Soot

You can read the short story below, or click this link and hear me read it to you.


Powered by Castpost

He without name, He with all names, individual and triune, breathed into the void. Below the level of the atom, quarks were sung into being, one dimensional strings, three voices singing a song of creation. Matter came to be.

The watchers, mighty and majestic, powerful and devoted, observed.

Before there was light, the Lord God set the stage. Hot, dark plasma filled all there was, the four dimensions were a seething soup of stripped nuclei.

As it cooled it condensed; the dance began. Hydrogen swirled and eddied and condensed further, pressing upon itself. Under pressure it fused, hydrogen into helium, the fire of fusion burned, stars were born. In the hot pressure within massive stars triple collisions of helium fused into carbon, the sooty source of life.

The giant stars, finished with their meals of hydrogen and helium, exploded in brilliant self immolation, flinging newly formed carbon into the universe. The spinning galaxies, rotating about once every 200 million years, swept the carbon up, soot joining light.

Dusty lanes of soot danced and swirled, flowed and poured into gravity-fed streams, backed into eddies, settled into clumps, became rocks, became worlds. Again compression settled in, the next generation of stars ignited. In their whiter light, they threw off the shroud of soot wrapping newborn worlds. But this time the stuff of life was there, ready for the larger dance to begin.

Darkness clung upon the world, a sooty darkness as pregnant with potential as the primordial darkness of the plasma soup before the birth of stars. Within the darkness The Lord God moved over the face of the deep.

The watchers, powerful forces, powerful beings, watched intently as the dance truly began.

It was the beginning and the Lord God said: “Let there be light,” and The Word went out over the deep, and there was light.

The carbon dropped out of the sky and sunlight filtered through glowering clouds. The moon backlit the sky, illuminating blackened hills, charred mountains.

And it was good.

The Lord God spoke, His Word went out, and it rained. The clouds rolled across the angry skies, seas rolled onto rough beaches. The carbon, swept by angry waves and poured into the depths. Water flowed in seas great and small. Water rolled across the sky.

And it was good.

The Lord God spoke, His Word moved into the world, and carbon formed chains. It made walls, and sugars, and the basics of organic chemistry. It became the stuff of life. Plants swayed in soils of land and sea. Carbon shuffled to the quicker dance of life. From gas to solids, carbon dioxide and cellulose, structures and strength. The soot, born of darkness, and born of light, became the backbone of all living things.

If there had been mortal eyes to see the strangeness of this scene they would have beheld a wonder profound. Immortals drew near. They came to behold ephemeral things, growing in muck, in sludge and soot and mud and clay. Beings of ancient experience watched intently, singing their praise of existence, of simply being, as the Lord God permitted the earth to spin, a tiny mote amidst a wild and violent universe, while green things reached with thin tendrils toward the glowing sky. Suddenly there were flowers and fruit and all sorts of carbon-based life.

And it was good.

The Lord God spoke, His Word moved through the world and another wonder occurred. The skies parted, the air cleared, and the thick shield of clouds was shattered. Brilliant light flooded the earth, throwing abundance where there had been shadow and darkness. The soot was balanced with bright flecks, all the elements of the earth were churned and dragged from the rocks by the pushing, shoving dance of green life. Soil.

Beings who had only known the slow dance of the galaxies creeping along the hidden paths of the universe, watched, fascinated, as The Creator mixed the elements of the world with water and light.

And it was good.

The Lord God spoke, His Word moved through the world, and quick life sprang up. Monsters of the deep, monsters of the land. Smaller versions also sprang up, lifting newly feathered wings to flit in the sunlight. Carbon formed tough, resilient structures, muscle, sinew, blood.

Blood was new, quick, hot. New mixtures to bring caustic oxygen to life. Carbon and water, iron and oxygen. The dance whirled into a faster tempo. Carbon, the ancient soot of dying stars danced ever faster, swinging through cycles of fruit and flesh and exhaled breath. Soot mingled with light, mingled with life. Light and dark... the melody that drove the dance picked up its tempo.

A great chorus arose from the watchers as the wonders of quick nature whirled through the pace of seasons, swinging from life to life, plant and flesh and air and again and again and again.

And it was good.

The Lord God spoke, His Word moved among the earth, and life was gentled. The monsters retreated, and in their vacancies softer animals sprang up. Livestock. Good for a different sort of existence, moved into the fields, ate of the grasses and the fruits.

