The Clever Kris » religion

Excuse me, did you just call me a fad?

The Clever Kris — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 18:47:17 +0000

I learned what the meaning of fad was the hard way.

And I don’t just mean having to look it up in a dictionary. Since, I come before the mandatory use of home computers.

I had a personal encounter with the word.

It’s surprising, though, what one’s personal history of fads says about oneself. For me, in retrospect, my string of passing fancies was equivalent to that annoying solid beep of an emergency broadcast—“ in the event of an actual emergency, contact information will be provided.”

That second part there, that never happened.

Some of my “interests” were rather unique to me and me alone. Aside from the veritable sexual deviant scream of my addiction to jelly bracelets, in third grade, and the cheerleader-look of a Scrunchie bunched up on the top of my hip, right or left, holding a wad of a paint-splattered or tie-died T-shirt, I also went through a phase of wearing bells knotted at the end of various widths of ribbon necklaces.

Just because, I guess…

God, the praying my family must have done behind my Bugle Boy button-up back.

It got worse, though.

I wanted charms for my bracelets; I rarely left any day of the school week during the early 90s without a tight-roll to my blue jeans; and I believed with my whole heart in color coordinating my swatch watch with my slouch socks or, on fun days, with any of my enviable collection of Hypercolor shirts.

My fads were cries for help. Loud, in-your-face, gossip-creating cries. I see that now.

Granted, I never did fall for the love-you-and-leave-you lure of a fanny pack, but really, is that any consolation, considering the above-mentioned atrocities?

I suppose, looking back, one could argue that I was merely trying to bridge the brokenness in the wake of having no parental influence from either of the two people who, having come together after some football game, “worked together” in giving me life.

I think I was just secretly a greedy child. I liked attention.

Even if it came at the expense of name calling, as it did that confusing afternoon in which a young boy said something along the lines of “You’re a blah blah blah, and a something else yadda, yadda, yadda, fad.” Or, so, that’s what I thought he was referencing.

It turns out that it wasn’t.

What’s the point, here, you ask?

Last night, while channel surfing, I came across a National Geographic special on intersexed children. It’s much more of a biological occurrence than you might at first think.

I found it both difficult to watch and too engaging not to.

I think I found this to be the case because it’s such a grossly misunderstood occurrence, and not just for intersexed children—for any that are different, be it from Nature or Nurture. My heart bleeds a lot for the infirm, unfortunate, and overlooked. It doesn’t take much to get me “on your side.”

Keeping me there, though, usually involves a free meal, and/or a bottle of Marco Negri.

What disturbed me the most, though, and thus has led me to this discussion of fads, was the story I saw last night of a young seven-year-old boy who told his parents that he was supposed to be a “girl.”

Instead of arguing with him, they said, Fine, OK, you’re a girl. And, living in Japan—they’re an American military family, no less—they have allowed their son to become their daughter. The child is happy, thoughtful, mannered, and despite the unbearable amount of verbal abuse this child has put himself through at school, seemingly well-rounded.

Perhaps that last comment has you perplexed.

I speak, though, from a place that knows. Because for many, many years of my life my whole purpose of being, my every prayer, was predicated on the off-chance I might go to sleep one night and wake up the next morning, a girl. It reached such a pinnacle of anxiety and self-hatred that two things emerged: a very, very uncomfortable confrontation involving U.L., Salathiel, the late Uncle Jerry, a young Hispanic man named Gabriel, and Uncle Jerry’s unsuspecting next-door neighbors in Pocatello, Idaho; and, an admission to myself of a real truth: I was unhappy in my own skin…and felt very alone.

I used to also pray at night for cancer, instead, because at least that could be removed. Or treated.

Nothing floats with quite the same consistency as truth. It, more than almost anything else in the world, will always rise to the surface, and when it does, it’s about as heavy as a paper plate.

The internal struggle of identity is beyond description, whether it involves the pressure to play sports when you’d rather read, or the precarious balance of being a boy when you really, truly think you’re not one.

I imagine puberty will be a living nightmare for this child.

