More Than a "Good Time"

More Than a Good Time

There was a fellow who observed an astrological event about one hundred years ago. He saw that Venus, (or some other planet that is still a planet—I’m not quite sure which), was crossing between the earth and the sun. He came about some money and built an observatory called, Radcliffe Observatory, so that he could watch this planet do this thing over and over again until he learned something.  It was into the construction of the building and the acquisition of the necessary tools that he plunged everything that he had.

As it turns out, the event for which he built the observatory to observe, the criss-crossing of some planet, is something that only occurs every one hundred years. Surely, he must have known that there was a possibility that his pet event might be, for his lifetime, and anomaly. And surely, after a few nights of the thing that he thought would happen, not happening, he found other things in the vastness of space for his gaze to be set upon. But our observer did one-day die. And it was most probably while watching something not happen through his own, costly scope, on top of his own, grand building, with little satisfaction and much confusion.

This past June, the thing our observer had been watching for, happened. Far beneath the cyclical movement of planets, the students of Green Templeton College, at Oxford, sat in a common room full of cushioned couches and arm-chairs, while pattering upon keyboards, running their fingers along lines of text, and sipping tea. Learning and pushing and striving, these young souls with young minds, the talents of our generation, the great healers, inventors, and helpers to come—all traveling along their own curious orbits in the renovated and converted, Radcliffe Observatory. A building built by mistake. Our observer was wrong, but what this common room is, what his observatory has become, the room in which I now type, is right.

*

I recently asked a few friends to tell me “what they know now that they didn’t know before.” I did little explaining so that the answers wouldn’t be influenced at all. One friend, a new father, said that he knows now that being a man has little to do with his body having reached maturity, but much more to do with putting coffee on after a 14 hour day, so that he can be the one to “get the baby” during the night. A different friend said that birth control and condoms are both frustrating. And another friend said that he wasn’t sure how to say it, but “the whole seasons of life thing is starting to make more sense.”

I think that I’m in the second season of my life. I had one, from about 3 months old until February sixth of 2010, and another from then through now. During the first season I came home and dinner was ready, I played video games, and I rode my bike along with friends to Number 1 Chinese. The second season, which, unfortunately, is still in progress, has been a bunch of not sleeping, pacing on porches late at night, and being unable to read or write anything more interpersonally taxing than “See Spot Run, See Spot Walk.” I wrote something a couple of days ago that has been replaced by this thing that I’m writing right now. The scrapped post was, I think decent, but the only people who read this are in my family, and they would either be worried or whisper about my parents’ crazy son. It wasn’t happy. In fact, I think the reason that I haven’t written in a bit is because anything that I could have written, if I could write, would have been wearingly heavy for anyone to read. And it’s embarrassing. My skill may have developed, but not as rapidly as my fear of shame.  

I’m tired of my fear and I miss my fearlessness. Maybe I romanticize the past, but if I don’t, then I truly have lost my heart for the marginalized, my capacity to “go there,” into the deepest and darkest of states and thoughts so I might be able to write something familiar to those who have been there, and the security of a faith believed in and a for hope of a world that could be changed.

Is this a thing that happens after college? Is this a thing that happens to the “lost generation?” Is this a thing that is only happening to me?

I once spoke to people that I didn’t know, flirted with girls that I thought were cute, wrote pieces that, if nothing else, were at least honest, and at least felt like I was moving somewhere. Now, I’m a number, an “any person”, and empty thing. I’ve lost my passions and my talents. I’ve lost my motivation and my competency. I say that “I’ve lost” them, but I feel like they’ve been taken from me. I charge God with the man that the world has made me, and I resent him for being the maker of the world that has made me as I am. I accept less responsibility than I should, but that too I am ashamed of and feel powerless over.

I leave a day before I say that I will, I look into teary eyes without emotion, and I’m loved but cannot love back. I’m like the most emo of emo songs, Im a cliché that doesn’t know it, I’m a half assed Christian and a half assed non-christian. I can laugh and charm and chat, but I hate it and have little energy for it. I don’t care where people are from or what they do as a job, I only want to know the things that should be saved for special people. Don’t tell me what you’re favorite color is, tell me why you wear baggy sweatshirts to hide your body. Tell me why you silence the calls that are from your brother. Tell me why you’re travelling or tell me why you’re not.

I’m tired of discussion, the noises of conversation, and the way things are going. Change something. Stick with me beyond the moment when I ask you not to. Present some friction. Or don’t. But if you don’t, will you at least hold my tired head and my tired person in your lap? Be there when I want a lap to rest my head upon and be okay with me not resting my head upon your lap when you wish that I would? Tell me that I’m “okay.” Tell me that I can change things, and tell me that I can win the argument for purpose, and tell me that the existential camp is wrong? Or tell me nothing, “hold me fast,” and slide your hands through my hair. I miss my old girlfriends because by being my girlfriend, they said, “You are okay.” I miss my home because I’m better at sleeping when there.  I miss myself from before. I think that self was starting to build an observatory. I may have been wrong, but it could have been right, eventually.

*

I’m waltzing again, and again, for so much more than a “good time.” I need so much more than a “good time.” I’ll be damned if I spend all of my money on bad beds and bad food for nothing more jollies. And this is where I think that many of my peers can meet me. We are “hopeless wanderers,” moving away from things that are more easily described than those that we are running towards. Job to job, city to city, social cause to social cause. We have within our experiences the greatest exposure socially and geographically ever available to man. The age disparity between the boomers who birthed us and ourselves is, again, the greatest ever. And we are single till later, and a part of more ended romantic relationships than ever before. (See CNN “Lost Generation” for fact check.)

Lonely people surround us all. I wonder if our restless wandering is in search of a unity that facebook and transit have forever stolen. I wonder if, for me at least, this is why I want to be held fast, held when I try to leave, held when you know that even though I’m in your arms, I’m not with you. 