The chorus paused. A few murmured. What new thing was the Lord God creating? For what purpose should there be creatures designed to be dominated, controlled, herded? Why should there be gentled life?

Two thirds of the great chorus sang on. One third hesitated. A lone voice rose in dissent.

The Lord God spoke.

His Word moved.

A very new thing was created.

Out of the very dust of creation, from the soot of dying stars, the mud of the earth, a man, a woman.

For an eternity the universe stopped. For no time at all and for all time at once the universe swept its awareness toward the speck of spinning dirt, the mote circling a nondescript star, in an outer arm of an ordinary spiral galaxy... light and darkness, eternal and mortal, sinews and spirit, human beings walked with the Lord God in a quiet corner of creation.

The watchers erupted in light beyond the dimensions of reality. Their voices sang of wonder, and a few of anger. A new being was a part of The Kingdom. A new type of creature, one who could choose, was a part of The Grand Community. Humans, capable of choice, capable of sin, were now permitted the opportunity to enter The Kingdom.

The watchers divided, some voices singing in wonder, other voices were singing in pride and anger.

The Lord God, the Spirit of all creation, the Living Word, moved through the universe, moved through time and space, and permitted choice to enter the great dance.

And it was very good.

Carbon discovered new roles in the new dance. It danced with iron, in blood, but now it also danced in tools and weapons. It danced from fruit to man, to air, to tree to fire and air again. It sprang from living thing to living thing. It flowed in blood and sap, it supported leaves and it supported flesh. It fed the whale and livestock and beasts and now beings with eternal souls.

With choices men learned to live for more than the joy of life. They learned to want what others had, possessions, mates, land. They forgot The Kingdom, and strove for kingdoms. Victory and glory and pride became forces which drove ambition.

A third of the watchers gloated, and sang dark, sooty songs of pride, and avarice, and the hatred of souls coupled with flesh.

The carbon danced its frantic dance. It became a part of hundreds of thousands of living things in a single spin of the galaxy. It was a part of the air, and part of trees. It had been in chains with other carbon atoms as lipids, and cellular structures. The pace of the dance was a whirling spin through life, in the air, in the sea, on and in the land.

The Lord God spoke, and The Word moved into the world. What was eternal was now flesh, mortal. As flesh had been raised up to where it could hold a soul, spirit, eternity, eternity had slipped into base reality and clothed itself in flesh.

The miracle was reversed. The Word breathed, ate, drank. The wonder of eternity creating the finite was now that the finite housing eternity. The Word crawled into the world through the womb of a young woman. Mystery beyond words, beyond imagining.

Most of the watchers sang with all the power of their existence at the reversal. The universe itself trembled as the all powerful set aside glory, a wedge of power and light and love slipping into an ever smaller container, a needle slipping into a haystack.

A few watchers howled in frustration. This step of blurring the lines between what is temporal and what is eternal turned their once glorious song to a shrieking roar.

The Word breathed in air, exhaled carbon. The Word consumed and excreted. Eternity took soot within itself, and showing creation the possibility of the divine living within flesh.

The Word moved through a world filled with anger, hatred, hope, and despair. The Word picked fruit, and ran calloused hands over wood with the strength of soot forged in the heart of dying stars.

Carbon that had floated between stars which supported algae under thunderous clouds, had flowed through the veins of monsters, and quickened in the sinews of livestock, the fruit of pomegranates and figs, the waving grains of wheat, now fed God, the Living Word. It had floated from the breath of a king and had been absorbed by a leaf on a dogwood tree before an empire had swept through the land. It had held tight to water and other carbon and supported a small part of a fiber which once guided water to leaves. That wood was cut and dried and shaped.

The Word moved through the lives of ordinary men, ordinary women. People who held souls, sparks from eternity clothed in sooty flesh. People who loved The Lord, and people who loved only themselves. People who loved power and tradition and wealth. People who wanted to kill The Word.

The angry watchers, the shriekers in the dark, whispered to those who hated The Word. And those who loved power and tradition and wealth listened.

He Who had started a good work, He Who had made stars and life, waited patiently as they laid hands on flesh and bone and dragged Him to judgment. He Who had sung creation into being and had forged carbon and sparked life within monsters and men, knelt humbly beneath the whip.

