First, if someone asks you whether you are a dog person or a cat person, the correct thing to say to stop the conversation is this: "Hmm. Good question. I've never thought about it. I guess when it comes to pets, I'd have to say I'm most in favor of the animal that will yield the most meat... you know, in the event of the apocalypse. Given the current high prices of traditional pet foods, I'd have to say I think I'd side with Guinea Pigs, which are not only considered a delicacy in many South American countries, but will also put on considerable weight on a diet that can be easily gathered from the woods and fields near my home."
Second, if someone asks about politics, just say what one of my students did today: "One of the most important things about me is that I hate Barack Obama." Then, when someone asks you (as another student did) why this is, just say, "Oh, you know. The obvious reasons."
Monday, February 8, 2010
Saturday, February 6, 2010
answers
I rejoice in the freedom of calcified lies grown brittle,
cracked and broken and then thrown out carelessly to the winds.
And, Oh, God, I see my sins stretching back
as sighs torn from between my eyes whisper off between the trees where I am lost,
so lost in thickets of apologies I never learned to say.
And way off on the crest of a hazy hill I see her lone and lonely figure
and I am crying for her to look my way so I can scream for her,
so I can cry for her
and love and live for her
as long as I have days.
But she can't hear me... can't come near me.
So my eyes look up at you (or is it down? or sideways?)
My eyes look all ways until they roll in paroxysms of existential ire
and I scream, then for fire.
I scream for blood and vengeance...
but all that falls are tears,
bloody tears of love-lost's salted taste.
And it seems a waste.
All this screaming on deaf ears... hers and yours.
All this smiling at lost fears pretending I have made it through,
silencing the tears, pretending I've received what I've desired
as on I've wallowed through the mire of lost paradigms,
making nonsensical rhymes as I proclaim the farce of freedom's fame.
As I proclaim the lie that lies are dead, and gone, and died.
But are they, God?
Some of them... yes.
The small weak ones grown worn from winds of admission,
have detached in resigned submission.
This, only this, has me screaming on despite my tears.
This thing, this relief of fears.
And God. Yes! God.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
crimson
Samuel put his brush down on the rough board next to the ragged strip of raw canvas he had been working on, contemplating the long strokes that no matter how hard he tried never seemed to match the fluidity and grace that seemed to flow effortlessly from Zebulon, his teacher.
He looked over to where he worked a few feet away. The old man was sitting on a stool and painting a large, home-stretched canvas that sat on a thoroughly splattered easel. The fine wisps of his silken white hair were lit by the warm glow of afternoon light through the many windows hap-hazardly cluttering the northern wall of the small, clean studio. Samuel watched the gentle rhythmic stroking of his brush, transfixed.
"Do you ever wonder", he began, "if violence is ever good?"
"No".
Samuel almost continued his question, but experience of his teacher's insistence on a very precise use of language made him pause.
"I mean, do you think violence is ever good?", he asked.
Again, his teacher said, "No".
"But what about like if you have to stop someone from hurting someone else", he continued, "do you still think violence is bad?"
"Absolutely", Zebulon replied.
"Is that why you gave that man your money yesterday?"
Zebulon sighed, resting his brush across the corded muscles of his dark forearm. "No, I gave him my money because he had a knife".
"But you know the disarming move for that better than anyone... I've seen you do it hundreds of times in our other class", Samuel argued. "And you told me once that it was very easy to do it in such away that the other man's wrist was snapped and useless for months, if you just applied downward..."
Zebulon cut him off with a wave of his hand. "The capacity for violence does not automatically imply justification. But that is not what I mean, exactly, when I say that violence is never good. Listen..."
He swiveled on his stool and Samuel tried to hide a smile at what he hoped would be a story or a lesson. The old man rarely spoke much without prompting, so when he did Samuel was always sure to listen. He loved the melodic sound of his teacher's voice. It had aged into something all the more precious for the rare histories it contained in it's musky tones.
"...I learned to disarm so that if I ever had to I would be able. But although that man seemed to be drunk and was probably so inept I could have easily hurt him far worse than he could have hurt me, I could have been wrong or he could have been lucky. With violence, there is always the possibility that you will lose. By giving him my money, I traded the sure loss of a few dollars against the possibility that you or I might have lost our blood, or worse. It was only money, and eventually that man's actions will find him out anyways. Justice is a hard and fickle thing, and mercy is usually not only better for the person to whom it is given, it 'twice blesses', as the bard said. The giver, for his part, is freed from the bondage that power demands. Do you understand?"
Samuel nodded. "But what about when you have to do violence? Like when the man has a knife and you are sure he is about to hurt you, or me?"