There’s a thing about men. There’s quality of foolishness and shortsightedness that is the ultimate of tragic characteristics. Men don’t care about so much as they care about injustice. The thief reconciles injustice through taking things for compensation, the sheriff reconciles injustice by attempting to enforce a moment of he perceives to be justice, and the man in-between reconciles injustice by ending himself. The last man may not put a bullet in his own brain or starve himself, but he will leave reality. He will stop feeling and thinking. The third man does not steal or enforce, but he does disengage. The first two are heroic because they will trade everything for a bullet to kill the other, but the third is disregarded because he accepts a muted existence so that he can survive.

The great motivator of unselfishness is the idea of permanent death.  The man who believes in permanent death commits himself to an idea, while the man who believes in a Heaven commits himself to himself. To believe in permanent death means to avenge the death of another or to avenge the impending death of one’s own self. To believe in eternal life means to commit oneself to the acquisition of that everlasting life. If I believe that I can attain eternal life, or that it is available to all who are righteous, then I can toil in the soil without remorse. But if I believe in the ethereal-mentality of life, if I believe that there is no life after this one, then the mistreatment of life is a crime that cannot be fully punished. And so the thief and the sheriff trade everything for a bullet to kill the other because they believe that this life is everything.  

The thief wishes to kill all authority because he has suffered and the authority claims responsibility. The sheriff wishes to kill all who object to authority because they are responsible for the loss of all that a man is entitled to. In the end, the thief and the sheriff kill one another and the man who has chosen to escape reality, the man who breathes through his mouth, is the survivor. The irony is that each of the three gets what he desires. The thief desires death, which is alright because Life has given cards of suffering, the sheriff desires death, which is alright because Life has given him cards of suffering, and the Apathetic Objector does not desire life because he has already gained it by not entering into the duel between the thief and the sheriff.  He lives because he does not care about living.

What muddles things is that the thief believes that he is righteous as the sheriff does. In fact, both believe themselves to be the sheriff. The thief believes that he is righting the wrongs committed by the unjust and that what is required of him is counter-cultural. The sheriff believes that he is righting the wrongs because what is required of him is to fulfill the desire of culture. The thief on the cross is not only joining the King of Righteousness because he asked to do so, but because he sacrificed his life for the acquisition of justice. 

Puzzles and Paintings

It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to finish something. Anything really, but the thing I’m most concerned about is my inability to complete a piece of writing. I write brainless heartless articles for an addiction recovery network, and I finish those bits of writing and submit them on time, but I’ve decided that anything that can be done by a monkey doesn’t count. I can shower, blow my nose, and drive. I can’tread, write, or hold my thoughts captive. If I’m in a conversation with someone in person or over the phone, my brain is considering people and events and curiosities that wouldn’t even qualify as tangential. I’m not engaging well. People who know me, who know my eyes, ask me where I am. I had a girlfriend once who held my face in her hands and said, “Where are you? Please come back.” It's like that.           

I’ve never been particularly clever, but I’m more dull than usual. The incoming calls far exceed the outgoing and I’m burdensome in circles of conversation. This is frustrating. I’ve tried to give up on the conversation or task that should at that time be focused upon in favor of following the random blips of thought inexplicably occurring in my head. No dice.  I live on the wrong side of relationships—thinking too often of the other person’s story and perspective while neglecting the data that they're giving me in the moment. As soon as my cognition spotlights what was periphery, the line of thought scurries like a beetle into the dark.

Grief

January 29, 2012

Two nights ago Scott called to tell me that Andrew had taken his own life. I thought about how Andrew wouldn’t see the moon again and sat in my car until the sun came up. Scott didn’t know why Andrew was gone or how it happened. I called Andrew to ask him myself but he didn’t answer. I wondered if Andrew’s sister might know why, or maybe Andrew’s girlfriend, but I didn’t call them. I called people who should know that Andrew won’t hug them again so that they wouldn’t find out from the internet. They were quiet, they cried, they screamed, they didn’t believe me, and then they called the people that they missed, and they called the other people that should know about Andrew from people.

I listened to an album his band had recorded, listened to videos with snippets of his voice, and listened to the shutter and settle of my car.

I went inside and showered and changed my clothes. Someone who loved Andrew his whole life sent me a text that said, “Wilson, my dear, dear friend, I just hurt so bad.” Even though nobody was home, I was embarrassed when I realized that the screaming was coming from me. When would someone be home?

A person who believes in the Bible would probably read the Bible. I believe in the Bible.

So I read a verse in the bible that says, “When I am afraid I will trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I will not be afraid.” Nothing. I started another one that says, “I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go…I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you.” Nothing. I remembered one about how a “mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace, yet the sinful mind is death.” Nothing. They were supposed to help me but they only inspired questions.

If we get to make decisions that have not already been made for us, then that means this about Andrew and that about God, but if all of our decisions were decided for us before we were born, then that means this about Andrew and that about God. (Do you know what I mean? Every question about what we do to others and ourselves, what we endure, and what we are responsible for is a question of sovereignty. If Andrew’s sorrow and death were predetermined, how can we reconcile that tragedy with “God is love”? If his story was not predetermined, but a plot of his own making, then why was God’s Spirit within Andrew not victorious over the spirit of Andrew’s flesh? I am not able to imagine how often or fervently Andrew prayed that he would be delivered of his unbearable pain.) Andrew’s close friends and I called each other over and over again and spoke a lot but didn’t say anything. Other people, people I know, or rather, people that I knew, called and asked if I’d seen any “signs,” or if I knew “why,” and a feeling started to seep into me. It was the first I felt. I didn’t know that it was a feeling by any sort of sensation but by the wake of thought that it left behind.

