IB: Honestly now.

MZ: I’m walking eight miles a day right now, Monday through Thursday.

IB: How long does that take you?

MZ: About two hours, give or take five minutes. It depends on how many times I stop to tap the bladder.

IB: Tap the bladder! Don’t tell us you are able to manage such a feat in that Eskimo suit of yours.

MZ: Where there’s a will, there’s a way. I carry a liter of Gatorade on my back, is the problem. Plus I drink about nine glasses of water a day. So there are issues.

IB: We have heard quite enough, thank you. So when you are not despoiling the countryside, you average about fifteen minutes a mile.

MZ: That’s right.

IB: So what do you do on Fridays? Collapse?

MZ: Not at all. I do three and a quarter miles of speedwork.

IB: You mean you actually drive your car?

MZ: No. I walk fast. Last week, I averaged 10.78 minutes a mile.

IB: People don’t walk that fast from a fire. At that pace, you may as well be running.

MZ: I used to run—all the time.

IB: I suppose we’re going to hear about it.

MZ: I started running in 1972. I remember watching the great miler Jim Ryun in a track and field event on television. I got inspired and did ten laps around my house when the next commercial came on. It was pitch dark out, about ten o’clock at night. I was probably wearing high-top Converses. My parents thought I was crazy.

IB: Your parents were wise.

MZ: I did my first marathon in 1980. I would end up doing four more. My best time for the 26.2 miles was a 3:06. But I decided I needed to do longer distances.

IB: All right now, hold on. Excuse us for asking this nonsense question, but—twenty-six miles was not long enough for you?

MZ: No. I wanted to do journey runs. I wanted to run over the curvature of the earth.

IB: Why?

MZ: Because it was there. I’m always striving to whittle life down; I want basics; I want essences. I want to live fit and simply. Lots of things conspire against that in this world, but running seemed so pure to me; pure travel, just the human body and the earth. And maybe a box of Granola bars. So I wanted to do more of it. I wanted to experience where such simple motion could take me.

IB: And so you put this madness to the test?

MZ: You bet. I did forty miles around my city, in one day. Then I did a two-day, seventy-five mile run. Then I did a one-day, fifty-four miler. Then I did a sixty-three mile run/walk from Philadelphia to Atlantic City, across the state of New Jersey. That was in 1982.

IB: Sixty-three miles in one day?

MZ: That’s the farthest I’ve ever gone on foot in a day. But I’d discovered the secret of mixing walking with running. I would run fifteen minutes, walk five, run fifteen minutes, walk five. I just kept doing that from four a.m. until nine-thirty at night.

IB: Isn’t walking cheating?

MZ: Not if they’re aren’t any rules.

IB: Were you alone on these adventures?

MZ: Yes.

IB: Ah. We thought so. So we are correct in surmising that you are some radical, ascetic, monk-in-motion.

MZ: Hm. Well…yes, I guess. Thank you. It’s not altogether true, but it would make a great bumper sticker.

IB: If you had a car!

MZ: You got me on that one.

IB: Back to your mad schedule of present. On Saturdays you…

MZ: Rest.

IB: God be praised! Amazing! You actually sit down! Oh, hallelujah. You are a Sabbath keeper, then.

MZ: Well, no. Saturday just happens to be the first day of the weekend when everyone is home. We just hang around because the kids are home from school, and Melody is off from work. She’s a secretary at the school.

IB: A secretary. Thank the Lord there is at least one normal person in your family. Tell us about Sundays. On Sundays you go to church, obviously, since we hear from so many that you are a man of God.

MZ: Well, no. I walk nine miles on Sunday. But I’m trying to build up to eighteen.

IB: The devil you are! Ignoring for the moment that you are an apostate of some strange and singular variety, may we ask why you—or anyone—would want to build up to eighteen miles of walking on the Christian Holy Day of Obligation?

MZ: I’m sort of training for a walk to Pittsburgh.

IB: Oh. Of course. Well, why didn’t we think of it? We should have know it, from all you have said. Pardon our inexcusable daftness on this. It is a most natural course for you, to walk to Pittsburgh. We are tempted to ask—why Pittsburgh? But please do not say. Because of course we know that the answer will be…

MZ: Because it’s there. Plus, it’ll be a five to six day journey, depending on whether I want to do twenty-five or thirty miles a day. I’ve never done more than a two-day trip on foot, so I’m excited at the prospect of this.