Zebulon nodded. His chin dropped to his chest and he seemed to be lost in thought, but when he answered his voice was as clear as ever. "Violence is never good. There are times when one must do violence, because one has to... but these times are so very, very rare, and so very hard to know. The webs of actions, re-actions and consequence that we spin out all around us are a mystery - and often we may believe that violence is our only recourse when there are, in fact, still many avenues available to us. Unless we hate violence... unless we loathe it with a deep and burning passion, then there will always be the possibility that we have not taken the time to give a nonviolent course of action enough of a chance. And that possibility will hang upon our shoulders for the rest of our lives, an invisible weight made all the more terrible by the fact that we probably do not even acknowledge its power over us."
"Is that why you hate war so much?" Samuel asked.
"Yes. Because I find it very hard to believe that the men who make the war machines and grow rich and powerful off their use will hate violence enough that I can trust their decisions to use it. War takes their lack of antipathy to violence and nurtures it. The violence then grows beyond what anyone would ever have intended. It kills the good earth and destroys the lives of the innocent. Even worse, perhaps, is what it does to the hearts of all the men and women who are touched by it, hardening and hardening until it seems there is room for little else than hatred and destruction, which are in fact the same thing. I am an artist. It breaks me when people chose to destroy instead of create."
"But enough... enough talk. We are here to paint. This requires not our words, but our actions."
With that he turned back to his easel and the steady motion of his arm continued. Samuel applied himself with greater concentration to his work and became so lost in the making that an hour later when he again looked up, the old man was gone. All the raw daylight had gone from the studio, but a lamp still burned over each of their work stations.
Samuel stood up, his long-ignored knees creaking, and walked over Zebulon's canvas. It was a scene of war, dripping with rage and anger and passion. Samuel could feel the power in the moment, and he was drawn to its tension and strength. The torn figures of men and beasts writhed in bloody combat, straining in battle with faces contorted in gruesome expressions of hatred, fear and desire. Something about the piece seemed odd, though, and as Samuel leaned in close he saw that each face was the face of the same man. He drew back when he realized that that man was Zebulon himself - young and full of life.
He stood watching, almost afraid, and then after what felt like an age left the room, taking care to shut the door with a gentle whisper as he stepped out into the cool night air.
He looked over to where he worked a few feet away. The old man was sitting on a stool and painting a large, home-stretched canvas that sat on a thoroughly splattered easel. The fine wisps of his silken white hair were lit by the warm glow of afternoon light through the many windows hap-hazardly cluttering the northern wall of the small, clean studio. Samuel watched the gentle rhythmic stroking of his brush, transfixed.
"Do you ever wonder", he began, "if violence is ever good?"
"No".
Samuel almost continued his question, but experience of his teacher's insistence on a very precise use of language made him pause.
"I mean, do you think violence is ever good?", he asked.
Again, his teacher said, "No".
"But what about like if you have to stop someone from hurting someone else", he continued, "do you still think violence is bad?"
"Absolutely", Zebulon replied.
"Is that why you gave that man your money yesterday?"
Zebulon sighed, resting his brush across the corded muscles of his dark forearm. "No, I gave him my money because he had a knife".
"But you know the disarming move for that better than anyone... I've seen you do it hundreds of times in our other class", Samuel argued. "And you told me once that it was very easy to do it in such away that the other man's wrist was snapped and useless for months, if you just applied downward..."
Zebulon cut him off with a wave of his hand. "The capacity for violence does not automatically imply justification. But that is not what I mean, exactly, when I say that violence is never good. Listen..."
He swiveled on his stool and Samuel tried to hide a smile at what he hoped would be a story or a lesson. The old man rarely spoke much without prompting, so when he did Samuel was always sure to listen. He loved the melodic sound of his teacher's voice. It had aged into something all the more precious for the rare histories it contained in it's musky tones.
"...I learned to disarm so that if I ever had to I would be able. But although that man seemed to be drunk and was probably so inept I could have easily hurt him far worse than he could have hurt me, I could have been wrong or he could have been lucky. With violence, there is always the possibility that you will lose. By giving him my money, I traded the sure loss of a few dollars against the possibility that you or I might have lost our blood, or worse. It was only money, and eventually that man's actions will find him out anyways. Justice is a hard and fickle thing, and mercy is usually not only better for the person to whom it is given, it 'twice blesses', as the bard said. The giver, for his part, is freed from the bondage that power demands. Do you understand?"
Samuel nodded. "But what about when you have to do violence? Like when the man has a knife and you are sure he is about to hurt you, or me?"
Zebulon nodded. His chin dropped to his chest and he seemed to be lost in thought, but when he answered his voice was as clear as ever. "Violence is never good. There are times when one must do violence, because one has to... but these times are so very, very rare, and so very hard to know. The webs of actions, re-actions and consequence that we spin out all around us are a mystery - and often we may believe that violence is our only recourse when there are, in fact, still many avenues available to us. Unless we hate violence... unless we loathe it with a deep and burning passion, then there will always be the possibility that we have not taken the time to give a nonviolent course of action enough of a chance. And that possibility will hang upon our shoulders for the rest of our lives, an invisible weight made all the more terrible by the fact that we probably do not even acknowledge its power over us."