“Something must be done about this. This is something happening in my brain that I don’t know about. I don’t feel cold, but it must be because my fingers aren’t working well. Do people ask me if I knew anything because they think that I should have? Did I know anything? Did I try to know anything? Something must be done about this. Do the people that I can’t see still exist? They must, because I’m talking to them on the phone. 


Did He make us knowing that it would be like this?”

I drove to Starbucks to see if anyone still existed. I brushed my arm against someone in line as an experiment. Nothing

I went home. I showered again and went to dinner with a family that thought that it was just Saturday. Mom, Dad, Three Young Daughters, and myself. Sometimes I smiled and sometimes they did. I tickled them and watched them do headstands. Heat bottlenecked around my brain and I started to feel outside of myself. The girls went downstairs to sing and dance. I went downstairs too and watched them for a while before I went home. Again, I tried to sleep.

My brain told me:

“The average person has about 2 to 3 true friends at a time. In Andrew’s case, his number is higher. But let’s say that the people who were truly friends with Andrew had 7 bail-you-out-of-jail-friends. Let’s suppose that each person lives an average of 80 years, and has an average of 7 different true friends every 20 years. That’s 28 true friends in a lifetime. Now obviously it can be argued that one wouldn’t have so many different sets of true friends because true friends would last for more than 20 years. I concur with this argument. But for sake of my point I want to allow for the possibility of a person who through bizarre circumstances ends up with an extraordinary amount of true friends in their lifetime.

There are approximately 6,987,000,000 people on earth right now. Because of our country’s economic situation, and the news, such high numbers inspire muted significance--so I’ll fail in an attempt to attain perspective. 369 times NYC’s population equals less than the current world population...There have been 107,602,707,791 people to ever be born on this earth. 

That is something like 5,300 generations. Out of around 5,300 generations, (a total of 107,602,707,791 people ever to be born), and 6,987,000,000 humans currently inhabiting our planet--how many have made you laugh? Hugged you? Told you a secret? Out of all of those generations of all of those people, how many have you lived with? Loved? How many sons of mothers in the history of man have made each day that you knew them a more bearable day because you knew them?  How many have you sung songs with in the car? Played golf with a whiffle-ball golf ball with? Seen fall in love? Eaten breakfast in silence with?

The family and the girl had the most and lost the most. Does subtracting the loss from the gain equal a number greater than zero? I think so. I’m sorry for the 107,000,000,000-ish people that weren’t fortunate enough to know Andrew. I’d rather be me that them.” 

Nothing.

I was supposed to write about more. I was supposed to explain how mourning Andrew’s absence reconciled a friendship that was lost. I was supposed to account each of the times that I told someone I love, that I love them. I was supposed to talk about Ecclesiastes and how it never made sense until Andrew was gone and I was supposed to reference the following quote and tell how it made me feel:

“It’s a shame that life is so precious. It makes us worry so much”.

I planned to tell that the quote sums my status. To talk about The Beauty, this is my name for our love of God and Man, and to explain that:

“The love of The Beauty cannot be withheld and yet we’re damned for it. Our guts are strings, hooked to people, places, and moments in strongly bound knots. We go to this school before that school and hold hands with this girl and then that one and love this person and then that one and all of these outreaching hooks, stemming from ourselves and remaining taught until they reach The Beauty, pull away from their origin and destination with equal force. We love too many people. We know more people than any other generation and polls say we are the loneliest generation. Can there be any explanation for our loneliness other than that of the pain of friendships parted?

I was supposed to talk about those things in depth but I don’t want anything to be gained from this. I don’t want to learn anything about myself from this. I don’t want to learn anything about life from this. Anything but misery resulting from Andrew’s absence seems like blood money. There isn’t a way to express what I would give to have Andrew back without sounding cliché or dramatic, but the first things that I would give are the things people might call “silver lining”.

Futility

April 2, 2012

We've all got pretty much the same amount of words in our heads. Of course some people know more words than others, but not as many more or less as you may imagine. Now let us suppose that each of those words is printed on a puzzle piece, and each puzzle piece, because of its’ unique shape, directly fits with only so many other words. There are some people who can fit these pieces, the pieces that we have scattered about, in a way that strikes us as extraordinary. These people, like C.S Lewis, Jonathan Safran Foer, and some others, connect the extending or concaving edges of each piece in ways that we’ve never considered—not only impressing us by connecting shapes in unique orders and ways, but by ultimately producing an image that we could not have guessed prior to its completion. Ironically, though we could not have guessed at their end aim, we somehow know that they could not have possibly made any other expression than the one they made. We recognize the picture despite never having seen it before. It’s something that we know, and something that we’ve always wanted to see, but something that we couldn’t see until it was shown to us.

For a couple of months I’ve wished that I was a painter. I’ve wished to be a painter because I’ve run into some things that are more rich and complex than anything that I could express through my limited ability to piece these pieces together. Grief. Futility. See? I can identify the puzzle pieces that seem appropriate, but I can’t manipulate and arrange them so that I will see the thing I must be shown. If I could paint I could stroke, slash, and glide a brush across a canvas and it would at least be honest. All of the word puzzles that I begin sound like lies from a salesman.

In the past I’ve been able to connect the pieces so that I could tell stories about myself. I’ve never arranged them in a particularly clever fashion, but I’ve been honest. Honesty was once enough. But I’ve learned more. Not about theory or arithmetic or history, but about being alive. It isn’t enough to say, “I miss him”, or that “I wish that he would have at least let me be with him while he left”. I know that my words are not enough because there haven’t been any words spoken or heard that gave profile to the thing that happened inside of me. If I stumbled across a tree without ever having seen one before, and did not know that we call that thing which I am seeing, “a tree”, I would not use words to share this discovery with friends or strangers…I would replicate it with lines and colors.