And they dragged Him to that piece of timber, that beam lying in the dirt. Soot of stars, clinging to its neighbors within the fibers of a piece of wood, rested beside God incarnate.

Iron and oxygen, hydrogen and carbon, flowed bright red from pierced hands, flooding the wood. Carbon born in the mind of divinity met with carbon supporting the muscles and sinews of divinity incarnate.

And the universe shuddered.

Reality split. Darkness cried out in the anguish of battle lost. A door opened between the finite and the infinite.

Soot which had flowed between stars, between lives, served now as a part of a crude bridge between Heaven and Hell.

And it was good.

The Blidget

My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun —
In Corners — till a Day
The Owner passed — identified —
And carried Me away —

And now We roam in Sovereign Woods —
And now We hunt the Doe —
And every time I speak for Him —
The Mountains straight reply —

And do I smile, such cordial light
Upon the Valley glow —
It is as a Vesuvian face
Has let its pleasure through —

And when at Night — Our good Day done —
I guard My Master's Head —
'Tis better than the Eider-Duck's
Deep Pillow — to have shared —

To foe of His — I'm deadly foe —
None stir the second time —
On whom I lay a Yellow Eye —
Or an emphatic Thumb —

Though I than He — may longer live
He longer must — than I —
For I have but the power — to kill
Without — the power to die —

------------------

For our 25th anniversary Brenda and I are staying at the Sylvia Beach Hotel in Newport, Oregon.

It’s a reader’s hotel. No TVs. No cell phones permitted. I suspect that even this laptop would be considered contraband.

Each room is decorated in a style of a particular author. We have stayed in Melville (slanted floor reminiscent of a ship's deck, great view!), Poe (pendulum swinging over bed, bricked up closet with a jester's tassle in mortar, stuffed raven, red and black touches throughout), Hemingway (Gulf of Mexico style white, stuffed trophies), Twain (19th century style, fireplace, balcony), Stevenson (handicap accessible room with maps of pirate coves and crutches in corner), and this time we are in the Emily Dickinson (simple 19th century furnishings).

This sweet recluse wrote beautiful poems that were not entirely appreciated until long, long after she passed away.

The poem above is one I enjoy.

If you look around the internet you might find many essays on it which posits surprising takes on it. Some argue that it is about the Civil War, or the love of a man and a woman, or of a woman and a woman.

Poetry is like that. It is like something someone might hand you, and you are suddenly unsure of how to even hold it. They might even offer you a brief explanation (“That there is a left-handed blidget.”), and you take their word for it, having never handled something like it before.

But for me, the poem above is an obvious reference to the Christian life.

First, like many of her poems, there is a clear indiciator of the spiritual element... it can be sung readily to the melody of “Amazing Grace." Go ahead... try it.

------------------

I believe our lives are without real purpose without the Creator in them. We are like a loaded gun... standing in the corner.

I love how Dickinson used punctuation, grammar, and especially capitalization.

Take a quick peek at which words are capitalized in this poem. They aren’t capitals because of the rules of English. They are capitalized because of their importance.

It just occurred to me that my habit of capitalizing the word “Him” in all my blogposts is because of a habit I may have picked up from her. I capitalize that pronoun to demonstrate how important I feel He is.

I am at His service. And in this world, God Himself has so arranged things that we, you and I, are His hands and feet. He has even decreed that His works will be done because we, you and I, pray. I am ready to “speak for Him” whenever He commands it.

I’m not going to over analyze this poem for several reasons. First, I feel I may have imposed upon you already, dear reader, in dragging you thus far into literary criticism when normally you visit just to check on how I am doing lately. But more importantly, I think poems, like most left-handed blidgets, is best understood by the person handling it, and not the person handing it.

So, back to snuggling with the wife... enjoying a little peace and quite on this weekend which marks half my life spent with someone I still dearly love.

Twenty-Five to Life

Twenty-five years ago today I stood in my father’s backyard in a borrowed suit and stammered out the words “I do.”

I said the words passionately, seriously. I meant them. It was the most serious sort of statement I can make. A vow.

This year I marked my 50th birthday, and as of today I have spent one half of those years with my beautiful wife, Brenda.

I was a very different guy then. I knew everything. Typical 25 year old.

