The thing that’s struck me time and again as I’ve wandered through my own life story over the last couple years is that I seem to be in love with the past. I don’t mean that in the way that I’m a historian and I love to endlessly learn about the past. I mean that I’m in love with where I used to be. It’s why I think it was both inevitable and astute that I latched on to the story of me and Her to try to figure out so much of where I’d been.
When I moved down to Dallas I had a brief uptick in thinking about Her. The voice that tries to scream about Her in my head was also the one doing its best to keep my plans on track to go back to Chicago last weekend.
The reason for this is simple, really. I focused what little ability I have to be nostalgic in to a specific set of memories that revolve around her. She fits in to a sort of idealized version of a past that’s no longer accessible, in much the way that she once fit in to an idealized idea of the future that I knew was impossible to achieve.
On one level that’s terrible. It locked me in a sort of stasis loop. When I start to break out of it the occasional random external stimulus seems to throw me right back in.
On another level, though, it’s brilliant. If I do say so myself…
See, I learn very slowly the things that matter most in life. When it comes to facts, figures, and philosophy I pick up on tidbits and theories extremely quickly. When it comes to life and love I generally need to learn a lesson three or four times to get it, assuming I ever do. If something goes wrong I have a bad habit of attempting to withdraw from the world, learn as much as I can, then step back out of my cocoon.
And this works just fine for me. I’m quite good at being alone. I like being alone, perhaps too much. Often I’ll find myself in a place that’s full of noise and light and color and people and movement and life and think it’s fantastic. Then I’ll go home and get in to my bed alone and be perfectly fine with that.
At some point in the night I’ll wonder if there’s not something more I should want. By the time the sun rises, though, that question has usually disappeared. When that happens I suppose that I could go through my entire life exactly as I am today without ever knowing the difference.
But every once in a while something happens. There’s a moment, an epiphany, if you will. In that instance I realize that all of those things I’m usually content to consign to sleepy two AM thoughts actually matter, actually make life worth living.
It happened most recently with a girl in red at a Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers show. Nothing came of that instance, but it served as a signpost. It served as a reminder.
There was a time I wandered around Millennium Park, aware of nothing except my thoughts of Her.
That moment was the one I was always trying to re-capture, even after I knew that all the things I wanted would never happen. After that, well, after that came a string of first dates that never become second encounters. After that came a series of forced and awkward encounters. I began to wonder if I would ever meet anyone who made me feel like I did that first few weeks with her again. I began to wonder if I would ever let myself.
Oddly, I think it’s good that nothing came of the chance meeting with the girl in red. I think I just needed that moment to jolt me out of my past, shock my system, let me know it’s entirely possible to move forward. Remind me to keep looking.
Because this, I think, is where the brilliance of the whole thing kicks in. Even as I was attempting to remember all of the time spent with her in sepia tones, I could not get out of acknowledging one simple fact:
That relationship, such as it was, was nearly a year and a half worth of complete and total suck. Period. Full stop.
My main problem in figuring that out is that I was always focused on trying to fix it, make it so it didn’t have to be that way. Try as I might, though, I could never, ever silence the quiet, nagging suspicion that there could be no repairs, that there shouldn’t have been any attempts at repair. Some things simply cannot and should not be fixed.
But I wanted to hold on because I didn’t know what else to do. I then wanted to go back because I didn’t know what else to do.
The solution to that problem is so simple and obvious that I had to learn it on the fourth try after wasting an awful lot of years of my life.
Stop thinking about Chicago. Stop thinking about her.
Go to Fort Worth. I might run in to a girl in red.
Or I might not.
But, at the very least, I’ll be out doing stuff, opening myself to possibilities. And the more possibilities there are, the less time there is to think about what never was.
Showing posts with label Loco to Stay Sane. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Loco to Stay Sane. Show all posts
Monday, July 26, 2010
The Day I Let Go
Good news can be so unkind
When it's everything you have to leave behind
I'm lookin' forward to lookin' back
On this day
In the taillights
So much hindsight
Telling me what I already know
I know
--Over the Rhine, “Lookin’ Forward”
I circled the weekend of July 23rd-25th on my calendar a couple weeks ago. Well, that’s not entirely true. I metaphorically circled the weekend. The actual calendar where I write down upcoming events of note just says “Lost Imigrants Ft. Worth.” I was having an argument with spelling that day and I lost.
I woke up a couple Sundays ago, looked at everything on my plate, and decided, “I think that it’s about time for me to make my triumphant return to Chicago. Work seemed to have slowed down enough to allow the indulgence of a long weekend. It would be a good chance to head back to Chicago, say hello to the family, bum around Millennium Park, eat some deep dish. You know, do all the things that make Chicago home.
There was also the added benefit that Pat Ryan was going to be at the Celtic Knot on Sunday. This would most definitely assure the presence of any number of storytellers and the opportunity to share some good food, some good times, and some good stories. Dallas, to the best of my knowledge, is completely lacking a place like the Celtic Knot that can serve as a destination and meeting place of storytellers.
I genuinely miss having that sort of place. I really do very little in the way of storytelling stuff down here. Part of that, admittedly, has been my own crazy schedule. But there’s really nothing I’ve found that forces me to incorporate storytelling in to my schedule like I had in Chicago. It was possible to do a different storytelling event every week at least. And there was always Storytelling in the Snug at the Celtic Knot.
The Celtic Knot, of course, is where it all began for me.
Some places act as nexuses in life, I suppose. In myth and legend they’re spoken of as “World Trees.” The world revolves around them, the key events happen in their shade. The Hero’s Journey always seems to involve a trip to, from, or to and back again.
In Norse myth the World Tree is Yggdrasil. It’s roots are in the underworld, its branches in the realm of the gods. It connects the various worlds that comprise the Norse universe.
If I may be free to mix a few metaphors, the Celtic Knot functioned as my Yggdrasil. It was there that I met a lot of storytellers. It was there that I learned about upcoming events. It was there that I learned about storytelling in the first place.
I was excited to have a chance to go back.
Then at the beginning of last week I started planning all of my other Chicago-related travels for the rest of the year. Labor Day. A week in October. Thanksgiving. Christmas. Add to that my parents coming down for a visit during that stretch.
All of the sudden one weekend in July seemed like such a bother.
I wish I could explain. I really do. I try and fail to put in to words exactly how that felt.
It was like the world had ended and I had only just caught up. From the moment I arrived in Dallas I was intellectually aware of the fact that I was far away from Chicago. But it was never that far. I could always go back.
Now I was doing a cost-benefit analysis and Chicago was losing.
The fact that I even did a cost-benefit analysis meant Chicago had lost.
So I did what I do. I went to Fort Worth. I went to Kohl’s and bought a couple new shirts. I played some GTA IV. I watched Doctor Who.
I find it increasingly difficult to hate Dallas. It’s not like it’s Dallas’s fault it’s not Chicago.
And I’ve had some good times here. But I think I’ve managed to muddle through by not having to think about just how far I am from home. It’s an easy enough task when you’re able to occupy your time and constantly working on getting past the newest, most immediate problem.
But, then, for a moment everything falls away. For a moment realization hits home, sinks in.
And, all of the sudden, I realize how far I am from my World Tree.
In the dark, though, in the deep, dark, pushed down bits of my soul, I have to admit there’s something else.
You have to be crazy
To try to hold on to
What we can’t get back
No matter what we do
--Zack Walther & the Cronkites, “Tumbleweed”
There’s one more world that connects to my World Tree.
It’s the world that contains the story of all that was, all that wasn’t, all that was never to be.
I love stories, but at the same time I hate them. Because the best thing and the worst thing about the story is one and the same. All stories come to an end. Each book begins with a moment of hope and a moment of sadness. Each page brings with it joy and mourning. There is a whole new world, a whole new creation. But each step taken through that world is a step towards the end.
You can read the same book twice. I often do. Each journey through the old story tells me how far I’ve progressed or regressed in my own.
But no journey is ever the same as the first. Each time after the story is begun with the end a known factor. The journey is not – cannot – be as fresh and exciting. And even if all’s well that ends well, it still ends. It’s the end that’s the most bittersweet, most unbearable of all.
There’s that one story that connects to my World Tree. There’s that one story where the last painful months played out with the World Tree as the only place where remote happiness could be achieved. If that story could be restarted anywhere, the World Tree is the place.
A dark, mad little corner of my mind tries to remind me of that from time to time. It used to happen all the time. When I moved that voice fell silent.
When I considered going back it started up again, chattering away in the back corners of my mind. It spoke nonsense, gibberish. It tried to tell me what I wanted to hear without knowing that I didn’t want to hear it any more.
At times it was about how the story didn’t end. At others it was a tale of spite and vengeance, saying, “Look at me now. Now go fuck yourself.”
When I decided not to go back to Chicago it was that voice that screamed the loudest. While I spent five months angry that voice had to say very little. While I spent a month realizing the move what okay that voice could get no purchase.
In the moment I realized, finally, just how far I was from the place I still call “home,” the voice realized it no longer has power.
And I’ll take this wheel at 10 and 2
Grip it with all my might
And on the dash a picture of you
And I’ll drive you out of my life
I’ll take you to the end with me
And leave you in the dust
Drive you out until I free
This old heart of memories and rust
--Lost Immigrants, “Memories and Rust”
Friday night I found myself in Fort Worth, a thousand miles from the place I wanted to be.
I wasn’t angry, though. I wasn’t even sad.
The little voice in the back of my head was screaming at me, but I know how to fight it. Music soothes the savage beast, after all. And that voice has had the center stage for far, far too long.
Some stories, as it turns out, need to end.
Some branches need to fall off the World Tree. Especially those that have already withered and died.
See, there’s one great thing about the fact that stories end.
There’s always another one to be found.
You just have to put the old one down and start looking for the next.
When it's everything you have to leave behind
I'm lookin' forward to lookin' back
On this day
In the taillights
So much hindsight
Telling me what I already know
I know
--Over the Rhine, “Lookin’ Forward”
I circled the weekend of July 23rd-25th on my calendar a couple weeks ago. Well, that’s not entirely true. I metaphorically circled the weekend. The actual calendar where I write down upcoming events of note just says “Lost Imigrants Ft. Worth.” I was having an argument with spelling that day and I lost.
I woke up a couple Sundays ago, looked at everything on my plate, and decided, “I think that it’s about time for me to make my triumphant return to Chicago. Work seemed to have slowed down enough to allow the indulgence of a long weekend. It would be a good chance to head back to Chicago, say hello to the family, bum around Millennium Park, eat some deep dish. You know, do all the things that make Chicago home.
There was also the added benefit that Pat Ryan was going to be at the Celtic Knot on Sunday. This would most definitely assure the presence of any number of storytellers and the opportunity to share some good food, some good times, and some good stories. Dallas, to the best of my knowledge, is completely lacking a place like the Celtic Knot that can serve as a destination and meeting place of storytellers.
I genuinely miss having that sort of place. I really do very little in the way of storytelling stuff down here. Part of that, admittedly, has been my own crazy schedule. But there’s really nothing I’ve found that forces me to incorporate storytelling in to my schedule like I had in Chicago. It was possible to do a different storytelling event every week at least. And there was always Storytelling in the Snug at the Celtic Knot.
The Celtic Knot, of course, is where it all began for me.
Some places act as nexuses in life, I suppose. In myth and legend they’re spoken of as “World Trees.” The world revolves around them, the key events happen in their shade. The Hero’s Journey always seems to involve a trip to, from, or to and back again.
In Norse myth the World Tree is Yggdrasil. It’s roots are in the underworld, its branches in the realm of the gods. It connects the various worlds that comprise the Norse universe.
If I may be free to mix a few metaphors, the Celtic Knot functioned as my Yggdrasil. It was there that I met a lot of storytellers. It was there that I learned about upcoming events. It was there that I learned about storytelling in the first place.
I was excited to have a chance to go back.
Then at the beginning of last week I started planning all of my other Chicago-related travels for the rest of the year. Labor Day. A week in October. Thanksgiving. Christmas. Add to that my parents coming down for a visit during that stretch.
All of the sudden one weekend in July seemed like such a bother.
I wish I could explain. I really do. I try and fail to put in to words exactly how that felt.
It was like the world had ended and I had only just caught up. From the moment I arrived in Dallas I was intellectually aware of the fact that I was far away from Chicago. But it was never that far. I could always go back.
Now I was doing a cost-benefit analysis and Chicago was losing.
The fact that I even did a cost-benefit analysis meant Chicago had lost.
So I did what I do. I went to Fort Worth. I went to Kohl’s and bought a couple new shirts. I played some GTA IV. I watched Doctor Who.
I find it increasingly difficult to hate Dallas. It’s not like it’s Dallas’s fault it’s not Chicago.
And I’ve had some good times here. But I think I’ve managed to muddle through by not having to think about just how far I am from home. It’s an easy enough task when you’re able to occupy your time and constantly working on getting past the newest, most immediate problem.
But, then, for a moment everything falls away. For a moment realization hits home, sinks in.
And, all of the sudden, I realize how far I am from my World Tree.
In the dark, though, in the deep, dark, pushed down bits of my soul, I have to admit there’s something else.
You have to be crazy
To try to hold on to
What we can’t get back
No matter what we do
--Zack Walther & the Cronkites, “Tumbleweed”
There’s one more world that connects to my World Tree.
It’s the world that contains the story of all that was, all that wasn’t, all that was never to be.
I love stories, but at the same time I hate them. Because the best thing and the worst thing about the story is one and the same. All stories come to an end. Each book begins with a moment of hope and a moment of sadness. Each page brings with it joy and mourning. There is a whole new world, a whole new creation. But each step taken through that world is a step towards the end.
You can read the same book twice. I often do. Each journey through the old story tells me how far I’ve progressed or regressed in my own.
But no journey is ever the same as the first. Each time after the story is begun with the end a known factor. The journey is not – cannot – be as fresh and exciting. And even if all’s well that ends well, it still ends. It’s the end that’s the most bittersweet, most unbearable of all.
There’s that one story that connects to my World Tree. There’s that one story where the last painful months played out with the World Tree as the only place where remote happiness could be achieved. If that story could be restarted anywhere, the World Tree is the place.
A dark, mad little corner of my mind tries to remind me of that from time to time. It used to happen all the time. When I moved that voice fell silent.
When I considered going back it started up again, chattering away in the back corners of my mind. It spoke nonsense, gibberish. It tried to tell me what I wanted to hear without knowing that I didn’t want to hear it any more.
At times it was about how the story didn’t end. At others it was a tale of spite and vengeance, saying, “Look at me now. Now go fuck yourself.”
When I decided not to go back to Chicago it was that voice that screamed the loudest. While I spent five months angry that voice had to say very little. While I spent a month realizing the move what okay that voice could get no purchase.
In the moment I realized, finally, just how far I was from the place I still call “home,” the voice realized it no longer has power.
And I’ll take this wheel at 10 and 2
Grip it with all my might
And on the dash a picture of you
And I’ll drive you out of my life
I’ll take you to the end with me
And leave you in the dust
Drive you out until I free
This old heart of memories and rust
--Lost Immigrants, “Memories and Rust”
Friday night I found myself in Fort Worth, a thousand miles from the place I wanted to be.
I wasn’t angry, though. I wasn’t even sad.
The little voice in the back of my head was screaming at me, but I know how to fight it. Music soothes the savage beast, after all. And that voice has had the center stage for far, far too long.
Some stories, as it turns out, need to end.
Some branches need to fall off the World Tree. Especially those that have already withered and died.
See, there’s one great thing about the fact that stories end.
There’s always another one to be found.
You just have to put the old one down and start looking for the next.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Six Months in Hell
Well
Give me a song to sing
Harder than it is to bring
Back all the years I've wasted
For so long
--Lost Immigrants, "Song to Sing"
I want to start this out with something pithy, something timeless, some bit of wisdom that will resonate throughout the paragraphs I splatter out here and beyond. But I find I’m not up to the task. All I can really offer is a single summation of the lessons I’ve learned over my six months in Dallas.
Looking forward to what the future holds is infinitely preferable to mourning what the past once contained.
For some things this is pretty obvious. My larger paycheck is obviously preferable to the one I had in Chicago, not to mention taking unemployment and hoping for a nibble on my resume. My 2010 Mazda 6 is obviously preferable to my 2004 Chevy Cavalier.
For some things it’s more of a wash. St. Arnold and Rahr & Sons admirably stepped up to fill the gap once occupied by Two Brothers and Metropolitan in this beer snob’s beer list.
For some things, well, for some things it’s harder. By any objective measure Chicago is a much more interesting place to be than Dallas. But I can’t afford to be objective about this. I’m not in Chicago, after all. I’m in Dallas.
And given a choice between wishing to be back in Chicago or trying to find a life in Dallas, well, one of those things will only result in depression.
Ultimately, too, I’ve realized that the place doesn’t matter nearly as much as the people who occupy it and the stories that I can tell. On that entirely subjective scale the first six months in Dallas have the last year and a half in Chicago beat by a disturbingly wide margin.
I’m gonna drive on down this highway
‘Til the pain in me is gone
I can’t look back
No I gotta keep moving along
--Lost Immigrants, “Rollin’ On”
I was on I-35W last night thinking about how tired I was of rain and listening to the Lost Immigrants. All of the sudden I started smiling.
I was thinking about pigeons. Specifically my first-ever yearly goals review meeting thing at my new company when my new boss and I spent a good thirty seconds doing pigeon imitations. I think you kind of had to be there.
When we were in the last weeks of the transition of my job to Dallas from Chicago some of the people from down here went up there for a strategy meeting. They were very, very serious. At that point I was 99% sure I was coming down here and 103% pissed about the fact that it had to happen. During that meeting I met my new boss for the first time, but I wasn’t sure if I could say anything because I hadn’t officially accepted the offer. Hell, I hadn’t even officially gotten an offer yet. I’d just had some HR people acting like they were doing me a favor by letting me move to Dallas from Chicago.
We spent the entire day in one of those meetings. I’m sure anyone who’s been in corporate America knows what I’m talking about. Two sides convinced the other side doesn’t have a clue what the other is doing, but trying to convince them that they’re not a bunch of idiots. We were using my laptop for presentation purposes. At the end my desktop picture popped up. It was a picture of my desk. New boss laughed. It was the first time I realized, “Yeah, I can work with her.”