IB: Oh, yes, well, who wouldn’t be? But why don’t you just run to Pittsburgh? You were so crazy about running. You disobeyed your parents because of it, and brought them grief. We think you owe it to them to run to Pittsburgh.

MZ: I don’t run anymore.

IB: What? Are you out of Granola bars? Gatorade? Some other foul product? Do tell.

MZ: Actually, I just got tired of it. It got to be too hard. Walking is more relaxing. It’s easier.

IB: Easier! Why, that should be enough to damn it for a person such as yourself. Are you turning over a new leaf?

MZ: My body’s telling me to walk. Besides, it’s even more basic than running. It used to be the main mode of transport in this world. The car is a Johnny-come-lately, you know. I’ve discovered that a Biblical day’s journey was between twenty and twenty-five miles a day.

IB: So?

MZ: So, people used to regularly walk distances like that. It was an ordinary thing back then to be able to walk twenty miles a day. When grandma said she’d be walking from Jerusalem to Jericho, nobody thought anything of it. It was no big deal. They said, “See ya, Grandma!” It was a common state of fitness, to be able to do that. These days, people don’t even want to park on the outskirts of a Wal-Mart parking lot. It’s too far. They’ll drive forty laps around the lot in their cars, just to get fifty yards closer. It’s pathetic.

IB: Oh, have some sympathy. People are old, you know.

MZ: Well, they wouldn’t get old if they’d get out and exercise. Ever hear of a guy named Edward Payson Weston? He was a famous pedestrian of the late 1800’s, and he walked across the United States at the age of seventy-one. Seventy-one. And he averaged forty miles a day!

IB: Another radical, ascetic, monk-in-motion, no doubt.

MZ: Not really. Just a man who valued exercise and fresh air. In fact, the more I think about it, this radical, ascetic, monk-in-motion label no longer describes me. Maybe I used to be that way, but I’m not anymore. I just want to be normal.

IB: Glory be. You call walking to Pittsburgh normal?

MZ: It would have been normal a hundred and fifty years ago. Nowadays, normal is weird and weird is normal. If you ask me, it’s weird to drive around a Wal-Mart parking lot for fifteen minutes looking for a spot next to the handicapped space.

IB: Hm. Well…perhaps you’ve made your first point of the day. But—say, where are you off to in such a hurry?

MZ: Excuse me, but I’ve got to use the restroom.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

TENDING TO MY DISCHOCOLATED WIFE

2006-02-16T10:50:00.000-08:00

I called Melody off sick today from her job. What a terrible week Melody is having. First her husband gets her nothing for Valentine’s Day, and then a virus invades her fair frame and convinces it to produce ridiculous amounts of histamine. I assure you that Melody would be at work today, performing her usual miracles, were she not talking like a frog. It would not do well, I told her, for her to answer the phone at the school and say, “Ribbit?”

“I need Kleenexes,” Melody told me before I headed off to work. “And those vitamin C cough drop things. Ribbit!” Having gotten her nothing for Valentine’s Day, this trip to the grocery was the least I could do. I hopped to the task.

As I stood in line at the grocery store at 8:15 a.m., a strange thing happened. The woman at the cash register told the woman in line ahead of me: “I think I’m getting Alzheimer’s.” She said this on the heels of forgetting the customer’s regular brand of cigarettes. It was not Alzheimer’s, of course, but that her mind was overloaded with grocery facts. She is also the owner of the store, and there must be no end to the details she must remember: How much does a can of garbanzo beans cost—per thirty-can carton? When will I have to order more Ajax? Will our twelve-packs of Lincoln-shaped marshmallow heads get here before President’s Day? Why does mold grow on all of our grapes?

At this juncture, the woman in line ahead of me said, “You just need a vacation.”

The storeowner responded, “Well, I’m going to a food vendor’s convention next weekend. I’m going to be buying hams.”

I was so taken aback that I almost reached for an impulse item. The woman in front of me said, “Well, that’s no vacation. That’s work.” Amen, sister. Preach it for both of us. A grocer going to a food vendor’s convention would be like a bullfighter going to church: business as usual.