I don't know everything anymore. In fact, it is amazing the immensity of my ignorance. But that is part of the fun, isn't it? Trying to drink the ocean with a teaspoon.

But back then I was pretty sure of myself.

We had been living in the small hamlet of Timber, Oregon, up in the coastal range, along the Nehalem River. Money was tight, there was very little work to be found. I did odd jobs, cooked in a local cafe, raised animals.

We did silly things then to make ends meet. There were rabbits for food, chickens for eggs (and the occasional soup), goats for milk. I had a small garden. I was an ineffectual hunter and gatherer. I was raising a goose for a special occasion, which turned out to be our wedding day. Like a couple of hicks we packed our clothes in some old suitcases and a backpack from my hitchhiking days and flew a thousand miles to be with my family (since my dad was footing the bill). I even took along the dressed goose as my contribution.

We’ve been through quite a bit. A long road. It isn’t the distance that wears these old vehicles out. It’s the terrain.

But it really hasn’t been so long in many ways. The years fly by, ever more quickly.

The dozen years we’ve had these boys seems to have sped right by.

“Until death us do part...”

A lifetime with one person is increasingly rare today. My father’s fifth marriage is ending. Brenda’s dad has been married four times.

I’ll admit that there were times when I thought we weren’t going to make it. Marriage is a difficult endeavor. But it has been worth it.

Today we finish each other’s thoughts. A few weeks ago, in response to something one of our kids said at the table, we said three short sentences in unison. We think that much alike.

So it is twenty-five years down, and the rest of my life to go.

But then it ends. Jesus said something about not being married in Heaven (Matthew 22:30).

Then we will have different lives to live. Eternal ones. And twenty-five years will seem a very small thing.

Just as I seriously swore to love only one woman until we are parted by death, I have sworn to love only one God, and that vow stretches beyond the grave.

Some may see marriage as some sort of prison sentence, lack of freedom, lack of choices. But for me it is a gift.

I’m glad that I have received “twenty-five to life.”

I love you Brenda.

Sweet Potatoes

“Mr. Servant! You want to eat with Taylor and me?”

“Sure, Travis. I’d love to.”

Truthfully, it had been a hectic day, shuttling kids to the Canby Depot Museum for my Virtual Museum project, and I really wanted to get a little adult company.

He led me over to a table in the corner of the cafeteria. This kid has changed so much in the few weeks I have known him. The first time he was in my class he openly challenged me.

Some kids are like that. They come in snarling and spitting. I’ve learned to keep notes to document these problems. It comes in handy to have such a record if things get worse, or to examine the needs of a specific child.

“Travis” has come a long way. Initially he refused to do any of the work expected of him in the robotics class. But he has moved from insolence and refusals, to working independently, to finally contributing to his robotics team.

He is on one of my four “Tournament Teams.” This means that his team will compete in a local robotics tournament in December (there are ten teams not going).

His assignments are all turned in and he is earning an A-.

His tray had a slice of pizza, jello, chocolate milk, and tater tots.

My tray had the traditional nod to Thanksgiving: turkey gravy over mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and yams with marshmallow sauce.

I smiled at “Taylor” and asked if I could sit down. He is also in my robotics class, but hardly ever talks. He nodded.

Travis has turned into a real talker. Between wolfing down the jello and chugging the chocolate milk he looked over what was on my tray.

“I didn’t see the sweet potatoes! I love sweet potatoes! I really like the marshmallows!"

He began talking about his life. How Taylor was another foster kid like him. How at the foster home the three miniature pinschers have such different personalities. How he calls his foster parents “Mom and Dad” even though they aren’t. How he was beaten with a curtain rod, and how his mom is in jail for something she didn’t do.

I listened carefully, taking it all with a grain of salt.

He asked about our home. I told him a little.

His eyes grew large when I told him about my two adopted boys.

“Adopt me! Adopt me!”

I looked into his begging eyes. Taylor’s eyes had also grown suddenly sharp.

“I don’t take much space. I’ll sleep anywhere. I can sleep in the living room!”

A part of me wants to say “yes.” Every child should have someone to love them, to parent them.

But I don’t take on such jobs unless I can do my best at it. My small house hasn’t room for another child. I already have two children who require a great deal of love, energy, and prayers. I am not the man to be this child's father.

