Listening to Miles While Talking to God

       I have to write something on my blog nearly everyday or else my numbers go down to nothing. Problem is, it's hard come up with things to write about. I don't want to write about just anything, you know like how television sport's commentators talk. I've been stuck for the last couple days and that's kind of unusual for me because I can get triggered by pretty much anything, dead cats and dogs, cemetery gates, squashed oranges, and even road intersections.

        This morning my friend Norb from Wisconsin posted a Bible verse, Psalm 46:10 which goes, "Be still and know that I AM GOD." I thought it was sent as a message to me  because I have been playing this strange game lately where I try to silence my mind and just notice what happens.

       I have to do this because my head hurts. I think way too much. My work trips to Visalia and back are all about the internal dialogues that I have, conversations with myself and others who aren't even there. It is something I do mainly as an exercise to clarify a position, to try to explain something to someone else helps me to discover new thoughts and insights, and helps refine what I think about a subject.

      I have had long dialogues where I've argued with Christopher Hitchens, the noted atheist about the meaning of life, and I've wiped the smirk off of the unfunny Bill Maher's face several times. I don't do this talking out loud, just so you know. It's all in my head.

           My allergies have combined with this excessive mode of thinking to make my head hurt so sometimes, instead of thinking, when I am driving to work now, I try to quiet my mind, put on some music, and look at the world around me like it is a masterpiece which it actually is. This is what I think the Bible verse means. If we all took the time to notice how wondrous creation really is, we couldn't help but glorify the creator. I think that the world would be a much better place.

           It is hard to sit in silence though. I was raised with a generation that still leaves the TV on as background noise whether we watch it or not. I'm upstairs listening to music as I type, and I can still hear the TV on downstairs.

           It is doubly hard for me to be silent because I have had tinnitus ever since my ex-wife died. It is an horrible affliction marked by a constant ringing in my head. I depend on outside noise to block it out. 

           I used to enjoy camping in the mountains and listening to the wind in the trees and the sound of water in babbling brooks and rushing streams or sitting on a balcony at a coast hotel room listening to the waves.  After I developed tinnitus, just thinking about sitting by myself in the mountains made me slightly nauseous. Words set to music even more so.  I could only listen to jazz for a while and even then only one album, Miles Davis's Kind of Blue. I am better now. I'm listening to Jimi Hendrix at this very moment.

          I want to be quiet and know that God is God. I want it so much, but I have trouble doing it. Sometimes, the best I can do is putting on Freddie the Freeloader and pretending that we both are listening to Miles Davis blow his horn.

           God: "Gabriel's better."

           Me: (cocking one eye) "Oh Please!"