A week or so later I had two different meetings, one with my boss, one with my interim boss/kinda-sorta now my boss’s boss, at least for my remaining time in Chicago. My boss hemmed and hawed his way around trying to tell me to be careful when I got there, tried to remind me that I was representing everyone in Chicago. Interim boss cut to the chase. “Just don’t be you for a while,” he said.
Everyone was sure that the Dallas people were uptight.
A couple months later I was sitting in new boss’s office and we were talking in pigeon.
Honestly, I can say that these first six months would have been terrible were it not for my new coworkers. I think I wanted to hate Dallas. I think I wanted to be able to reach January 1st, 2011 and say, “Fuck this noise, I’m out of here,” and go back to Chicago. But for the last six months I’ve been mostly – surprisingly -- gruntled at work.
And I cannot say enough how much I appreciate that.
But that doesn’t even begin to approach the fullness of the reasons that I’ve been able to make this transition. Work is, after all, the reason I’m here but not the totality of my existence.
It was with tongue firmly in cheek that I called the first meeting of the Accidental Historian Appreciation Society, Dallas Area Chapter.
I remember walking in to the Londoner in Addison on an otherwise random Saturday morning and discovered that someone (I’m pretty damn sure it was Michael Mock, though) had made signs. Those signs are still sitting on my coffee table. Chances are they’d be framed if I were organized enough to do so.
A few weeks (um, months?) later I learned that I’m a horrible administrator. Seneca was in town. They were doing a show at the Dallas Trinity Hall location and I called the second meeting of the A.H.A.S.D.A.C. for that night. I think I gave three different times. I then proceeded to arrive later than Michael Mock, Fake Al Gore, and Big A.
But it was a good night, anyway.
Even that doesn’t quite say enough.
I met some great people during Rogapalooza. Y’all know who you are.
Honestly, I think Gruene Hall in New Braunfels, TX will end up being one of my favorite places in the world even if I never go back there again.
That night was a culmination of a great week. Nine days, really.
You know who you are. Michael, Raquel, Lauren, Robert, Zack, Andrew, Andrew’s brother (with whom I am not Facebook friends, and whose name I do not remember, but, seriously, you’re good people), the Girl in Red, and, of course, Tawni and the Peacemakers theirownselves.
Fuzzy’s Tacos in Fort Worth. The only building in Texas that lacks air conditioning. A few too many Shiner Bocks. Those crazy and annoying drunk people at Antone’s. What else can I say?
I’m happy I met you. How’s that? Also, if you’re not at my Six Months in Hell party I’ll hold an extremely not interesting grudge, since I suck at holding grudges.
And last, but certainly not least, Big A.
What can I say? I mean, seriously?
When you left Chicago She was still in my life. And She couldn’t, at first, understand why I was so unemotional about the whole thing. But then She said, “He’s gone, but he’s not out of your life.”
I don’t think anyone was expecting that the reason for that was an eventual move to Dallas. I sure as hell wasn’t.
It’s been a crazy fucking ride, dudeman. Tater. Trinity Hall. BWW in Allen. Seth. Mike Doughty. Realizing that life hasn’t actually changed since WIU.
What. The. Fuck? Seriously.
I’m not the kind
To make up my mind
To lose sanity, lose my head
For some girl in red
I smell the smoke
Still hear the band
I taste the beer
That was in my hand
That night we met runs through my head
I can’t forget the girl in red
--Eli Young Band, “Girl in Red”
When it gets right down to it I moved to Dallas with a broken heart. But I moved to Dallas with a broken heart because I was in love with the idea of having a broken heart. The girl who broke my heart wasn’t worth it, but I had to leave Chicago to realize that.
I left my broken heart in Chicago.
I left my anger in Oklahoma City.
I left my fear in Fort Worth.
I left my liver in Austin.
I left my inhibitions in New Braunfels.
Tonight I sit on my balcony in Irving. I'm accompanied by a bottle of Woodford Reserve bourbon and a six-pack of St. Arnold Lawnmower.
It’s been exactly six months since I crossed the border from Oklahoma in to Texas.
And it’s been six good months. Six necessary months.
I’m having a party at the Tap-In Bar & Grill in Grapevine, TX. The Lost Immigrants will be providing the entertainment. Hopefully the people who have come to matter most to me over the last six months will be there. I’m calling it the Six Months in Hell Party.
But, if I’m honest, this hasn’t been hell. Hell implies imprisonment.
Since I’ve moved to Texas I’ve actually been freed.
And, when it gets right down to it, that's all that matters.
Give me a song to sing
Harder than it is to bring
Back all the years I've wasted
For so long
--Lost Immigrants, "Song to Sing"
I want to start this out with something pithy, something timeless, some bit of wisdom that will resonate throughout the paragraphs I splatter out here and beyond. But I find I’m not up to the task. All I can really offer is a single summation of the lessons I’ve learned over my six months in Dallas.
Looking forward to what the future holds is infinitely preferable to mourning what the past once contained.
For some things this is pretty obvious. My larger paycheck is obviously preferable to the one I had in Chicago, not to mention taking unemployment and hoping for a nibble on my resume. My 2010 Mazda 6 is obviously preferable to my 2004 Chevy Cavalier.
For some things it’s more of a wash. St. Arnold and Rahr & Sons admirably stepped up to fill the gap once occupied by Two Brothers and Metropolitan in this beer snob’s beer list.
For some things, well, for some things it’s harder. By any objective measure Chicago is a much more interesting place to be than Dallas. But I can’t afford to be objective about this. I’m not in Chicago, after all. I’m in Dallas.
And given a choice between wishing to be back in Chicago or trying to find a life in Dallas, well, one of those things will only result in depression.
Ultimately, too, I’ve realized that the place doesn’t matter nearly as much as the people who occupy it and the stories that I can tell. On that entirely subjective scale the first six months in Dallas have the last year and a half in Chicago beat by a disturbingly wide margin.
I’m gonna drive on down this highway
‘Til the pain in me is gone
I can’t look back
No I gotta keep moving along
--Lost Immigrants, “Rollin’ On”
I was on I-35W last night thinking about how tired I was of rain and listening to the Lost Immigrants. All of the sudden I started smiling.
I was thinking about pigeons. Specifically my first-ever yearly goals review meeting thing at my new company when my new boss and I spent a good thirty seconds doing pigeon imitations. I think you kind of had to be there.
When we were in the last weeks of the transition of my job to Dallas from Chicago some of the people from down here went up there for a strategy meeting. They were very, very serious. At that point I was 99% sure I was coming down here and 103% pissed about the fact that it had to happen. During that meeting I met my new boss for the first time, but I wasn’t sure if I could say anything because I hadn’t officially accepted the offer. Hell, I hadn’t even officially gotten an offer yet. I’d just had some HR people acting like they were doing me a favor by letting me move to Dallas from Chicago.
We spent the entire day in one of those meetings. I’m sure anyone who’s been in corporate America knows what I’m talking about. Two sides convinced the other side doesn’t have a clue what the other is doing, but trying to convince them that they’re not a bunch of idiots. We were using my laptop for presentation purposes. At the end my desktop picture popped up. It was a picture of my desk. New boss laughed. It was the first time I realized, “Yeah, I can work with her.”
A week or so later I had two different meetings, one with my boss, one with my interim boss/kinda-sorta now my boss’s boss, at least for my remaining time in Chicago. My boss hemmed and hawed his way around trying to tell me to be careful when I got there, tried to remind me that I was representing everyone in Chicago. Interim boss cut to the chase. “Just don’t be you for a while,” he said.
Everyone was sure that the Dallas people were uptight.
A couple months later I was sitting in new boss’s office and we were talking in pigeon.
Honestly, I can say that these first six months would have been terrible were it not for my new coworkers. I think I wanted to hate Dallas. I think I wanted to be able to reach January 1st, 2011 and say, “Fuck this noise, I’m out of here,” and go back to Chicago. But for the last six months I’ve been mostly – surprisingly -- gruntled at work.
And I cannot say enough how much I appreciate that.
But that doesn’t even begin to approach the fullness of the reasons that I’ve been able to make this transition. Work is, after all, the reason I’m here but not the totality of my existence.
It was with tongue firmly in cheek that I called the first meeting of the Accidental Historian Appreciation Society, Dallas Area Chapter.
I remember walking in to the Londoner in Addison on an otherwise random Saturday morning and discovered that someone (I’m pretty damn sure it was Michael Mock, though) had made signs. Those signs are still sitting on my coffee table. Chances are they’d be framed if I were organized enough to do so.
A few weeks (um, months?) later I learned that I’m a horrible administrator. Seneca was in town. They were doing a show at the Dallas Trinity Hall location and I called the second meeting of the A.H.A.S.D.A.C. for that night. I think I gave three different times. I then proceeded to arrive later than Michael Mock, Fake Al Gore, and Big A.
But it was a good night, anyway.
Even that doesn’t quite say enough.
I met some great people during Rogapalooza. Y’all know who you are.
Honestly, I think Gruene Hall in New Braunfels, TX will end up being one of my favorite places in the world even if I never go back there again.
That night was a culmination of a great week. Nine days, really.
You know who you are. Michael, Raquel, Lauren, Robert, Zack, Andrew, Andrew’s brother (with whom I am not Facebook friends, and whose name I do not remember, but, seriously, you’re good people), the Girl in Red, and, of course, Tawni and the Peacemakers theirownselves.
Fuzzy’s Tacos in Fort Worth. The only building in Texas that lacks air conditioning. A few too many Shiner Bocks. Those crazy and annoying drunk people at Antone’s. What else can I say?
I’m happy I met you. How’s that? Also, if you’re not at my Six Months in Hell party I’ll hold an extremely not interesting grudge, since I suck at holding grudges.
And last, but certainly not least, Big A.
What can I say? I mean, seriously?
When you left Chicago She was still in my life. And She couldn’t, at first, understand why I was so unemotional about the whole thing. But then She said, “He’s gone, but he’s not out of your life.”
I don’t think anyone was expecting that the reason for that was an eventual move to Dallas. I sure as hell wasn’t.
It’s been a crazy fucking ride, dudeman. Tater. Trinity Hall. BWW in Allen. Seth. Mike Doughty. Realizing that life hasn’t actually changed since WIU.
What. The. Fuck? Seriously.
I’m not the kind
To make up my mind
To lose sanity, lose my head
For some girl in red
I smell the smoke
Still hear the band
I taste the beer
That was in my hand
That night we met runs through my head
I can’t forget the girl in red
--Eli Young Band, “Girl in Red”
When it gets right down to it I moved to Dallas with a broken heart. But I moved to Dallas with a broken heart because I was in love with the idea of having a broken heart. The girl who broke my heart wasn’t worth it, but I had to leave Chicago to realize that.
I left my broken heart in Chicago.
I left my anger in Oklahoma City.
I left my fear in Fort Worth.
I left my liver in Austin.
I left my inhibitions in New Braunfels.
Tonight I sit on my balcony in Irving. I'm accompanied by a bottle of Woodford Reserve bourbon and a six-pack of St. Arnold Lawnmower.
It’s been exactly six months since I crossed the border from Oklahoma in to Texas.
And it’s been six good months. Six necessary months.
I’m having a party at the Tap-In Bar & Grill in Grapevine, TX. The Lost Immigrants will be providing the entertainment. Hopefully the people who have come to matter most to me over the last six months will be there. I’m calling it the Six Months in Hell Party.
But, if I’m honest, this hasn’t been hell. Hell implies imprisonment.
Since I’ve moved to Texas I’ve actually been freed.
And, when it gets right down to it, that's all that matters.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Something Better
The harder I fight the stronger it’s a comin’
I wipe the tears from my eyes
and keep on strummin’
Baby, I ain’t runnin’ away
I’m tryin’ to find you something better inside me
--RCPM, “Your Name on a Grain of Rice”
It’s something that puzzles me greatly, the sort of conundrum that I feel would unlock any number of other realizations if I could only puzzle through the ramifications, if I could only make sense of the differences in light of the similarities.
Two girls, separated by seven years. They never met each other, probably never will. The only thing they have in common is me. Well, there’s other stuff, too. Daddy issues, judgmentalism, incessant moralizing about crap that doesn’t really matter, lack of compunction in the realm of being willing to use a certain moronic member of the male gender as long as it suited their purposes (y’know, this guy).
I came to despise one. She spent nine years trying to get me to be her friend again.
I guess the other came to despise me. I spent a year and a half trying to win her back. And somewhere in the back of my mind I still think it would be fantastic to run in to her the next time I’m in Chicago. Oddly enough, I think it would mostly be to have the chance to rub her face in everything she’s missed out on. But what’s the point of that?
There are really only two options. The first is to hear, “I totally want you back in my life,” and to graciously accept that. The second is to hear, “I totally want you back in my life,” and to say, “Ha, you should have thought of that way back when.”
So I’ve wandered out in to the world. I’ve made, for a time, my second home in Brookfield, Madison, Milwaukee, and Texas cantinas. I like to think I’ve come back wiser and found that something better inside me.
And yet I’ve discovered that deep down inside I’m still perfectly capable of petty cruelty. I’m still perfectly capable of irrational desires for things I don’t want, don’t need, and know better than to chase after. So have I really found anything better inside me? Or have I just discovered that the search is futile?
And I said, “Mama, mama, mama, why am I so alone?”
I can’t go outside I’m scared I might not make it home
Well I’m alive, I’m alive, and I’m sinking in
If there’s anyone at home at your place, darlin’
Why don’t you invite me in?
--Counting Crows, “Rain King”*
There was a time in my life when I counted the passage of time by who and what had left me behind. I don’t know why. Somehow I had this idea early on that if I left a place and came back everything would be exactly as it had been. It turned out that was wrong, and that realization shocked me.
I tried to hang on to people and moments in an attempt to savor every moment. I tried to hang on to people and moments in an attempt to make sure nothing ever changed.
It turns out that you can’t do that. Not every moment can be the greatest moment of your life. Not every person can be the most important person in your life. But as long as I was staying in place and the world was revolving around me I didn’t notice it.
See, I very rarely left a place behind. Everyone and everything left me. Such is the danger of spending the first twenty-three years of your life in the same town, going to the same places, seeing many of the same people. Everything becomes irretrievably filled with memories, impressions, and emotions. The ghosts of everyone you’ve ever known take up permanent residence in every building, every restaurant, every store. They walk the sidewalks, sit on park benches, and stare at you as you drive past.
Or maybe that’s just me.
I think that’s why I ended up coming to love live music so much and came to like meeting musicians. I’d expect that transient connection, that fleeting moment of meeting. Jessi Lynn, the guys from Seneca, the Peacemakers, they’d pass through my life for a couple hours, then be gone. But that was okay, because I expected them to leave. Besides, they’d leave that most meaningful connection behind in the music I could carry with me in a shiny little box. It’s the most meaningful possible connection with the most meaningless possible commitment.
My life in Chicago gradually emptied. Old friends left and I never found new ones to replace them. I had professional relationships with work acquaintances. I had my connections with storytellers, but I was gradually losing those people you could call and say, “Hey, wanna go grab a beer?” I was losing those people I could have those meaningful conversations with deep in to the night.
I was going in to hiding. I didn’t want to give anything new a try. I didn’t want to risk my heart or myself.
But you
You never realized
What I could do
Stars in your eyes
You made it true
While looking at the sky
You were searching for something better
While the better was right in front of you
--Lost Immigrants, “Something Better”
The equation, I think, is far more simple than I want to admit it actually is. I think that as long as it seems like a big, complicated equation I can puzzle it out until the end of the universe and beyond. But here’s what it comes down to:
That one girl I despised wasn’t good enough for me.
The one that despises me was too good for me.
At least, that’s my perception. Reality may well be completely and totally different, but reality doesn’t matter in this situation. Perception’s all I’ve got to go on. I can be stupid and petty and cruel because I limit the entire universe to three points on a continuum.
And, in a weird way, it allows me to hold something over the head of the one. “See,” I can say, “You didn’t think I was good enough. Well look at me now.”
Look at me, indeed.
Look at the fool who sat on his couch in Brookfield for more than a year, afraid to try anything new. Look at the fool who moved to Dallas and still thought, “Man, if she could only see me now with my new car and my job that pays the bills and then some and shit.”
I spent two fruitless years trying to prove to her that I was good enough. Why did I then spend another two years after I left trying to prove to her that I was better? That’s a fool’s errand.
She wasn’t worth the dedication I gave to her the first two years and sure as shit isn’t worth whatever I gave for the next two.
It really is that easy.
I realized at some point that if you’re sitting there saying, “Why don’t you see me as good enough?” you’ll never be good enough for that person. Ultimately the problem is that you’re not trying to convince them. You’re trying to convince yourself.
And as long as you’re having phantom conversations with the ghost of a person long-gone you’ll never be able to do that.
So I can’t find her something better inside me.
All I can do is find me something better inside me.
------------------------------
*Funny story. I was listening to Pandora whilst thinking through the various thoughts that lead to this post. I knew exactly what I was doing with the start and end, but needed a connecting thought. And Pandora played "Rain King." I suddenly had my connecting thought.
I wipe the tears from my eyes
and keep on strummin’
Baby, I ain’t runnin’ away
I’m tryin’ to find you something better inside me
--RCPM, “Your Name on a Grain of Rice”
It’s something that puzzles me greatly, the sort of conundrum that I feel would unlock any number of other realizations if I could only puzzle through the ramifications, if I could only make sense of the differences in light of the similarities.
Two girls, separated by seven years. They never met each other, probably never will. The only thing they have in common is me. Well, there’s other stuff, too. Daddy issues, judgmentalism, incessant moralizing about crap that doesn’t really matter, lack of compunction in the realm of being willing to use a certain moronic member of the male gender as long as it suited their purposes (y’know, this guy).
I came to despise one. She spent nine years trying to get me to be her friend again.
I guess the other came to despise me. I spent a year and a half trying to win her back. And somewhere in the back of my mind I still think it would be fantastic to run in to her the next time I’m in Chicago. Oddly enough, I think it would mostly be to have the chance to rub her face in everything she’s missed out on. But what’s the point of that?
There are really only two options. The first is to hear, “I totally want you back in my life,” and to graciously accept that. The second is to hear, “I totally want you back in my life,” and to say, “Ha, you should have thought of that way back when.”
