10.9.11

I am afraid of being angry with God, though I often am. Afraid that my anger will require some harsh, predicated punishment that He, impersonally, will be obligated to deliver. Last night I realized that some unknown someone had taken advantage of me, had taken something that I desperately needed - something that I had worked hard to secure for myself - and would not be returning it. I, of course, went immediately to God in order to direct my fury as He is obviously the one in control of things that I desperately need - this implying that I am in control of everything else - this implying that I should only really recognize Him in the extremes, in the tails of my logical, bell-curve existence - this implying that only injustice or extra-justice should be attributed to God - this implying that God is more mysterious than science has previous proven - this implying that He is not trustworthy as to matters of certainty - this implying that there is an incomprehensible system of divine justice which, as it cannot be predicted, can only be feared - this implying that God, be He personal or impersonal, only allocates mercy to those righteous souls who would never, as a consequence of their saintly nature, be angry with Him - this implying that I should never feel anger in any circumstance due to its high consequences, namely damnation - this implying that my current anger with God would disqualify me from other things that I desperately need - this generating an intense emotional conflict in which I was furious that my Father should deny me my allowance and simultaneously terrified that my reaction would deny me further allowances (these allowances, by the way, already causing enough terror in the clearly unmerited nature of their irregularly), not to mention my worries of divine inflation and pay cuts due to past overdrafts.

Of course, none of this was able to recant the fact that I was, at that time, angry; the emotion (most illogically) being produced without written consent. It was preposterous - why would God, knowing that I would become angry and that being angry would force Him to punish me, put me in such a situation in the first place? He was testing you, you may say, to see if you would actually get angry. Well, that may be true; kinda makes me feel like a lab rat though. But maybe I am, maybe we all are; makes we wonder what kind of drug God is trying to get through the FDA - maybe He's trying to cure humanity.

And as a corollary, it can be a fascinating exercise trying to be angry with God, like a child making fretful splashes in the midst of a giant, calming sea. I was there last night - trying to grab hold of some minor injustice and fuel it with increasingly irrational outbursts, crouching stubbornly over the dying flame trying to hide it from the sweet, soothing rain. Frantic, I was frustrated by my empty attempts at genuine frustration, each passing minute solidifying the superfluous temporality of what I wanted so badly to hate. How many years have I spent so occupied - holding onto a feeling of which the source is long forgotten, or long exaggerated, or long disassociated somehow with the pain I have thought justified in carrying? How long have I sought dark corners where I thought I could escape the cleansing influence of time, only to find out that such corners only exist in my mind; in the solitary caves of self-willed, self-fueled deception? Where is my allowance?

Sometimes I wonder so intensely as to how God looks at me. Is that what this fear comes down to? Do the unknowns of my relationship with Him leave room for doubt? Of course they do.

Sometimes my prayers feel more sincere when they are illogical; honest; human.

In the movie Howl's Moving Castle, the main character is a young woman who is cursed to look like a very old woman by a witch. Sophie subsequently meets a wizard - Howl - and tries to help him deal with his own demons (pun intended, guess you'll have to see the movie to get it). Sophie falls in love with Howl, and though she doesn't realize it, each time she expresses her love for him, she turns young again; she becomes herself again. I think Hayao Miyazaki may just be a genius.

What do I fear that makes me so angry with God? The unknown, perhaps? Pain, unpleasantness, rejection? All possibilities along the horizon and ones that, ironically, our fear cannot partial out of our lives, although heaven knows we spend lifetimes trying to convince ourselves it can. I think sometimes I look at salvation like an electricity bill: I can't afford to get angry.

10.5.11

I see a living room with small red checkered couches.
I see a narrow mountain road opening up to a small circular driveway; I see the house there looking back down the mountain toward a lake and evergreen landscape.
I see a busy causeway with large shops on either side.
I see the end of a small dirt road, endless fields beyond.
I see a busy train station; and another busy train station, steam rising from tracks and yawning mouths.
I see a hamburger stand at yet another train station; they also have churri-pans.
I see the Thames.
I see a leaf-littered path covered by overhanging trees; a bench.
I see a wide sidewalk with grass and trees on both sides; people walking, playing games, picnicking, laughing.
I see a gigantic golden statue looking across the street at a concert hall; large red buses occasionally blocking his view.
I see a large house serving as a chapel; I see friends there washing and cleaning on a Saturday.
I see a small house and a woman with a large pot of potatoes.
I see a lake and a perfect day, both slowly receding into a warm evening.
I see a little boy swimming with empty milk jugs tied to his waist.
I see a group of children in a dark room; I see their tired, confused faces; I see them chewing on sugar cane.
I see a giant river as I drive along the road at its bank.
I see an audience obscured by several stage lights.
I see two scantily-clad girls giggling at me from a display window.
I see an empty city on a chill morning.
I see empty slopes and endless snow.
I see snow in Central Park.
I see a child smile at me and run away.
I see...