I should have let this intelligent customer make our mutual point, paid for my Kleenexes and vitamin C cough drops, and left to attend to my dischocolated wife. But it entered my head how to make the food convention fun. I saw mental pictures of how to accomplish it. I can’t help what I think of. I can usually help saying it, but I thought my comments would enlighten and edify this gathering. So I said, “The only thing that might make a food convention fun is if there was a food fight.”

I realized then that I should have slapped myself in the head with an impulse item. I stared at the black conveyer belt thing, waiting for someone to laugh. I stared at the ingredients of the cough drops, waiting for someone to laugh. I noticed that there were 200 Kleenexes inside the box I was preparing to purchase, waiting for someone to laugh. For a reason I will never understand, I gained courage from the silence. My vision of the food fight at the convention had budded, and I was not even at the flower shop. So I looked up into the owner’s eyes and said, “I mean, I would love to throw a ham. Wouldn’t you? Imagine that. Throwing a ham. Try to imagine actually heaving it at someone. I’d throw it thawed, of course. I wouldn’t want to throw a frozen ham. Can you imagine getting hit on the head by a frozen ham?”

It was so quiet after this that, for a moment, I thought I might be at the library. But I looked around and noticed that there were no books. There were only impulse items like little pencil sharpeners, packs of bubble gum, and issues of TV Guide. I knew it was the grocery store then, because patrons at the library are discouraged both from chewing gum and knowing ahead of time what will be on television.

Someone had come into line behind me—another woman. She had heard my ham soliloquy. I looked to her for comfort, but she was staring at a rack of beef jerky, pretending to read the ingredients.

To me, throwing hams is a healthy antidote to the rotish observance of Hallmark Holidays. My advice to everyone is: Do the unexpected. Be unpredictable, and good things will come to you.

You can always apologize to everyone later.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

HALLMARK HOLIDAYS

2006-02-15T10:40:00.001-08:00

Someone e-mailed me this morning and asked me what I got Melody for Valentine’s Day yesterday. This was my answer:

I am an eschewer of Hallmark Holidays. I know that Hallmark did not invent Valentine’s Day, but it has become so closely associated with it that the firm has hired Cupid as its East Coast Distributor. As for lauding Melody with such things as flowers and chocolates, I avoid predictability whenever possible. I am a man of spontaneous combustion.

On the way home from work yesterday, I saw a guy emerging from the flower shop with a vasefull of product. He looked so sheepish. He really did resemble a sheep—a sheep carrying a bottle of roses. Getting one’s wife flowers on Valentine’s Day is like going to church on Christmas and Easter. It’s like saying to God, “Okay, God. I’m doing what I’m supposed to do here, so please try not to send me to hell.”

I knew the guy, so I gave him a knowing wave. He yelled across the street, “Marriage insurance!” I had to laugh. Fire insurance, marriage insurance—what’s the difference?

You will never find me at the flower shop on February 14, or at the bar on St. Patrick’s Day, or in Selma on the Day of Martin Luther King. I’m more likely to visit the florist on Wednesday, April 12. Why then? What does that day mean? It means nothing. The day does not exist on Hallmark’s hallowed calendar, and this is why I favor it. It is for this very reason that I may be there. April 12, 2006 is an arbitrary day. It’s a day on which spontaneous love for my wife could very well spill from my heart and land on her desk at work in the form of a professionally arranged bouquet. But now I’m doubting it. Because now that I’ve announced this day as a possible contender for my spilling heart, I am forced by my own doctrine to avoid it. Notice to one and all: I, Martin Zender, will not be seen walking from the local florist with a vasefull of product on Wednesday, the twelfth of April, 2006.

I may, however, venture surreptitiously to Selma.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

DREAMING IN COLOR

2006-02-13T10:05:00.000-08:00

I had an intriguing dream the other night that I did not remember until the following afternoon when I was interrupted at the corner of Snyder and Milbourne Roads by a funeral procession.

“That figures,” I mumbled. I couldn’t turn left because the hearse was coming on, followed by seven or eight hundred cars (or so it seemed) with their lights on and the requisite purple flags suction-cupped to their roofs and hoods.