"Is that why you hate war so much?" Samuel asked.
"Yes. Because I find it very hard to believe that the men who make the war machines and grow rich and powerful off their use will hate violence enough that I can trust their decisions to use it. War takes their lack of antipathy to violence and nurtures it. The violence then grows beyond what anyone would ever have intended. It kills the good earth and destroys the lives of the innocent. Even worse, perhaps, is what it does to the hearts of all the men and women who are touched by it, hardening and hardening until it seems there is room for little else than hatred and destruction, which are in fact the same thing. I am an artist. It breaks me when people chose to destroy instead of create."
"But enough... enough talk. We are here to paint. This requires not our words, but our actions."
With that he turned back to his easel and the steady motion of his arm continued. Samuel applied himself with greater concentration to his work and became so lost in the making that an hour later when he again looked up, the old man was gone. All the raw daylight had gone from the studio, but a lamp still burned over each of their work stations.
Samuel stood up, his long-ignored knees creaking, and walked over Zebulon's canvas. It was a scene of war, dripping with rage and anger and passion. Samuel could feel the power in the moment, and he was drawn to its tension and strength. The torn figures of men and beasts writhed in bloody combat, straining in battle with faces contorted in gruesome expressions of hatred, fear and desire. Something about the piece seemed odd, though, and as Samuel leaned in close he saw that each face was the face of the same man. He drew back when he realized that that man was Zebulon himself - young and full of life.
He stood watching, almost afraid, and then after what felt like an age left the room, taking care to shut the door with a gentle whisper as he stepped out into the cool night air.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
speaking of drugs...
I am sick, sick, sick... dog-sick. I know that I have progressed to the canine level of sicknosity because I have resorted to taking drugs to kill the headache and coughing at night so I can maybe sleep a chunk and allow my body to heal itself. What I really need right now is a kind and loving homeopathic fairy godmother to make me exotic herbal teas and knead my knotted kneck. The ice storm must be keeping them away.
Monday, January 25, 2010
The Kids Aren't All Right (but neither are the adults)
In my little corner of America almost everyone is a drug addict. Seriously. You will often see box drugstores directly across the street from each other, and it's hard to find a moderately populous road you can drive down without passing one or two pharmacies every couple of minutes. There are more drug stores here than there are grocery stores, so you might almost start to wonder if people do drugs more often than they eat food.
And that's just the legal stuff.
I don't have any hard statistics, so I decided to run an impromptu survey and ask my high school students what percentage of kids they figure are smoking weed or doing some sort of illegal narcotics, and the general consensus was between forty and sixty percent. From my experience as a teacher somewhat privy to this sort of information, I would say that twenty-five to forty percent of the students are on some sort of prescription psychoactive drug, so it would not be too much of a stretch to say that at least seventy percent of the students at my school are regularly on some sort of mind-altering substance. If you include caffeine drinks, then you could take that percentage up to just about a hundred. And this is in one of the most affluent, ostensibly "Christian" areas of one of the most ostensibly "Christian" countries on the face of the planet.
Hmm.
Sometimes I feel as though I'm in the middle of a dystopian novel. I am not the sort of guy to look around and cluck my tongue and bemoan how bad everything and everyone else is - so don't think I bring this all up to show how we're all going to hell in a gold-plated handcart (although we probably deserve it). I'm just sayin'... something ain't as it should be.
Last week I took a planning period to drive over to a student's house. He is a capitol fellow - the sort of intentional oddball who makes me happy to be a teacher. He's generous and loving and very creatively talented. He also gets depressed sometimes and can't sleep, and for that reason was missing school.
I understand this more than most. I spent a lot of high school depressed. I could feel it coming up on me like a giant, sickly-green wall of goo, and I would usually sneak off to the upper branches of some tree to sway around, sing, cry, and maybe just wonder how much I'd be missed if I were to slip.
I remember this one time when I was in the back of a pickup truck, inside a metal box they had placed over the bed for shelter from the elements. I was riding home from a youth event with some peers and the green wall caught me and I couldn't get away, so I actually ended up banging my forehead on the aluminum for about ten minutes - to the point where one of the more muscular fellows in there with me ended up offering to help.
Weird stuff, I know, and it is just possible that some sort of happy drug could have not only taken away my bad feelings, but also might have allowed me to avoid some of the bad, destructive habits I formed to cope with them. Maybe then I would have been freed of a lot of the baggage I had to carry for a long time. But maybe not.