Blah, blah, blah...I see the Grim.

10.3.11

 
Shame
I did not know my maternal grandfather very well; at least, I have very few memories of him. I remember that he loved shortbread and small tins of cookies could often be found around the house. I remember that he would sit in a chair by a large window on the second story of the house and that I would often sit behind it. I remember the almost forbidden nature of an office downstairs that had all his things in it. But mostly I just remember watching television (All That!), lying on the polar-bear-skin rug, playing with the small organ/ piano next to the fireplace, sleeping in a room full of droopy-eyed dolls, the large wooden Buddha on the staircase, the wooden chairs with dragons carved into the armrests, a giant clock, a giant window, an indoor pool that I tried not to splash too much in, the red-rocked landscape around the house, playing arcade games in town.

It was my brother, although much younger than I was, who actually seemed to have a stronger bond with our grandfather. As I was the attention stealer, my brother seemed to settle more into a genuine, peaceful state of being. Perhaps I don't remember grandpa as well because of how concerned I've always been with myself - even those memories I do have of him are based on my own interactions. I cry out now for more observation, but find none; perhaps my brother better remembers, his sincere innocence holding truer to the wholeness of the man. I hope so, even as a pang of jealousy and self-rebuke gazes back and wishes for a more personal curiosity.

***

One day I was playing with a friend in my backyard. There was a red basket of old toys in the yard and, as we were playing, I kept hearing a strange noise emanating from the basket. It was sort of a plastic grinding noise, the kind that cheap wind-up toys make when they are walking or driving across the table, or doing a back flip, or chomping their giant teeth on some invisible, superfluous enemy.

We continued playing, but the noise insisted - the gentle plea of something long-neglected. Or perhaps not, perhaps just the simple expression of something so long in playing with that it reveled in this new dutiful rendition of its noise, which seemed to grow ever louder.

In the excitement of play, I suddenly turned my attention to the basket. The sound had not so much annoyed me, but as my companion's attention had also been turned to the noise, I was obviously obligated to incorporate it into my performance. Given too much leeway, the noise could have completely divided his attention, which I could not allow.

I approached the basket, making some exaggerated comment about the noise; he laughed, my scene was progressing excellently. I searched through the basket to find the source; the basket was full of guns and cars and miscellaneous pieces of past adventures. The last thing I expected to find was...a toy train? It was small, comparable to any given Hot Wheel also found at times in the basket. It seemed a bit older though, something quite distinctive from its flashy contemporaries. Green, it was a small green steam engine that, invigorated by some invisible Duracell, had been chugging along some distant reverie; pulling its faithful wheels through an abandoned desert, the crisp, dry smell of cactus and tumbleweed trapped in the boiling estuary of sun and rock, thus forcing the aroma to blossom slowly and permeate its barren eternity. The train asked nothing but to ramble on in its dream, in its nonchalant, joyful canter.

But I had my audience in perfect, rapt attention. I searched the toy for the "off" switch and found it, but then quickly realized that simply turning it off would have very little artistic value. What could I do to make the scene more dramatic, more powerful?

I turned the train off, but then back on, dropping it back into the basket, its tiny wheels still grinding. My audience was intrigued, I delivered a perfect mask of overbearing frustration, he laughed, I drank in his curiosity and childish delight, it fueled me, intoxicating me sufficiently to abandon simple reason. I dove back into the basket and pulled out the enraging perpetrator, the tool of my addiction, the damned soul. The passion in my eyes and mind burned in the chaos of a child's condemnation. I held the engine before the world, wishing nothing more than to bring it to a terrible end, to seal the act of this momentous play with a momentary hatred bent to crucify.

With its wheels still whirling gently, I turned and hurled the train. It flew ever so gracefully and then, in romantic brilliance, exploded against the stone wall of my backyard. The noise had stopped forever.

Later that day, my friend long since having left the theatre, I sat inside. My brother was outside playing alone when he happened upon the remnants of my sacrifice. He picked up the pieces and began to weep; deep, powerful, heartfelt sobs - not of the scraped-knee brand, or of the leave-the-toy-store-without-the-game type - this was much more. It was the terrifying onset of grief, the realization of a pure ideal suddenly being ripped from the world in horrid, undeserving malice. At his tiny fingertips lay the pieces of a dear friend, a link to a meaningful past that now had been smashed and violated - the pureness of the bond being mocked in the selfish assurance of its end.