So I’ve wandered out in to the world. I’ve made, for a time, my second home in Brookfield, Madison, Milwaukee, and Texas cantinas. I like to think I’ve come back wiser and found that something better inside me.
And yet I’ve discovered that deep down inside I’m still perfectly capable of petty cruelty. I’m still perfectly capable of irrational desires for things I don’t want, don’t need, and know better than to chase after. So have I really found anything better inside me? Or have I just discovered that the search is futile?
And I said, “Mama, mama, mama, why am I so alone?”
I can’t go outside I’m scared I might not make it home
Well I’m alive, I’m alive, and I’m sinking in
If there’s anyone at home at your place, darlin’
Why don’t you invite me in?
--Counting Crows, “Rain King”*
There was a time in my life when I counted the passage of time by who and what had left me behind. I don’t know why. Somehow I had this idea early on that if I left a place and came back everything would be exactly as it had been. It turned out that was wrong, and that realization shocked me.
I tried to hang on to people and moments in an attempt to savor every moment. I tried to hang on to people and moments in an attempt to make sure nothing ever changed.
It turns out that you can’t do that. Not every moment can be the greatest moment of your life. Not every person can be the most important person in your life. But as long as I was staying in place and the world was revolving around me I didn’t notice it.
See, I very rarely left a place behind. Everyone and everything left me. Such is the danger of spending the first twenty-three years of your life in the same town, going to the same places, seeing many of the same people. Everything becomes irretrievably filled with memories, impressions, and emotions. The ghosts of everyone you’ve ever known take up permanent residence in every building, every restaurant, every store. They walk the sidewalks, sit on park benches, and stare at you as you drive past.
Or maybe that’s just me.
I think that’s why I ended up coming to love live music so much and came to like meeting musicians. I’d expect that transient connection, that fleeting moment of meeting. Jessi Lynn, the guys from Seneca, the Peacemakers, they’d pass through my life for a couple hours, then be gone. But that was okay, because I expected them to leave. Besides, they’d leave that most meaningful connection behind in the music I could carry with me in a shiny little box. It’s the most meaningful possible connection with the most meaningless possible commitment.
My life in Chicago gradually emptied. Old friends left and I never found new ones to replace them. I had professional relationships with work acquaintances. I had my connections with storytellers, but I was gradually losing those people you could call and say, “Hey, wanna go grab a beer?” I was losing those people I could have those meaningful conversations with deep in to the night.
I was going in to hiding. I didn’t want to give anything new a try. I didn’t want to risk my heart or myself.
But you
You never realized
What I could do
Stars in your eyes
You made it true
While looking at the sky
You were searching for something better
While the better was right in front of you
--Lost Immigrants, “Something Better”
The equation, I think, is far more simple than I want to admit it actually is. I think that as long as it seems like a big, complicated equation I can puzzle it out until the end of the universe and beyond. But here’s what it comes down to:
That one girl I despised wasn’t good enough for me.
The one that despises me was too good for me.
At least, that’s my perception. Reality may well be completely and totally different, but reality doesn’t matter in this situation. Perception’s all I’ve got to go on. I can be stupid and petty and cruel because I limit the entire universe to three points on a continuum.
And, in a weird way, it allows me to hold something over the head of the one. “See,” I can say, “You didn’t think I was good enough. Well look at me now.”
Look at me, indeed.
Look at the fool who sat on his couch in Brookfield for more than a year, afraid to try anything new. Look at the fool who moved to Dallas and still thought, “Man, if she could only see me now with my new car and my job that pays the bills and then some and shit.”
I spent two fruitless years trying to prove to her that I was good enough. Why did I then spend another two years after I left trying to prove to her that I was better? That’s a fool’s errand.
She wasn’t worth the dedication I gave to her the first two years and sure as shit isn’t worth whatever I gave for the next two.
It really is that easy.
I realized at some point that if you’re sitting there saying, “Why don’t you see me as good enough?” you’ll never be good enough for that person. Ultimately the problem is that you’re not trying to convince them. You’re trying to convince yourself.
And as long as you’re having phantom conversations with the ghost of a person long-gone you’ll never be able to do that.
So I can’t find her something better inside me.
All I can do is find me something better inside me.
------------------------------
*Funny story. I was listening to Pandora whilst thinking through the various thoughts that lead to this post. I knew exactly what I was doing with the start and end, but needed a connecting thought. And Pandora played "Rain King." I suddenly had my connecting thought.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Tuesday Fluffiness
And I wonder where I’ll be in a year
Probably be sitting right here
And if you know the answer don’t tell me anyone
‘Cuz I don’t wanna know
--The Refreshments, “Don’t Wanna Know”
I’m not quite ready to start my gazillion-part series on religion in the Byzantine Empire. In truth, I have it whittled down to what seems to be an extremely manageable series of posts, but I haven’t entirely figured out how to pull it together yet. Besides, I feel like getting some thoughts out of the way, so I’ve decided to write one of those disjointed, fluffy posts in the hopes that everything in it will tie together by the end.
I think the best place to start is on my couch. And not just because that’s where I’m sitting right now.
Last week I was sitting on my couch talking to one of my best friends about life, women, and, well, women (seriously, what else is there to talk about?). All of the sudden the image of a dorm room in Lincoln Hall at Western Illinois University flashed through my mind and I started laughing. He seemed confused.
“Five years ago when we were sitting at Western talking about girls would you have believed we’d be sitting here doing this now?” I asked (or something similar).
He didn’t find it quite as funny as I did. Of course he hadn’t had quite the week I’d had…
---------------------------
What if we offered
All these broken hearted pieces to the sky
Would it be enough
To keep on living ‘til tomorrow comes
What if everything
Disappeared to gone and all that’s left
Is a circle in my hand
All that’s left is a circle in my hand
--Lost Immigrants, “Circle in My Hand”
I came to Dallas with a broken heart.
I came to Dallas convinced that I’d be leaving again as quickly as possible.
I came to Dallas convinced that no good could come out of the transition.
I was just here to do my job, make a few bucks, and get back to Chicago. Move along, nothing to see here. Of course I came down here with a single, pretty well set attitude about life: life is what happens while you’re waiting for life to happen.
Once I got done being pissed about everything I started to realize that, hey, I had a point. Funny how that works…
I was talking about weight loss today. Specifically I was talking about how no matter what you do to your body, it eventually adjusts. You can go on a crash diet and lose a bunch of weight, but eventually the body will realize what’s happened and the diet will stop being effective. You can start working out, but eventually the same old routine will stop being particularly effective.
The only way to keep moving forward is to keep changing things around.
I think that’s pretty much the way everything works in life. I had to change my life when I moved. And having to change has made all the difference.
Oddly enough, I think that it helps that I moved to a place I didn’t particularly want to live. If something bad happens in Dallas or something ends up sucking, well, that’s what I expected, anyway. But if something good happens it’s a surprise, it’s a delight. That’s expectation management at its finest.
----------------------------
I want you to be my love
I want you to be my love
'Neath the moon and the stars above
I want you to be my love
'Cause I want you
I know all you--
All you've been through
--Over the Rhine, “I Want You to Be My Love”
It’s impossible to make it to thirty without a certain amount of baggage. We live in a world of pain, of longing, of missed opportunity, of broken hearts and love gone bad. We’re all capable of immense cruelty and extreme thoughtlessness.
The question, then, isn’t where we’ve been, but what we’ve survived. The question isn’t about whether we can find someone who is perfect, but whether we can find someone who has figured out how to live with their imperfections, learn from their mistakes, and make it through life with an unbroken spirit. It’s about finding out whether you can make my life brighter, better, happier and can I do the same for you?
I used to think it was possible to find perfection. I used to think, as so many others I knew believed, that god had somehow preserved a single, perfect someone just for me. It’s an odd thought, that, when you consider that I knew that I was nothing if not imperfect.
I find that the farther my life trajectory takes me from Christianity the more I love Slacktivist and Over the Rhine. The words that I find in those places speak to a longing I don’t think I heard anywhere in the churches I attended. It’s a longing for a better world, but one where we make it better by putting in the work, not just by praying and expecting god to fix it all.
You can’t try to find perfection. You can’t expect to love in spite of imperfection.
The only real option is to love because of imperfection. A wise man once said, “Beauty is beauty in spite of perfection,” after all. Also, something about, “Better beautiful than perfect, anyway.”
I’ve also come to the conclusion that this wisdom needs to be applied to places as well as people.
Probably be sitting right here
And if you know the answer don’t tell me anyone
‘Cuz I don’t wanna know
--The Refreshments, “Don’t Wanna Know”
I’m not quite ready to start my gazillion-part series on religion in the Byzantine Empire. In truth, I have it whittled down to what seems to be an extremely manageable series of posts, but I haven’t entirely figured out how to pull it together yet. Besides, I feel like getting some thoughts out of the way, so I’ve decided to write one of those disjointed, fluffy posts in the hopes that everything in it will tie together by the end.
I think the best place to start is on my couch. And not just because that’s where I’m sitting right now.
Last week I was sitting on my couch talking to one of my best friends about life, women, and, well, women (seriously, what else is there to talk about?). All of the sudden the image of a dorm room in Lincoln Hall at Western Illinois University flashed through my mind and I started laughing. He seemed confused.
“Five years ago when we were sitting at Western talking about girls would you have believed we’d be sitting here doing this now?” I asked (or something similar).
He didn’t find it quite as funny as I did. Of course he hadn’t had quite the week I’d had…
---------------------------
What if we offered
All these broken hearted pieces to the sky
Would it be enough
To keep on living ‘til tomorrow comes
What if everything
Disappeared to gone and all that’s left
Is a circle in my hand
All that’s left is a circle in my hand
--Lost Immigrants, “Circle in My Hand”
I came to Dallas with a broken heart.
I came to Dallas convinced that I’d be leaving again as quickly as possible.
I came to Dallas convinced that no good could come out of the transition.
I was just here to do my job, make a few bucks, and get back to Chicago. Move along, nothing to see here. Of course I came down here with a single, pretty well set attitude about life: life is what happens while you’re waiting for life to happen.
Once I got done being pissed about everything I started to realize that, hey, I had a point. Funny how that works…
I was talking about weight loss today. Specifically I was talking about how no matter what you do to your body, it eventually adjusts. You can go on a crash diet and lose a bunch of weight, but eventually the body will realize what’s happened and the diet will stop being effective. You can start working out, but eventually the same old routine will stop being particularly effective.
The only way to keep moving forward is to keep changing things around.
I think that’s pretty much the way everything works in life. I had to change my life when I moved. And having to change has made all the difference.
Oddly enough, I think that it helps that I moved to a place I didn’t particularly want to live. If something bad happens in Dallas or something ends up sucking, well, that’s what I expected, anyway. But if something good happens it’s a surprise, it’s a delight. That’s expectation management at its finest.
----------------------------
I want you to be my love
I want you to be my love
'Neath the moon and the stars above
I want you to be my love
'Cause I want you
I know all you--
All you've been through
--Over the Rhine, “I Want You to Be My Love”
It’s impossible to make it to thirty without a certain amount of baggage. We live in a world of pain, of longing, of missed opportunity, of broken hearts and love gone bad. We’re all capable of immense cruelty and extreme thoughtlessness.
The question, then, isn’t where we’ve been, but what we’ve survived. The question isn’t about whether we can find someone who is perfect, but whether we can find someone who has figured out how to live with their imperfections, learn from their mistakes, and make it through life with an unbroken spirit. It’s about finding out whether you can make my life brighter, better, happier and can I do the same for you?
I used to think it was possible to find perfection. I used to think, as so many others I knew believed, that god had somehow preserved a single, perfect someone just for me. It’s an odd thought, that, when you consider that I knew that I was nothing if not imperfect.
I find that the farther my life trajectory takes me from Christianity the more I love Slacktivist and Over the Rhine. The words that I find in those places speak to a longing I don’t think I heard anywhere in the churches I attended. It’s a longing for a better world, but one where we make it better by putting in the work, not just by praying and expecting god to fix it all.
You can’t try to find perfection. You can’t expect to love in spite of imperfection.
The only real option is to love because of imperfection. A wise man once said, “Beauty is beauty in spite of perfection,” after all. Also, something about, “Better beautiful than perfect, anyway.”
I’ve also come to the conclusion that this wisdom needs to be applied to places as well as people.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Open it Up and Let My Yearning Shine
And the true dope on salvation is
Two weeks in a clinic
And a public testimonial
You tell them kids
Tell them not to hurt themselves
Speeding fast from who you were
--Mike Doughty, “No Peace, Los Angeles”
Four trains of thought came crashing together in my mind.
It’s strange how that happens to me. All the trains start from the same station running on parallel tracks. I can usually tell that they are related. Sometimes I can even tell how. But it’s not until that moment of clarity that I realize why they were all running.
I’ve often tried to figure out how to communicate that moment of convergence but I’ve concluded that it’s impossible. So, in the spirit of my new dabblings in written minimalism, I’m going to try something different.
------------------------
When will I hear the click?
When will I know that it is time to split?
What is the use of it?
What is my life without the heart at risk?
--Mike Doughty, “40 Grand in the Hole”
I wrote a paraphrase of that last line on my own blog comments while sitting in the Chupacabra Cantina in Austin, TX. It was some 14 hours after something happened that I had begun to think would never, ever happen again. Some 72 hours after that I sat and looked at the lyrics and realized something:
It’s a song about addiction.
More than that, it’s a song about wanting out.
I don’t understand the specific situation that lead to the song and hope I never, ever will. But I’m pretty sure I understand the concept all too well.
-----------------------------
I realized at some point over the course of my oft inane and pathetic ramblings about Her that I wasn’t actually talking about Her. Not really. She’d always represented something bigger, something more fundamental about my universe and my place in it than she or I understood.
She was supposed to save me.
In time I realized that she couldn’t.
It wasn’t a clean path from Point A to Point B. And I’m reasonably certain that much psychological violence was done during and after. In fact, I know it was.
-----------------------------
Now the harder I fight the stronger it’s coming
I wipe the tears from my eye and keep on strumming
I ain’t running away
Just trying to find you something better inside me
--RCPM, “Your Name on a Grain of Rice”
Worship concerts used to open up something inside of me that rarely ever peeked out. When I started to lose the ability to connect with god I started to lose the ability to connect to that part of myself. For a while I desperately clung to her, hoping that she would allow me to find that part of me.
But she didn’t want to. I think she was tired of the game, tired of my neediness. She had her own shit to deal with, too.
She had been supposed to lead me back to god, but it didn’t work. Then she had been supposed to lead me back to that part of myself I was losing, but it didn’t work. Finally she was just supposed to give me some reason to believe there was a purpose in continuing on. That didn’t work, either.
----------------------
It screams at me from the pages of my mis-remembered college paper drafts. It unlocks so many things that I never quite connected, never quite understood. Even though I know I’ve mentioned it, I know I’ve said the words, even though I’ve acknowledged it as a factor, I’ve never realized that it was the driving, central factor.
Salvation.
I wanted it. I needed it. I genuinely believed she could provide it.
It’s why I left the church behind, but I tried to stay with her. It’s why I recognized that nothing would ever happen but still tried. It’s why I finally realized that there would have to be a final split but still kept myself tethered to the idea of her. I couldn’t figure out anything else to do.
-----------------------
It’s been more than two years. I’ve been on quite a few first dates, approximately zero second dates. I began to wonder a while ago if that was it, if I would never again be able to make a connection to anyone, never again meet someone and actually want her in my life again. I began to wonder if I was emotionally crippled, doomed to relive a shitty, stillborn relationship endlessly because it was the best I’d be able to do ever again.
In one night that question was answered. I may never see that girl in red again (and, I must begrudgingly admit, the prospects don’t look too good at the moment, which makes me a sad panda), but no matter what happens I now know one thing: I’m still capable of having all those feelings. I want to have all those feelings.
I repeated a line I’d recently come up with to a friend of mine recently. “I’m as warm and fluffy as a Brillo pad.” She told me that she doesn’t buy it, that she thinks I protest too much, that I’m just trying to cover.
I argued the point, but I’m pretty sure she’s right.
--------------------
Never thought I’d need someone to save me
Now I’ll be free as soon as you enslave me
--RCPM, “I Don’t Need Another Thrill”
It seems strange to disagree with a Peacemakers song. But at some point over the last week I heard that line and realized that no, no it doesn’t work that way.
I heard a lot about it in church, you see. We were supposed to hand over our sovereignty to Jesus, let him take control. Only then could we be freed from the world. Slavery described as freedom.
Of course one doesn’t just hand over their freedom to another without repercussion. There’s rebellion. Within the Christian context it’s the flesh striking back in its sinful, horrible way. At least, that’s the general story.
It’s impossible to live that perfect, godly life. Because those who try have to stop being themselves to a certain extent. There is a part of the enslaved soul that longs to be free.
There is a part of the newly freed soul that seeks re-enslavement.
It’s a vicious cycle.
That story of Jesus as perfect sovereign is a myth we keep telling ourselves. Jesus doesn’t save.
Jesus can’t save.
Any more than she could. Any more than anyone can.
-------------------------
I hate the way the story writes itself.
Boy does a bunch of stupid, idiotic, self-defeating things. Fate sends boy to a place he doesn’t want to live. Boy finally starts to accept that this is his life. Boy finally starts to have fun.
Girl walks in to boy’s life at that exact moment. Girl has had her own pain, her own heartache, her own happiness.
Girl tells boy she’ll break his heart in six months. Boy takes girl up on the offer because he’s finally learned that tomorrow can take care of itself, it’s only today that matters.
And, of course, they live happily ever after.
But it’s too neat, too tidy.
That story doesn’t exist.
----------------------------
It’s not what is that’s the killer. It’s what could have been.
But at least I now know the thing I’ve most needed to learn. There’s something in between a life unfettered and a life enslaved. Neither extreme leads to true healthiness or happiness.
It’s that in between spot I need to find.
And that story is still writing itself.
Two weeks in a clinic
And a public testimonial
You tell them kids
Tell them not to hurt themselves
Speeding fast from who you were
--Mike Doughty, “No Peace, Los Angeles”
Four trains of thought came crashing together in my mind.
