Jesus, Can You Help Me?

--> Lord knows, I need something. We all do. Sex, drugs, rock and roll, cigarettes, alcohol, movies, music, working too hard, coffee, shopping, eating, FaceBook. It's all just a bunch of crap that we do to fill the gigantic emptiness that we walk around with.

My daughter spends weekends at my house. She likes to make messes: If it's in a box she wants to take it out. If it's on a shelf she wants to take it off the shelf. If it's folded, she unfolds it. If it's in a drawer she likes to scatter it on the floor. Toys are not so much played with as they are spread thoroughly around the house. She likes to smash squishy things and color in things that shouldn't be colored in. I find blueberries and Goldfish in strangest places. I'll be honest...it's pretty freaking annoying. I spend the weekend picking up, cleaning up, changing diapers, changing clothes and cutting up food into small pieces. There's always some damn thing that needs to be done.

When the weekend is over I drop her off with her mom and come home to an empty house. For a few minutes I enjoy the quiet, clean house but soon I'm overtaken with that empty, lonely feeling that inevitably comes. Everything is where I left it and there are no little hands moving things around or ripping things up or getting themselves into harm's way. I'm surrounded by inanimate, pointless objects that don't need tending and don't get hurt and don't start crying or demanding that I hold them when they get hungry. It's just me and a couple of rooms full of nothing. So I get on FaceBook and annoy my friends and also my “friends”.

That's when I realize the best part of my week was wiping my toddler's ass and telling her what a good pooper she is. Well maybe not really that particular part but you know what I mean. Her messes and her moaning and her attraction to all the potentially dangerous objects in the house (scissors, hot stoves, electrical outlets and trash cans come to mind) are just about big enough to fill my sparsely furnished home (hey, I'm still kind of a bachelor so back off). Her little laughs and giggles and mumblings are just about loud enough to start to erase the haunting quiet in me.

If not for her I'd probably be chasing all sorts of no good; searching madly for something to fill the gap. We humans are smart enough to know we are not quite right but not always able to figure out what it is that we are missing. My daughter helps a lot but I reckon I'm still a little short in some department or other. I, like you, need something. I wonder what it is?


Here's a downloadable version of "Jesus Can You Help Me". Jesus Can You Help Me (I Need You) by timpepper Click on the little grey arrow on the right hand side to download. It's free y'all.

 Jesus Can You Help Me by timpepper

MORE TIMPEPPER MUSIC HERE: www.onesheet.com/timpepper

Life.......Oh Life.........Oh Li..i..i...fe.......Oh Life.....do do do do.

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Last year about this time I started noticing the magnificent outfits that the ladies of Nashville were sporting. The emphasis was less on the outfits and more on the ladies themselves I suppose. I wrote a blog about it and my brother said I sounded horny. Well I’m not saying he was right but 2 months ago my first child was born. Her name is August. Probably more than anything else in my life right now she has brought the idea of life and all its mysteries to the fore in my head again.

There’s a porch adjoining the back door of my apartment in Nashville. It’s a small porch but I like it. I go there to drink coffee and survey the neighborhood and smoke cigarettes and think. There is a nearby tree whose branches hang down just beyond the edge of the porch. Throughout the year these branches go from being bare and brown to having thousands of small green buds then suddenly leafy and green and then finally through a death scene during which the leaves turn yellow and then red and then brown and then end up scattered all over the ground.

I grew up in a town with a very constant climate. It’s pretty much always warm in Durban. So I imagined that in places experiencing the full range of seasons it must be a gradual undulation from one season to the next. But it seems that seasons in Nashville arrive suddenly as if they were relatives from out of town. There’s no mistaking their arrival…. You get a cell phone message saying they are on the way and should be there around supper time, but things seem pretty much the same until the moment they arrive and then everything changes suddenly.

I didn’t notice the leaves beginning to grow on my porch-tree this year. I just looked up one day and realized that the branches didn’t look dead anymore and were covered in green leaves. As if they sprouted overnight…There must have been a lot of activity going on under the surface.