Weird stuff, I know, and it is just possible that some sort of happy drug could have not only taken away my bad feelings, but also might have allowed me to avoid some of the bad, destructive habits I formed to cope with them. Maybe then I would have been freed of a lot of the baggage I had to carry for a long time. But maybe not.
It was spirit week at school last week and the theme the day I went to visit my student was "being mauled by a lion". I wasn't too keen on cutting up a shirt and slathering myself with red paint, so instead I dressed in full indigenous Amazonian warrior regalia - complete with spear and monkey-tooth necklaces - and it was in this garb that I was greeted by my bummed student's mom, who had contacted me because she was concerned for her son's well being. I brushed past her startled response and walked over to my student with my spear held menacingly in front of me. "I've come to put you out of your misery", I said, and he laughed.
Then we talked. For about an hour. He told me about the Civil War-era piano of his sister's in the living room, and when I noticed a thin sheen of dust and asked him if he played, he said she was "really anal" and wouldn't let anyone else touch it. We went up the steep, open steps with the nifty curved banisters, past his toddler brother's room with the floor and bed covered entirely with brightly-colored plastic toys, and then into his room, where we sat and chatted about whatever came to mind.
I didn't have an agenda. I told him straight up that I was there because his mom was worried about him, and then we talked about other stuff. Later, he told me that he'd stopped taking his meds about a week before, and I told him about being depressed in high school. I enjoy this guy and had been really bothered to hear he wasn't doing well, so I was thrilled to be there - thrilled for the opportunity to be a friend. We had a good chat and then I had to leave.
He came back to school the next day. I don't know if he would have otherwise done so, but I do know that I was able to cheer him up quite a bit. I know because he told me, and because his mom wrote a grateful email as soon as I was gone, thanking me and telling me that those were the first words she'd heard him speak in two days.
Could I have used prescription drugs in high school - would they have alleviated my suffering? Yes. Maybe. I don't know. I know that what I needed even more than drugs was not money, or toys, or a smokin' hot girlfriend with money and toys, but rather a friend without an agenda. And even though there were times when I felt as though a broken branch and a quick fall would have left everyone (especially me) a whole lot happier, my friends were there. They were selfish and broken and stupid, but they were also wonderful, and I always knew down in my duodenum that they loved me.
I am grateful that my depression was not so deep that I succumbed, finally, to despair. I am living now through the ugliness of a dissolving marriage, but I am also so full up with joy at the wonderment of an exciting, creative world. I am grateful for the moments I have had. I am also savoring the ones I am in now and am anticipating a great many others with hope. I am living and creating and loving in more meaningful and poignant ways than ever before.
This morning a good friend of mine wrote that a friend of his named Brandon had, in fact, given over to despair and had overdosed. He wrote about what a beautiful, talented person Brandon had been, and how he had gotten my friend through an intensely difficult time in his life with prayer and with love. I cried, reading that. I cried for the suckiness of this broken, ugly world. I cried for a small child in Haiti who, after a short life of poverty and hunger, now lies trapped beneath rubble - perhaps at this very moment breathing her last breath. I cried for my students who, trapped in the wealth of their sterile, museum-McMansions, take drugs and look for a way out. I cried for the desperate gasping of a dying culture, glutting on money and drugging away the pain while the medicine we all need lies all around us like snow... or sunbeams.
We are the solution, and the lonely death of any man is a tragedy for us all, because we all have failed and are continuing to fail each other. God is here in human flesh, and that flesh is me. Again and again I silence God, choosing instead to to worship the tawdry idol of my own selfish momentary desires.
Enough is enough. And the drugs aren't working.
Friday, January 22, 2010
burning to shine
Epiphanies are weird, and today I had two. I forget the first one (so it must have been an epiffle) but the second one was awesome. I realized that for the first time in my life, I feel as though there is not enough time in the day.
This is awesome not because I have suddenly discovered my inner workaholic, but because I have begun to discover a passion for making art and am realizing that despite my best efforts to use my spare time as well as I possibly can, I still seem to end up a little temporally short. It isn't that I couldn't find a little more time - that I have become uber-disciplined to the point where I schedule my life down to the second - it's just that as events in my life have begun to allow me to laugh at my fears, I have started to have a whole bunch of mini-creativity-eruptions.
For starters, there is the previously-mentioned feature-length screenplay, which I'm only beginning to lay out because I have two screenplay-writing "textbooks" I need to pretty much memorize before I can proceed. Next, there are screenplays for film-shorts I am attempting to write in order to develop my "chops" - one of which is scheduled to be shot by actor Austin next month.
I also have an incomplete painting sitting in the other room, taunting me. Its siren song tickles my ears at night, competing for the ministrations of my artisty fingers with the filing cabinet full of children's book illustrations I am trying to get around to polishing so I can submit them to publishers.