So innocent were his sobs, so genuine; the approach of despair to a child: not jealous, not vengeful, not angry, only intensely sorrowful, not knowing what to try to understand, only feeling the extreme unfairness of the moment, the incomprehensible hurt of an unblemished loss.

My mother went outside to comfort him, told him it was okay, asked him what had happened.

"This was my train from grandpa; this was grandpa's train he gave me."

9.28.11

"Rows of houses all bearing down on me
I can feel their blue hands touching me" (Yorke 1993)

I am often melancholy; tragically longing in the mid-morning. Do you get irritated easily?

I remember standing with my bicycle on an unkempt lawn. My friend was there also; we were talking to a man. We had stood on this same spot with our bicycles about a week before and spoken to him and his mother. We had tried to convince them to let us teach them something religious. Come back, they had said. Now we were back.

The man was going blind, they had also informed us. He was taking it very hard, everyday receding more into an unknown world, walking down a fading road alone. His mother was pleasant, but concerned in the stubborn, business way that some mother's are. She knew all the facts and figures; a resourceful woman, but not a scrounger. Her's was a hard-met hope, built and sustained on passion fused with logic, on the defending of her son. There was at least the hope that his condition was treatable.

Their house was close to a main road that headed out to a large bus station and then out to the highway. There was a gourmet sweets shop on that road; we stopped there several times. The road out to the bus station was long and beautiful, but we rarely noticed the beauty - we were most often rushing to the station in a long since futile effort to catch the right bus. My bike seemed to be perpetually stuck in the highest gear, although our bikes didn't even have gears. That must sound like some awful metaphor, but its not - for some reason my bike was simply adamant about missing the bus. Perhaps its previous owner had not been so care-taking as I, though I can hardly claim that I took better care of the vehicle, mostly because of my frustration with its stubborn spite of cooperation. I felt like my legs were going to implode every time we got to that bus station.

I often have the audacity to call this kind of mood "pensive." I guess it is somewhat pensive, but more like a plea for the weight of heavy thoughts.

This time the man was alone - his mother had gone out to run some errands. In the interim since our last visit, he and his mother had visited the hospital and found out that his blindness was not reversible. As he spoke about it, he began to weep. Had God taken even this from him; his sight? What hope could he have in God? He seemed to plead with us for the answer. I don't remember what we told him, but I don't think it was the answer.

So long have I waited, Lord
so long I have tried
so long whipped and hated, Lord
that my hope has burned and died

In ashes let me see thee, Lord
so tired, let me rest
not as I would see me, Lord
but as I need be blessed

I picture my brother playing with his band in a dark room. There is no stage, only a space between the many tables and the wall. There is a moose's head hanging on the wall, or maybe it was more like some type of caribou or elk; I don't really know (it took me a good minute to figure out how to spell "caribou"; spell-check suggestions were "carbonate", "caboose", and "scarab"). There are only two small lamps on either side of the wall, and a neon Coor's Light sign. The band begins amidst a subtle hubbub.

My brother starts to sing and is gradually transformed. Each word that he transmits to the microphone pulls him deeper into some mysterious plane of painful meditation. There is all range of voice; all range of feeling. Within this world he alone transcends the bounds of mortal limitations - social, cultural, ethical, intellectual. Alone he drifts in some immortal current, beyond even the notes of his own music. At times the sound is a gentle haunting of ghostly contemplations, at others the mournful scream of some overpowering memory, once experienced and now laid before the audience, our souls surrounding it and collectively weeping as it is slowly, triumphantly lowered into its grave. Such is the emotional power of his travels that by the end of the performance he is on his knees. Breathing heavily, he resurfaces amidst rapt applause.

"I can't believe we have fans that can deal emotionally with that song. That's why I'm convinced that they don't know what it's about. It's why we play it towards the end of our sets. It drains me, and it shakes me, and hurts like hell every time I play it, looking out at thousands of people cheering and smiling, oblivious to the tragedy of its meaning, like when you're going to have your dog put down and it's wagging its tail on the way there. That's what they all look like, and it breaks my heart. I wish that song hadn't picked us as its catalysts, and so I don't claim it. It asks too much. I didn't write that song" (Yorke).

9.26.11

"Tho' I've belted you and flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!" (Kipling 1892).