Oh, woeful and wretched man am I. This procession, at first, was but an impediment to my forward progress. I was inconvenienced so that I could not immediately turn left and hurry back to work after lunch. This, while some poor and lunchless person lay prostrate in a box at the back of the hearse, making no forward progress whatsoever. And here was the family, in mourning.

I came to my senses and shifted into “park.” Now I had to watch it; God said, Watch this.

My radio does not work, praise Him. The February sky hangs low and gray this day, as it does on most days here in my state. Lukewarm air comes through my venting system and my car rumbles because God has damned the exhaust system. To His credit, He has granted 235,000 miles of miraculous travel to this machine, my machine. It used to belong to my earthly father, who died himself two years ago and no longer suffers upon this vale of tears.

I could see the entrance to the cemetery from my stop-sign vantage point. The cars pulled so slowly into the place; right turn, right turn, right turn; outside wheels obeying inside wheels; wheels, wheels, scrunching against the pavement and leather-gloved palms. I stared at the wheels and their slower-than-death turns.

Steering wheels; tire wheels; the wheel itself, invented thousands of years ago and still the workhorse of this “advanced” age. By now we ought to be visiting wheels in museums, but instead we surround them with balloons and flapping plastic pennants. Wheels should humiliate us, but instead they excite us. We decorate them with spoked covers and kick them. If they maintain their constitution, we delight in them and incur debt because of them. We take care to polish them. We tell our friends we have got “a new set of wheels.” We “wheeled and deal.” We have become “big wheels.” Wheels are as humiliating as crutches and the rubber-bottomed boots used for casts, but nobody gets it. The race is hobbled and no one notices. As I watched the cars, I though of travel in the hereafter: wheels will be conspicuously absent. But here beneath the modern February sky, I watched the deceased suffer the final humiliation of mortal flesh: transported to the grave by means of the wheel.

At that precise moment, I remembered my dream.

Take this lightly. My dreams may be inspired by the wheat germ I sprinkle on my oatmeal before bed. What I am about to relate to you may not even have been a dream, but a mental picture in the seam between consciousness and sleep. It was real enough to me, though, and it thrilled me.

In the dream I saw colors, but not colors as we know them. You may think that an apple is red and a leaf is green, but what we call “red” and “green” are poor substitutes for the real things. The real things have names that we don’t even know. Red may actually be splerdon, and green florn. What we see now are baby colors; primitive hues; dialed-down driplight. The colors of my dream were mature, ripened, bursting. It was as if God had suddenly cleaned my dirty windshield with a miraculous blue fluid. I saw an apple tree that was so beautiful it made a noise. The colors made sound, so pure were they. They attacked me in a pleasant way and attached themselves to my eyes. A simple close-up of an apple made my breath halt. Even the air had color; even the air made a noise. I realized then that, even while seeing, I had for my whole life been blind. In this dream, God removed the veil and I saw glory.

I knew then the trouble God went to to mute the glory of His creation. He works hard, daily, to keep it under wraps. He must not reveal it before the time. It is as if God has a glory knob and has turned it far left to the lowest notch and nailed it there. But on this occasion and in this seam of unconsciousness, He turned the glory dial up one notch to grant me a glimpse at the real; this reality; these colors; this air.

It was brief, but momentous. My initial reactions was: God! I see now why evil had to come. It’s worth it! This was my instant response. All evil fell away to nothing except for its bare-bones purpose: to reveal glory. I knew in a moment that every evil was justified. Every pain fell into place at my first glimpse of the real world. And God may well have said: You justify me because of this? Greater things than these shall you be seeing!

He had barely nudged the glory dial and I was ready to proclaim Him “The Pure Genius, God! Father of all! Justifier of Everything!”

What a sucker I am for glory.

For now, I endure the trains of death, with accompanying headlights, purple cotton flags, and the endless convoy of wheels. But now I see God behind it all, winking, gripping the glory knob with His right hand, smiling so pregnantly toward my tired face.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

SOCK HELL

2006-02-09T09:40:00.000-08:00

I am capable in some areas of living, in others—no. For instance, I am mercilessly incapable in the area of sorting socks.

I can distinguish Melody’s socks from those of my sons because Melody’s socks have a feminine look and feel. The best news for me is that Melody wears a certain variety of black, lacy sock. I know the socks are hers; they better be. I enjoy folding Melody’s socks; I linger over them. I do not do the same over the socks of my sons. I love my sons, but I am afraid of their socks and avoid them. All of my sons’ socks look alike; I cannot distinguish them.