Then there are the books. As I toil over marketing materials for my memoir, I realize that one of the first questions I will likely be asked by any agent or publisher is, "and what are you writing next?" They like to sign author's, not individual books, so I need an answer ready and you know what? It's pretty easy at this point.
There is the book about the Philosopher Jungle Man, for instance - a fellow who grew up in Peru as I did but pretty much stayed in the rainforest with one of the indigenous groups and would be there now, working on fish-farming projects, if not for his commitment to his ailing mother's care. He was once a guide for a National Geographic TV Special and is certainly not interested in that kind of spotlight any more, but I would love to convince him to let me tell his story as a way of exploring the effects of globalization on a marginalized group such as the Achuar.
Or there is fiction. Writing screenplays has whet my appetite for fiction, and I have been contemplating digging back into a fantasy novel I once started writing that was some sort of elaborate Christ-metaphor I couldn't figure out how to maintain.
And finally, there is tree planting. There are volumes and volumes I could write about tree planting, the hellish/euphoric alternate-universe Vietnam-without-guns I inhabited for ten summers. I would love to mine all that for the gold lying about in plain view, but I just don't feel I have the time. I got a call recently from a film producer who was looking for some storyboarding for a movie. This is paid, creative work with the potential to generate a lot more, but I had to redirect the project to a couple of pretty-much-genius students I have, because I had to make a choice and my greatest passion right now is my writing.
This a great place to be - too much passion-work, not enough time - but I'm starting to get a little anxious. I told a few of my colleagues at dinner last night that I can feel the frustration growing, and as much as I love teaching I just don't know how long I can sustain this before I lose my mind. Seriously. Sometimes I wonder if I am starting to go a bit crackers, or if I'm going to get smithereened by some large truck before I can actually finish something. I always seem to run up against some new, seemingly worthy distraction - like the short I'm helping Austin film this weekend, or the ukulele I am still trying to pick up at intervals, trying to learn how to play a song I wrote that I am supposed to be recording sometime soon with a friend of mine.
This has been a rambling whine-fest, I know. It isn't that I am not happy about all this. I love that I'm starting to at long last get excited about life and to treasure my moments enough to be concerned at their passing. The time will come when I will have to leave teaching and give my entire work-time to this, but for now I am still enjoying a pretty swank existence. In light of the struggles most people face in their lives, it seems rather stupid-dumb to be sniveling at you about this.
So I will end, instead, with something light and fluffy. It's a poem I wrote a few years ago to embarrass a treeplanting buddy, and I think it is a perfect example of the sort of outrageous characters who would make a book on planting so compelling. It is a (mostly) true account:
Ode to Nate's Toe
Here ye now a tale I have
both harrowing, yes, and bold.
A tale the likes of which, my friends,
your ears have not been told, been told,
A tale you've not been told.
There once was a man who - chances are good -
you could possibly even now know.
But this isn't the story of him, my friends,
it's the tale of his missing toe, his toe,
the tale of his missing toe.
Nate the explorer set out one day
to climb to the top of the world.
If only he'd known what fate was in store
I tell you his toes would have curled, have curled,
I tell you his toes would have curled.
When he put on his boots I betcha he thought
that in no time he'd come tromping back.
But he didn't know that when the time came
there'd be something he'd had that he lacked, he'd lack,
A piece of himself that he'd lack.
Conditions were bad (they were wicked in fact)
a blizzard was coming in thick.
If you or myself had been there that day
I'd wager we'd turn back and quick, so quick
I'd wager we'd do it so quick.
But Nate and his toe were bound for the peak -
so they laughed at the snow and the ice,
'til the mountain was filled with a mountainous rage
that made it do something not nice, not nice,
this terrible thing wasn't nice.
A rock in the way that his toe didn't see
sent Nate off a precipice tall.
He bounced off a ledge and then off two more,
then he plunged for a thirty foot fall, a fall,
he took a gargantuan fall.
Nate, mighty Nate, the manliest man,
the manliest man about town,
had at last met his match on the mountain that day -
that mountain that knocked poor Nate down, so down,
it knocked our poor hero far down.
He crawled for a day and he crawled for a night,
half-naked he crawled in the snow,
and all the day next, ignoring the pain
that was starting to shoot through his toe, his toe,
the cold that was claiming his toe.
With two broken legs and three broken arms
he struggled for two nights and days.
He came down from the mountain - but minus a toe -
and up on the mount it now stays, it stays,
it rests on the snow where it lays.
So remember the toe and the end that it met,
the tragedy of that toe's fate,
and fear for your life if you anger the man,
the manliest man that is Nate, is Nate,
the manliest man that is Nate.
This is awesome not because I have suddenly discovered my inner workaholic, but because I have begun to discover a passion for making art and am realizing that despite my best efforts to use my spare time as well as I possibly can, I still seem to end up a little temporally short. It isn't that I couldn't find a little more time - that I have become uber-disciplined to the point where I schedule my life down to the second - it's just that as events in my life have begun to allow me to laugh at my fears, I have started to have a whole bunch of mini-creativity-eruptions.