Since Andrew died words haven’t mattered. Nobody has been able to say or write anything to anyone about Andrew that is helpful. Understanding the futility of words made it impossible to write anything to completion. Why would I?  All the words do nothing for the grief. They only do something for the time in the late nights—words rowing minutes behind until the shore of exhaustion is finally reached.

Easter Criminal

April 8, 2012

“When they got to the place called Skull Hill, they crucified him, along with the criminals, one on his right, the other on his left. One of the criminals hanging alongside cursed him: "Some Messiah you are! Save yourself! Save us!" But the other one made him shut up: "Have you no fear of God? You're getting the same as him. We deserve this, but not him—he did nothing to deserve this." Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you enter your kingdom."

Jesus said, "Don't worry, I will. Today you will join me in paradise."

I don’t know what the criminals had been up to before they were crucified, but I imagine that their stories are familiar ones. Their bodies, as well as the scars upon their insides were given to them by a mother and father. They made decisions every day that formed a personality. They did some things selfishly and some things selflessly. Maybe they loved someone maybe they didn’t. But they lived just like each of us. At some point each of them did something that the government of their time deemed to be impermissible. As a consequence of their crimes they were nailed by their hands and feet to crosses. I suggest that these spikes were not the first, nor the most painful for them to endure. I wager that they lived long enough to wish that life were better than it was. I bet they knew regret, rejection, and sorrow. 

Who hasn’t?

I’ve heard teachers ask “Of the crucified convicts, which are you?” Of course we all want to be the dude who gets the golden ticket to Wonka’s factory, but aren’t we all both of them? Aren’t we all on crosses, enduring the spikes of a broken world that we did not apply for until we die? We’ve all done wrong and received it. Do you hear the words—“Some kind of Messiah you are! Save yourself! Save us!”

We want Him to save Himself because we want Him to be who He says that He is. We need Him to be. And we want Him to be who He says that He is so that He can save us.  When I’m pacing in the yard or forgetting to get out of the car I’m asking God why He made all of it so poorly. If He is God then surely He could have come up with a better plan. I don’t know how people could desire Him without the imperfections of our reality, but I bet He could figure out how to make that happen if He wanted to.

My fear drives me to beg Him to, “Remember me”, as he did the Repentant Criminal. And I say it. And I mean it. I want Him to remember me. And even though I’m ruined by the pain of watching pain, the pain has proven the possibility of a dimension without it. Crooked lines are proof of the straight ones. And even crooked lines are momentarily straight before turning or bending. I went to a wedding a couple of weeks ago and realized that two different dying people were deciding to love the other dying person, and to at least go about dying together. That’s a miracle. I have a friend who’s having a baby soon and he said, “Babies are God’s opinion that the world should keep going.”

Okay fine.

Though my lips’ request that The Rabbi remember me seems less authentic than my heart’s desire for an explanation, I’ve got enough to go on for tonight. Tonight, it’s enough for me that a new daddy loves a once-abandoned kid named Caleb. It’s enough for me that a mom woke up early to iron her daughter’s church dresses. It’s enough for me that someone ran in a circle because they care about their health for sake of the loved ones who depend upon it. And it’s enough for me that the blue of an Easter sky is the bluest blue.

We place our feet on the floor, bathe ourselves, eat, work, eat, look at people’s eyes, eat, watch TV, and then pass out wishing that we’d had sex, hadn’t had sex, or would at least wake up the next day and be Don Draper. There are many lamentations accrued with living, but when we slide our feet out of bed, work, and look into the eyes of other immortal souls, we prove the contemporary existence of a Hope made possible by a God who I think could have done better.  

I'm going to try

I’m sitting in Bucks, just as I do most other days, talking with Troy and depending on the internet for procrastination, when a middle-aged man asks us where we go to school.

“Nowhere. I’ve graduated, and so has he.” says Troy, with a nod in my direction.

“Shit”, I think, just as I think every time that a stranger who’s not a girl approaches me.

“Where from?”

“Auburn”

“Oh really? How come Auburn?”

“How come not? How come you’re losing your hair? How come you say, “How come”? What does that actually mean?

“My Dad, sister, aunts, and grandparents went there, I loved the people…You know of Auburn?”

The guy appears to be one of the millions of New Yorker’s who’ve moved down to our retirement county. And generally, after hearing that I went to “Auburn”, a cloud shades their face and they mutter something like “that’s great”, and they know that I know that they don’t know where or what Auburn is.

“Oh yeah, Auburn, that’s right, you guys are the one’s having that nut electrocuted for killing your trees!” 

He smiles self-appreciatively, and though I immediately realize that this guy is from New York in every way, including the worst ways, I’m compelled to play along. He is, after all, an adult, and I did, after all, read some A.W. Tozer only a few moments ago. So I can’t exactly interrupt my, “Be Thou exalted” prayer, with a snide congratulations for managing to belittle something important to my school, and therefore me, plants, and humans, with such a “witty” comment.  

“Yeah, they’re pretty upset up there, those trees are kind of a big deal” I say.

Somehow Troy has now excused himself from the conversation. I’m not sure when he managed it, but both of his headphones are in. He seems to be working on something important, which he obviously is not, and to have somehow forgotten that a man is talking to us. Troy also seems to have forgotten that we are friends, and that he should be walking outside to call me so that I can walk outside importantly as if I’ve just received a call from NASA. I start to get nervous, and the dark wrinkles and deep set eyes of the face standing above me suggest that he’s feeling like talking. A lot.

“So what are you doing now? Now that you’re graduated? Just slacking in Starbucks?”

“Oh god, again he’s smiling, so I can’t tell him that it’s better to be young and slacking than old and slacking, and that’s a big question he has asked, and how long until I can start getting away with rude subtleties just by being old?”

I sneak a grudging glance at Troy. Troy wins, and his computer screen blinks first.