In a strange way, that tree porch and my daughter give me a kind of hopefulness about life. Not that I have any reason to not be hopeful but for some reason I have an extra helping of hopefulness lately. When my daughter arrived she was this little, squirmy, beautiful person. Every time I see her now she’s grown just a little. She’s changing daily. As adults we reach a point where we think we are in kind of stasis where we are about the same as we were the day before but it’s not true. We never really stop changing and growing. That tree and my daughter have reminded me that change is inevitable and constant. I can’t control everything about the way I change. Eventually we all end up old and dead. But I can direct myself towards positive changes.

Hopefully if I keep toiling and building and moving and direct things in a positive direction I’ll look around one day and realize that, just like August and the relatives from out of town I have suddenly arrived at some place I’ve been traveling towards. And like that tree, I’ve bloomed into something perhaps a little better than I am right now.

NOTE: The above painting is titled: "Tree of Life" and was painted by Tim Parish in 2008

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Of Life and Storms and Cloaked Men

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Eagle’s Wings is a song about being bigger than your troubles. It is often said that life is hard. I used to get a little annoyed at that statement because often when people say it, they do so from a high horse, admonishing someone for having the indecency to share their troubles.

Nevertheless it’s true. Somehow I figured that much out when I wrote this song. I also figured out that you can’t let that get you down. You have to be better than your circumstances.

Looking back though I think I stopped short of another fact. A lot of times, the things that seem so hard and painful are really the things that make us who we are, get us where we want to be, give us character and generally make life less boring. So I wrote this poem-thing and posted it here for you to read while you listen to my song.

Of Life and Storms and Cloaked Men

I met you on a dance floor on a Monday night.
Early Tuesday morning, I guess, is when we gave her life.

She must be impatient; A little bit like dad.
Thirty five weeks later, she came early, just a tad.

It’s true we made a people. That still surprises me.
After all it was the first of firsts and I’m the son of a missionary.

I know there’s folks a sayin’, “Pshaw!” with mouths agape.
The news was too unbelievable. The irony had no escape.

I traded in my silver ring for a night of lust.
Now I’ve got a daughter. It’s true. Her name is “Gus”.

I said I wasn’t ready and I may have complained.
But she locked eyes with me and I knew it was a good thing.

You see life is all a mystery; A stranger in a hooded cloak.
He’s waiting in the alley. By all accounts; he’s a charming bloke.

He waits ‘til we’re not looking. He sits and smokes and bides his time.
Then he does some silly party trick and we give him each a dime.

Then later, buying cigarettes at the local grocery store,
We all get mad and cuss a bit because we came up ten cents short.

Later as we think it through amidst thoughts of regret,
We realize the treasure of smoking one less cigarette.

Now if you think I’m saying that I’ve got it all worked out,
Then you’d be wrong. That’s for dog gone. ‘Cause I still have some doubt.

But I liken myself to a skipper at the helm in a stormy sea:
The wind in gale and waters crash and on his breath, fresh Hennessy.

And he knows the storm is a lady who needs a steady hand.
But she’s mad and bad and raging and he is but a man.

He’ll use his skill and wisdom gathered up through stormy years.
He’s seen ones like her before. She laughs at tears and fears.

He knows that she will storm and crash and boom and wail.
But soon she will grow weary and calm seas will prevail.

There will be days of sunshine and easy sailing more.
But firm resolve is needed to get his ship to shore.

With the storm subsiding he breathes a sailor’s sigh.
“One more for the books.” He says, sparkle in his eye.

For he is yet alive, and more fully quick, at that,
For having sailed one more angry sea and placed one more mark inside his cap.

The storm, she is a lady. Make no mistake, she’ll make you quake.
The stranger in the hooded cloak; He’ll make your fists to shake.

But as you sit and drink a drink upon your old age porch,
You’ll know that storms and cloaked men were no more than a torch.

They lit a fire inside you and sparked with flame to make things bright.
They stirred up dregs of dullness and made you curse and fight.

In fact they put some beauty in your ordinary life.
They were the balm of vigor and not the bonds of strife.

They gave you life and memories and people to love and trust.
They gave you battle-scars of beauty…
And a daughter, named “Gus”.