Let the Butts Begin

I have been writing 1,000 – 1,500 word essays on pretty much anything that crosses my mind for the better part of twenty five years. While I have occassionally published these in magazines and newspapers (though usually in some adapted form more fit for human consumption than they started out) most of them reside in multiple mangled versions on the hard drives (and skeletons of hard drives), pads of paper and large black blank books scattered just about everywhere I have ever touched ground. I have for some time wanted to print more of these than I can typically get past editors (or have the time to mail out to editors), but with the beginning of my SpeakLo blog back in July and it's brother blog, Washington's Cousin, shortly thereafter, I began to have a sense of what I can do with some of this stuff.

Hence… Butting Heads.

With a name like Butler, I have been subjected to any number of obvious perversions – butthead, butthead-ler (as a friend in California refers to me with an inordinate amount of self-satisfaction in the thought that this was somehow an original idea of his own) and, of course, Ass-ler, were many of the choice favorites. My own favorite nickname in high school and college was the shortened Butts. I think it was a way of end running the insults by embracing my own sanctified version and owning it with enthusiasm. I even had a football jersey with that name on it from my freshman year at Oral Roberts University (that's another story of its own). This name had only one downfall. At the time, I shared it with the somehwat less than enlightened Secretary of the Interior during the then active Nixon Administration. In any case… Butt.. Butts… Butthead and all the other derivations have been a part of my identity my whole life. I figure I might as well claim them for something of at least semi-value.

The name is also atrributable to the awareness that most of my philosophical meanderings are as pointless as the activity described. Their biggest advantage to me personally being that the pain of the head butting draws my attention away from the pain of the awareness itself. I may not be able to do much about most things in the world, but I can at least scribble down my feelings about them and hope that somewhere, somehow those shared experiences bring at least a little bit of light and life (and maybe an occasional free beer) to the subjects at hand.

Of course… the biggest advantage of all this to me personally, is simply the writing practice. What you get out of these meanderings I will leave to you. You should of course feel free to leave them for me (and other readers) through a liberal use of the comments feature.

One of my favorite books of all time is a little book by Thomas Merton that is difficult to find, "Raids on the Unspeakable." It sits on the table where I write and I pick it up and read short segments on a regular basis. I've been doing this, almost daily, for the last 27 years. In the prologue to the book, Merton begins, "WELL, Raids, you're grown up now. It is time for you to go out and meet people as the other books have done." I'm not sure that the reflections I expect to publish here will be "all grown up," in fact, it's pretty likely that many of them won't be grown up at all, but that's the chance I'm deciding to take.
Finally, a disclaimer and a warning:

Caveat Emptor…

In some of these entries, you may find out more than you want to know. I guarantee that you will find out more than I want you to know, but I am determined that if the most basic rule of writing is "write what you know" then this writing is going to require an honesty on my part that I am generally less than enthusiastic about engaging in such a public way.

For the sake of a certain amount of propriety (and the fact that my mother, sister, daughter and other people who are sometimes too close for comfort read this stuff) I will be at least somewhat circumspect about sharing any truly ugly details, such as they are.

With that said… to quote Dubya's favorite phrase…

Let's Roll.