I thinly slide a confident smile across my lips, liven my eyes, and say that I’m, “unemployed”, in the sort of way that is supposed to show this man that being unemployed is merely a novelty, and that I’m not concerned in the least. And I’m really not. I have a job in that fall. I’m not even looking for work. But I’d rather say that I’m “unemployed”, than say, “I’m mooching off of my parents generosity”, or that, “I’m just hanging out.” First of all, because I do some of the dishes sometimes, and second of all, despite my chief concern being the playoffs of my basketball video-game, (In the third round. Up 2 games to 1 on the Pacers), because I take myself way to seriously to ever describe the thing that I am doing with my life in the same way that one may subtly admit that one is currently stoned.

His face moves to its’ natural position, an amused frown, and he says, “Whadya go to college for?” and it seems that he means to ask me which major I chose, not to question the value of a college education.

I answer with a combination of, “English” and “nothing”, in a way that they jump out of my mouth in a sort of circle, unclear which is said first, which second, where one ends and the other begins. I do this because the self-abashment is supposed to quell a smart response.

“So you’ve got as much sense as a squirrel’s nut, uh?”

At first I wonder if he’s referring to the nut that a squirrel stores for the winter, or the one on the guy squirrel’s body, or the seed of the one on that on the guy squirrel’s body. Then I realize that I’ve been insulted. He’s smiling with his mouth, unable to rouse himself to a full expression of friendly jesting.

And then I do something that I hate about myself:

“Yeah, there definitely aren’t any Englishers.”

I hate myself because I’ve used this same “joke”, about a million times, and despite actually thinking highly of an English degree, I submit to the peacefulness of bullshit. (I realize that the degree is mocked because our increasingly mathematical and scientific culture finds little value in it, but I’m not exactly embarrassed to have chosen something that our culture doesn’t highly esteem.)

“Well I’ve got something for you”, he says. “I’m a sports photographer. You know those pictures you took when you were little, the tee-ball ones where you hold a bat like a moron? Well the mark-up on those is about 500%. I take those pictures.”

“Does that make you a “sports photographer”? And how many of the little morons have you touched just a little too long when you were “positioning” them?”

“Wow”, I say, realizing that this is going to be one of those conversation where I don’t need to listen, because he’ll never care to hear what I think about what he’s saying, and that my greatest struggle is now to contort my face in a cycle of movements so as to appear dynamically affected by his speech. Throughout what he’s saying I sometimes say, “umm hmm”, and then other times I say, “right”, and at one point, when I notice that I’ve used, “I see”, five responses in a row, note it, and correct the mistake by supplying an ultra-satisfying, “Oh, wow, that’s amazing, I understand what you’re saying.”

Here’s some of what he’s saying:

“…so this guy is refusing to leave the parking lot, this big boss who’s in charge of two leagues, and then the other boss is telling him that he is only the “1” away from completing the 911 phone call. And there’s all this drama, and you could be there, man could I sell you, and you probably drive everyone crazy, but you can shake hands, yeah I could sell you, and so you’d be wearing a hat you know, and a collared shirt, and on the hat it would say, “James TV”, and you would, yeah, James is my name, and even though you couldn’t sell a five dollar bill for three dollars, I could teach you, and you would go up to these guy who run the league, all John Madden wannabees, and you’d have your hat that says, “James TV”, or maybe, “JTV”, and you’d go up to a coach or player or something, and what you need to know, what you don’t have that I could give you, the reason that I’d make the biggest bucks is because I’m calling the shots, and I could teach you to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and once you’re a wolf, then I’d send you to Jacksonville, say, and you’d go up there in your outfit and you’d pitch our stuff, I mean even you can read a script, and boom, we’d be rolling in dough…”

And he says plenty more, and I only hear parts of it all, and a couple of times I make small remarks that he can’t hear, such as asking if he has a daughter in response to his saying that unless he teaches me, there’s no way I could be a wolf.  Troy’s body shudders as if he’s holding a sneeze in. He gets up and walks to the coffee bar. He, Eric, (who’s working), and Eric’s girlfriend all glance at me, then at JTV, then mutter, then laugh. I wonder why no one is helping. Troy reaches in his pocket, pulls out his phone, hope rises in my heart, Troy puts the phone away, and I decide to set Troy up on a blind date with the big girl from the movie, Bridesmaids.    

“I’ll run and get you some stuff; I’ve got some stuff for you, just one second.” And he heads out to his car. A yellow mustang. Duh.

Troy comes back and sits down next to me smiling.

“Oh my god I am so sorry”, he says. “What all was he saying?”

“Dude, he’s coming back, and if he starts talking to me, you have got to call me.”

“Deal”

JTV walks in and hands me two, paper-sized, tee-ball picture collages.  There are little kids in baseball uniforms, little kids in football uniforms, and little kids holding big trophies. Not bad work, but in no way different work that any other little league pictures than anyone has ever seen.

“Send me an email if you’re smart, and I’m sure, like all kids like you, you’re not, but send me an email, and you’ll be rolling. See these two?” he says pointing to two pro cheerleaders. “Have you ever met a pro cheerleader? Well not an ounce of fat, lemme tell you not one ounce. And this one here on the left, she’s not a Hooters girl, none of em are, she’s an accountant. How about that?”

“Wow”, I say.

My phone rings. I tell him it’s important, step outside, and talk to myself on the phone for five minutes. I come back in. He’s still standing next to my chair.

“Yeah I could definitely sell a good looking kid like you. You’re not imposing and you can shake hands. You just need to know how not to be a moron, kid. E-mail me.”

And he walks over to his seat, sits down, and puts his headphones in.

While he’s sitting I’m thinking about how this wacko doesn’t know me, how I could definitely sell 5 dollars for three dollars, because duh, that’s a profit for the buyer, (Yeah I’d figured that out), and that my Dad could probably convince JTV to buy pink underpants and then wear them as a helmet. I think about how dumb some of the stuff he said was, and how, to my agitation, I have probably assumed that I knew as much about some strangers as he assumed that he knew about me.

