My friend Moose died Friday. I was in my office working on some music when my cell phone rang an unknown number, in an area code I recognized: Maui.

I was less than an egg, in this dark little room, I was a red wavy light thing, and there were other red wavy light things all around me. We were waiting, eagerly I might add, for something to happen. It was a timeless place, so I don't know how long I was there. Then, there was something else there with us, and I can only call it an angel, and it gestured to me with a smile, and it was my turn. I left the room and floated down a long tunnel. At the end, my eyes opened, and I realized that a place in the center of my belly was sore. Years later, I was told that I had surgury to repair a torn umbilical tie (belly button) and that it had taken several weeks to heal.

Questions: What was the dark room? Was it spiritual, or was it just a place I inhabited before birth? Who were the others there with me? Why did some leave before I did? What was the thing I can only call an Angel? Does anyone out there have any pre-birth memories or am I the only one? Did I dream this? It seems too real to have dreamed, like when you've been hurt physically you usually remember and that's the way I remember this. Answers?

Sweet, Crazy Money... You'd think it caused the earth to actually rotate. Not so. Yet, so many on this planet uphold money as the ultimate belief system. Yes, money is worshipped with a faith, so solid, so sure, doubt is almost never countenanced in it's presence.

Those of us who worship at the altar of money hardly even know what system of immateriality that we so firmly and confidently embrace....

What we agree on is simply to exchange energies in relation to little paper or plastic chits - and sometimes in real precious metals, gemstones, and computer memory chips.

Just the tangible forms of our energy, unfairly distributed, scrambling as we do for more than our neighbor, when we instinctively know than with the acquisition of superior material wealth must most certainly come -- love, security, faith, and life. Did we not know, all along, that those last four ingredients were always free, an unbounded and unmeasured gift?

Look around you -- you will find that the value that you hold in the highest esteem lies deep in the eyes of another human being, or several - a child, a lover, a parent, sibling, friend, cousin, even the enemy who hones our self and other awareness into sharp and merciless focus.

There is the true faith.

This is my third time to have the latter feeling. Once, for my oldest daughter, once, for my middle child, and now, my last time, for my youngest girl, almost full grown. For their sterling lives, for thier good friends that became my good friends, for their true beauty and intelligence, for the sensible caution and bravery in tough conditions that is my trademark and that I have tried to instill in each one of them, I thank them.

I am already missing you, girl. Missing how you needed me -- how you learned from me -- how you hugged me, always-- how I carried you around on my shoulders, and rocked you in my arms to sleep -- it all went by, so fast, too fast --

While you ache for freedom, for adulthood, for independence, and it looks to you like so many years away, so far that you must hurry, hurry out the door -- I want to hold you back, to ask you to wait -- It will be so quick, your going -- and it will be years to you before you know that your "grown-up-ness" is fait accompli.

Will you ever cling to me again, like you did then? Will you ever need me like your younger self once did?

Maybe. But the hope of every parent is that his child should grow up strong, and free, and able to outdo or outrun the sordid challenges she will face, with the innocence and courage that God provides, to see her through --

We, as parents, agonize for years about our chidren leaving us.

Because that very thing is what we have raised them to do, and we will have few further chances to teach them and they already know everything that they will accept; They say, "I need to make MY OWN big mistakes". Now, we can protect them only sometimes, now, we can seldom rescue them, now, we cannot shield them from the things that will most certainly hurt -- those things which we can no longer prevent, that go in tandem with being grown.

Someday, maybe you will come up to me, you will hug me, and you will say, "Thank you Daddy." And I will be drawn to a time and place long ago and far away, so much like heaven, the place from which you had so recently sprung forth to enlighten the lives of your mother and me.

But as is, my reward comes from seeing the fine strong young woman that I have raised, and my hope comes from knowing the few small lessons that I taught you, that I have conveyed over and over again to you and your older sisters, will probably stick and take root and be passed on.

God grant that this will happen, so that my life can be fully blessed. Then, I will see this old heart of mine grow young and strong in the lives of those yet to come.

It's like when somebody takes your bed even though you had your hand on it at a camp ground. Is it worth fighting over? Probably not. But is it worth festering over, about the person who cheated you, and obsessing over ways that God might take revenge for you? Probably.

Not. So, today I am a raving rambler. A lunatic lecturer of unfortunate predisposition. I can say no more.

But I shall. It's hard to hit a moving target, and today the moving target is what I am thinking, as in "what am I thinking?"

I DON'T KNOW !!

So move on, unless you, too, my friend, are today having trouble articulating from out of the void that is your scrambled brain. If so, please comment. You are one of us. Yes, in here, with us. Congrats should be in order.

So bye.

Suffice it to say that my friends got away without further mishap. And so did we. The details of this MAY be further chronicled in Jenna's Journal. She drove; I looked at our friend's engine while posturing and grunting like a man, which I am. I cannot help this superior feeling I get when my women friends say, "It stopped all at once and it won't start again. I think it ran out of gas."

And I say: "We'll be right there." My chest starts to puff up in the manly way and Jenna grabs the car keys. We head out the door and our car overheats. Wooo! we're supposed to be rescuing people, so we put some more water and antifreeze in the Volvo and head to the rendezvous point.

Our friends Jessica and Sam(antha) are there, so I say, "Never drive on 316!! It's too dangerous!" Then I realize that I am DE FACTO acting my age and need to pull back on the critique.

So, we put the gas in and the car won't start for Jess. I want to try. Doesn't start for me. I sit there trying for about fiften minutes. I say to the ladies, "don't stand between the cars!" I yell paternally. "Move off to the side of the road! Further!"

Then it won't start for the Gwinnette County Policeman (much younger than me) who comes by to check us out.

He and I stand and shine our flashlights on the engine. I say, "I think the solenoid thingy is out or something," quietly, just to him.

He replies softly, "I know absolutely nothing about this stuff." We commiserate as men yards away from "the girls" who are by now giggling and laughing at our macho stuff. I hereby refer you Jenna's Journal for July 30, 2002.

Bye fer now!! (TTFN)

But I'm cool... I'm cool..