It is an experience of evil that Elohim has given to the sons of humanity, to humble them by it. –Ecclesiastes 1:13.

Darn those socks! There are too many of them. Each of my sons has two feet, making six feet in all. Each foot has a sock, and each sock looks like all the others. To make matters worse, one size appears to fit all. Compound this with the fact that my sons change their socks every day (a habit they learned from their mother), and you can appreciate my dilemma. I am not a patient man, at least not when it comes to sorting socks. I tried to be patient one day last month. I attempted to sort the socks that day; I made an honest effort. But I ended up throwing the socks against the wall and talking loudly to them. The static electricity made the socks stick to the wall, and so I cursed the stuck socks; I cursed them verbally where they vertically lay. I wondered if it was worth it, this sock-sorting business. In a short time, I decided it wasn’t. I was willing to serve Melody, but was unwilling to lose my mind over underwear made for shoes. It was at this time that I devised Plan B.

Plan B, stated flatly, is this: GIVE UP. This strategy has worked wonders for me. I have used it several other times in life, to good result. So I began gathering up the socks and plopping them on the dryer in a pile, much like a sock hodge-podge—a sock-podge. “It’s a free-for-all,” I told my sons. “A sock-podge. It’s a sock give-away. On top of the dryer, you will encounter sock hell. If, by some mad gift of God, you are able to distinguish what is yours from that of your brother, then do so. Now!”

Melody did not like this, at first. She tried to persuade me that I was capable of sorting the socks.

“I am incapable,” I corrected her.

“Try it,” Melody said.

“Oh, Melody. I have tried.”

“What happened?” Melody asked.

“I failed miserably.”

Melody asked if I could demonstrate my conception of “failed miserably.” Being more than happy to, I grabbed a handful of socks, threw them against the wall, then cursed them where they vertically lay.

Melody was impressed. “Does this happen every time?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, “I’ve only tried it once. And once is all I intend to try it.”

So now the socks somehow disappear from the top of the dryer, and everyone is wearing clean socks. I don’t know how this happens, and I don’t care.

I only care that it happens, and that I have nothing whatsoever to do with it.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

PEOPLE ARE HUMBLED WHEN THEIR FINGERS FREEZE OFF

2006-01-15T12:00:00.000-08:00

I love to see, when leaves
depart,
The clear anatomy arrive,
Winter, the paragon of art,
That kills all forms of life and
feeling
Save what is pure and will survive.

—Roy Campbell

There is a pomposity to summertime that winter forbids. Summer permits the Beach Boys, squealing tires, hot sliding boards, and rolled-up sleeves. Winter brings cares, caution and the clutching of wraps to the breast.

Winter humbles us, and that’s what I like about it. It does to our character what it does to trees. When ferocious, winter strips bark and stops sap. When cruelly overstaying its welcome, it makes human beings groan and wish for Elsewhere.

Winter is a mirror of the real world; it draws from men the ingenuity to surmount hardship. When the world is cold, a man builds a fire. When the world is tempestuous, a man builds a roof. When the world is so terrible that a man’s skin begins to die, he finally seeks God.

God lives on both sides of a storm window. He inhabits both the crystalline snowflake and the embers of a cozy, Christmas fire. He inhabits the ice dagger snapping from the eaves and the robe belt clinched tight against the absence of heat.

Winter is contrast between sides of a storm window. The storm is without, peace within. The cold is without, warmth within. The wind is without, within are gentle heat-puffs rising from ducts or stovetops. This contrast is as delicious as man and woman, work and rest, laughter and tear.

Here is one way to enjoy it:

The outside of your down sleeping bag should be forest green, the inside silver. Sleep naked inside the bag on cold, winter nights. The bag should be of goose down so that the down traps the air, warms it, and keeps your skin the temperature of palm trees while the outside world quivers and quakes.

Yesterday you wore heavy bedclothes, but today you test comfort against nothing but the feathers of geese. The silver lining is a cirrus cloud that the goose flies through, and the long zipper is the Deity’s man-made wedge against a much crueler world.