It’s strange how that happens to me. All the trains start from the same station running on parallel tracks. I can usually tell that they are related. Sometimes I can even tell how. But it’s not until that moment of clarity that I realize why they were all running.
I’ve often tried to figure out how to communicate that moment of convergence but I’ve concluded that it’s impossible. So, in the spirit of my new dabblings in written minimalism, I’m going to try something different.
------------------------
When will I hear the click?
When will I know that it is time to split?
What is the use of it?
What is my life without the heart at risk?
--Mike Doughty, “40 Grand in the Hole”
I wrote a paraphrase of that last line on my own blog comments while sitting in the Chupacabra Cantina in Austin, TX. It was some 14 hours after something happened that I had begun to think would never, ever happen again. Some 72 hours after that I sat and looked at the lyrics and realized something:
It’s a song about addiction.
More than that, it’s a song about wanting out.
I don’t understand the specific situation that lead to the song and hope I never, ever will. But I’m pretty sure I understand the concept all too well.
-----------------------------
I realized at some point over the course of my oft inane and pathetic ramblings about Her that I wasn’t actually talking about Her. Not really. She’d always represented something bigger, something more fundamental about my universe and my place in it than she or I understood.
She was supposed to save me.
In time I realized that she couldn’t.
It wasn’t a clean path from Point A to Point B. And I’m reasonably certain that much psychological violence was done during and after. In fact, I know it was.
-----------------------------
Now the harder I fight the stronger it’s coming
I wipe the tears from my eye and keep on strumming
I ain’t running away
Just trying to find you something better inside me
--RCPM, “Your Name on a Grain of Rice”
Worship concerts used to open up something inside of me that rarely ever peeked out. When I started to lose the ability to connect with god I started to lose the ability to connect to that part of myself. For a while I desperately clung to her, hoping that she would allow me to find that part of me.
But she didn’t want to. I think she was tired of the game, tired of my neediness. She had her own shit to deal with, too.
She had been supposed to lead me back to god, but it didn’t work. Then she had been supposed to lead me back to that part of myself I was losing, but it didn’t work. Finally she was just supposed to give me some reason to believe there was a purpose in continuing on. That didn’t work, either.
----------------------
It screams at me from the pages of my mis-remembered college paper drafts. It unlocks so many things that I never quite connected, never quite understood. Even though I know I’ve mentioned it, I know I’ve said the words, even though I’ve acknowledged it as a factor, I’ve never realized that it was the driving, central factor.
Salvation.
I wanted it. I needed it. I genuinely believed she could provide it.
It’s why I left the church behind, but I tried to stay with her. It’s why I recognized that nothing would ever happen but still tried. It’s why I finally realized that there would have to be a final split but still kept myself tethered to the idea of her. I couldn’t figure out anything else to do.
-----------------------
It’s been more than two years. I’ve been on quite a few first dates, approximately zero second dates. I began to wonder a while ago if that was it, if I would never again be able to make a connection to anyone, never again meet someone and actually want her in my life again. I began to wonder if I was emotionally crippled, doomed to relive a shitty, stillborn relationship endlessly because it was the best I’d be able to do ever again.
In one night that question was answered. I may never see that girl in red again (and, I must begrudgingly admit, the prospects don’t look too good at the moment, which makes me a sad panda), but no matter what happens I now know one thing: I’m still capable of having all those feelings. I want to have all those feelings.
I repeated a line I’d recently come up with to a friend of mine recently. “I’m as warm and fluffy as a Brillo pad.” She told me that she doesn’t buy it, that she thinks I protest too much, that I’m just trying to cover.
I argued the point, but I’m pretty sure she’s right.
--------------------
Never thought I’d need someone to save me
Now I’ll be free as soon as you enslave me
--RCPM, “I Don’t Need Another Thrill”
It seems strange to disagree with a Peacemakers song. But at some point over the last week I heard that line and realized that no, no it doesn’t work that way.
I heard a lot about it in church, you see. We were supposed to hand over our sovereignty to Jesus, let him take control. Only then could we be freed from the world. Slavery described as freedom.
Of course one doesn’t just hand over their freedom to another without repercussion. There’s rebellion. Within the Christian context it’s the flesh striking back in its sinful, horrible way. At least, that’s the general story.
It’s impossible to live that perfect, godly life. Because those who try have to stop being themselves to a certain extent. There is a part of the enslaved soul that longs to be free.
There is a part of the newly freed soul that seeks re-enslavement.
It’s a vicious cycle.
That story of Jesus as perfect sovereign is a myth we keep telling ourselves. Jesus doesn’t save.
Jesus can’t save.
Any more than she could. Any more than anyone can.
-------------------------
I hate the way the story writes itself.
Boy does a bunch of stupid, idiotic, self-defeating things. Fate sends boy to a place he doesn’t want to live. Boy finally starts to accept that this is his life. Boy finally starts to have fun.
Girl walks in to boy’s life at that exact moment. Girl has had her own pain, her own heartache, her own happiness.
Girl tells boy she’ll break his heart in six months. Boy takes girl up on the offer because he’s finally learned that tomorrow can take care of itself, it’s only today that matters.
And, of course, they live happily ever after.
But it’s too neat, too tidy.
That story doesn’t exist.
----------------------------
It’s not what is that’s the killer. It’s what could have been.
But at least I now know the thing I’ve most needed to learn. There’s something in between a life unfettered and a life enslaved. Neither extreme leads to true healthiness or happiness.
It’s that in between spot I need to find.
And that story is still writing itself.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
The New Normal
The heat is a palpable force, slamming in to me as I emerge from the door of my office. I squint in to the bright, early evening sun. One thought passes through my mind.
“What the fuck am I doing in Texas?”
It’s a strange thought, but mostly because this is the first time I’ve had it in about two weeks.
---------------------------
There ain’t no moral to this story at all
And anything I tell you very well could be a lie
Been away from the living
I don’t need to be forgiven
I’m just waiting for this cold black soul of mine
To come alive
--The Refreshments, “Nada”
---------------------------
Traffic slows to a crawl on northbound I-35. Construction, by all appearances.
All I want to do is get to Oklahoma City. Saturday afternoon construction doesn’t seem like a good way to make that happen.
After a few miles traveled an inch at a time I catch the sight. Lights. Red and blue.
It’s not construction. I feel guilty for getting pissed.
Then I realize that I have friends traveling that same stretch of road. It might be them. I hope not.
--------------------------
Work. Sleep. Eat. Work. Sleep. Eat.
It’s all routine. I get up in the morning and head to the office. I leave the office in the evening. I run errands. I watch TV.
It was the new buzzword at the office last year: “The new normal.”
I drive home from the Kroger remembering a conversation with my boss. The new normal.
It was the new normal that sent me to Dallas. Dallas must become my new normal.
------------------------
There ain’t no moral to this story at all
And anything I tell you very well could be a lie
Been away from the living
I don’t need to be forgiven
I’m just waiting for this cold black
Sun cracked
Soul of mine
To come alive
--The Refreshments, “Nada”
------------------------
Oklahoma City reminds me of Madison, Wisconsin. The Wormy Dog Saloon reminds me of the High Noon Saloon. The new friends I meet – who all made the journey safely – remind me of new friends I once met in Madison.
Of course, the last time I was in Madison it was October and the temperature was hovering around freezing. The temperature when I arrived in Oklahoma City was a perfectly tolerable 93…when compared to the 100 degree temp I’d left behind.
The last time I was in Madison it was the last night of Rogtober. For the previous week I’d traveled around the state of Wisconsin making new friends. That night I was hanging out with one of my oldest friends.
The last time I was in Madison was the last time I got to completely live in the old normal. Five days later I got the news.
--------------------------
I’m surrounded by memories of Chicago. My living room is practically a shrine to the city I call home. The pictures on the walls are of the streets of the city, the White Sox World Series run, Old and New Comiskey, the old Chicago Stadium.
My cube at work has my White Sox calendar on the wall alongside posters I stole from bathroom walls when I went to see Seneca, RCPM, Jessi Lynn. Local H graces two computer screens as my wallpaper.
I came to Dallas desperately clinging to memories of a city I wanted everyone to know I left due to no choice of my own. I was dragged off by the press gang, forced against my will to travel to foreign lands.
It strikes me, though, that being able to carry Chicago with me is a luxury. It strikes me, too, that I can return relatively easily. I cannot comprehend what it would have been like to live in a world before jetliners and automobiles. I cannot fathom being absent from those oft-maligned signs of homogenization of culture: McDonald’s, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble. There’s a comfort to being able to walk in to the same store in Chicago, Dallas, or at any point in between.
It also strikes me that I did have a choice. And I chose this.
------------------------
There ain’t no moral to this story at all
And anything I tell you very well could be a lie
There ain’t no morals to these stories at all
And everything I tell you you can bet will be a lie
Been away from the living
I don’t need to be forgiven
I’m just waiting for this cold black
Sun cracked
Numb inside
Soul of mine
To come alive
--The Refreshments, “Nada”
----------------------------------
It’s strange how a place you’ve only ever stopped in once before to get a Quarter Pounder with Cheese can feel like home.
With the right touch points, the right people, the right moments, a friend met in Madison and again in Oklahoma City, that foreign land can feel just right.
As I nose my car back on to I-35 southbound the idea of going home to Dallas doesn’t feel completely alien for the first time.
The new normal.
“What the fuck am I doing in Texas?”
It’s a strange thought, but mostly because this is the first time I’ve had it in about two weeks.
---------------------------
There ain’t no moral to this story at all
And anything I tell you very well could be a lie
Been away from the living
I don’t need to be forgiven
I’m just waiting for this cold black soul of mine
To come alive
--The Refreshments, “Nada”
---------------------------
Traffic slows to a crawl on northbound I-35. Construction, by all appearances.
All I want to do is get to Oklahoma City. Saturday afternoon construction doesn’t seem like a good way to make that happen.
After a few miles traveled an inch at a time I catch the sight. Lights. Red and blue.
It’s not construction. I feel guilty for getting pissed.
Then I realize that I have friends traveling that same stretch of road. It might be them. I hope not.
--------------------------
Work. Sleep. Eat. Work. Sleep. Eat.
It’s all routine. I get up in the morning and head to the office. I leave the office in the evening. I run errands. I watch TV.
It was the new buzzword at the office last year: “The new normal.”
I drive home from the Kroger remembering a conversation with my boss. The new normal.
It was the new normal that sent me to Dallas. Dallas must become my new normal.
------------------------
There ain’t no moral to this story at all
And anything I tell you very well could be a lie
Been away from the living
I don’t need to be forgiven
I’m just waiting for this cold black
Sun cracked
Soul of mine
To come alive
--The Refreshments, “Nada”
------------------------
Oklahoma City reminds me of Madison, Wisconsin. The Wormy Dog Saloon reminds me of the High Noon Saloon. The new friends I meet – who all made the journey safely – remind me of new friends I once met in Madison.
Of course, the last time I was in Madison it was October and the temperature was hovering around freezing. The temperature when I arrived in Oklahoma City was a perfectly tolerable 93…when compared to the 100 degree temp I’d left behind.
The last time I was in Madison it was the last night of Rogtober. For the previous week I’d traveled around the state of Wisconsin making new friends. That night I was hanging out with one of my oldest friends.
The last time I was in Madison was the last time I got to completely live in the old normal. Five days later I got the news.
--------------------------
I’m surrounded by memories of Chicago. My living room is practically a shrine to the city I call home. The pictures on the walls are of the streets of the city, the White Sox World Series run, Old and New Comiskey, the old Chicago Stadium.
My cube at work has my White Sox calendar on the wall alongside posters I stole from bathroom walls when I went to see Seneca, RCPM, Jessi Lynn. Local H graces two computer screens as my wallpaper.
I came to Dallas desperately clinging to memories of a city I wanted everyone to know I left due to no choice of my own. I was dragged off by the press gang, forced against my will to travel to foreign lands.
It strikes me, though, that being able to carry Chicago with me is a luxury. It strikes me, too, that I can return relatively easily. I cannot comprehend what it would have been like to live in a world before jetliners and automobiles. I cannot fathom being absent from those oft-maligned signs of homogenization of culture: McDonald’s, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble. There’s a comfort to being able to walk in to the same store in Chicago, Dallas, or at any point in between.
It also strikes me that I did have a choice. And I chose this.
------------------------
There ain’t no moral to this story at all
And anything I tell you very well could be a lie
There ain’t no morals to these stories at all
And everything I tell you you can bet will be a lie
Been away from the living
I don’t need to be forgiven
I’m just waiting for this cold black
Sun cracked
Numb inside
Soul of mine
To come alive
--The Refreshments, “Nada”
----------------------------------
It’s strange how a place you’ve only ever stopped in once before to get a Quarter Pounder with Cheese can feel like home.
With the right touch points, the right people, the right moments, a friend met in Madison and again in Oklahoma City, that foreign land can feel just right.
As I nose my car back on to I-35 southbound the idea of going home to Dallas doesn’t feel completely alien for the first time.
The new normal.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
The Rest Was Hard to Explain
I’m weak when you miss me
When you roll me on your tongue
When you whisper me your best moves
And I almost believe you
But you don’t know me at all
I spent days stupid
Nailed to your floor
And I spent nights pushed against you
Just trying to keep warm
But you don’t know me at all
--Matt Nathanson, “Weight of it All”
I still feel the need to pray sometimes.
Sometimes I even do.
The first couple of times this happened it was awkward. A first date, the first meeting in many years between old friends who parted on bad terms. Robbed of the practiced self-assurance of an arrogant surety of audience I hemmed and hawed, grew self-conscious in the knowledge that I was talking to myself as if I had an audience.
Eventually, though, I’d hit a rhythm. It’s in the beginnings of a ritual that we find comfort.
-----------------------------
Dallas is beginning to feel normal to me. I’m building a mental map of the things I’ve seen in the city, the places I’ve been.
I point my Mazda down 114. Dallas is ahead, somehow closer and more accessible than Chicago ever really was.
The windows are rolled down, the moonroof rolled back. Even at 9 pm it’s still above ninety degrees according to the temperature display in my dashboard.
That’s a hard adjustment to make.
-----------------------------
I learned something. As much as I love learning new things, as much as I love increasing my understanding of the world which I inhabit, there are some lessons that…well…
There are some times when ignorance really is bliss.
It’s in the moment of those lessons that I wish there were someone to whom I could pray, when I wish there was someone capable of fixing the unfixable, bringing back the past, picking up the pieces.
It’s where the idea of prayer becomes a comfort. I used to turn the lights off, turn on some appropriately spiritual music, sit on the floor, and talk to the ceiling about that immovable object that was creating such a grand distraction in my life.
-----------------------------
Las Colinas is desolate at 9 o’clock on a week night. I’m sure it’s the sort of place that’s described as “A Great Place to Raise a Family” on some website designed to lure yuppies to the suburbs with the promise of schools that have enough money for air conditioning and microscopes. It’s not the sort of place that’s great to be 29 and single.
My Mazda picks up speed effortlessly. It’s smoother, faster, quicker than any other car I’ve ever had. After three months it’s my favorite car by a wide margin, better than the Concorde, better even than my beloved old Chevy Caprice.
I’ll be in Dallas in minutes. It’s not nearly the production that driving to Chicago was.
-----------------------------
I think that the default antipathy to religion that’s experienced by so many who go through the process of leaving fundamentalist religion is necessary, healthy, even. The asphyxiatingly pious outfit of self-indulgent religion cannot be lightly cast off. They’re church clothes, Sunday best, designed to look good and proper at the expense of comfort and ease of movement.
It’s important to dance about for a bit unencumbered by the notion of what others might think. Sometimes that requires angrily batting away those who hold up the suit, tie, and finely polished shoes and suggest you try them on again. Sometimes it requires putting those clothes away in the dark corners of your closet, never to see the light of day.
But they go in the closet, never the dumpster. Something that was once such an important part of your life cannot be discarded, not completely. It can be ignored and left to gather dust, but that’s the farthest it goes.
-----------------------------
I don’t really get a sense of entering Dallas. I’m in not-Dallas, then I’m in Dallas and that’s the end of the story.
Chicago, though. You enter Chicago. It’s most obvious on the Eisenhower, where the old Post Office stretches over the road, an open mouth swallowing speeding cars. One side is Chicago, the other is not Chicago. The lines drawn on the map don’t matter. I always passed under the Post Office with a sense of excitement and passed under it again with a sense of disappointment.
I have a mental map of Chicago. For the past six months it’s been populated with lists of places I can’t get to, things I can’t do, people I can’t see.
I suppose it’s good that I haven’t been back, haven’t realistically been able to consider going back. It’s not like my last semester at Western, when I’d hop in to my car every other weekend and drive back because…well…because hindsight was still off in the distance and it wasn’t a wasted effort just yet.
It’s good that I can’t go back. It’s forced me to get over my anger at leaving Chicago and begin to think about having to apply that unthinkable, four-letter word to this new place.
Home.
-----------------------------
There’s nothing worse than being confronted with the truth behind a comforting lie.
There are those things we tell ourselves just to get through the day, through the week, come up with a reason to wake up tomorrow and slog through another day. Life is so often a series of small catastrophes that we need to ignore or pretend never happened until they somehow work themselves out. “Tomorrow will be better,” is the most comforting lie of all.
It’s the lie of hope.
In that moment when the comforting lie shatters, though, all that’s left is hopelessness. It’s at that point where it seems the best – the only – thing is prayer.
Another comforting lie.
Words pour out of my mouth.
-----------------------------
It’s strange how something that was so close for so long managed to take on such a mythical status for me. Not so long ago I wanted to leave Chicago. I tried to figure out how to go to schools far away. I looked for jobs in other states.
I thought that if I could leave Chicago I’d be able to re-invent myself, leave the person I was behind.
As I learned to like me I came to love Chicago. I could never stay, though. It swallowed me, then spit me back out to the suburbs. The only thing worse than wanting to go is not being able to stay.
I don’t enter Dallas. I’m not in Dallas, then – suddenly – I am.
-----------------------------
My words bounce off the ceiling, return to my ears.
I am reminded.
I chose this. I chose the life I lead. I decided.
I told myself the comforting lie because I wanted to believe I could go back. I told myself the comforting lie because I wanted to believe that things could change, that things would change. I told myself the comforting lie because it was easier than the truth.
