Intruse Recluse

I'm an obtuse brown recluse, too fat for my fangs

Night of the living Duckstack

Art: Dariusz Klimczak

Hello. This is your conscience speaking. Or a conscience anyway. I assume I'm conscious. Ever read Descartes? He talks about that. He would have loved The Duckstack. He coined the phrase “I think and therefore I am” which I ripped off once. This is not because I admire him, I think he’s a bit of a doofus. Anyway, your conscience. Yes. I’m here to tell you to eat your vitamins or something. I’m not totally sure. I never finished conscience training. But yes. (sinisterly) vitamins would make a good start. And for the next steps, perhaps change your sheets once in a while? And then more vitamins. I’m told Zinc is really good for men and iron is really good for women. So. Hopefully you find that enlightening. That’s probably good enough for my conscience speaking duties, no? Please don’t fire me. I really need this job.

Thankful Session

Are you thankful enough, comrade?

The sin of depression is being hard to please- A sort of ingratitude, I think. Something my son taught me and also which I reciprocally taught him, when he would forget. When someone is easy to please, it is a lot more fun to do things for them, but if your efforts are in vain, then you aren’t really interested in doing more next time.

You can learn a lot about God from parenthood, which is by design. Jethro used to manipulate us, he would give us these big eyes and say “I’ve never done that before!”, even if it was something that we did with him last week. He might have known he was lying, he might not have, but he was speaking truthfully when he wanted to communicate how much he would appreciate us fulfilling his request.

“Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?” Mathew 7:9

So I would suggest we talk to God the same way. I have had, well, quite a few friends tell me they pray for God to work in oblique ways because they don’t want to “disrespect his power” or something like that, prayers like “please give me knowledge to handle this situation” or “make me okay with this circumstance” or “do whatever you want since you’re a cosmic computer running a flawless algorithm and I don’t want to screw it up” and those are fine things to pray for and appropriate sometimes but I don’t think that’s really how God asks us to pray, and I think we’re supposed to pray like little kids. “Dad, can I have this?” If he says no you can always ask for an explanation right? Treat him like you want to spend time with him.

I kind of wrote about this before but with my son’s passing I’m feeling it a little more keenly this week. Particularly the importance of being grateful, which is maybe not very easy right now. When its time to leave a friends house my toddler screams in agony, which is natural and normal. But if he’s behaved about it then my attitude shifts, and I want to let him play there more. Gratitude is a sign that you’re doing okay. And maybe you don’t want to feel okay, because you feel bad, but its a sign you’re going to do what you can to make it easy on people. Everyone likes being around someone who is thankful, especially when you know you’re stepping on their toes a bit. When my wife says she’s thankful for me it gives a sense of relief that my little inadequacies aren’t hurting her, and more courage to be who we want me to be, and so I imagine it works the same way when I express gratitude myself.

I don’t know if I ever got tired of Jethro saying he was thankful for me. I don’t know if God will ever get tired of you expressing gratitude to him.

The Noble Ostrich

True bird royalty¹

There exists in Africa or Australia or something a “bird” called an Ostrich. Compared to the Hydra, they have at least one head, and giant grasshopper legs for jumping, which they use almost exclusively for sprinting. This just goes to show you their indomitable nature, being perfectly comfortable spitting on intelligent design in their bald [sic] disregard of eternal law.

When threatened, these things have two options: Run, or don’t. They call this “fight or flight” in animal biology, but what they don’t teach you is that ostriches² learn their complex fighting techniques from the noble turtle. However, ostriches have such a big, colossal ego, that they use the entire earth as their shell. Ostrich style martial arts, the most arrogant of all, actually involves sticking their head into the earth, and piloting it around like a giant bumper car.

Now, you, a skeptic³, might say, “That sounds kind of inefficient. It is going to have a hard time hitting me, seeing as I am standing on the planet myself.” (assuming you are standing, not jumping.) And the thing that you don’t understand, is the Ostriches incredible arrogance, which you underestimate at your own peril. The reason this is ineffective on you is that you are beneath its notice. You are like a tiny ant to them, whose gaze penetrates the fiber of being. It no more wishes to fight you than you wish to fight a speck of dust, or an abnormally tiny ant. What are you going to do, shoot it? You may murder its body, but you can never destroy its unwavering spirit.

History - Jethro

God kept all his promises to us with my son. I’m still struggling with his passing, but it would seem foolish to start doubting him now.

We knew Jethro didn’t have long, so we threw him an early birthday party, which is something he had been planning for a long, long time. Dinosaur themed, with jurassic park donations everywhere. We told Jethro it was a party and he got all excited, and told me that he wanted his stuffed animal, the dinosaur one. I found it for him, and he explained to me that he wanted the party hat dinosaur. “Because its a party!” We sat him there with his wheelchair and he opened presents and showed us where to cut the cake, which was also a dinosaur.

Art: A party hat brontosaurus, still loved weeks after this picture

A few more things Jethro said to us. My wife was nursing the new baby and Jethro looked over and told her “look! The baby’s eating!” And then after a pause he told her “I just thought I would point that out.” We think my wife already knew, but its good that Jethro was so vigilant. He told her, “I am going to watch you feed the baby, so I know how to do it next time if you aren’t there.” How thoughtful

Jethro holding the baby commented, “She's not too heavy for me. Because I'm a big brother!”

Jethro had been having ups and downs for a few weeks, but each down became a little more permanent. On one of his down days I thought he was starting to really die, he had been sleeping so much. So I was sitting with him, and kind of rubbing his back and suddenly he sits up and goes “I wonder why my brother likes coloring on his legs with marker?”

And he was always very sweet. He had started dying, laying down and not moving a lot, and I was, you know, crying, told him I loved him. And he opened his eyes and lucidity returned and in the most irritated voice he told me, “I know that!”

I gave him some pain medicine and he laid back down, hardly able to move half of his body without assistance, and after thinking about it for a little bit he chimed: “That was easy!”

And then he randomly told us, “I know what would get our car clean. A car wash.”

I mentioned it in the Eulogy I gave, but no matter how he felt he kept politely saying “thank you” when we did things for him, like cleaning the side of his mouth, or giving him kisses. And occasionally he would say “ow that hurts” when we bumped him, and then he would go back to saying “love you!”

A few other things. I don’t know if I should share. But I want to remember them. How sweet they were. Jethro had been unresponsive for 36 hours, and I had the idea to give him chocolate milk, through a syringe. Chocolate milk had been his only source of caloric intake for at least 8 months of his life, he really liked the stuff. And I put the syringe in and gave him .25 ML, and he swallowed it, which brought me so much joy. But then he started moving his mouth, and I saw that he was dry mouthing "more”. And I gave him a tiny bit more, and he would just keep opening his mouth whenever I would put the syringe to it. He drank 8 ML and then opened his eyes for the first time in 36 hours. “Thank You. Love You.”

Put my fingers near his hand, and he gripped them hard and wheezed out “I love you”, in a sort of sighing, sleepy sort of way.

I carried his body to the hearse. I had carried him like that so many times in life. I felt so close to him.

There will be more History with Jethro in it some day. I don’t know what he’s doing in the spirit world right now, but I believe we will get glimpses here and there. God has always kept his promises to us, always. And I believe, Jethro is feeling better.

Ducksnax

Refreshing

Ducksnax #025

1. bird royalty apparently revolves entirely around mass

2. ostrichen? Ostrichi? Ostrich’s? Ostrich’?

3. foolish mortal