As he was walking out I notice that he walks with a stiff back, stiff with age, and that he’s probably not the happiest guy, and that stuff has probably been hard for him at some point, and that he most likely doesn’t relish being old, and that he’s probably terrified; Terrified that he’s beginning something, terrified that he’s taking a risk at his age, terrified that his constructs will fail, and terrified, just as we all are, about everything.

I make jokes about JTV to Eric, his girlfriend, and Troy. They’re mean jokes and I feel nauseous.

He’s gone now. I remember him walking through the drizzle of an afternoon storm; stiffly gaiting to his car. The sports-car, that instead of making him appear to be, or feel younger, confirms that he’s getting older.

I acknowledge that my arrogance springs from some false belief that being young is an excuse for not having really done anything. My self-assured stature shrinks as I understand that he is really trying something, that he is being brave; brave enough to begin, despite being nearer his end, brave enough to approach a sure-to-be-egotistical, and to give him an opportunity to be a part of something other than the community of the “I’m okay because I’m too young and smart and healthy and good-looking to risk failing”, which he knows I belong.

Yeah, I’m probably over-romanticizing JTV.  I’m sure that I’m trying to somehow atone for the things that I thought and said. And yeah, he probably really did see nothing more than a face that he deemed useful.

I won’t work for JTV. Any job that requires a hat is a no-go, and honestly, I don’t think that he’ll have much success. But I’ll e-mail him. And I’ll thank him.

 JTV’s an ass, and not the best photographer, and he likely gets off to assuming power over people. But JTV is in it, and so am I.

Maybe JTV is more than the thief of forty minutes of my life. Maybe JTV’s one of the many waves that it takes to erode the firm shore of smug, false, self-aggrandizement that must crumble to nothing so that I may recognize the truth: That I am, and have done nothing; and that more than this being okay, it’s hope. Everything is potential.

A rejection slip would not make me more or less of a “writer”. In one way, as long as I type, I’m a writer. In another, until my writing is acknowledged by the judges that I’ve assigned significance to, I’m not. But the rejection wouldn’t take something from me that I had, just as to be published would allow me no more permission to write than I currently possess. Someone deciding not to pay me to write is not an additional person deciding to do so. There is only the possibility of one less indifference, never more.  

JTV is trying.

 And though I’m even scared to say, “I’m trying”, and though I spent  last night’s time, the time that I was trying to sleep but couldn’t, thinking about how dumb some of the stuff that I’ve written is, (what I just wrote about the waves and erosion is a good example), I say today, “I’m going to try”. 

If in two weeks I haven’t posted an official rejection: e-mail me a computer virus, leave a flaming bag of poop outside of my door, or tell my roommate from Spain that I took 3$ off of his desk to buy a chaser that I didn’t share with him. 

A Moment of Many in Fido

Why are her blue eyes looking into his circular face? She with her symmetry and tastefully freckled skin, confident posture, and steely eyes... I sit at the table behind him, and sometimes, as he gestures and wobbles to and fro, am in a plain of sight which, as she steals glances at his satellite dish, right ear, connects us in an instant of conversation; her ashamed blue pleading to my arrogant hazel.  His strait brown hair, combed from a typical leave-it-to-beaver, right forehead part, to the space about an inch above his left ear, quivers and bounces as he grows desperate for her nods and “um hms”, to become earnest interest. His acceptable size-to-height body, hunched over folded arms, grows terrifically still as she says something about work and the time and how great dinner was. His feet, covered in tall black socks, bounce down into his brown, lace shoes, then up into tubes of standard-fit, GAP blue jeans.

He’s drinking a coke. The menu explains the process from beginning to end, of how fairly and naturally the coffee comes to be sold, and he slurps a coke through puckered lips. His voice isn’t as high as his boyish appearance suggests, nor is it so deep as to require notation, but nonetheless, the sounds of his words seem stolen from someone else.

She says thanks again, and being the type that fancies herself not only desirable, but benevolent, grants him an “excessive” three sentences to communicate “goodbye”. Walking quickly and stern faced she passes by the window which meets the tables where he and I now sit alone. She shoots the steely blues across her right shoulder at the last moment possible.  

As her eyes meet mine, she all calculation, forecast, and cognition, I realize that Motley Satellite Ears has escaped, protected by the brave, unique heartbeat, whose lover will someday tell him that his socks don't match his shoes.    

"This matter of "salvation" is, when seen intuitively, a very simple thing. But when we analyze it, it turns into a complex tangle of paradoxes. We become ourselves by dying to ourselves. We gain only what we give up, and if we give up everything we gain everything. We cannot find ourselves within ourselves, but only in others; yet at the same time, before we can go out to others we must first find ourselves. We must forget ourselves in order to become truly conscious of who we are. The best way to love ourselves is to love others; yet we cannot love others unless we love ourselves, since it is written, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." But if we love ourselves in the wrong way, we become incapable of loving anybody else. And indeed when we love ourselves wrongly, we hate ourselves; if we hate ourselves we cannot help hating others. Yet there is a sense in which we must hate others and leave them in order to find God... As for this finding of God, we cannot even look for Him unless we have already found Him, and we cannot find Him unless He has first found us. We cannot begin to seek Him without a special gift of His grace; yet if we wait for grace to move us before beginning to seek Him, we will probably never begin. 