The truth was that there could be no change.
The only options were to leave or…or what?
-----------------------------
I pass through Dallas, turn back towards my apartment.
It’s a drive I never could have taken in Chicago. It’s a drive I never would have taken in Chicago. Whenever I just wanted to drive I invariably headed west.
My life was never in Chicago. It was a place I visited, a place I worshipped.
It was a place that always sent me away at the end of the night.
-----------------------------
The comforting lie disappears. In its stead sits something better.
Prayer is supposed to change the one who prays. It’s supposed to aline the pray-er with the mind of god, suppress worldly desires for ethereal purpose.
It was once the only way I honestly admitted the things that truly bugged me, the things I wished I was, the things I wanted to be no longer, to that all-powerful audience of one who knew it all, anyway. There was no use in lying.
Maybe there’s still a place for prayer. It’s not about admitting to god.
It’s about admitting to me.
There’s no space for the comforting lie between my ceiling and my ears.
It’s strange how quickly sleep arrives when the tension is gone.
When you roll me on your tongue
When you whisper me your best moves
And I almost believe you
But you don’t know me at all
I spent days stupid
Nailed to your floor
And I spent nights pushed against you
Just trying to keep warm
But you don’t know me at all
--Matt Nathanson, “Weight of it All”
I still feel the need to pray sometimes.
Sometimes I even do.
The first couple of times this happened it was awkward. A first date, the first meeting in many years between old friends who parted on bad terms. Robbed of the practiced self-assurance of an arrogant surety of audience I hemmed and hawed, grew self-conscious in the knowledge that I was talking to myself as if I had an audience.
Eventually, though, I’d hit a rhythm. It’s in the beginnings of a ritual that we find comfort.
-----------------------------
Dallas is beginning to feel normal to me. I’m building a mental map of the things I’ve seen in the city, the places I’ve been.
I point my Mazda down 114. Dallas is ahead, somehow closer and more accessible than Chicago ever really was.
The windows are rolled down, the moonroof rolled back. Even at 9 pm it’s still above ninety degrees according to the temperature display in my dashboard.
That’s a hard adjustment to make.
-----------------------------
I learned something. As much as I love learning new things, as much as I love increasing my understanding of the world which I inhabit, there are some lessons that…well…
There are some times when ignorance really is bliss.
It’s in the moment of those lessons that I wish there were someone to whom I could pray, when I wish there was someone capable of fixing the unfixable, bringing back the past, picking up the pieces.
It’s where the idea of prayer becomes a comfort. I used to turn the lights off, turn on some appropriately spiritual music, sit on the floor, and talk to the ceiling about that immovable object that was creating such a grand distraction in my life.
-----------------------------
Las Colinas is desolate at 9 o’clock on a week night. I’m sure it’s the sort of place that’s described as “A Great Place to Raise a Family” on some website designed to lure yuppies to the suburbs with the promise of schools that have enough money for air conditioning and microscopes. It’s not the sort of place that’s great to be 29 and single.
My Mazda picks up speed effortlessly. It’s smoother, faster, quicker than any other car I’ve ever had. After three months it’s my favorite car by a wide margin, better than the Concorde, better even than my beloved old Chevy Caprice.
I’ll be in Dallas in minutes. It’s not nearly the production that driving to Chicago was.
-----------------------------
I think that the default antipathy to religion that’s experienced by so many who go through the process of leaving fundamentalist religion is necessary, healthy, even. The asphyxiatingly pious outfit of self-indulgent religion cannot be lightly cast off. They’re church clothes, Sunday best, designed to look good and proper at the expense of comfort and ease of movement.
It’s important to dance about for a bit unencumbered by the notion of what others might think. Sometimes that requires angrily batting away those who hold up the suit, tie, and finely polished shoes and suggest you try them on again. Sometimes it requires putting those clothes away in the dark corners of your closet, never to see the light of day.
But they go in the closet, never the dumpster. Something that was once such an important part of your life cannot be discarded, not completely. It can be ignored and left to gather dust, but that’s the farthest it goes.
-----------------------------
I don’t really get a sense of entering Dallas. I’m in not-Dallas, then I’m in Dallas and that’s the end of the story.
Chicago, though. You enter Chicago. It’s most obvious on the Eisenhower, where the old Post Office stretches over the road, an open mouth swallowing speeding cars. One side is Chicago, the other is not Chicago. The lines drawn on the map don’t matter. I always passed under the Post Office with a sense of excitement and passed under it again with a sense of disappointment.
I have a mental map of Chicago. For the past six months it’s been populated with lists of places I can’t get to, things I can’t do, people I can’t see.
I suppose it’s good that I haven’t been back, haven’t realistically been able to consider going back. It’s not like my last semester at Western, when I’d hop in to my car every other weekend and drive back because…well…because hindsight was still off in the distance and it wasn’t a wasted effort just yet.
It’s good that I can’t go back. It’s forced me to get over my anger at leaving Chicago and begin to think about having to apply that unthinkable, four-letter word to this new place.
Home.
-----------------------------
There’s nothing worse than being confronted with the truth behind a comforting lie.
There are those things we tell ourselves just to get through the day, through the week, come up with a reason to wake up tomorrow and slog through another day. Life is so often a series of small catastrophes that we need to ignore or pretend never happened until they somehow work themselves out. “Tomorrow will be better,” is the most comforting lie of all.
It’s the lie of hope.
In that moment when the comforting lie shatters, though, all that’s left is hopelessness. It’s at that point where it seems the best – the only – thing is prayer.
Another comforting lie.
Words pour out of my mouth.
-----------------------------
It’s strange how something that was so close for so long managed to take on such a mythical status for me. Not so long ago I wanted to leave Chicago. I tried to figure out how to go to schools far away. I looked for jobs in other states.
I thought that if I could leave Chicago I’d be able to re-invent myself, leave the person I was behind.
As I learned to like me I came to love Chicago. I could never stay, though. It swallowed me, then spit me back out to the suburbs. The only thing worse than wanting to go is not being able to stay.
I don’t enter Dallas. I’m not in Dallas, then – suddenly – I am.
-----------------------------
My words bounce off the ceiling, return to my ears.
I am reminded.
I chose this. I chose the life I lead. I decided.
I told myself the comforting lie because I wanted to believe I could go back. I told myself the comforting lie because I wanted to believe that things could change, that things would change. I told myself the comforting lie because it was easier than the truth.
The truth was that there could be no change.
The only options were to leave or…or what?
-----------------------------
I pass through Dallas, turn back towards my apartment.
It’s a drive I never could have taken in Chicago. It’s a drive I never would have taken in Chicago. Whenever I just wanted to drive I invariably headed west.
My life was never in Chicago. It was a place I visited, a place I worshipped.
It was a place that always sent me away at the end of the night.
-----------------------------
The comforting lie disappears. In its stead sits something better.
Prayer is supposed to change the one who prays. It’s supposed to aline the pray-er with the mind of god, suppress worldly desires for ethereal purpose.
It was once the only way I honestly admitted the things that truly bugged me, the things I wished I was, the things I wanted to be no longer, to that all-powerful audience of one who knew it all, anyway. There was no use in lying.
Maybe there’s still a place for prayer. It’s not about admitting to god.
It’s about admitting to me.
There’s no space for the comforting lie between my ceiling and my ears.
It’s strange how quickly sleep arrives when the tension is gone.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Kissin' the Muse
Summer No 39
Was full and fine
Of women and wine
And water too
Of glass and smoke
And things that broke
That I can’t throw away
Maybe I don’t want to
--RCPM, “Summer No 39”
So going on vacation was a good thing. I got to not be relentlessly focused on work and worries and how my life has changed for a few days.
Isn’t that what vacations are for, though?
Actually, it started before I headed down I-45 on Friday. I had a fascinating conversation with one of the Dallas storytellers on Wednesday after the meeting. I’d been wanting to write about that since, but wasn’t sure how to put it in to proper perspective.
The ten-cent tour, however, is this: I realized that I’ve spent my life focused far, far too much on labels. I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense. I mean, my primary concern growing up was, “Are you living the right kind of Christian life?” It kind of makes labeling mandatory. This is good, that is bad. He’s the right kind of Christian. He isn’t.
So when I left Christianity my main concern was with the question, “What am I now?” Was I an agnostic, an atheist, a skeptic, a humanist, or what?
Oddly enough, that was what all of my posts on car purchasing were really about. It wasn’t about how I viewed cars so much as how I could view myself through the prism of making a car purchase.
What I realized on Wednesday was this: the religious types of labels don’t matter. I’m an agnostic one day, an atheist the next. I’m generally skeptical and have pretty much always been a humanist, but in general I don’t think you need to choose a religion to be either one of those things. When I look at religion it’s through the lens of trying to figure out what growing up religious did to me and how I’ve changed since then. But my views on how the world works and how it should work have come from myriad sources that include religion, folktale, fiction, philosophy, and myth but also include the people in my life, my understanding of history, and my own sense of what is just and what is right. I’m reasonably certain that I’d hold most of the same views I hold now no matter what label I placed on myself, since I’ve drawn from a spectrum of sources that cut across all cultural lines.
And there’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t have to stop being a Local H fan to go to a Peacemakers show. I don’t have to leave rock behind if I want to break out Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.” I don’t have to renounce all music to spend a quiet evening reading a book. The world is big enough, I am big enough that I can contain within myself many labels.
And I’ve realized that I do have three favored labels to apply to myself:
Historian
Writer
Storyteller
That’s who I am. That’s who I want to be. They have nothing to do with my age, gender, race, day job, my religious opinions, or my political affiliations. That’s all stuff that other people want to use to make sure I fit in the proper box on the census or demographics forms. The thing is, having spent most of my life in a situation where I was hyper-aware of the labels, I couldn’t not think in them.
And it’s not like modern American society is much better, anyway. We’re obsessed with demographics and knowing how Product A sells to men between the ages of 18 and 35 and TV Show B is viewed by women from 24 to 42. Population modeling and market research is a science. So the world cares about my gender, age, marital status, race, and yearly income. The church used to care if I was an appropriately true Christian or an apostate of some sort.
It’s all the same question: “Are you going to fit in this box or this other box?”
The problem is that nowhere is there a box for writer, historian, or storyteller. So those things that I want to be, those things that I actually am, are de-valued by the people making the counts. I am supposed to be my race, gender, job title, or income. I’m supposed to be my religious affiliation. I’m supposed to care about those things because those are the common categories that divide and demarcate us.
There’s only one choice to take in response to such things, then: be what I want to be and check off those other little boxes when it comes time to be counted for other purposes. But just because I know what categories I fit in to I don’t have to actually give a flying crap.
Going in to the day on Thursday, then, I realized something. I’ve learned more in these three and a half months in Dallas than I would have if I’d stayed in Chicago. It’s possible that I’ve learned more than I would have learned in three and a half years in Chicago, really. So, in that, it’s been a good move.
Some things you can only learn by being forced to change, after all. I kept doing the same things over and over again back in Chicago. And the fact is that what I was doing was working well enough that I had little incentive to change. So I stayed where I was. And I talked about all of the things that I was going to do or wanted to do. But I never did any of them.
I’ve realized over the last week or so just how much I miss writing and how many excuses I was coming up with to explain why I wasn’t. This might seem like an odd thing to say on this blog, upon which I regularly splatter words. But I largely write on this blog to find reasons not to write other things.
On Sunday night I found myself directly in front of Scott Lucas at Scout Bar in Houston right after someone pulled 12 Angry Months out of the cowboy hat. Almost exactly two years ago I was directly in front of Scott Lucas when he first played 12 Angry Months.
On one level, I was disappointed. I mean, been there, done that…
On another level, though, it was that concert that started some of my favorite Loco to Stay Sane posts.
Then I kind of lost track of what the Loco to Stay Sane posts were supposed to be about. See, the entire point was to say, “I’ve gone through this, now I want to see what’s next.” I just never quite got around to the “see what’s next” part of the conversation.
In truth, I think I was just trying to wallow as an excuse to avoid that moving on bit. Moving on is potentially frightening and the more time you spend wallowing the easier it is to keep wallowing. And if you’re -- like me -- prone to contentment with just good enough, there’s really little incentive to stop wallowing. I can always think of a reason why change will backfire, after all.
Yet, when it gets right down to it, life is what happens while you’re waiting for stuff to happen. So here I am, sitting in Dallas, trying to convince myself that I’ll make some stuff happen later, you know, when I’ve gotten good and fed up and left the state for places less…Texas-y. But, really, what’s going to happen? I wait another year, another two years? Am I going to be listening to Scott Lucas play 12 Angry Months in April of 2012 asking myself what I did with the last two years of my life?
How is that better than making decisions that might actually force me to contemplate staying in Texas for a while? More importantly, am I still going to be writing the same Loco to Stay Sane posts on the eve of my 31st birthday that I was on the eve of my 27th?
That’s pathetic.
What I’ve realized, though, is that what I’m really doing is cannibalizing the same shit I’ve gotten past in order to avoid that big thing, the 800 pound gorilla in the room. I’ve been wanting to channel all this emotional creativity in to a book that I keep finding excuses not to write. So since I’m not really making any important emotional advancements in my own life, as one doesn’t advance while maintaining the status quo
It’s fascinating, really, how some realizations snap things in to place. I’d had an idea for a new story, but I couldn’t make it work. On Wednesday when I realized I needed to stop labeling myself I also realized that I didn’t have to leave that problematic story so literally connected to its original inspiration. I suddenly had the basic story to what I now call “The Wishing Door.” It needs work, but it’s there. Also, I came up with a second story, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was. But that’s okay, it will come back.
The story was there. It was just waiting for me to discover it. So much of life works that same way. The pieces are all there, they’re just waiting for us to push past what we want them to be and discover how they actually fit together.
Either way, I shan’t be abandoning Accidental Historian. There’s a really good chance that it’s going to be less self-absorbed and whiny in the future. I’ll probably be focused more on actual history or something. Who knows? Either way, there will probably be fewer overall posts, but the ones that arrive won’t be full of masturbatory suckage. There'll be history. And religion. And puppies. And maybe some baseball and random concert diaries. I mean, there's Rogapallooza coming up in June, after all.
Also, I spent my last birthday at a Local H show at the Double Door. It looks like I'll be spending my upcoming birthday seeing the Lost Immigrants at place called the Doublewide. It's the small differences that I notice the most. I don't know why I felt the need to include that tidbit. But it's there for your perusal nonetheless...
Was full and fine
Of women and wine
And water too
Of glass and smoke
And things that broke
That I can’t throw away
Maybe I don’t want to
--RCPM, “Summer No 39”
So going on vacation was a good thing. I got to not be relentlessly focused on work and worries and how my life has changed for a few days.
Isn’t that what vacations are for, though?
Actually, it started before I headed down I-45 on Friday. I had a fascinating conversation with one of the Dallas storytellers on Wednesday after the meeting. I’d been wanting to write about that since, but wasn’t sure how to put it in to proper perspective.
The ten-cent tour, however, is this: I realized that I’ve spent my life focused far, far too much on labels. I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense. I mean, my primary concern growing up was, “Are you living the right kind of Christian life?” It kind of makes labeling mandatory. This is good, that is bad. He’s the right kind of Christian. He isn’t.
So when I left Christianity my main concern was with the question, “What am I now?” Was I an agnostic, an atheist, a skeptic, a humanist, or what?
Oddly enough, that was what all of my posts on car purchasing were really about. It wasn’t about how I viewed cars so much as how I could view myself through the prism of making a car purchase.
What I realized on Wednesday was this: the religious types of labels don’t matter. I’m an agnostic one day, an atheist the next. I’m generally skeptical and have pretty much always been a humanist, but in general I don’t think you need to choose a religion to be either one of those things. When I look at religion it’s through the lens of trying to figure out what growing up religious did to me and how I’ve changed since then. But my views on how the world works and how it should work have come from myriad sources that include religion, folktale, fiction, philosophy, and myth but also include the people in my life, my understanding of history, and my own sense of what is just and what is right. I’m reasonably certain that I’d hold most of the same views I hold now no matter what label I placed on myself, since I’ve drawn from a spectrum of sources that cut across all cultural lines.
And there’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t have to stop being a Local H fan to go to a Peacemakers show. I don’t have to leave rock behind if I want to break out Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.” I don’t have to renounce all music to spend a quiet evening reading a book. The world is big enough, I am big enough that I can contain within myself many labels.
And I’ve realized that I do have three favored labels to apply to myself:
Historian
Writer
Storyteller
That’s who I am. That’s who I want to be. They have nothing to do with my age, gender, race, day job, my religious opinions, or my political affiliations. That’s all stuff that other people want to use to make sure I fit in the proper box on the census or demographics forms. The thing is, having spent most of my life in a situation where I was hyper-aware of the labels, I couldn’t not think in them.
And it’s not like modern American society is much better, anyway. We’re obsessed with demographics and knowing how Product A sells to men between the ages of 18 and 35 and TV Show B is viewed by women from 24 to 42. Population modeling and market research is a science. So the world cares about my gender, age, marital status, race, and yearly income. The church used to care if I was an appropriately true Christian or an apostate of some sort.
It’s all the same question: “Are you going to fit in this box or this other box?”
The problem is that nowhere is there a box for writer, historian, or storyteller. So those things that I want to be, those things that I actually am, are de-valued by the people making the counts. I am supposed to be my race, gender, job title, or income. I’m supposed to be my religious affiliation. I’m supposed to care about those things because those are the common categories that divide and demarcate us.
There’s only one choice to take in response to such things, then: be what I want to be and check off those other little boxes when it comes time to be counted for other purposes. But just because I know what categories I fit in to I don’t have to actually give a flying crap.
Going in to the day on Thursday, then, I realized something. I’ve learned more in these three and a half months in Dallas than I would have if I’d stayed in Chicago. It’s possible that I’ve learned more than I would have learned in three and a half years in Chicago, really. So, in that, it’s been a good move.
Some things you can only learn by being forced to change, after all. I kept doing the same things over and over again back in Chicago. And the fact is that what I was doing was working well enough that I had little incentive to change. So I stayed where I was. And I talked about all of the things that I was going to do or wanted to do. But I never did any of them.