And I know that psychiatry would argue against such parental white-flagging to what may appear as the misled whim of an adolescent. But, deeper still, is the fact that I believe we’re drawn, as early an age as two or three, perhaps, to the things that shape us. No matter what we do to hide them, pretend they’re Nothings, overlook them as valid, they are there as signposts, warnings, or words of encouragement.

How much easier it would be for all children, who struggle with identity and social placement, if we (as the proverbial outsiders, since it “always happens to someone else,” right?) just took that knowledge in stride. Fads are important barometers, but barometers aren’t meant to be alarming. They’re meant to gauge pressure.

I’m not saying fads force us into being the shape we appear to be born into. Rather, they let us know what we’re capable of becoming; they’re indicators, decisions, options. And the only thing that has to pass…is the moment, if needed, or the awkwardness of realizing something’s not quite right, even when it doesn’t feel wrong.

Fads are an invitation to the party. They’re gifts of permission. Saying, OK, so you’re a boy who likes dolls. Well, go for it. Ride it out.

And, though, it’s usually best done in the privacy of your own home; sometimes, you gotta go to Idaho.

I know this is just a theory, but it works…on me. I just have to recall the things that I found myself most drawn to throughout my childhood to see that the picture I’ve painted for myself was an extremely colorful one, albeit with some really heavy lines and a little too Olan Mills.

It was a piece of art, all the same.

Fads are totems of Identity, our growth as a person.

For my cousin Mikey, in fifth grade, it was a bolo tie or bust. While I snuck a cameo out of Tigi’s jewelry case and wore it over my breast pocket. He had the entire Ewok Village; I had an Easy Bake. He collected Garbage Pail Kids cards; I framed the adoption papers of my two Cabbage Patch Kids. He preferred Aerosmith and Poison; I bought every single Amy Grant ever released, as a crossover pop-artist, as well as the one-hit wonder and brief tastemaker that was Karen White. He played in the mud and looked for worms to go fishing. I made mud pies and served them to the ants.

And my family, they had to know. One Christmas, Aunt Ruth gave him an envelope with money in it. To me, she gave a doll that she’d crocheted.

I guess they just assumed it was a phase.

As if.

But, now, it’s not like I didn’t do boy-things. I did. I loved to go fishing; I grew my own vegetables (still do), and on more than once occasion, I’ve aimed and shot a BB gun.

It’s just that as I got older, I was more inclined to buy acid-wash jeans that had BB bullets sewn down the leg in a swoop design. Remember those? That didn’t last for long.

I was an unavoidable totem, too tall and obvious, until the windbreaker made its debut. And everyone had one.

Thank god for the windbreaker, though.

Otherwise, I’d never know how much I didn’t want to fit in.

A word about lesbians…

The Clever Kris — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:46:11 +0000

So, Mississippi’s made the news, again. Have you heard?

Itawamba County’s School Board has decided to cancel the local high school’s prom because one student, a lesbian, wanted to wear a tuxedo and bring her girlfriend as her date.

Of course, the media is licking its chops, I’m sure, over this newest political deep-fried Panic Button. All the more so because it’s straight from the Heart of Dixie, also known as the Buckle of the Bible Belt. It was only a little more than a decade ago, wasn’t it?, when we were splayed across the nation’s newsrooms (again, the culprit being North Mississippi) over school prayer.

Today, it’s a gay girl and the threat of a prom. (Though, the more serious danger, to me, would be the fact that a high school gym would be filled to the rim with acne, teenagers, and a spiked punch bowl).

I’m a bit confused, to be honest, about all of it. And what I think it boils down to isn’t really politics. It’s personalities…and the fact that change is only OK when it’s already happened; in other words, become tradition.

I grew up straddling generations: mine versus U.L.’s, who tipped his hat to Tigi’s generation which started at the end of the 19^th century. So, I’m well aware of the discrepancies between our two struggling cultures.

I’ve tried valiantly to marry these two competing frames of reference my entire life. I’ve tried to take what’s good about U.L.’s worldview and tie its thin thread of logic around the finger of my own, more liberal perspective.

Because I do not believe they are all that mutually exclusive.

No, they’re a lot more alike than we want to admit. What’s different, you see, isn’t our personal philosophies; it is Us. As individuals.