Religion sometimes confuses and worries me, mostly because I enjoy it when people think I know things. And it's not that you can't know things in religion, but it seems that so often the lines between belief, assumption, logic, knowledge, and truth become incredibly blurred. That being said, I naturally grew up as a spiritual prodigy.

I went one summer to a week-long church camp called EFY (Especially for Youth). I remember one night we were gathered as a small group sitting outside and listening to our councilor give a short lesson. At the end of the lesson, he invited us to separate (there were only about ten of us) and each find a secluded location where we could (ideally) truly and honestly pray. I found my spot and laid down on the grass, looking up at the moon. Suddenly, I began to weep. Powerful, emotional sobs - waves of some kind of fire, some kind of eruption of deep anticipation that washed over me again and again. Was it God? Was it only me? I stared up at the moon as if it were the hand of God. After a time my tears stopped and the intensity was replaced by a feeling of rest: a sort-of aching peace. As I think about it now, I think about Elijah, who witnessed wind and earthquake and fire - what emotions of terror must have accompanied him, I can only imagine. Or maybe it wasn't terror, maybe it was astonishment and awe, an outburst, a crescendo of incomprehensible beauty that may sometimes attend us as we witness the unequivocal power of the natural; perhaps even of the divine. Perhaps he felt the wind and the earthquake and saw the fire as if they too were the hand of God; waves of passion washing over him as they did me.

But I feel empty now as I remember Elijah's story; I feel somewhat confused, like my emotions should have proved something, like remembering them - and even experiencing them again in the slightest degree as I do so - should have produced something more than the quiet, tired uncertainty that now pervades. But perhaps that is why the author of 1 Kings was so careful to note that the Lord was not in the wind, or in the earthquake, or in the fire. But why? What is this voice that comes after?

A few years after EFY, I went with a large group of local church youth to a weekend campout activity. During one of the last nights we were put in a surprisingly similar situation (though this time by our local church leaders) and thus I again found myself in a secluded spot with the intent of communing with the Divine. But this time I was ready, I knew what I wanted and I was fully prepared to ask for it. This time I did not weep; I was not washed; I was not fooled by wind or earthquake or fire. I was only refused.

One day in my high-school English class our teacher began to criticize the US government. The things he said here controversial - something about Osama Bin Laden (whoever that is) and the Taliban (whatever that is) being freedom fighters when they were fighting Russia , but now being branded as terrorists. I didn't really know what he was talking about, but I definitely observed how his controversy gave him some sort of rapt attentive power. I immediately adopted his beliefs and, the next day, was thrown out of my Math class for refusing to stand during the Pledge of Allegiance. My Math teacher spoke to me afterwards as did my mother when she picked me up from school. They each reprimanded me, but then masterfully used the situation to respectfully present their opinions. They even encouraged me to discover my own.

Did I listen? Of course not; the damage had already been done. When I had been waiting outside my Math class after being kicked out, I had been approached by two girls, one of which I knew. They asked me why I wasn’t in class and I explained. They looked at me like a god.

You know, the boy who cried wolf eventually got eaten by the wolf. I'm not entirely sure what that means, but it is rather frightening to me that, in my mind, this brutal end seems so incredibly justified.

