You can join if you want.

I think you’re great.

The only requirement to join is that you think I’m great too.

I don’t think everything you do is great…

but I don’t think everything I do is great either…

I still think we’re both great.

Evil speech in the absence of the subject is cancer. It oozes to the subject through slimy back alleys. It destroys trust. It instills fear. It empowers it’s wielder, in the moment, then leaves them wondering who else is slave to its power.

Each time I sit the toilette I feel a ghoul.

When I squat in the woods I am nature.

I’ve heard that you have to learn the rules of an art before you break them. What if I’d rather not?

God made us like him. That’s the premise as I understand it. “God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” That’s the New King James version – if you’re curious. I mean the only bit that isn’t really clear is the whole image thing. When I think image, I think visual, and unless God has a penis and a vagina that, on it’s own, doesn’t make a lot of sense… or it makes a whole lot of sense… either way…

I imagine it’s the same way I’m like my father. Growing. Learning. Always imperfect. And, to me, that’s the really interesting part. Why shouldn’t a god grow, and evolve, and learn, and change? I am capable of all of those things. Surely any deity who begot me could be capable of no less.

Old Testament, New Testament, Koran. Books written by the hands of men. Books written as reactions to the conditions each man believed his god had created on earth for him. Ask the first born what dad was like growing up then ask the 8th born.

My mother always felt I should be practical with regard to my career. Everything else was up to me, but she wanted me to be secure.

I doubt practical would be the first word to jump to the minds of people who know me, were you to say my name. And yet, it is perhaps the most indelible legacy my mother gave me.

She gave it to me without ever forcing me. Just the single consistent message that you should be able to earn a living with a respectable profession.

I think the world is full of artists who received the same message and bucked. I bucked, but never as much as I made out. At my most overtly oppositional, I still received A’s, B’s, and C’s. At my most irresponsible, I joined the Army – because I realized that I was wasting my family’s money partying in college and not passing all my classes. So even my rebellion carried a tinge of my mother’s pragmatism.

It’s the struggle between the my impulse, for impulsivity, and the ever present thought in my head, of what will come if you choose this? This struggle has formed who I am. My struggle to balance these two drives informs my daily life. It has encouraged me to look closely at my values and processes. It has driven me to look closely at the values and processes of others.

My mother’s greatest legacy to me may be life of internal struggle. My mother’s greatest gift to me is the courage and curiosity to face that struggle and grow with it.