That’s why politics doesn’t work…and why it does.

Every issue that faces this country, and aside from “hurt feelings” and “recognition” (which, granted, are important in the world of politicizing), there are still far greater things to worry about, I think, than a lesbian in a tuxedo, dancing with her girlfriend.

Even if it’s in Mississippi.

Until the age of eighteen, I spent as much time in my homegrown Southern Baptist church as I did in school. I know all too well the fervor of conviction that guides the decisions most of Mississippi’s religious make.

I used to be just like them. And while there’s a lot of good in being that way, there’s an equal amount of bad in being that way. Which we ignore in the South.

And that’s the problem.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe in Jesus. But, I also believe in Red Bull. And what I mean by that is this: We are all grown-ups. We ought to know important from ridiculous. We ought to be able to distinguish between faith and fact. We ought to have no trouble recognizing progress from protest.

But, as Itawamba proves, we don’t.

What’s at stake here has nothing at all to do with “rules” or “policies.” It’s reputation that we’re worried about. It’s what people will think, what people will say about Us, about Mississippi, what they will say about our “personalities,” as a people, as southerners, and as Christians.

It’s about letting go of what we never questioned because we were afraid that if we did, we might find out that we were wrong. Or, heaven forbid, that there was more than way to answer the question. Because, like it or not, Christian or no, this young girl, this lesbian, is Mississippi, too.

I learned that lesson the hard way, myself.

When I was in college, I saw what my church friends were doing, behind closed doors. Hell, I was doing some of it myself. And I well remember a party I threw at my apartment one weekend in which, I’m certain, several people became pregnant, if not drunk, and high…and all those others things that were so, so “wrong.”

Don’t misunderstand: stupid people do stupid things, and when stupid things are done, there are consequences.

But, that’s not the same thing as morality.

It just leaves the same kind of scar.

In small doses, these friends accepted any number of “social ills” and “misfits.” Much like Jesus did, in his own day. But, there was an interesting correlation: as the number of people grew, the amount of support lessened.

For instance, no one minded that I was gay, at first. When it was just a few of us, hanging out. But, that evening, in my own apartment, when the number of those who had congregated grew into double-digits, and we were sitting around my den playing Truth or Dare, and my “truth” was brought out (because I didn’t think it was that big of a deal; it was old news to me—plus, it was MY APARTMENT), well God Above, you would have thought the world exploded.

I was mortified. I would never do anything to intentionally harm my family’s good name or embarrass myself, but I mean, for the love of God, where was all the support I’d been given, earlier?

Who was the bigger coward: Me, for facing my personality, my own struggles, or the fair-weathers, who were so worried about what “people would think” for befriending a homosexual?

This is why, in my opinion, politics will never truly work; we cannot separate ourselves from our upbringing. It’s why the majority never represents the majority. Because any majority must necessarily be incestuous, and feed on itself. It’s philosophical cannibalism. When any given Congressman is sitting in his/her office weighing the consequences of their decisions, their upcoming votes, when he/she is all alone and searches within to find the “truth,” what do you think they rely on?

Nine out of ten times, their faith, I believe. Whatever it may be. Currently, the majority of our Congressmen are Christians.

And their internecine struggle forces us all to constantly compromise…which may work on the larger issues: democracy, health care reform, I don’t know…but it never seems to work on the smaller issues, which really aren’t, in retrospect, issues at all. They’re scapegoats.

I mean, really: the entire prom is cancelled because of a tuxedo and a lesbian?

I can’t even remember if I went to my prom. (I did, but you get the point).

Besides, it was the after-party that needed supervision.

But, let’s stay pragmatic about it, shall we? Let’s make this a “teachable moment.” What is learned by cancelling the prom? What does the student body benefit from this decision?

I can’t think of a single, real thing.

I mean, with school prayer, an actual constitutional right was being re-addressed, that of the separation of church and state. And as much as I believe in God, Jesus, Christianity, the Works, I also recognize the importance of the Separation of Church and State. I believe in that, too.

But, what’s the lesson with this current Mississippi joke of “standing up for what we believe is right?” This cancelled prom?