I’ve realized over the last week or so just how much I miss writing and how many excuses I was coming up with to explain why I wasn’t. This might seem like an odd thing to say on this blog, upon which I regularly splatter words. But I largely write on this blog to find reasons not to write other things.
On Sunday night I found myself directly in front of Scott Lucas at Scout Bar in Houston right after someone pulled 12 Angry Months out of the cowboy hat. Almost exactly two years ago I was directly in front of Scott Lucas when he first played 12 Angry Months.
On one level, I was disappointed. I mean, been there, done that…
On another level, though, it was that concert that started some of my favorite Loco to Stay Sane posts.
Then I kind of lost track of what the Loco to Stay Sane posts were supposed to be about. See, the entire point was to say, “I’ve gone through this, now I want to see what’s next.” I just never quite got around to the “see what’s next” part of the conversation.
In truth, I think I was just trying to wallow as an excuse to avoid that moving on bit. Moving on is potentially frightening and the more time you spend wallowing the easier it is to keep wallowing. And if you’re -- like me -- prone to contentment with just good enough, there’s really little incentive to stop wallowing. I can always think of a reason why change will backfire, after all.
Yet, when it gets right down to it, life is what happens while you’re waiting for stuff to happen. So here I am, sitting in Dallas, trying to convince myself that I’ll make some stuff happen later, you know, when I’ve gotten good and fed up and left the state for places less…Texas-y. But, really, what’s going to happen? I wait another year, another two years? Am I going to be listening to Scott Lucas play 12 Angry Months in April of 2012 asking myself what I did with the last two years of my life?
How is that better than making decisions that might actually force me to contemplate staying in Texas for a while? More importantly, am I still going to be writing the same Loco to Stay Sane posts on the eve of my 31st birthday that I was on the eve of my 27th?
That’s pathetic.
What I’ve realized, though, is that what I’m really doing is cannibalizing the same shit I’ve gotten past in order to avoid that big thing, the 800 pound gorilla in the room. I’ve been wanting to channel all this emotional creativity in to a book that I keep finding excuses not to write. So since I’m not really making any important emotional advancements in my own life, as one doesn’t advance while maintaining the status quo
It’s fascinating, really, how some realizations snap things in to place. I’d had an idea for a new story, but I couldn’t make it work. On Wednesday when I realized I needed to stop labeling myself I also realized that I didn’t have to leave that problematic story so literally connected to its original inspiration. I suddenly had the basic story to what I now call “The Wishing Door.” It needs work, but it’s there. Also, I came up with a second story, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was. But that’s okay, it will come back.
The story was there. It was just waiting for me to discover it. So much of life works that same way. The pieces are all there, they’re just waiting for us to push past what we want them to be and discover how they actually fit together.
Either way, I shan’t be abandoning Accidental Historian. There’s a really good chance that it’s going to be less self-absorbed and whiny in the future. I’ll probably be focused more on actual history or something. Who knows? Either way, there will probably be fewer overall posts, but the ones that arrive won’t be full of masturbatory suckage. There'll be history. And religion. And puppies. And maybe some baseball and random concert diaries. I mean, there's Rogapallooza coming up in June, after all.
Also, I spent my last birthday at a Local H show at the Double Door. It looks like I'll be spending my upcoming birthday seeing the Lost Immigrants at place called the Doublewide. It's the small differences that I notice the most. I don't know why I felt the need to include that tidbit. But it's there for your perusal nonetheless...
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
No Place to Hide to Keep from Running
Now don’t tell me that part of the story
Where the cowboy falls in love
When he traded in his pistol and his saddle
And the stars above
But when the candles’ burning down
And when midnight comes around
And all the best that we can hope for
Is to be laughing when we finally hit the ground
--The Refreshments, “Sin Nombre”
I tried writing this post once before. I even set it to publish this morning but when I woke up I deleted it. It was too bitter. Too…not at all the point.
I suppose I was just feeling bitter the first time I tried to write it. I don’t know. That happens.
This morning I was reading Slacktivist’s latest Tribulation Force entry. He finally got to the end of one of the worst romantic comedy of errors plots in the history of fiction, which lead to a discussion of the general fucked-up-ness of Evangelical attitudes towards sexuality. Growing up in that world I was well aware of its…well, fucked-up-ness, but I’d always believed I’d emerged from that world more or less unscathed.
I generally avoid the Madonna/whore dichotomy, for one. I’m well aware of the crazy idea that women can, and often are, horny while men aren’t always uncontrollably sex-crazed. I was even aware of the fact that the sex drive is a completely natural and human thing that couldn’t just be prayed away. These, by the way, are the sorts of things that help tremendously in the process of deciding to leave the crazy little world of Evangelicalism. It’s not so much that I was like, “I wanna leave so I can have sex!”* but the bit where I realize that my church world was actively attempting to deny reality and insulate me from those things that might cause me to embrace said reality.
Either way, as I was thinking about Buck and Chloe’s, um, romance-ish thingy, and the post where I attempted to conjure thoughts of a girl who I once thought could make or break my world.** I suddenly recalled a stray thought I’d had upon reminding myself of her. It went, “I can’t actually imagine her engaging in something as crass as sex.”
Now, remember, for a while in my life she was my image of perfection. Not just, um, potential mate-ly perfection (to invent a word), but godly perfection. She was both the wonderful woman and the Knight of Faith. I know that she didn’t see herself that way. First of all, she did have faults. I was largely shielded from them, since it’s not like we hung out all the time or had intimate discussions of our failings and sins, but I know that she had fault since I know she was, in all actuality, human. And I know she was aware of her faults and wasn’t exactly living in denial. Second, I’m pretty sure that even if she was that wonderful, she wouldn’t have let it go to her head.
But perhaps I’m letting the sepia tones of pleasant memory color my opinions. To make a completely pointless side-note, I’m pretty sure that this is the sort of thing that would ruin any sort of “angry atheist” persona people might want to paint me with. There are still people, places, and times that I remember quite fondly. What I’m not a fan of is the part where I basically had to sneak away because I knew that there would be people who treated me as less than human for leaving. I’m also not a fan of the bits where I learned that I was only valuable as long as I was perceived as being on the right side and doing the work I was expected to do.
Really, though, one of the reasons that I know the woman I once thought was the greatest paragon of virtue probably wasn’t and was probably aware of it is because I know myself. There were people who looked up to me as a great example of what a Christian should be. Hell, as I recall, there was a time or two when she told me that she admired certain aspects of my faith. Yet for much of that time in my life I was angry and hoping like hell no one would discover who I really was. And, of course, my doubts about the reality of the Evangelical worldview started long before I left. Long before I realized them, really.
This isn’t to say that I think she was the same as me. It’s just that I’ve realized that the doubts and sins were far more prevalent than anyone wanted to admit. And I’ve found out that attempting to cover such things up was far more widespread than anyone probably realized. Because if we dug too deep in to someone else’s convenient cover we would have had to face our own lies and denials. There’s no fun in that.
So what’s the point of all this, then? Honestly, I really don’t know. In general I’ve grown past the place where I was six years ago. But it’s a little strange to realize that there’s a still a little bit inside of me that can actually run the phrase, “engaging in something as crass as sex,” without any reflection of the connotations of such a thought.
It also makes me wonder if I don’t still have a little bit of the attitude that there’s what type of woman I want to be with and what type of woman I think I can be with. Then again, “Wouldn’t actually deign to have sex,” seems like a really, really shitty quality to desire in a potential mate. It’s got to be right up there with, “Doesn’t want to be seen with you in public,” or, “Has a real thing for the comedic stylings of Dane Cook.”
Maybe I’m just over thinking it. Perhaps that thought was something random. Perhaps it was just an artifact of my Evangelical existence. Maybe it just means that I can’t see her engaging in something as crass as sex with me.
I’ve come a long way in the last four years. People who have met me in the last couple of years actually find it difficult to believe when I casually mention my previous religiosity. I guess it’s kind of the reverse of when people who haven’t talked to me in a few years suddenly get caught up on where I am. I think I’m a walking mental whiplash generator.
Either way, I’ve realized that I’ve been running for a long time. I move from convenient excuse to convenient excuse. I wasn’t good enough once. I wanted to dedicate myself to god once. I was too hurt. I was too damaged. I couldn’t find the right person. I was too busy to look. I was moving to Texas. I’m going to be moving back to Chicago as soon as I possibly can.
Rode hard and put up wet
I ain’t down but I can’t get up yet
It’s a long ride back
To the way I want to feel
Sun down all across the plain
I been sore before I’ll be sore again
No place to hide
To keep from running
--The Refreshments, “Sin Nombre”
I think I’ve always wanted to be a cowboy. I’ve always wanted to be able to pack up and head off at a moment’s notice. I used to think that I wanted that for the romance of the idea. It’s pretty cool to be unattached, able to go where you want to go and do what you want to do. It sounds a lot like living the dream, that dream that comes without mortgages and desk jobs and nagging and whiny kids. That dream that says you never have to worry about growing up and fucking up because there’s always a horizon and a sunset a few hours away.
But what if that isn’t it at all? What if I’ve wanted to be an outlaw because I didn’t think anyone would actually think enough of me to want me to stay?
That changes the story a bit, doesn’t it?
---------------------------
*…Yeah…fat lotta good that did me…
**This, by the by, is an interesting thought, too. I remember feeling quite strongly at the time that it would somehow ruin my life if nothing ever happened with her. This was the sort of thing that kept me up at night. It’s been about six years since I talked to her last and in between now and then I’ve had one spectacular failure of a relationship and a string of non-starters. Even at that I don’t regret the bit where nothing happened with this one-time end-all-be-all. Now, that’s not to say that I’ve decided she’s not worthwhile. If she popped up again I’d totally be in favor of hanging out and, say, finding out what she’s been up to. There are even conceivable scenarios where actually starting a romantic relationship of some sort with her would be cool. But, ultimately, I’ve made it through these last six years without her in my life and I’m reasonably certain I’ll be able to handle another sixty without seeing her again.
It’s weird, but that realization creates in me a great deal of hope. There’s always something or someone new around the next corner. It's just hard to realize that when you're young and haven't lived too much of your life just yet.
Where the cowboy falls in love
When he traded in his pistol and his saddle
And the stars above
But when the candles’ burning down
And when midnight comes around
And all the best that we can hope for
Is to be laughing when we finally hit the ground
--The Refreshments, “Sin Nombre”
I tried writing this post once before. I even set it to publish this morning but when I woke up I deleted it. It was too bitter. Too…not at all the point.
I suppose I was just feeling bitter the first time I tried to write it. I don’t know. That happens.
This morning I was reading Slacktivist’s latest Tribulation Force entry. He finally got to the end of one of the worst romantic comedy of errors plots in the history of fiction, which lead to a discussion of the general fucked-up-ness of Evangelical attitudes towards sexuality. Growing up in that world I was well aware of its…well, fucked-up-ness, but I’d always believed I’d emerged from that world more or less unscathed.
I generally avoid the Madonna/whore dichotomy, for one. I’m well aware of the crazy idea that women can, and often are, horny while men aren’t always uncontrollably sex-crazed. I was even aware of the fact that the sex drive is a completely natural and human thing that couldn’t just be prayed away. These, by the way, are the sorts of things that help tremendously in the process of deciding to leave the crazy little world of Evangelicalism. It’s not so much that I was like, “I wanna leave so I can have sex!”* but the bit where I realize that my church world was actively attempting to deny reality and insulate me from those things that might cause me to embrace said reality.
Either way, as I was thinking about Buck and Chloe’s, um, romance-ish thingy, and the post where I attempted to conjure thoughts of a girl who I once thought could make or break my world.** I suddenly recalled a stray thought I’d had upon reminding myself of her. It went, “I can’t actually imagine her engaging in something as crass as sex.”
Now, remember, for a while in my life she was my image of perfection. Not just, um, potential mate-ly perfection (to invent a word), but godly perfection. She was both the wonderful woman and the Knight of Faith. I know that she didn’t see herself that way. First of all, she did have faults. I was largely shielded from them, since it’s not like we hung out all the time or had intimate discussions of our failings and sins, but I know that she had fault since I know she was, in all actuality, human. And I know she was aware of her faults and wasn’t exactly living in denial. Second, I’m pretty sure that even if she was that wonderful, she wouldn’t have let it go to her head.
But perhaps I’m letting the sepia tones of pleasant memory color my opinions. To make a completely pointless side-note, I’m pretty sure that this is the sort of thing that would ruin any sort of “angry atheist” persona people might want to paint me with. There are still people, places, and times that I remember quite fondly. What I’m not a fan of is the part where I basically had to sneak away because I knew that there would be people who treated me as less than human for leaving. I’m also not a fan of the bits where I learned that I was only valuable as long as I was perceived as being on the right side and doing the work I was expected to do.
Really, though, one of the reasons that I know the woman I once thought was the greatest paragon of virtue probably wasn’t and was probably aware of it is because I know myself. There were people who looked up to me as a great example of what a Christian should be. Hell, as I recall, there was a time or two when she told me that she admired certain aspects of my faith. Yet for much of that time in my life I was angry and hoping like hell no one would discover who I really was. And, of course, my doubts about the reality of the Evangelical worldview started long before I left. Long before I realized them, really.
This isn’t to say that I think she was the same as me. It’s just that I’ve realized that the doubts and sins were far more prevalent than anyone wanted to admit. And I’ve found out that attempting to cover such things up was far more widespread than anyone probably realized. Because if we dug too deep in to someone else’s convenient cover we would have had to face our own lies and denials. There’s no fun in that.
So what’s the point of all this, then? Honestly, I really don’t know. In general I’ve grown past the place where I was six years ago. But it’s a little strange to realize that there’s a still a little bit inside of me that can actually run the phrase, “engaging in something as crass as sex,” without any reflection of the connotations of such a thought.
It also makes me wonder if I don’t still have a little bit of the attitude that there’s what type of woman I want to be with and what type of woman I think I can be with. Then again, “Wouldn’t actually deign to have sex,” seems like a really, really shitty quality to desire in a potential mate. It’s got to be right up there with, “Doesn’t want to be seen with you in public,” or, “Has a real thing for the comedic stylings of Dane Cook.”
Maybe I’m just over thinking it. Perhaps that thought was something random. Perhaps it was just an artifact of my Evangelical existence. Maybe it just means that I can’t see her engaging in something as crass as sex with me.
I’ve come a long way in the last four years. People who have met me in the last couple of years actually find it difficult to believe when I casually mention my previous religiosity. I guess it’s kind of the reverse of when people who haven’t talked to me in a few years suddenly get caught up on where I am. I think I’m a walking mental whiplash generator.
Either way, I’ve realized that I’ve been running for a long time. I move from convenient excuse to convenient excuse. I wasn’t good enough once. I wanted to dedicate myself to god once. I was too hurt. I was too damaged. I couldn’t find the right person. I was too busy to look. I was moving to Texas. I’m going to be moving back to Chicago as soon as I possibly can.
Rode hard and put up wet
I ain’t down but I can’t get up yet
It’s a long ride back
To the way I want to feel
Sun down all across the plain
I been sore before I’ll be sore again
No place to hide
To keep from running
--The Refreshments, “Sin Nombre”
I think I’ve always wanted to be a cowboy. I’ve always wanted to be able to pack up and head off at a moment’s notice. I used to think that I wanted that for the romance of the idea. It’s pretty cool to be unattached, able to go where you want to go and do what you want to do. It sounds a lot like living the dream, that dream that comes without mortgages and desk jobs and nagging and whiny kids. That dream that says you never have to worry about growing up and fucking up because there’s always a horizon and a sunset a few hours away.
But what if that isn’t it at all? What if I’ve wanted to be an outlaw because I didn’t think anyone would actually think enough of me to want me to stay?
That changes the story a bit, doesn’t it?
---------------------------
*…Yeah…fat lotta good that did me…
**This, by the by, is an interesting thought, too. I remember feeling quite strongly at the time that it would somehow ruin my life if nothing ever happened with her. This was the sort of thing that kept me up at night. It’s been about six years since I talked to her last and in between now and then I’ve had one spectacular failure of a relationship and a string of non-starters. Even at that I don’t regret the bit where nothing happened with this one-time end-all-be-all. Now, that’s not to say that I’ve decided she’s not worthwhile. If she popped up again I’d totally be in favor of hanging out and, say, finding out what she’s been up to. There are even conceivable scenarios where actually starting a romantic relationship of some sort with her would be cool. But, ultimately, I’ve made it through these last six years without her in my life and I’m reasonably certain I’ll be able to handle another sixty without seeing her again.
It’s weird, but that realization creates in me a great deal of hope. There’s always something or someone new around the next corner. It's just hard to realize that when you're young and haven't lived too much of your life just yet.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Sin Nombre
I forgive the world right now
Still I play the chump’s role every time
My world’s the surface of the moon
My heart’s down in a diamond mine
Like the black stars of Memphis, moaning on,
When your white Lexus comes
To drive
Me out
Drive me to the edge of town
Try to feel nothing on command
When your white Lexus comes
The thrill
Be damned
Damn it to the last damned man.
--Mike Doughty, “White Lexus”
“Have you ever been in love?”
It’s a question I’ve been asked more than once. It’s generally not the sort of question that’s asked in a vacuum, either. See, people who learn of my history with relationships for the first time often learn that I’m far more jaded than they ever suspected. This is the nature of things, I suppose.
The interesting thing is that I’m not jaded in the traditional sense. It’s not that I have that stereotypical, “All women are bitches,” attitude so prevalent in men who have had a string of failed relationships. For that matter, I haven’t exactly had a string of failed relationships. I’ve had two. I’m less than two months from my twenty-ninth birthday and I’ve had exactly two relationships. One was an ill-conceived relationship with someone I didn’t actually like very much. The other, well, it was ill-conceived, but because I wanted so very much for it to work even though I knew it wouldn’t. I knew it couldn’t.
“Have you ever been in love?”
When I’m asked that question I hesitate. No matter how many times I’ve been asked I don’t know what to say in response. My hesitance is generally taken as a, “No.” But it’s so much more complicated than that.
The fact is that, yes, I’ve been in love. I’ve waited with breathless anticipation to hear that one voice on the phone that will make everything better. I’ve felt my heart leap at hearing from her that she loves me. I’ve counted down minute after expectant minute until I could see her again. I’ve stared at my ceiling in the dark, lost in wonder that this most amazing person wants nothing more than to spend her time with me.