For starters, there is the previously-mentioned feature-length screenplay, which I'm only beginning to lay out because I have two screenplay-writing "textbooks" I need to pretty much memorize before I can proceed. Next, there are screenplays for film-shorts I am attempting to write in order to develop my "chops" - one of which is scheduled to be shot by actor Austin next month.
I also have an incomplete painting sitting in the other room, taunting me. Its siren song tickles my ears at night, competing for the ministrations of my artisty fingers with the filing cabinet full of children's book illustrations I am trying to get around to polishing so I can submit them to publishers.
Then there are the books. As I toil over marketing materials for my memoir, I realize that one of the first questions I will likely be asked by any agent or publisher is, "and what are you writing next?" They like to sign author's, not individual books, so I need an answer ready and you know what? It's pretty easy at this point.
There is the book about the Philosopher Jungle Man, for instance - a fellow who grew up in Peru as I did but pretty much stayed in the rainforest with one of the indigenous groups and would be there now, working on fish-farming projects, if not for his commitment to his ailing mother's care. He was once a guide for a National Geographic TV Special and is certainly not interested in that kind of spotlight any more, but I would love to convince him to let me tell his story as a way of exploring the effects of globalization on a marginalized group such as the Achuar.
Or there is fiction. Writing screenplays has whet my appetite for fiction, and I have been contemplating digging back into a fantasy novel I once started writing that was some sort of elaborate Christ-metaphor I couldn't figure out how to maintain.
And finally, there is tree planting. There are volumes and volumes I could write about tree planting, the hellish/euphoric alternate-universe Vietnam-without-guns I inhabited for ten summers. I would love to mine all that for the gold lying about in plain view, but I just don't feel I have the time. I got a call recently from a film producer who was looking for some storyboarding for a movie. This is paid, creative work with the potential to generate a lot more, but I had to redirect the project to a couple of pretty-much-genius students I have, because I had to make a choice and my greatest passion right now is my writing.
This a great place to be - too much passion-work, not enough time - but I'm starting to get a little anxious. I told a few of my colleagues at dinner last night that I can feel the frustration growing, and as much as I love teaching I just don't know how long I can sustain this before I lose my mind. Seriously. Sometimes I wonder if I am starting to go a bit crackers, or if I'm going to get smithereened by some large truck before I can actually finish something. I always seem to run up against some new, seemingly worthy distraction - like the short I'm helping Austin film this weekend, or the ukulele I am still trying to pick up at intervals, trying to learn how to play a song I wrote that I am supposed to be recording sometime soon with a friend of mine.
This has been a rambling whine-fest, I know. It isn't that I am not happy about all this. I love that I'm starting to at long last get excited about life and to treasure my moments enough to be concerned at their passing. The time will come when I will have to leave teaching and give my entire work-time to this, but for now I am still enjoying a pretty swank existence. In light of the struggles most people face in their lives, it seems rather stupid-dumb to be sniveling at you about this.
So I will end, instead, with something light and fluffy. It's a poem I wrote a few years ago to embarrass a treeplanting buddy, and I think it is a perfect example of the sort of outrageous characters who would make a book on planting so compelling. It is a (mostly) true account:
Ode to Nate's Toe
Here ye now a tale I have
both harrowing, yes, and bold.
A tale the likes of which, my friends,
your ears have not been told, been told,
A tale you've not been told.
There once was a man who - chances are good -
you could possibly even now know.
But this isn't the story of him, my friends,
it's the tale of his missing toe, his toe,
the tale of his missing toe.
Nate the explorer set out one day
to climb to the top of the world.
If only he'd known what fate was in store
I tell you his toes would have curled, have curled,
I tell you his toes would have curled.
When he put on his boots I betcha he thought
that in no time he'd come tromping back.
But he didn't know that when the time came
there'd be something he'd had that he lacked, he'd lack,
A piece of himself that he'd lack.
Conditions were bad (they were wicked in fact)
a blizzard was coming in thick.
If you or myself had been there that day
I'd wager we'd turn back and quick, so quick
I'd wager we'd do it so quick.
But Nate and his toe were bound for the peak -
so they laughed at the snow and the ice,
'til the mountain was filled with a mountainous rage
that made it do something not nice, not nice,
this terrible thing wasn't nice.
A rock in the way that his toe didn't see
sent Nate off a precipice tall.
He bounced off a ledge and then off two more,
then he plunged for a thirty foot fall, a fall,
he took a gargantuan fall.
Nate, mighty Nate, the manliest man,
the manliest man about town,
had at last met his match on the mountain that day -
that mountain that knocked poor Nate down, so down,
it knocked our poor hero far down.