The only effective answer to the problem of salvation must therefore reach out and embrace both extremes of a contradiction at the same time. Hense the answer must be supernatural. This is why all the answers that are not supernatural are imperfect; for they only embrace one of the contradictory terms." -Thomas Merton

Part 2: Numbers and Boxes

Something Big:

Something Big, capitalizing on human miss-supposition, a greater fear of loss than desire for gain, and the complexities of some confusing thing called, “macroeconomics”, is on the attack. Something Big is happening. The Boss has become The Employee and The Employee has become The Unemployed. The past decisions of wisdom and fortune, the decisions of 2006, have become today’s decisions of disaster. In the coffee shops, where the masses of Big Something are headquartered, drawing circles in newspapers and joining Feel-better-about-yourself-because-you’re-trying-to-get-a-job.coms, people are saying:

“Once, my house could have been sold at this price, but it is now valued at that price, and so I’ll need to work at least twenty years longer than I’ll live.”

“I earned a degree in this, but I’m a part-time that, and I’m afraid that more school will only qualify me for a different this, and a similar that, and I just don’t know what to do.”

“I hired employees before Something Big began to happen. After the employees became people, they became friends, and because I couldn’t fire my friends, we are all unemployed; all troops of Big Something.”

“My daughter drives my car from my apartment that she lives in to the school that my money pays for. My great-aunt lives with my mother in a house that I own, my dad’s heart and wisdom are with the Lord, and I, the man who searches the eyes in the mirror for something remembered, the man who has no choice but to take his daughter’s car and school, evict his aunt and mother, and forget his father—I live in hell.”

Those statements, spoken intimately between strangers who share everything in common, are our battle cries. We are Big Something and we aren’t merely surviving Something Big, but we are living.  And that is our weapon—despite circumstance, to not merely survive, but to live; A group ethic. This weapon, or battle strategy, was not created in hidden laboratories, or suggested in the essays of Big Something’s philosophers, but in the collision of despair and humanity.

The Ethic of Living:

Ms. Amy’s skin, which is the leathery wrinkled sort, the type that proves many years of Florida’s sun, stretches across bones and muscles that have earned relaxation and reward; But Ms. Amy labors. Working the register is the attack of Something Big. There, Ms. Amy has no choice—it’s a fact of survival. But when Ms. Amy’s undaunted blue eyes begin a dance that her body follows, joyously flowing to the overhead music, it’s an act of revenge, a claim of hope, and the vivid execution of The Ethic of Living.

Jeremy, comfortably seated in a black, leather chair, spends his mornings scouring the net for an opportunity. He’s got kids and a wife and god knows how much other stuff to worry about. He, of course, is looking for a job. And since there aren’t jobs, this obviously means that he has seen pictures of Arnold’s mistress, follows the stocks that he no longer owns, writes letters that he’ll never send, and beats the heck out of a Sudoku book. I mean he absolutely, American X style, curb stomps that little yellow booklet—black coffee on the stand next to him, khaki-panted legs crossed, and brown eyes passionately fixed on the boxes so unlucky as to be empty—the once defeated Jeremy has victory over that book. He’s a man over that book. The numbers and boxes and ink are defenseless against him, and I know that Jeremy’s defeat of numbers and ink is an act of revenge, a claim of hope, and the vivid execution of The Ethic of Living.

I spent the first week of my new life, the “what now” life, scouring the internet for opportunities to write. There weren’t any. I got into a pyramid scheme that I soon got out of. I decided to go ahead and write a wildly popular novel. But the story was about me with a different name, and people would know that the screw-up in the book was me, so I didn’t. I resolved to walk to the offices of Florida Today, where I’d demand an opportunity to prove myself, but it’s hot, and so I didn’t. I did a lot of didn’t.

My despair met my humanity.

I graduated an English major who thought himself a writer, but yesterday, as an act of survival, I used a chainsaw to cut wood that I then stacked. The wood lost and I won. I, like Ms. Amy and Jeremy, had victory. Something Big has been happening, and it’s forced us to the coffee shops. And this herding, this galvanization, has created Big Something. I’m as stuck to you as I am to Big Something, and just as we people have always done when coalesced and desperate, we will have victory in the life of one another. We’ll see the morning and evening colors that Something Big cannot blot, buy coffees for the strangers that Something Big cannot keep from our love, dance with the bodies that Something Big cannot tire, and ultimately, through all of these vivid executions of The Ethic of Living, the numbers, boxes, and ink will submit to the new, hopeful, living nation of Big Something.   

Part 1: No resolution, and apparently about nothing—of course

I left the hotel at 7:15am, allotting an hour for transport to Madrid’s airport, and another hour and a half for check-in, security, and a casually sipped hazelnut latte. This, however, is not what happened. In reality I boarded the plane in a rush of sweat and panic. Of course I had waited at the wrong bus-stop, disembarked at terminal 1 when I needed to be in terminal 3, walked a mile to the Air France check-in, found out that I would need to leave a bag in Madrid, that the flight was closing in ten minutes, and enjoyed zero sips of the Coffee Giant’s latte.

But I did catch the flight, and easily transitioned in Charles de Galle airport from one Air France flight to another. And I ate a juicy, overpriced burger in terminal A of Detroit’s modern airport. And I slept soundly on the two hour flight into Orlando International. And I incessantly spoke of café’s and people during the familiar ride to our home.