All I can think of is this: If you’re going to stand up for what you believe in around here, you better make sure it’s on the right foot.

Phenergan’s Wake

The Clever Kris — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:01:11 +0000

I’ve had an ill-behaving stomach, as of late.

Which has kept me up at nights, uneasy and nauseous. I couldn’t eat much of anything yesterday; I had to practically force myself to eat the leftover cheese sticks, a bowl of soup, and half a chocolate bar (with hazelnuts).

So, I did.

But, I couldn’t bear to go another night with fitful sleep; so last night, to combat this, I took a Phenergan. It’s a pill prescribed for upset stomachs, etc. We fear I might have IBS. (That’s quite a conversation-starter, there, is it not?)

It took a couple of hours, but it did the trick: it settled my stomach enough and made me drowsy enough to fall asleep and stay that way through most of the night. Though I fell asleep on the couch and as is the usual piper’s fee for that, I woke up with aching hips.

I also fell asleep with the heating pad on, which, the warning tag clearly indicates, is a no-no.

And the dream I had? Well…it was perfectly Joyce-ian, ironically comic and lengthy. As most of my dreams tend to be. I was, it seems, in my own version of Finnegans Wake, one that I am rightfully going to call, Phenergan’s Wake.

I swear that pun came to me just now.

(And I don’t care if you don’t believe me).

Here’s the dream, in two parts.

PART A: “Keep it down, out there, I’m trying to drink my shower!”

I’m the age I am now, but I’m back in my hometown, and I’m running late to church. I’m supposed to help Nana with the dinner, the setup, etc.

We often would eat dinner at the church, especially if it’s during Revival.

Nana has opted to cook for everyone in the church, by herself, and I have been given the task of setting the tables. Because it is a revival, we have invited everyone in the world. I am responsible for setting what appears to be 1,000 tables. All of which require linens and freeze-dried, hand-painted rose petals.

I have overslept. The only recourse to this is to grab my clothes, which were in the microwave, warming, and to shower at the church.

So, this is what I do.

The shower at the church (a shower which does not exist in real life) is located at the back of the old Fellowship Hall, by the nursery. It is a very tiny shower. And though my body is completely covered by the small shower curtains, my head is not and I am able to talk to all the people who walk by, on their way to the new Fellowship Hall where dinner will be served.

Except, I’m not talking to these people.

I’m yelling at them to “keep it down!” I’m angry at them. They keep asking me to do things, to explain things, to answer questions. I want them to hush because I’m trying to not only take a shower, but to drink it as well from a plastic cup that appeared out of nowhere (and yet that didn’t seem odd because doesn’t everyone take a plastic cup to the shower with them?) because I realized while bathing that I was bathing in holy water.

Which, for the record, has never seen the light of day in a Baptist church.

I somehow put it together that I’m not really in a bathroom, per se, but I’m in a secondary type of Baptistery. I’m showering in a spare, if you will, in case the actual Baptistery in the sanctuary was to break.

I realize I’m shouting to distract the people, the congregation, from noticing that I’m sacrilegiously cleaning myself…with holy water that has found its way in from some Catholic tributary.

They don’t seem to notice, though, or they don’t care…either way, the big problem hasn’t occurred to me yet.

When I’m finished, it hits me: I don’t have a towel.

[NOTE: I wake up in here, somewhere, and go to the bathroom. In a rare event, when I return to the couch, as opposed to my bed because I do not think clearly at night, I continue with the same dream].

PART B: “The turkey isn’t done until the vest matches Diane’s earrings.”

We’re now in the new Fellowship Hall. All the tables are set with linens, rose petals, water glasses, forks. Everyone is in line, and they’re all very excited to eat. It’s as if they’ve not eaten in days.

And they haven’t.

I see a clock on the wall that tells me we’ve been at church for four days. Four solid days. (Of course, some revivals have been known to last even longer – though they allow you time to eat in between sermons).

Nana has truly outdone herself, here. She’s cooked everything known to man: dressing, meatloaf, fried chicken, pies, creamed corn, and for the pièce de résistance, a mammoth turkey.

It’s easily the size of a Tercel.