He crawled for a day and he crawled for a night,
half-naked he crawled in the snow,
and all the day next, ignoring the pain
that was starting to shoot through his toe, his toe,
the cold that was claiming his toe.
With two broken legs and three broken arms
he struggled for two nights and days.
He came down from the mountain - but minus a toe -
and up on the mount it now stays, it stays,
it rests on the snow where it lays.
So remember the toe and the end that it met,
the tragedy of that toe's fate,
and fear for your life if you anger the man,
the manliest man that is Nate, is Nate,
the manliest man that is Nate.
Monday, January 18, 2010
when a man loves a man, et cetera
The internet is a scary place, full of goblins and ghouls lurking in corners and alleyways and - as time goes on - rattling with skeletons in a myriad of cob-webbed closets.
Take, for instance, homosexuals. When I was in college and knew everything, I wrote an article about them in response to something someone had written in the online version of our school paper. I still think that this person was sort of an idiot and had written a terrible piece; but the problem is that I was an idiot, too - perhaps an even bigger one. I compounded this idiocy by emailing my little rebuttal to the online paper, which, lamentably, proceeded to publish it.
For years thereafter, if you googled my name this article was only ever a short ways into the search results, a fact I noted with a growing amount of consternation. I hope that I have since learned to temper my opinions with greater humility, but it still does worry me, and the corporeal remains of my ill-advised college article still rattle around in some dusty corner of the world wide web.
Last night I told a friend my latest writing project, now that I have "finished" my memoir. I told him that I am learning how to write screenplays - working on the development of a script that has as its hero-protagonist a homosexual artist-painter living in California. I won't tell you any more details here, since the internet is full of writers (who are all a bunch of weaselly little thieves - I should know) but I will say that his reaction intrigued me, as it echoed very closely my own attitudes about homosexuality back in college.
I am only barely less ignorant than I used to be about what homosexuality really is. Television - with its over-the-top, politicized scripting - hasn't educated me too much, and neither have I bothered to expend too much time or energy studying the issue from either a ratio-centric or theological standpoint. Nonetheless, I do have what I consider to be a much wiser (and from the standpoint of my faith, a more Biblically sound) response: I don't know.
If pressed, this is what I say: "Hmm. You know what? I've been a sexual pervert for quite a while now. That is to say, the ways I engage and express my sexuality have been a tawdry, pathetic excuse for what I feel like sexuality can and ought to be. Are homosexuals perverts? Undoubtedly. But so, I think, is everyone else... and most especially me! Who am I to judge someone else's perversion as being any more wonky than my own? I just don't buy that any more - and I don't think Jesus taught that I should go there, either. I think what matters much more is how I love people."
I told my friend this, and went on to point out the ugly pride in picking one behavior you don't personally feel any compulsion towards and then screaming that it's a sin and God can't love you if you do it. I explained how that sort of attitude misses a whole lot of what the Bible seems to be written expressly to get across: that is, Pride is Bad, Love is Good. "Christians", I said, often seem to be more concerned with being right than with being in Love, so to speak. And that's stupid.
My friend was not particularly impressed by this. I mean, he agreed in theory, but he seemed to think that I ought to have an opinion, one way or another, about the issue. If I don't take a stand, he asked, then am I not dropping the ball and avoiding my responsibility? I gave this some serious thought as I was riding my evil two-wheeled gas machine up into Charlotte to visit my actor-friend. Must I have an opinion?
I have a buddy from my childhood who no longer agrees with me about matters of faith. He has begun attending a Unitarian church and considers himself something of a (forgive me if I've got this wrong, J) neo-pagan. He knows that I don't agree with him. We've had that conversation. But so what? Do I keep having that conversation every time I see him? NO... and I say it again, NO! We talk about how our days went. We talk about our relationships, our passions, our art. He ends our phone conversations by telling me he loves me and you know what? I love him, too! And I don't give a rat's left eyeball for convincing him I am right. Who cares!?! I can't sort all that out - that's what God is for.
What really matters to me is that my friend knows I love him, because he is an important friend - one of the few who consistently keeps in touch and has encouraged me through my often excruciatingly painful separation from my wife. He has done this even as he deals with his own, much more pronounced life-pain.
And that, my friends, is love. Greater love has no man than this that he lay down the pride and stupidity of having it together and just sacrifices his time and himself for other people. And they will know you are living in Christ's kingdom by your love. If I had to figure out everything that's bad or immoral or wrong in this world and loudly proclaim my personal opinion of it to all and sundry, then I would be spending my entire life wallowing in the muck. We are all screwed up, and me most of all! Instead, I choose to look up into the light.
So I will write my script and love my fellow screw-ups, gay and straight alike. I will earn with my relationships the right that love allows to tell them what I believe. I will tell them... gently, and in private... once. And then I will pass them the potato salad.
