Do You Know the Way to San Jose?

A state of mind, no? I'm bogged down in C.S Lewis 'splainin' Christianity, looking for a new rector for our dear St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, and listening to Diddy, Dionne, DeBarge, Chaka Kahn, Bobby Brown, and Black Eyed Peas on my iPod Shuffle. That's where you can hear three versions of the San Jose song.

The dead wife of the brain splatter guy is haunting us now. Her random bulb plantings are springing up excuuuuse the pun--oh here comes Mama Cass---and believe it or not now there's something groovy about whatever we got---gettin' better every day--under rhodie bushes and out on the little meadow. We've been through sweet stands of Snowdrops and clumps of purple Crocus. Now hyacinth have appeared. They are making me sad. Like today I remembered sitting at the fountain in the old Powell Street Woolworth's on Gay Pride Day back in the seventies with a Quantas flight attendant, a steward, who knew Wade Howard. I teared up thinking about those paper cones slipped into a metal collar that was your water glass.

Jeez. Now I'm the co-chair of what is named a Call Committee. We scour the earth putting out a call to clergy. Come to us. Pray with us. Lead us to salvation. Don't come if you're too old. Don't come if you're not a family man with loads of children. Stay put if you are gay. Seems some meeting nights I'm called. Called to break down the committee's walls only to sit satisfied with a flimsy partition that goes up after the bricks come down.

My friend Dick is getting married. He asked me to officiate----here comes Chad and Jeremy...when the rain beats against my window pane I'll think of summer days again and dream of you...---so I got ordained last week. On line. $19.50 from The Church of United Life, Sacramento, California. They are sending a certificate with a GOLD seal which entitles me to clothing discounts--now Chaka...through the fire to the limit...----and the right to be addressed as Reverend.

The wedding is April 22 which is way sooner than planned since Dick's eighty something mother recently found out she has lung cancer with mets to every major organ. So he and his betrothed are accelerating their plans--from Chaka to Charlie Mingus "Good bye to Pork Pie Hat"---so I'm trying to put together a binding sort of ceremony.

I can marry people but I can't get married. Go figure.

My friend Ed lost 8000 of his 10,000 iPod songs. He found all but 1800. Ed is waiting for his son to come home from medical school on Spring Break to find the last missing songs. I remember when Ed had 10,000 Ralph Lauren rep ties. Poor CT.

Charlie Parker enters the room blowing "Just Friends" oh my oh my. Paul has several new friends, Charlotte aged 5, Autumn age 3, and toothless Clayton age 7. These are three of the fourteen children who live in the house at the bottom of our cul de sac. We just found out about the 14th having believed there were only 13. The little ones stand along our property line watching Paul dig holes and plant cypress trees. Twenty-five cypress destined to grow wide and tall as a hedge to keep the children out. Paul pumps them for information--little boy what does your father think of the color of our house? (he hates it) little girl how many brothers and sisters do you have (too many she says sweetly). I came home the other afternoon. Paul had them carrying big pails collecting rocks for our riverbed feature.

They've all told us that the old man who lived in our house died. "How?" I ask. "He fell out of his car in the driveway." The pudgy boy from another family, holding his Super-Sized Coke from McDonald's in one had and an all day sucker in the other describes the police and fire trucks and ambulances come for the old man. A few minutes later I turned back to the kid. He was peeeing on Paul's new Dogwood--still holding the coke, sucker in his mouth.

Cissy Houston singing FAITH...the invincible, it can conquer anything aaaaaaannnyyyyyyything, ANYTHING. C.S. Lewis is calling. Or perhaps a little lite porn? Yeah. Right. Bye.