9.23.11

The womb
The average temperature of the female womb is 98 degrees Fahrenheit, which degree scale was named after the Dutch and German and Polish physicist (and engineer) Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit who in 1686 apparently caused his mother to go into labor somewhere in Danzig, Poland before communicating his express opinion that he possess tri-nationality, thus causing his mother to quickly traverse the German countryside - including both the Elbe and Rhine rivers - so that he could actually be born somewhere (I would imagine) in Kerkrade, Germany/ Netherlands which city existed at the time as a part of, of all things, the Spanish Empire from which he apparently emigrated to begin experimenting with alcohol, glass blowing, and mercury which led him to eventually propose the philosophy of a temperature scale in 1724, just 12 years before his death in 1736 for which a certain Swedish astronomer, Anders Celsius, was desperately waiting perhaps due in part to some slight insecurities and jealousy caused by what must have been for him a very lonely, mono-national state of being and also in order that, perhaps as a strictly secondary reason, he might - only 2 years before his own death in 1744 - propose a completely new scale at which water boils at 0 degrees and which he must have thought to be vastly superior to Fahrenheit's, but with which an Irishman - one William Thomson - would disagree (though perhaps not because of reasons of nationality) and so propose yet another scale in 1848 which was an attempt to reconcile his qualms with absolute zero (which I'm sure he's settled by now with his absolute death in 1907) and, in a startling turn of events, was actually named after him by other scientists instead of being so named in front of a mirror, though I'm sure he had plenty of mirrors as he was said to be a Baron in which case I probably should have addressed him as "Lord William" at first, this being the proper title at the time in Ireland for people with a lot of potatoes, such as engineers, and for people named William as was the case (though I think without the potatoes) with William John Macquorn Rankine of Scotland who didn't even wait for his Irish counterpart to kick off before proposing the Rankine scale in 1859 which no one really uses, which I think a just consequence for William's obvious attempt to overshadow another William and fellow engineer for the reason of potatoes, but I also think poor William got little attention because there were many other important things going on in 1859 of which one was the birth of William Fredrick Rigby, Jr., who left Mrs. Mary Clark's 98-degree (Fahrenheit; 36.67-degree Celsius; 309.82-degree Kelvin; and 557.67-degree Rankine) womb to be aptly named after his father, William Fredrick Rigby, Sr. who had renounced his own mother's womb 26 years before as the first child of his father, William (this fifth William adding substantial evidence to the Rankine's apparent William complex for which I'm sure he received frequent, albeit posthumous, criticisms from William "Lord" Kelvin who actually outlived him by 35 years, probably because of his potatoes) Atkin Howarth who abandoned his respective womb (the word "womb" actually being of unknown origins) in 1816, a mere 46 years before the birth of little Jr. William's brother, George, whose son's daughter's son (not named William) married a lovely woman (whose paternal grandfather, believe it or not, is named William) whose womb I vacated on the 25th of April in 1986, exactly 300 years after the birth of Mr. Fahrenheit, with whom I share a name and by whose scale I experienced a temperature drop of about 30 degrees on the night in question, which has justifiably caused me to remain screaming for the last 25 years.

9.21.11

Loss
In my junior year of high school, I was enrolled in an art class at the south end of campus. I sat across from two girls, one of which I was attracted to, one of which I was not; but I had to make jokes for both so as not to lose face. The result was that the girl I was not attracted to became attracted to me. The other girl I couldn't say. She (the girl I was not attracted to) wanted us to take a picture together near the end of the semester - I was sitting down at the art table and she was bent down from behind me, her arms wrapped around my neck and her head to the left of mine (to the right in the picture). She gave me a copy of the picture which I still have somewhere. The other girl must have taken the picture, but I don't remember; I don't even remember what she (the girl I was attracted to) looked like. I remember the picture though, vividly - the lighting of the room such that it turned out terribly blurred. I remember the feeling of her arms around my neck, her face close to mine; why do I remember her?

For a few days in art class we were assigned to attempt a self-portrait. It was to be my next masterpiece as all high school art projects are when you are sitting across from a girl you are attracted to. We began simply enough: the basic shape of the head, the symmetry of the face, adding the ears at the same level as the eyes (which I had no idea was the case even though I had been looking at faces for upwards of sixteen years, including the face of the girl I was attracted to. The girl I was not attracted to had smooth, brown skin and long, dark, strong Latin hair; she was just a tad shorter than I was).

Next we added the nose, mouth, and hairline. I took great care to add my characteristic Widow's Peak and scraggly sideburns. A Widow's Peak is said to be an omen of early widowhood.

"And ye Jentyl wymen whome this lewde vice doth blynde Lased on the backe: your peakes set a loft" (Barclay 1509).

After the basic hairline, we went back to the eyes. Here great care was taken, mirrors getting closer and closer to faces across the room, silence in the contemplative poetry of self and self. The brushing and nervous scratching of pencils, the condemning judgement of the No. 2 eraser.

After many minutes of work, I put pencil and mirror down to view the portrait in its entirety. I looked at the proportions and hairline (which, again, pleased me immensely) and then meandered down the face to the eyes of my creation. I was suddenly transfixed. Deep within those sullen, two-dimensional orbs I saw something strange and terrible; something that looked back at me in the sudden realization of life. It was the mirror that looked back, it was me; beyond the windows of lead and tree I had crossed the bloody, arcane river braved by Frankenstein. I was startled and entranced, and then it was gone; the monster fled before me and I was left alone, never to see his living visage again upon the page.

"I saw—with shut eyes, but acute mental vision—I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion. Frightful must it be, for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world" (Shelley 1831).

The girl I was not attracted to had produced a pitifully disproportionate portrait - her head was much too sphere-like and much too small. I said I liked it though; her's is the only other portrait I remember.