He moved on to how he is enrolled in the Big Brother program, how they are looking for a guy who likes to do the things he likes to do and will take him places and do lots of fun things.

The boy needs a dad. Someone in his life who loves him.

Every child does.

My dad called me the other night.

He was getting ready to go have breakfast in the village below his rented bungalow.

He wants me to come down to see him this Christmas season.

I haven’t decided yet.

I don’t think he will be around a year from now.

He is planning on doing something... stupid? Foolish? Adventurous? The adjective depends on the point of view.

He is spending about $150,000 on a motorcycle.

It is a custom job of course. A bike designed for only one person to ever ride. And only for one day of riding. Its 400 horse engine will suck two gallons of nitro fuel in a mile and a third. He wants to set a couple of world records on it at the Bonneville Salt Flats.

He is turning 70 in May. I know that in his heart he is thinking that he willl finally be "old." From his point of view it would be better to get smeared along the salt flats attempting a world record than... well, rather than turning 70.

Meanwhile he is living in my sister’s old house (she died a couple of years ago, a sad tale of selfish desperation), next to his grand house. He doesn’t sleep at home anymore, ever since he took up with the maid. But I don’t hear much about that maid who arrives to clean people's houses in the new Mercedes he bought her. I think he has a new girlfriend in that bungalow in southern Thailand.

I make plenty of mistakes as a parent.

My father did.

I wish every kid could have all the love and guidance they need, they deserve.

We thought once we were pregnant. But a tubal pregnancy is a danger-filled let down that leaves a bitter taste after the surgeries are over.

We adopted a child, took him home when he was less than a day old. But that ended sadly.

We adopted two more, and that has been an adventure.

I look at the job my parents failed to do, and I see my own imperfections, and I look at these other children who so desperately want to have any sort of parents, and it makes me sad.

I recognize this is a fallen world and imperfection is how it is defined. I wish it could be different, better.

Whether or not I go see my own father this winter, this perhaps last chance to talk together, is really a side issue. I don’t know if I can afford it. I don’t know if it is wise.

I just know that the tension I feel when I speak with him is echoed in the tension I feel thinking how I want to do my best in raising my kids, which echoes the tension I see in the eyes of the child in the cafeteria when I slide my tray over to him so he can eat the sweet potatoes with marshmallow sauce.

Just for Laughs

I'm juggling a lot of things, and have not been posting as much on this blog as I like (but my professional blog is up to date!).

I like to tease my friend and colleague across the hall, so I sent him this email this afternoon. He says he never laughed so hard. So I took a screen shot of it and am posting it for y'all.

(Click to Enlarge)

Dreading, Bitter and Sweet

Bitter and sweet.

Life is bitter and sweet.

Isaac turned 16 this week, so I am sitting in Barberama, a beauty parlor in Portland.

He is getting dread locks.

As I watch, “Chainsaw Mary” is working away on his hair...

(Click pics to enlarge)

...while Jeremiah and Grandma are looking at his yearbook...


and Mommy is gushing over the resident dog, Marley.



It is kind of sweet.

My friend, my pastor, led a great service this morning. It was on Mark 5, the story of Jairus’ daughter.

He talked about how we need to be desperate. In desperation we seek God. He spoke of Jarius’ desperation to save his dying daughter. He spoke about what it is like to hear the words: “She is dead.”

He said some of us have been told such words.

I’m one of them.

I heard those words at Willamette Falls Hospital. I’ve been led to a stainless steel table to see my child lying naked and alone.

I had already known he was dead. I held his lifeless body at the end of the driveway on that December day nearly fourteen years ago.

My friend was speaking about how desperate times can drive us to pray, drive us to God. My mind, and then my heart, went to that memory, still a sharp thing in my heart, and the tears were suddenly rolling down my cheeks. My wife squeezed my hand.

It is kind of bitter.

So I’m in this reflective mood in a strange setting, tapping away at my laptop. I’m floating within this strange mood, within this pounding music and the smell of hair products. People drift in and out. Purple hair, dreads, conservative and wild. Women with their boyfriends. Women with their girlfriends. People who would not fit in well at church.

This is life.

Tiny Ridley Knox scampers from his owner, leaping on my chest, giving me kisses.



Bitter and sweet.

My son will be an adult in a couple of years. Getting dreads is a step toward finding his own way, his own style. (I’m not sure how I feel about it, but I know I grew my hair pretty long in the 70s and that annoyed quite a few adults.)

