01_Unexpected 02_Pressing On 03_An Ordinary Life 04_Continuity 0#_My Will To Fight -------------------- Connexions Music RCP90 Elijah's Tomb Boy Charlie -------------------- ryanro@mac.com

UNEXPECTED My legs are uncomfortable from sitting cross-legged for so long, but there is not a seat left for me in the lecture hall tonight. It's unbearably hot. Thirty degrees below zero where I come from today. Here, I can barely see my breath. I can understand why they find it cold, but I don't sympathize. There are worse fates than cold. I try to listen to the words. I know they mean something. I agree that the subject being talked about this night is important. Regrettably, I do not care. I take the book from my backpack and begin to read. It is a work of grief observed. It is also the work I have read the least of the books I own. The binding has yet to be cracked, and the glossy cover still shines. It is it not yet well worn. If the physical book has not lived, the words contained within have. They have lived and offer that life up to me however I choose to take it. They are a curious comfort to me in a place where comfort should come easily. I read, partially taking in what the speaker says. The words are passionate and true but I find I do not care. They talk of God and men and revival and blessings and I wish I had a cigarette. I could listen if I had a fag. I don't smoke. I've sat for a little over an hour now. Likely there is just shy of an hour left. The thought of spending another hour with these people is unbearable. I can't take anymore! my mind cries. Old instincts flare into existence and I hesitate. If I leave, I miss out on something important. I may miss an opportunity to make connections. The deliberation is swift and I am out the door. I wish I had a cigarette. I pause outside the door. Bull in a china shop I may be, but to step out of a door is to pause and take stock of my surroundings. I hope I never tire of seeing the city laid out like so many fireflies at night. I start walking. The corner of my eye catches a neon open sign flickering just slightly. A mirthless grin pulls at the corner of my lips. But it is all too welcome, this bar next to a lecture hall. College life. Corona, no lime, I tell the bartender. My beer and I find refuge on an unoccupied sofa wedged behind the fooseball table. I look up. A younger man than I---and I am not an old man---perches on a stool, acoustic guitar slung about him. His hair is curly and thick. I write him off as the typical "dork with an acoustic guitar". I pay him no mind and return to my reading. Both pool tables are in use. The bar is mostly empty, the noise only a mild roar. I read. I wish I had a cigarette. It dawns on me that I would have to go outside to smoke it. On stage, he finishes a song. Scattered applause. He makes small talk with the small crowd. I look up. He introduces the next song. I know the song. His voice doesn't do it any favors; the lack of a full band hurts it; and I'm really not particularly fond of acoustic guitars. But all this I notice later, right now it falls to the wayside. I watch this unpretentious boy on a stool with an acoustic guitar, I listen to the music that gloriously flaunts its imperfections for the world---and the baker's dozen in the bar tonight are, for this moment, the whole world---with a beer in my hand and a wish for a cigarette I don't need as the church service I left in the lecture hall behind goes on. Unresisting and unforced, I smile. It feels like it's been years.

WITHOUT REALLY THINKING ABOUT IT Absently, I run fingers through still wet hair. Twist the steel in my navel to and fro, Stroke the day old stubble growing on my jaw. I correct her spelling, Idly tracing the peculiar groove at the front of my skull; I twirl the pen beneath my fingers And rub cold toes against one another. I fall in love with Him.

C.S Lewis writes: "My father's people were true Welshmen, sentimental, passionate, and rhetorical, easily moved both to anger and to tenderness; who laughed and cried a great deal and who had not much the talent for happiness."