Upon waking, you need only a reclining chair and a book. Do not move except at the behest of gravity; this must include the sinking of your heels into the foot part of the chair. Let the book capture you to the point that the world outside the storm window ceases to exist. At this juncture, cars, if they come, will not come, and people, if they chatter, will say no words.

There is a cup of coffee near you, billowing smoke. The smoke, if you watch it, twirls in the cup as it exits, then disappears inside a lamp shade. If you read a fine sentence, savor the words with a small mouthful of the coffee. When the words have exhausted their usefulness (and not until then), let the coffee slide down your throat and pay attention to what happens when it arrives at your stomach.

Winter is a slender thing. I recommend befriending it. Tomorrow it disappears and someone plugs in the Beach Boys. Tomorrow it disappears, and men build no fires, nor do they contemplate roofs, nor do they seek God. This is because, in the green and the blue and the rose petals of summer, God seems everywhere. This, in turn, is because, in the green and the blue and the rose petals of summer, contrasts disappear.

God dwells most heartily in the snowflake, the ember, the icicle, and the robe. These are the best things, the hard and soft things, the things that draw purpose from the breast, around which, today, we wrap our coats.

© 2006 by Martin Zender

DATES & CONTENTS

2006-01-01T09:23:00.000-08:00

GREETINGS! Welcome to Zenderville. If you are new in town, read these offerings chronologically. Things will make a little more sense to you that way. The events will not only be chrono, but they will be logical as well. And don't forget to break the speed limit! Martin

1/15/2006
PEOPLE ARE HUMBLED WHEN THEIR FINGERS FREEZE OFF

2/09/2006
SOCK HELL

2/13/2006
DREAMING IN COLOR

2/15/2006
HALLMARK HOLIDAYS

2/16/2006
TENDING TO MY DISCHOCOLATED WIFE

2/18/2006
MONK IN MOTION

2/22/2006
ZENDER-SCHMENDER

2/23/2006
PHILADELPHIA FREEDOM, 1982

2/26/2006
MELODY’S BIRTHDAY

3/02/2006
BLUE HOUR RESCUE

3/04/2006
THAT MAN IN HIS NYLON PRESCRIPTION BOTTLE

3/06/2006
VENTI EXPERIENCES AT THE BOOKSTORE

3/07/2006
FROM THE TREES SHALL COME MY HELP

3/13/2006
TOWN JUNK

3/14/2006
THE DEATH OF HERB DIRKS

3/15/2006
PASTOR DISASTER

3/16/2006
IN LOVE WITH MYSELF

3/17/2006
ST. PATRICK’S DUH

3/18/2006
ROAD MAN

3/20/2006
MELODY WHITE VS. MOE & COMPANY

3/21/2006
DAY OF BITTER COMPLAINT

3/22/2006
NPR ANGEL

3/27/2006
HOT SOFT CHEESE ROLLS

3/28/2006
NUCLEAR WAR AND THE BIKINI CURE MALE DEPRESSION

3/29/2006
EFFECTIVE CURES FOR DEPRESSED WOMEN

3/30/2006
SHAMEFUL WEALTH

4/01/2006
CURLICUES OF A WICKED EON

4/04/2006
WITH A BUTLER ON THE LADDER AND A PHIPPS IN HAIR

4/05/2006
A BROTHERHOOD OF CREEPIES

4/08/2006
LAST LAUGH IN AMISH COUNTRY

4/11/2006
TO BE A DUCK

4/13/2006
TENDER BABY IN A NEW WOMB: THE HENNESSY ARRIVES

4/14/2006
PRETEND YOU’RE UNCLOVEN

4/18/2006
SLEEPING APART

4/21/2006
THE MARTIN ZENDER DRILLING COMPANY

4/28/2006
MELODY GOES TO NASHVILLE ALONE

4/30/2006
I MISS MELODY

5/01/2006
MELODY RETURNS FROM NASHVILLE

5/04/2006
LONG COOL WOMAN AIN’T HEAVY

5/05/2006
HOW TO WRITE/HOW TO LIVE

5/08/2006
ANTLERS ON A FRICKIN’ MOOSE

5/09/2006
THE FLIGHT OF THE DOOPSIE

5/10/2006
F15718

5/16/2006
JED CLAMPETT OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER

5/22/2006
GOLD IN THE CAVE WALL