Me. A guy who’s a bit overweight. A guy who’s massively geeky. A guy who’s never, ever dreamed of being noticed by someone as amazing, much less appreciated. Much less loved. There’s a moment of realization in any random, torrid love affair. You’ve got this person -- this amazing, unbelievable person – who you can’t get enough of standing in front of you and all of the sudden the realization hits. “She feels the same exact way you do right now.”
Is there anything better in the world than that feeling? Could winning the Lottery or getting a big promotion come even remotely close?
“Have you ever been in love?”
I don’t know. I couldn’t tell you.
See, I know those initial weeks and months of bliss. But I also know what came afterwards. There were the fights, the arguments, the moments of petty name-calling and agonizing silence. There were the times I wanted to storm out just to see if she’d give a shit. There were the moments I wanted her to storm out so I could show her that I didn’t.
There’s the knowledge that I could have avoided all of that if I’d tried. There was a moment of clarity when I knew it wouldn’t work. I just knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that all was over save the epilogue. But I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to fight. I wanted to try. I wanted her to try, even though I was pretty sure she wouldn’t.
“Have you ever been in love?”
Don’t hate me
But I wish you were still a fool for me
I just want the chance to show you
What a total fool I could be
I fucked up the day I let you go
And I know I deserve to be on my own but
Everything you are to me is etched upon my life
--Scott Lucas & the Married Men, “You Put a Spell on Me”
One of the most beautiful women I ever knew is from Houston. She came up to Wheaton and – coincidentally – in to my life, for college. As far as I knew, she went back to Houston afterwards and never left. Or she never went back. Or she went back and has since gone elsewhere. But in my mind she’s in Houston right now because I don’t know anything else of her life since we last parted company.
I think I once thought I was in love with her. It was, as most love is, unreciprocated. If she ever even noticed I have no way of knowing. I imagine she did, since I didn’t exactly try to keep it secret. But she most certainly didn’t feel the need to lead me on or help me entertain any thoughts that she felt the same way. I’m closer to her now than I’ve been in six years, at least assuming she’s still in Houston. For that matter, I’ll be in Houston in less than a week. I imagine that maybe, just maybe, I’ll see her while I’m there.
But – chances are – I won’t. The universe doesn’t work that way. And even if it does, it won’t matter. She’s probably married now. Or, if not, she’s probably close. It’s been nearly six years, after all. I highly doubt that she’s managed, Penelope-like, to avoid the suitors who have undoubtedly lined up to try to take her hand.
Even at that, it wouldn’t matter. I met her in church while she was attending Wheaton College. As if that wasn’t bad enough, more than anything about her I admired her faith.
“Have you ever been in love?”
There’s a passage in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling where he describes the Knight of Faith. In broad strokes the Knight of Faith is one who exists in both this world and the next, treading lightly on the ground of this base, fallen world and ready at a moment’s notice to pirouette and spring in to the next. In my mind she was a Knight of Faith.
I was not. I was nothing. I was base, fallen, unlovely, unlovable. It was little wonder, really, that she wouldn’t deign to feel about me the way I felt about her.
When I headed off to Western Illinois University I wanted to be a different person. I’d decided to start losing weight the spring before. See, my idea was that all of my problems were because I was fat. And because I couldn’t see past my own weight issues, I assumed no one else could, either.
When I wanted to stop fighting, stop trying, give up, I imagined that the people in my life were mocking me, telling me I’d never succeed. She was one of the people whose mocking laughter I’d imagine in an attempt to call up the strength to keep going.
By the time I hit WIU I just wanted to forget about her. I finally found the one person who could make that happen.
“Have you ever been in love?”
Absolutely. Unquestionably. Without a doubt.
It didn’t matter, though. The one time I loved someone who actually loved me back it ended terribly. Beyond terribly, really. To the point where I decided it wasn’t worth attempting to fall in love again.
So here I am in Dallas. A thousand miles from the person I once wanted to love for the rest of my life. A thousand miles from the one person who made me forget everyone who came before. Two hundred and fifty miles from the one person I thought I couldn’t forget before I met her. And none of it matters. Not even a little bit.
I wonder what’s become of her. And her. Both of them, really.
I wonder, too, if either ever wonders what’s become of me.
I suspect not. I don’t think I mattered much at all to one of them. I think I hurt the other too much.
This, I think, is why I hesitate. Have I ever been in love? I don’t know. Is it really love if it’s unreciprocated? Is it really love if it ends with nothing but pain?
I decided when I moved to Texas that I wanted my life to be different. I think that’s why the idea of buying a new car caused me so much stress. It was that pull between the comfortable known and the stressful unknown. Choices, especially the choices to find those things that cause the greatest happiness, are difficult. They require effort.
They require faith.
“Have you ever been in love?”
It’s the wrong question.
Yes. I’ve been in love. I’ve been in love with women who didn’t reciprocate. I’ve been in love with women who were in love with me but, ultimately, didn’t want to follow through.
Their love doesn’t matter. My love for them doesn’t matter. The question isn’t, “Have you ever been in love.”
It’s, “Do you want to be in love again?”
The answer to that question is as simple as it is terrifying.
Yes.
Still I play the chump’s role every time
My world’s the surface of the moon
My heart’s down in a diamond mine
Like the black stars of Memphis, moaning on,
When your white Lexus comes
To drive
Me out
Drive me to the edge of town
Try to feel nothing on command
When your white Lexus comes
The thrill
Be damned
Damn it to the last damned man.
--Mike Doughty, “White Lexus”
“Have you ever been in love?”
It’s a question I’ve been asked more than once. It’s generally not the sort of question that’s asked in a vacuum, either. See, people who learn of my history with relationships for the first time often learn that I’m far more jaded than they ever suspected. This is the nature of things, I suppose.
The interesting thing is that I’m not jaded in the traditional sense. It’s not that I have that stereotypical, “All women are bitches,” attitude so prevalent in men who have had a string of failed relationships. For that matter, I haven’t exactly had a string of failed relationships. I’ve had two. I’m less than two months from my twenty-ninth birthday and I’ve had exactly two relationships. One was an ill-conceived relationship with someone I didn’t actually like very much. The other, well, it was ill-conceived, but because I wanted so very much for it to work even though I knew it wouldn’t. I knew it couldn’t.
“Have you ever been in love?”
When I’m asked that question I hesitate. No matter how many times I’ve been asked I don’t know what to say in response. My hesitance is generally taken as a, “No.” But it’s so much more complicated than that.
The fact is that, yes, I’ve been in love. I’ve waited with breathless anticipation to hear that one voice on the phone that will make everything better. I’ve felt my heart leap at hearing from her that she loves me. I’ve counted down minute after expectant minute until I could see her again. I’ve stared at my ceiling in the dark, lost in wonder that this most amazing person wants nothing more than to spend her time with me.
Me. A guy who’s a bit overweight. A guy who’s massively geeky. A guy who’s never, ever dreamed of being noticed by someone as amazing, much less appreciated. Much less loved. There’s a moment of realization in any random, torrid love affair. You’ve got this person -- this amazing, unbelievable person – who you can’t get enough of standing in front of you and all of the sudden the realization hits. “She feels the same exact way you do right now.”
Is there anything better in the world than that feeling? Could winning the Lottery or getting a big promotion come even remotely close?
“Have you ever been in love?”
I don’t know. I couldn’t tell you.
See, I know those initial weeks and months of bliss. But I also know what came afterwards. There were the fights, the arguments, the moments of petty name-calling and agonizing silence. There were the times I wanted to storm out just to see if she’d give a shit. There were the moments I wanted her to storm out so I could show her that I didn’t.
There’s the knowledge that I could have avoided all of that if I’d tried. There was a moment of clarity when I knew it wouldn’t work. I just knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that all was over save the epilogue. But I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to fight. I wanted to try. I wanted her to try, even though I was pretty sure she wouldn’t.
“Have you ever been in love?”
Don’t hate me
But I wish you were still a fool for me
I just want the chance to show you
What a total fool I could be
I fucked up the day I let you go
And I know I deserve to be on my own but
Everything you are to me is etched upon my life
--Scott Lucas & the Married Men, “You Put a Spell on Me”
One of the most beautiful women I ever knew is from Houston. She came up to Wheaton and – coincidentally – in to my life, for college. As far as I knew, she went back to Houston afterwards and never left. Or she never went back. Or she went back and has since gone elsewhere. But in my mind she’s in Houston right now because I don’t know anything else of her life since we last parted company.
I think I once thought I was in love with her. It was, as most love is, unreciprocated. If she ever even noticed I have no way of knowing. I imagine she did, since I didn’t exactly try to keep it secret. But she most certainly didn’t feel the need to lead me on or help me entertain any thoughts that she felt the same way. I’m closer to her now than I’ve been in six years, at least assuming she’s still in Houston. For that matter, I’ll be in Houston in less than a week. I imagine that maybe, just maybe, I’ll see her while I’m there.
But – chances are – I won’t. The universe doesn’t work that way. And even if it does, it won’t matter. She’s probably married now. Or, if not, she’s probably close. It’s been nearly six years, after all. I highly doubt that she’s managed, Penelope-like, to avoid the suitors who have undoubtedly lined up to try to take her hand.
Even at that, it wouldn’t matter. I met her in church while she was attending Wheaton College. As if that wasn’t bad enough, more than anything about her I admired her faith.
“Have you ever been in love?”
There’s a passage in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling where he describes the Knight of Faith. In broad strokes the Knight of Faith is one who exists in both this world and the next, treading lightly on the ground of this base, fallen world and ready at a moment’s notice to pirouette and spring in to the next. In my mind she was a Knight of Faith.
I was not. I was nothing. I was base, fallen, unlovely, unlovable. It was little wonder, really, that she wouldn’t deign to feel about me the way I felt about her.
When I headed off to Western Illinois University I wanted to be a different person. I’d decided to start losing weight the spring before. See, my idea was that all of my problems were because I was fat. And because I couldn’t see past my own weight issues, I assumed no one else could, either.
When I wanted to stop fighting, stop trying, give up, I imagined that the people in my life were mocking me, telling me I’d never succeed. She was one of the people whose mocking laughter I’d imagine in an attempt to call up the strength to keep going.
By the time I hit WIU I just wanted to forget about her. I finally found the one person who could make that happen.
“Have you ever been in love?”
Absolutely. Unquestionably. Without a doubt.
It didn’t matter, though. The one time I loved someone who actually loved me back it ended terribly. Beyond terribly, really. To the point where I decided it wasn’t worth attempting to fall in love again.
So here I am in Dallas. A thousand miles from the person I once wanted to love for the rest of my life. A thousand miles from the one person who made me forget everyone who came before. Two hundred and fifty miles from the one person I thought I couldn’t forget before I met her. And none of it matters. Not even a little bit.
I wonder what’s become of her. And her. Both of them, really.
I wonder, too, if either ever wonders what’s become of me.
I suspect not. I don’t think I mattered much at all to one of them. I think I hurt the other too much.
This, I think, is why I hesitate. Have I ever been in love? I don’t know. Is it really love if it’s unreciprocated? Is it really love if it ends with nothing but pain?
I decided when I moved to Texas that I wanted my life to be different. I think that’s why the idea of buying a new car caused me so much stress. It was that pull between the comfortable known and the stressful unknown. Choices, especially the choices to find those things that cause the greatest happiness, are difficult. They require effort.
They require faith.
“Have you ever been in love?”
It’s the wrong question.
Yes. I’ve been in love. I’ve been in love with women who didn’t reciprocate. I’ve been in love with women who were in love with me but, ultimately, didn’t want to follow through.
Their love doesn’t matter. My love for them doesn’t matter. The question isn’t, “Have you ever been in love.”
It’s, “Do you want to be in love again?”
The answer to that question is as simple as it is terrifying.
Yes.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
The Cross and the Glyph, Part 2
I call upon my demons as I call upon my saints
I lend an equal ear to each and I suffer no complaints
When the furies be your ushers and the shadows be your guide
The best way out of hell is through the other side
--Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers, “State of the Art”
It always amuses me when I miss my own point. I write or say something, then go back and think, “Wait. That’s totally not where I wanted to go with that.” Most likely, too, by the time I get around to getting back to my point, I’ve forgotten what it was again and managed to go off on some further rabbit trail.
Although, really, I consider this a good thing on some level. In writing you need two things: an idea and a framework. I often have one but not the other. It’s also likely that I have ideas that don’t fit the frameworks that are currently on my mind, either. My general response to that in the past was to force it. The result would often involve me getting my point across but writing a deeply, deeply unwieldy piece. I’ve learned, slowly and haltingly, that it’s best to just let the ideas lie for a while. Eventually a framework and an idea will combine. Sometimes, too, it won’t fit together perfectly, but in modification I find harmony and beauty, but have to leave something on the cutting room floor.
That’s okay, too. The idea will come full circle eventually.
I had to do something in order to hit this point in my writing, however. I had to stop writing for someone else. There was a time when I said that there was no reason to write if you weren’t intending to sell the thing you wrote. It was too much work, too much bother to do otherwise. Not surprisingly, I didn’t write much then. I didn’t like writing.*
There was also a time when I wrote with the intention of being able to present anything I’d written to a test audience of pastors and junior high youth group kids. I literally wrote with the thought, “What would my junior highers think if they read this?” in the back of my mind. This goes far, far beyond the simplistic, “Well, just don’t put swears in to it.” There’s a lot of explanation that can go in to this, but suffice it to say that there’s a specific framework that all Evangelical Christian entertainment is supposed to fit and all ideas have to fit that framework. No ifs, ands, or buts. There’s a reason that one of my most frequently cast epithets about that world is “artless.”**
Then I started this blog. I worried about hit counters and whatnot. I still kind of do. But I don’t write anything on here that’s not, ultimately, what I want to write. Writing for Right Behind was much the same thing. There’s a story I was working on over there that I really want to continue, but I haven’t had time. Same with The Repository.
But, really, Accidental Historian is where it started and where it remains. Ultimately I tell stories here, and they’re the stories that interest me, whether I’m talking about the history of Persia or my own personal history. Every post is a little bit of self-reflection, a little bit of therapy, a little reminder that, above all, I write for me and I do it because words flow through my veins.
It’s also why one of my favorite RCPM lyrics ever comes from “Lemons:”
I am the fat native, skinny-dippin, semi-professional tourist…
a gold watch at the bottom of the sea
Tis time I depose of those petty tyrants
One on the throne, One inside me
Two petty tyrants. One out there, one in here.
That petty tyrant inside? Yeah. I know that guy. He’s the one who says, “No, don’t do that. If you do that no one will like you. Be this way, instead. Be like everyone else. It’s the only way to make it.”
He’s much harder to get rid of than the tyrant on the throne. I suppose that’s the advantage of living where I do. Some enthroned tyrants are more imposing. But this one? Not so much.
It’s why I’m so offended when I get asked if I thought about what my leaving Christianity did to someone else. That’s the tyrant on the throne speaking through his self-appointed agents. I mean, think about it. Christians are supposed to consider Jesus the king of their lives and live out their days according to his whims. Evangelicals take this to such an extreme that they create a police state in the church and are attempting to bring that police state to the, well, state.
So when I’m asked if I thought about what my personal decision would do to someone else, I know it’s that god tyrant thinking that I no longer listen to but can still hear. I also know why it’s supposed to be a slam dunk argument. You’re encouraged as long as you remain in the Evangelical circles to be constantly paranoid about how others are looking at you. It’s not stated in those terms, but there’s a constant reminder to be a witness and to be a good role model, by which they mean, “Follow all of the arbitrary rules,” not, “Show people how to truly live.”
This is the topsy-turvy world in which Tony Campolo once famously said to a group of college students that (and I paraphrase), “[X number of] starving people have died while I gave this talk and no one here gives a shit. And what’s worse, you’re more concerned that I just used a four-letter word.”
There’s a reason I regard leaving Evangelical Christianity and leaving Christianity as completely separate events. There’s a reason I still like Fred Clark and respect my parents’ church back in Wheaton. There’s also a reason why I try to make it very clear that when I mock Christianity, I mock the Christianity I once knew.
My supposedly loving savior was a petty tyrant who needed to be cleared from his throne. And I’m not really entirely sure that most people actually, honestly believed in him. Or it. Whatever.
I delved ever so slightly in to this in the post I didn’t know was part one, but it’s worth looking at again.
I don’t really think that most people I used to go to church did much of anything for or because of god. I think that when we sang we did so specifically to get that feeling that meant, “The presence of god is here.” I think that when we prayed we did it because we believed it would get us stuff. When we behaved it was because we knew someone was watching and we’d hear about our transgressions. It’s just that it was the other people in the room who were watching and them that we’d hear from.
Eventually that petty tyrant on the throne installs another inside the believer.
I think we all have one of those, anyway, so there’s a constant conflict. It’s called a conflict between “spirit” and “flesh,” but I think it’s really our internalized insecurities and desires against our socialized insecurities and pressures.
I’m told that I left so I could sin. I’m told I gave up on god so I could go live a life of selfish hedonism. I always shake my head at that assertion, since the only “sin” I engage in is the one where I reject god. I’m also reasonably sure that I have a steadier moral compass than I ever had before, back when I was mostly concerned with looking good instead of being good. And I certainly like me more than I did before.
So that brings us, inevitably, back to that switch from the cross to the Glyph. I offer, again, words from “Lemons:”
Bring on the change
Let's keep it simple now
Don't confuse your wants with your needs
Believe in Love, forsake your greed
And give away what you want to receive
Again, it’s not that I’ve chosen Roger Clyne as my new god. It’s that in the words of Peacemakers songs I find all of those things I wanted to say but couldn’t find words for. Believe in love, forsake greed, give away what you want to receive.
I no longer write or live for an audience. And what I get in exchange is worth way more than a book deal or the sure knowledge that everything I do is a-ok for an audience of sheltered thirteen year-olds.
I’m still finding that the petty tyrant inside of me had a decent grip on things. I suppose he’ll always be there to some extent. But little by little his influence weakens.
I suppose it helps, too, that my former audience is now a thousand miles away and I know that if they notice me or think about my changes there’s naught to do but shrug or fume with impotent rage. I moved to Dallas and found I’d finally escaped from Christianity. Funny, that.