When I was throwing the “necessaries” from one suitcase into another I noticed that the things I couldn’t leave behind had absolutely zero practical value. My passport from the Camino de Santiago made it, as well as some awful gifts I had gotten for family, but clothes and books were left behind. The check-in attendant laughed. While I was running to security I realized that getting rid of my extra bag, the one that I couldn’t take with me, would actually be very difficult. It was the day after the raid on OBL’s compound, security levels were high, and apparently the entire Spanish army, brandishing huge guns, was in Madrid’s airport. First I tried to stuff the suitcase into a trashcan. This, you can imagine, looked conspicuous. Me, sweating and panicked, shoving a suitcase into a trashcan. People actually stopped and looked, murmuring to one another. I looked around with saucer sized eyes, yanked the wedged bag out of the iron trashcan, and took off in the direction of security. I thought about leaving the bag next to the trashcan, but remembered the ominous warnings against leaving baggage unattended. I saw myself running away from an orphaned bag, trying to explain, in Spanish, to the guards who would be shooting at me, that I had only paid to check one bag and was forced to leave another. I was upon security before any reasonable solutions had come to mind. When I told the guard that I wished to leave a heavy suitcase in a trashcan, (I don’t speak Spanish), he was obviously alarmed.  More guards came over, tightly gripping the black stocks of their automatic rifles, and tried to understand what the young American nut was saying. Eventually one guard, holding my bag at arms’ length, walked it through the scanner, and allowed me to proceed. And I ran. Luckily, only five days earlier I had mistakenly sprinted through the same gates of the same airport, so the path was familiar. But the sprint was a long one. And since I had worn jeans and a long-sleeve shirt, thinking myself handsome, and that I would make every guapa Spanish chick wish she had met me while I was in her country, I, as I mentioned earlier, accumulated a great amount of sweat in all of the obvious areas, and arrived at my gate breathing as if I might had smoked three packs since security. Also, I’m sure that I had already been red-flagged and secretly followed.  I sat next to the creepiest people on the plane. A couple, the guy from Canada and the girl from the Netherlands, she matching his un-trimmed nails with her unshaven legs, flirted via some perverted computer-game lingo. The short flight was long.

Drinks of all kinds were complimentary on the flight from Paris to Detroit. This wonderful fact combined with a growing realization that my time abroad was indeed over, made me avert my eyes from average movies like, The  Company Men, and, Love and other Drugs, so that I’d remember the theater of it all, and keep my eyes dry. I was coming home to a loving family, a familiar bed, and a country slam full of English-speakers…But I was also coming home to unemployment, financial desolation, (I literally had zero dollars. No money), the storm of a legal cluster-fuck, the shameful residence of a college graduate in his parents’ home, and high school ghosts that still haunt. I had gained much, maybe even some of myself, but it seemed like everything that I had been sure of in Spain, all that I had accumulated, was as worthless as the euros in my pocket.

Two days after I returned from Spain my mom drove me to a mandatory meeting with my state appointed counselor. Brimming with confidence, and as much charisma as I could muster, I joked with the secretary, pet her dog, and smiled with my eyes while I told Sally, the sweet, elderly counselor, that yes, before being caught, I had driven under the influence. I told her about the night that I was arrested, that I wouldn’t trade the embarrassment and shame, and that I now know that no night, no extra drink, is worth the sacrifice of freedom and finances which the DUI has cost me. I told her about Missouri sending the wrong information, and how what was supposed to be 30 days without driving has turned into 6 months in the passenger seat. Sally said some really nice things about me, and that, “yes”, sometimes people like me, with good parents, a college diploma, and a vocabulary stocked with 4 syllable words, are caught. She assigned me as little counseling as possible, (3 thirty minute sessions in 12 weeks), and apologized for having no choice but to require, because the state requires it of her, that I attend weekly AA meetings. Even while I was still with her I was deflated. Three more months without driving, more shameful meetings, and an increased sense of the feeling that I had at some point transitioned from perpetrator to victim. Sally hugged me at the end and told me that one day I would laugh at “all of this”.

My mom and I went to lunch afterwards. She told me that she was sorry things had turned out as they had. I remembered that I created the situation which allowed the possibility of “all of this”. I had. But I’ve made things hard for myself before. I’ve never had cancer or lost a loved one, but I have, thanks to my own mistakes, endured hardship. And from those times, and those mistakes, from the loss of friendship and loss of self, learned that “this too shall pass”, applies to everything. I told my mom, as we walked from the car I couldn’t drive to the restaurant where I couldn’t order a beer, that, “this won’t stop me”. And even though I didn’t say what it wouldn’t stop me from doing, but earnestly meaning it nonetheless, my mom said, “I know”. And I believed her. And it won’t. And I know that it sounds like something Rudy or Andy Dufresne would say, but I wasn’t embarrassed to say it. Because sometimes the hardest things to get through are ourselves. And I knew that AA couldn’t be bad for anybody, and that I’ll spend more time with my little brother because I literally can’t go anywhere without him, and that one day I’ll be able to drive a friend home, because there were so many times that I couldn’t. And I also knew that August 1^st, when I can drive again, that I’ll probably drive the lonely Neon, at four dollars a gallon, to the goddam North Pole.   

“I know that It’ll pass. I know that things will change and that This will be a memory. I know that other people have gone through worse and I know that I deserve whatever comes to me. I know I’ve escaped many times, I know that It was stupid, I know.

But I’m so weary.

The strings from my shoulders to my toes are being tightened. My heart beats in my head and my brain thinks in my stomach. It’s late and tomorrow will be better because it’s forward. I only find peace in the memory that the eyes to see exactly how dark tonight is, will equally appreciate tomorrow’s light.”

I wrote that a long time ago. I was on the airplane looking through folders and files, and I couldn’t remember what “I know that it’ll pass”, came from. I’m not sure what night it was on, or what was happening, but it’s true, I mean the thing that I found peace in.

Yesterday I was looking through my most recent journal and I found a line that I had written. It said, “what if the stars blotted out the streetlights”. It was scribbled apart from everything else, crossing the horizontal lines of my moleskin.

First of all, I actually like that line. I rarely feel successful with a sentence or a thought, and it’s probably that I had no idea what I was saying, but I think it’s pretty good. When I read it now I think of how we see each other—and how it’s sad that This Person’s or That Person’s streetlights often blot out their stars. The next thing I thought of was a mountain top in Hawaii, and how everything turned to stars after the sun had set beneath the clouds.

Neither the stars nor the streetlights had moved, but I had seen something different.