He wants friends so much. He wants to stand out. He wants to fit in. He doesn’t know what he wants.

He wants dreads.

So, today I am dreading. Or rather, Chainsaw Mary is. I’m just paying the tab (well, half of it, he is paying the other half).


I love him. He is growing up and will soon be on his own, the day all parents look forward to, and dread. Bitter and sweet.

A bitter taste is usually an indication of something alkaline, perhaps poisonous.

I’ve tasted a lot of bitter things... the day my dad tried to kill my brother and I... getting fired from a job I loved... my son burning down our church...Willy’s death.

Such bitter experiences make sweet things sweeter.

They also make us desperate.

I think desperation can be a good thing. This morning, during worship, I felt the drawing near of the Holy Spirit. It makes me desperate for more.

I’ve given a lot of thought to the spiritual health of our church. There are many indicators of change... that we are doing more than rebuilding our physical church, we are rebuilding our spiritual body as well.

Bitter things can lead to sweet things.

I think my pastor is right. The bitter cup of my child’s death was a draft that purged much of the nonsense in my life. The bitter cups bring me to my knees, poisons that make me sick enough to vomit up the sickness within.


So even when life is sweet, the bitter aftertaste can return. It is a good thing. It reminds me I am fallible...

...and why I remain desperate for Him.

Big Place

I'm dashing this post off in a hurry. Busyness still has me in her maw.

But two things have come together to prompt me to pause for a moment and sit down at this keyboard and tap out a quick post.

The first is a part of a conversation from this morning. Actually two conversations, because I quoted myself in the second conversation from the first.

I have found myself involved in examining prayer within our church. I have had quite a few meetings with various folks, and something has been whispering to me that the prayer in our church needs to change. The status quo isn't good enough.

In that first post-prompting event today we were talking about the fear and joy in drawing close to God. I was saying something about how I often think about the science of things, especially the size of the universe and the mysteries of quantum mechanics. That in understanding the size of the universe I know intimately my own place in it, and it makes me tremble.

I don't understand how anyone can believe in a creator and not stop and consider the implications of who He is. And in thinking about Him, I tremble.

I know He loves me. I know that He is a being of community, by nature three. I know that He loves me deeply and invites me to join Him in that community.

I said something this morning about the size of the universe, and the joy and fear I have found of late in worship.

This was in the context of a conversation about how people can be unhappy with the choice of music performed by the worship team, or do not like the way someone else is dressed, or object all sorts of things that sound like they are more concerned about how they are right than they are about loving others.

The second thing that happened was just a few moments ago. I checked my blog and found a new comment from my friend Justin:

Hey Will,
Check out this link.
http://www.pistolwimp.com/media/53235/
Until I read the end credits, I was convinced this was you with a cold:-)

I was surprised myself. The first image is pretty familiar to me, and to any of you who are familiar with me. But the similarities are much deeper than that blog pic of mine. The voice is a little like mine, but the topic! It is one that I am not only familiar with, but could have written myself. Even the writing style is much like my own. There are even many editing techniques that I routinely use in my own video. It is a little eerie to meet your digital clone.

Though the video does not directly make a theological connection, the connection is easy enough to make.

If you can be patient enough for the download and to watch the six and a half minute video you might be as surprised as JH and I have been.

Thanks Justin!

My Not So Secret Identity

Hi folks!

I'm still as busy as a one armed paper hanger, but I thought I'd drop a quick note here to say "Hi!"

Tonight and tomorrow night are conferences, so I will be working late. Friday is a day off, but I have scheduled three hours in our prayer room and have one meeting to attend. All good stuff though.

I thought I'd share another piece of my life with you.

You know me as Curious Servant. This nom de plume is perfect for the internet, describes me pretty well, and shields my "real" self from those out there.

But I have always been pretty transparent and open, so I thought I would permit you, my dear readers, to know a little more about the "real" me.

So I am inviting you to visit my professional blog which I have just restarted for the new school year. Please do not leave any reference to this blog, Job's Tale, there as I will be forced to delete it. I must keep the spiritual aspect of my life separate from my professional one. However, I can talk about my professional life here all I wish.

You can pretend to be a parent if you want!

So here it is:

Curious Servant's Alter Ego blog