-------------------------
*I just realized that I’m following that same exact pattern in storytelling right now. It’s not so much about “selling” as “being able to tell at festivals and whatnot.” So I’m not actually exploring ideas so much as intended audiences and things that can be communicated in seven minutes or less. Gaah. Bad Geds. Bad.
**To be fair, there are artists who manage to avoid this. I tend to point to Over the Rhine, Andrew Peterson, Eric Peters, and Mitch McVicker when I need an example. They’re not mainstream. There’s a reason…
I lend an equal ear to each and I suffer no complaints
When the furies be your ushers and the shadows be your guide
The best way out of hell is through the other side
--Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers, “State of the Art”
It always amuses me when I miss my own point. I write or say something, then go back and think, “Wait. That’s totally not where I wanted to go with that.” Most likely, too, by the time I get around to getting back to my point, I’ve forgotten what it was again and managed to go off on some further rabbit trail.
Although, really, I consider this a good thing on some level. In writing you need two things: an idea and a framework. I often have one but not the other. It’s also likely that I have ideas that don’t fit the frameworks that are currently on my mind, either. My general response to that in the past was to force it. The result would often involve me getting my point across but writing a deeply, deeply unwieldy piece. I’ve learned, slowly and haltingly, that it’s best to just let the ideas lie for a while. Eventually a framework and an idea will combine. Sometimes, too, it won’t fit together perfectly, but in modification I find harmony and beauty, but have to leave something on the cutting room floor.
That’s okay, too. The idea will come full circle eventually.
I had to do something in order to hit this point in my writing, however. I had to stop writing for someone else. There was a time when I said that there was no reason to write if you weren’t intending to sell the thing you wrote. It was too much work, too much bother to do otherwise. Not surprisingly, I didn’t write much then. I didn’t like writing.*
There was also a time when I wrote with the intention of being able to present anything I’d written to a test audience of pastors and junior high youth group kids. I literally wrote with the thought, “What would my junior highers think if they read this?” in the back of my mind. This goes far, far beyond the simplistic, “Well, just don’t put swears in to it.” There’s a lot of explanation that can go in to this, but suffice it to say that there’s a specific framework that all Evangelical Christian entertainment is supposed to fit and all ideas have to fit that framework. No ifs, ands, or buts. There’s a reason that one of my most frequently cast epithets about that world is “artless.”**
Then I started this blog. I worried about hit counters and whatnot. I still kind of do. But I don’t write anything on here that’s not, ultimately, what I want to write. Writing for Right Behind was much the same thing. There’s a story I was working on over there that I really want to continue, but I haven’t had time. Same with The Repository.
But, really, Accidental Historian is where it started and where it remains. Ultimately I tell stories here, and they’re the stories that interest me, whether I’m talking about the history of Persia or my own personal history. Every post is a little bit of self-reflection, a little bit of therapy, a little reminder that, above all, I write for me and I do it because words flow through my veins.
It’s also why one of my favorite RCPM lyrics ever comes from “Lemons:”
I am the fat native, skinny-dippin, semi-professional tourist…
a gold watch at the bottom of the sea
Tis time I depose of those petty tyrants
One on the throne, One inside me
Two petty tyrants. One out there, one in here.
That petty tyrant inside? Yeah. I know that guy. He’s the one who says, “No, don’t do that. If you do that no one will like you. Be this way, instead. Be like everyone else. It’s the only way to make it.”
He’s much harder to get rid of than the tyrant on the throne. I suppose that’s the advantage of living where I do. Some enthroned tyrants are more imposing. But this one? Not so much.
It’s why I’m so offended when I get asked if I thought about what my leaving Christianity did to someone else. That’s the tyrant on the throne speaking through his self-appointed agents. I mean, think about it. Christians are supposed to consider Jesus the king of their lives and live out their days according to his whims. Evangelicals take this to such an extreme that they create a police state in the church and are attempting to bring that police state to the, well, state.
So when I’m asked if I thought about what my personal decision would do to someone else, I know it’s that god tyrant thinking that I no longer listen to but can still hear. I also know why it’s supposed to be a slam dunk argument. You’re encouraged as long as you remain in the Evangelical circles to be constantly paranoid about how others are looking at you. It’s not stated in those terms, but there’s a constant reminder to be a witness and to be a good role model, by which they mean, “Follow all of the arbitrary rules,” not, “Show people how to truly live.”
This is the topsy-turvy world in which Tony Campolo once famously said to a group of college students that (and I paraphrase), “[X number of] starving people have died while I gave this talk and no one here gives a shit. And what’s worse, you’re more concerned that I just used a four-letter word.”
There’s a reason I regard leaving Evangelical Christianity and leaving Christianity as completely separate events. There’s a reason I still like Fred Clark and respect my parents’ church back in Wheaton. There’s also a reason why I try to make it very clear that when I mock Christianity, I mock the Christianity I once knew.
My supposedly loving savior was a petty tyrant who needed to be cleared from his throne. And I’m not really entirely sure that most people actually, honestly believed in him. Or it. Whatever.
I delved ever so slightly in to this in the post I didn’t know was part one, but it’s worth looking at again.
I don’t really think that most people I used to go to church did much of anything for or because of god. I think that when we sang we did so specifically to get that feeling that meant, “The presence of god is here.” I think that when we prayed we did it because we believed it would get us stuff. When we behaved it was because we knew someone was watching and we’d hear about our transgressions. It’s just that it was the other people in the room who were watching and them that we’d hear from.
Eventually that petty tyrant on the throne installs another inside the believer.
I think we all have one of those, anyway, so there’s a constant conflict. It’s called a conflict between “spirit” and “flesh,” but I think it’s really our internalized insecurities and desires against our socialized insecurities and pressures.
I’m told that I left so I could sin. I’m told I gave up on god so I could go live a life of selfish hedonism. I always shake my head at that assertion, since the only “sin” I engage in is the one where I reject god. I’m also reasonably sure that I have a steadier moral compass than I ever had before, back when I was mostly concerned with looking good instead of being good. And I certainly like me more than I did before.
So that brings us, inevitably, back to that switch from the cross to the Glyph. I offer, again, words from “Lemons:”
Bring on the change
Let's keep it simple now
Don't confuse your wants with your needs
Believe in Love, forsake your greed
And give away what you want to receive
Again, it’s not that I’ve chosen Roger Clyne as my new god. It’s that in the words of Peacemakers songs I find all of those things I wanted to say but couldn’t find words for. Believe in love, forsake greed, give away what you want to receive.
I no longer write or live for an audience. And what I get in exchange is worth way more than a book deal or the sure knowledge that everything I do is a-ok for an audience of sheltered thirteen year-olds.
I’m still finding that the petty tyrant inside of me had a decent grip on things. I suppose he’ll always be there to some extent. But little by little his influence weakens.
I suppose it helps, too, that my former audience is now a thousand miles away and I know that if they notice me or think about my changes there’s naught to do but shrug or fume with impotent rage. I moved to Dallas and found I’d finally escaped from Christianity. Funny, that.
-------------------------
*I just realized that I’m following that same exact pattern in storytelling right now. It’s not so much about “selling” as “being able to tell at festivals and whatnot.” So I’m not actually exploring ideas so much as intended audiences and things that can be communicated in seven minutes or less. Gaah. Bad Geds. Bad.
**To be fair, there are artists who manage to avoid this. I tend to point to Over the Rhine, Andrew Peterson, Eric Peters, and Mitch McVicker when I need an example. They’re not mainstream. There’s a reason…
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
The Cross and the Glyph
Had I not known the darkness
I could not love the light
Were it not for gravity there would be no flight
Had I not lost the path, I’d have never found my way
Equal parts my heart I gave to bloom and to decay
--Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers, “State of the Art”
It’s strange, I suppose, being as comfortable as I am with my most glaring (at least to me, I suppose) weakness. I have different terms for it depending on the day and how I’m feeling, but the idea boils down to this: I’m pretty much emotionally stunted.
I used to think that I was emotionless, but I’ve come to admit that there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary, so I’ve realized it’s something else. It’s more about protection, really. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out, for instance, that it’s a good part of the reason why I’m so damned enthralled by The Crazy. Crazy Girls are the female equivalent of the Bad Boy, forcing you to revolve your world around them and never actually committing to anything. There’s a sort of inevitability about the bitter end, but there’s also a weird comfort. When all is said and done you can blame everything on them and bask in the glow of your friends saying, “She wasn’t good enough for you, anyway.”
As long as it’s “her” fault, then, I never have to confront my own issues. I’m your fairly typical commitment-phobic guy, I suppose. But I’m definitely not out sowing my wild oats and living it up, crazy bachelor style. I’m worried about how choices limit options down the road. If I do [this], then it will limit my ability to do [that] and [the other thing]. It’s why I had a hard time buying a new car. The potential future realization of, “Oh, crap, I can’t do this because I have a car payment coming up,” constantly threatened to override the potential pleasure of having a new car.
There’s a reason why I couch my decision to leave Christianity behind in the terms of a bad break up. There’s also a reason, I’m finally realizing, why those from my former life who approach me on the subject do so in the way they do. Much like I don’t want to have to confront my commitment issues, they don’t want to confront the doubts I once did. My story is scary to those who want to stay in the embrace of the Christianity I left behind. I know this because my story was once scary to me.
But that is ultimately what makes it so interesting, too. See, people love to tell me why I left Christianity. I wasn’t around the right kinds of Christian. I just wanted to go off and sin. I was never really a Christian to begin with. There’s probably someone out there who thinks it’s all because of Satan, too. I tend to ignore such things, since I’m 99% sure they’d never understand the real issues even if they sat still long enough to listen.
Moreover, every once in a while I impinge myself upon the consciousness of my former brethren for a bit. When that happens I find out that I’ve changed. I find out that it’s sad. It’s depressing to the people who remain in church that I’m a different person, that I left. Alternately, it makes them angry. They want to know how I could have done what I did to them.
Maybe god isn’t the crazy girl in this situation. Maybe the church is. As long as my life revolved around my church it was okay. As long as I wanted to do everything for god it was okay. But as soon as I said, “Nah, I’m good,” I was a pariah. I was persona non grata to all but a few.
Really, though, if you want to be objectified, there’s no better place to go than church. If you’re respected you’re a “great man/woman of god.” If you’re not you’re a sinner. If you leave you’re a missions project. If you’re not there yet, same thing.
I was one of those “great man of god,” types. I was always up to help, to volunteer, to do the work that needed to be done. I was regarded as having Biblical knowledge and wisdom to be emulated. But when I left my church I was ignored. When I went public with my lack of faith I was approached with a barely modified version of the shtick presented to the unknown, nameless nonbeliever.
I was even told by one person that we’d never actually been friends. For a while this hurt me, until I realized he was right. I was an object to him then, I’m an object to him now. It’s just that the sort of object I am has changed. Such is life, I suppose.
The fact is, though, that my lack of ability to go on a second date should tell you something. My lack of ability to get a new car without worrying about the outcome to the point of distraction should, too. No decision that I make is made lightly. I didn’t leave Christianity for shits and giggles. I didn’t do it just so I could sin without repercussion, either.
Fact is that it’s not like there was a shortage of sin then or a surplus of it now. I don’t do anything now that I didn’t do then. Really, the only net effect of leaving church for me is that I no longer go to church. I even still get up at church time on Sunday mornings. It’s the best time to go grocery shopping in this god sodden city (back in Brookfield I generally did it at 7 pm on Sundays. Take from that what you will).
It’s the dirty little not-so-secret of Evangelical Christianity. “Sinful behavior” is rampant. Everyone is just really good at rationalizing it, explaining it, and promising to do better the next time. Then they find someone who is even more of a sinner and secretly (or not so secretly) find relief in that. Apparently god will smite that other person’s sin first or something. Hell, I’m not even entirely sure that there’s a strong god belief in Evangelical Christianity.
Seriously. Follow me down the rabbit hole for a moment. There are twin obsessions that occupy the time of a huge chunk of people in Evangelical Christianity: trying to prove god and trying to find other people who are more sinful than yourself. As such, faith is placed in simplistic “proofs” of god’s existence. Belief is phrased in requests for the Holy Spirit to show up and show god’s power to the assembled multitude. Conversation then revolves around how everyone felt when the Holy Spirit arrived. I could do a similar trick without god, though.
Pretend I want to impress some friends and am hanging out with a bunch of people who have never, ever seen a basketball game. I could tell everyone about Michael Jordan. Then I could quote some stats and give the years of the championship seasons. Then, once everyone was suitably impressed, I could claim to be friends with Michael Jordan. I could then call Michael Jordan, hand my phone around to everyone in the room one at a time, and have him say a few things. I could then have everyone sit down and say what Michael Jordan said to them and how they felt.
Now let’s pretend that I don’t actually know Michael Jordan (okay, it’s not so much “pretend” as “admit reality”). I’d actually just changed a buddy’s name in my cell phone to read “Michael Jordan” and called with a pre-arranged “pretend to be Michael Jordan” thing going. It’s all a giant scam.
I haven’t actually proved Michael Jordan exists. I haven’t introduced anyone to Michael Jordan. But I have tricked them in to a belief in Michael Jordan. And that I have a direct line to him.
Welcome to church, Evangelical Christianity style. It’s all a lot of smoke and mirrors. But the way they keep you in is by telling you that Michael Jordan, erm, god, will be pissed if you leave. Or express doubt. Or masturbate. You definitely shouldn’t masturbate. And don’t even think about masturbating while thinking about two dudes doing it. Two chicks is probably okay, though, for reasons I’ve never really been able to understand.
Also, if you do masturbate (and by “if” I mean “when”),* never, ever admit it to anyone. Ever. Period. And get really uncomfortable if anybody else brings it up. Sex is evil and icky and disgusting and gross. Until you get married. Then it’s awesome and everything will work perfectly the first time around with no problems.
Anyway, the larger point to all of this is pretty simple: I didn’t leave Evangelical Christianity because I liked sin. I left it because I like sanity. Then I left Christianity in general because it didn’t make any sense.
I used to wear a cross on a gold chain around my neck. I took it off one day and haven’t put it back on since. Some time later (I can’t really tell you when, but it was a minimum of six months) I replaced it with this:
That’s the Glyph, the official symbol of Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers. It’s hard to explain why, really. I wasn’t able to figure it out, since I’ve never had an overwhelming urge to wear Local H or Idlewild jewelry. So I’d toss out a generic, “They’re my favorite band.” Or, “It’s a reminder to live life to its fullest.”
Yesterday I was listening to “Mekong” and it finally hit me.
I came all the way
From Taipei today
Now Bangkok's pouring rain
And I'm going blind again
And I haven’t seen my girl
For fifteen thousand miles
But is it true
It's always happy hour here
If it is I'd like to stay a while
And as cliché as it may sound
I'd like to raise another round
And if you bottle’s empty
Help yourself to mine
Thank you for your time
And here's to life
And, of course, there’s “Better Beautiful than Perfect.”
we can hear the bossa nova
we can sway the night away
the steps to the dance are best left up to chance
better beautiful than perfect, anyway
and while the moon wanes and waxes
death and taxes are lurking out there
Life is grand, Love is real and Beauty is everywhere
There’s “State of the Art,” too. And a dozen others. Almost everything in the library, really.
I didn’t start wearing The Glyph because I needed something to believe in. I didn’t turn to RCPM to give me meaning. I did it because Roger Clyne gives voice to something I wasn’t allowed to believe before. Happiness comes in spite of pain. Beauty exists in spite of perfection. Taking a chance is way better than waiting for certainty. It’s all about raising a glass and toasting life even though it seems like there’s nothing to do but complain.
But why complain? Why worry? Life is much better when lived and lived well.
I grew up in a church that taught me to cover my flaws and pray for the next life. I was told that the only thing I could do with the pain and doubt was give it up to Jesus, let him take care of everything. And if I still worried, if I still doubted, it was because I wasn’t good enough.
But crying to god felt like Jon Favreau calling his ex in Swingers. I’d call and call and never get an answer, never get a return message. Except you know that bit where he finally decides to move on and -- exactly as predicted -- she calls? Yeah. My phone still hasn’t rung. And I’m pretty sure that it’s been predicted to me that I’d be getting that call on the god line.
It hasn’t happened. And I’ve moved on to smaller and better things.
So raise another round.
And here’s to life.
-------------------------
*Should any Christian who’s where I used to be read this, I have something to say: it’s okay. I know how it feels to be sitting there in “admit your sins” times and “accountability partners” times. I know how much it sucks to not actually admit the real sins because you’re terrified the other person will put you on the “sinners” list and look down on you. The person sitting across from you plays with him- or herself, too. I can practically guarantee it. There’s a reason for it, too. It’s fun. Anyone who tells you different is asexual or lying in between bouts of whacking it.
And, seriously, for the guys out there, girls like sex, too (I mean, I don’t have direct proof of this, but I’ve heard it from any number of impeccable sources). Now, they might not like having sex with YOU, per se. But that’s okay, too. It happens. Either way, if there’s a surplus of beating off in your world, it’s not their fault for being all sexy and just letting their boobs be all, you know, in existence and stuff. It’s because they’re attractive and you’re normal. They’re probably feeling the same exact way about someone right now, too. Maybe even you, but I hear Naveen Andrews and Daniel Dae Kim are all the rage these days.**
Also, I suddenly feel like starting a career as an old-timey Revivalist preacher for masturbation. That would be the awesomest altar call ever. You know, until everyone whipped their junk out. Although even then it could be awesome, depending on demographics and seating charts.
Further, the whole, “Never admit you masturbate,” thing has such a strong grip (pun intended) that even now there’s a little voice in my head saying, “Whoa, buddy. You should tone this down. Maybe erase a couple paragraphs…”
Ain’t it grand?
** Ironic, really, considering that I run hot and cold with Yunjin Kim and am part of that, “I just want someone to kill Kate right now,” cadre. So now that Juliet is dead and Emile de Raven seems to be wearing a bird’s nest as a wig, I watch a show that’s pretty much all man candy. And considering that Sawyer seems to be allergic to shirts, I’m pretty sure that if I were gay I’d have known it sometime around Season 2.
Aren’t you glad we have these talks?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)