Life goes on
5/03/2004

This has been a strange weekend, even for the Buddha Bubba. I sit here this morning, somehow in a surrealistic trance. That trance has me ignoring what went on. I just saw the happenings as a movie or poorly written book. Maybe Steve is correct, we have no control, but we must fight pre-destiny. The feeling that "something" was askew in the universe was obvious in my temperment all week last week.
The last day that I worked alone ona building that we were building, I had ominous, though vague and uncertain fears about an injury. I altered my usual careless execution of use on power tools, because of those premonitions. My friend and carpentry partner, who had worked and been trained by me for thirty years in that field, chopped off one of his fingers and mangled two other, with a chop saw. A wasp flew into his face as he was cutting a piece of wood and his reaction took his hand into the saw.
So affected by this, I had to sell my van, a van in which he bleed all over the place. I could not get in without seeing his hand dripping blood and tissue. I have not been able to use the saw since either (a week). I traded the truck in on a new vehicle. This started the week.
The rest of the week had a somewhat hinky tone, a pawl hung over everything. As we all know, things happen in multiples.
I have a very close friend, we have to categorize them, friends that is; who called me on April 1 and said that he was going into the hospital for an  operation; he had been under the knife many times in recent years. I was tempted to jump in a car and go see him there (300 miles away), but when I was packing and my wife asked specifically what he said. He had been too light hearted for his serious side to be engaged. We know him well. After a few minuets we decided that he was playing a April fools joke on us. I didn't go. I called a few times to check on him, left messages, no response. Finally, Saturday night the phone rang: it was David....JR. Dad passed away that afternoon. This was a man who dated my wife before me and I had known for too many years to count. We cried an told stories to each other and laughed and saw his face and moved on. We would never see him again. On a day like this and the next we would not see TV or read newspaper or even get into contact friends; we were in hiding.
We, my wife and I and our closest friend, a woman whom that dead friend had a major crush, went to the only therapy that women know; we went shopping, an auction. We traveled 50 miles to the location, eaten breakfast and were at the preview of that sale when a cell phone rang. We had turned them all off, we thought. Two of us could tell by the suddenly teary eyed face and the sudden collapse of  person on the phone that something else had happened. A few moments of hysterical crying..."Daniel was the guy shot last night at Jazz Fest". Another friend had left us. This one taken in a needless robbery attempt, he never carried much of anything. He was an artist, a true hippie, not one of those long haired phonies but the real deal. An artist in wood, an artist in oil paints, and artist in every thing that he touched. We often didn't get along, because we were too much alike, but every one who he touched loved him.
He is gone because four kids thought that it would be easier to steal than to work for money. They took a gun, put it to his head and shot him, nothing, literally nothing.

I now must listen to the anger, and the cries for Capital Punishment, from those who had called me names for me "harsh and inhumane" thought on crime and punishment; including Daniel himself. He would say that we need to work with these people and they can be turned around. Why is so hard to understand that we are not all created equal. There is no fixing some people. We need to sent them to same place as their victims. They have caught one of the four FOURTEEN YEAR OLDS.

The past week did not happen. I really didn't live it. My passion for life and my anger with injustice force me to exhibit avoidance behavior...make it go away; or I will be on the streets with a gun, on the prowl for those who hunt us. That is the only way to end crime, make them more afraid of us, than we are of them. I am also searching my address book for anyone with the first name starting with D, because my belief is that things happen in threes.