If this angers those righteous few who consider it their God-ordained calling to point out the sins of the world, then I will weep for them, too. I will bear their aspersions with all the love I can manage as a testament to the grace of God in which I somehow (despite the best efforts of these lovers of their own dark selves) still manage to believe. Perhaps in this way my own closets will be flung open and the bones contained within in them will turn to dust in the glaring light of the sun.
Take, for instance, homosexuals. When I was in college and knew everything, I wrote an article about them in response to something someone had written in the online version of our school paper. I still think that this person was sort of an idiot and had written a terrible piece; but the problem is that I was an idiot, too - perhaps an even bigger one. I compounded this idiocy by emailing my little rebuttal to the online paper, which, lamentably, proceeded to publish it.
For years thereafter, if you googled my name this article was only ever a short ways into the search results, a fact I noted with a growing amount of consternation. I hope that I have since learned to temper my opinions with greater humility, but it still does worry me, and the corporeal remains of my ill-advised college article still rattle around in some dusty corner of the world wide web.
Last night I told a friend my latest writing project, now that I have "finished" my memoir. I told him that I am learning how to write screenplays - working on the development of a script that has as its hero-protagonist a homosexual artist-painter living in California. I won't tell you any more details here, since the internet is full of writers (who are all a bunch of weaselly little thieves - I should know) but I will say that his reaction intrigued me, as it echoed very closely my own attitudes about homosexuality back in college.
I am only barely less ignorant than I used to be about what homosexuality really is. Television - with its over-the-top, politicized scripting - hasn't educated me too much, and neither have I bothered to expend too much time or energy studying the issue from either a ratio-centric or theological standpoint. Nonetheless, I do have what I consider to be a much wiser (and from the standpoint of my faith, a more Biblically sound) response: I don't know.
If pressed, this is what I say: "Hmm. You know what? I've been a sexual pervert for quite a while now. That is to say, the ways I engage and express my sexuality have been a tawdry, pathetic excuse for what I feel like sexuality can and ought to be. Are homosexuals perverts? Undoubtedly. But so, I think, is everyone else... and most especially me! Who am I to judge someone else's perversion as being any more wonky than my own? I just don't buy that any more - and I don't think Jesus taught that I should go there, either. I think what matters much more is how I love people."
I told my friend this, and went on to point out the ugly pride in picking one behavior you don't personally feel any compulsion towards and then screaming that it's a sin and God can't love you if you do it. I explained how that sort of attitude misses a whole lot of what the Bible seems to be written expressly to get across: that is, Pride is Bad, Love is Good. "Christians", I said, often seem to be more concerned with being right than with being in Love, so to speak. And that's stupid.
My friend was not particularly impressed by this. I mean, he agreed in theory, but he seemed to think that I ought to have an opinion, one way or another, about the issue. If I don't take a stand, he asked, then am I not dropping the ball and avoiding my responsibility? I gave this some serious thought as I was riding my evil two-wheeled gas machine up into Charlotte to visit my actor-friend. Must I have an opinion?
I have a buddy from my childhood who no longer agrees with me about matters of faith. He has begun attending a Unitarian church and considers himself something of a (forgive me if I've got this wrong, J) neo-pagan. He knows that I don't agree with him. We've had that conversation. But so what? Do I keep having that conversation every time I see him? NO... and I say it again, NO! We talk about how our days went. We talk about our relationships, our passions, our art. He ends our phone conversations by telling me he loves me and you know what? I love him, too! And I don't give a rat's left eyeball for convincing him I am right. Who cares!?! I can't sort all that out - that's what God is for.
What really matters to me is that my friend knows I love him, because he is an important friend - one of the few who consistently keeps in touch and has encouraged me through my often excruciatingly painful separation from my wife. He has done this even as he deals with his own, much more pronounced life-pain.
And that, my friends, is love. Greater love has no man than this that he lay down the pride and stupidity of having it together and just sacrifices his time and himself for other people. And they will know you are living in Christ's kingdom by your love. If I had to figure out everything that's bad or immoral or wrong in this world and loudly proclaim my personal opinion of it to all and sundry, then I would be spending my entire life wallowing in the muck. We are all screwed up, and me most of all! Instead, I choose to look up into the light.
So I will write my script and love my fellow screw-ups, gay and straight alike. I will earn with my relationships the right that love allows to tell them what I believe. I will tell them... gently, and in private... once. And then I will pass them the potato salad.
If this angers those righteous few who consider it their God-ordained calling to point out the sins of the world, then I will weep for them, too. I will bear their aspersions with all the love I can manage as a testament to the grace of God in which I somehow (despite the best efforts of these lovers of their own dark selves) still manage to believe. Perhaps in this way my own closets will be flung open and the bones contained within in them will turn to dust in the glaring light of the sun.
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