And it’s wearing a thick, wool vest, stark white…with three marbles for buttons.

She looks at the vest and then shakes her head. She puts it back in the oven, which is sitting above the sink. As a matter of fact, the knob that turns on the hot water, also sets the temperature for the oven.

Everyone groans. They’re very hungry, and she’s not letting anyone fix their plate until the turkey’s done.

“You know the rule.” She says, “The turkey’s not done until its vest matches Diane’s earrings.”

Diane apologizes. She hasn’t worn any earrings today.

[And this is where I woke up].

It’s the first dream I’ve had in a long time that I fully remembered the following morning. I’m not saying that Phenergan is the answer to my restless eyes; I have no desire to be a substance abuser…again.

Though the last time I abused any substance to the point of becoming problematic I was ten and the substance was mashed potatoes, insofar as that counts as a substance.

I loved mashed potatoes. (Potatoes in general, really). And once when I was ten, I ate so many that I vomited. Right there at the Sunday dinner table, in front of Nana.

That’s what I thought, at least, that it was the fault of the mashed potatoes.

The truth was that I was in the process of getting the stomach flu. As you might imagine I assumed it was due to the excessive influx of mashed potatoes I’d consumed that caused the illness. The doctor assured me it was not the mashed potatoes.

I think in lieu of a traditional upbringing, rooted as such in the normal definition of a family with a Father, Mother, and 2.5 children, that familial love was sublimated by food and food preparation. I think it’s the reason for my love/hate relationship with cooking to this day.

Or, maybe I was just an ignorant, greedy child.

I couldn’t look at a potato for months without blushing.

***

Though, as you know, that is certainly not the case today.

Not with potatoes…and not, I pray, with the Phenergan.

I don’t have to use a walker to pump my gas.

The Clever Kris — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 17:19:27 +0000

I have realized, lately, that I am, at best, a third cousin once removed from my own definition of self-awareness.

I like to think I’m savvy and a smooth operator, most of the time, but I had a bit of a bitter pill to swallow yesterday, when, on my way back from Scooba (perish the thought!), I had to stop and get gas.

This is hardly a new thing for me, but unlike my usual stop-and-gos at the Scooba Junction gas station, I had neglected to look at my gas gauge until I was in Brooksville, about twenty minutes north. I had no choice but to pull in at the only other gas station on Highway 45 between Starkville and Scooba.

I can’t remember the feebly-attempted witty name it had (Kountry Korner, or some other god-awful collective rape of the alphabet), so I shall refer to it as a vortex of evil. But, that’s as far as I’ll go because, oddly enough, I’m not here to talk about the gas station itself, other than this last thing: they overprice Every Thing.

No, what I’m here to talk about is the elderly black man with his walker pumping his own gas, which he somehow did by propping the pump itself in between the upper and lower handles of his walker. He left it there, and got back in his car.

I swear I need to get a digital camera.

I had finished pumping my gas, at this point, and as I drove away, he looked up at me.

So, I smiled the same smile I’ve been giving all people-I-don’t-know-but-I-want-to-appear-like-a-decent-human-being for years. He returned my smile with a look that was, if I do say so myself, dismissive and impolite.

I need to frame the rest of the story first, though.

No snake eyes for me.

I have a tendency to turn the rearview mirror onto myself when I drive. It’s silly and a bit narcissistic, but it also makes me feel less alone when I’m on the road. I’m not much in the way of this world, but I can be a fun traveling companion.

Also, I like looking at myself.

And, I’m not one bit ashamed to admit it.

I’m not gorgeous, it’s not that, I just like to see someone I respect looking back at me on my sojourns.

I say that to say this (a lovely phrase for so many cliched reasons), when I offered my smile to this man, I was actually able to catch my own reflection of said smile, in the process.

I’d never noticed this before, but as I drove past him, mulling over his look of disapproval, I, for the first time in my entire life, actually saw the smile that I gave him. The same smile I have given to thousands.

And boy was I in for a shock.

What I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles (but only the King James’ ones) was a sweet, how-do-you-do smile was in fact, a smirk.

I saw it, myself. A bona fide, certified smirk.

To be honest, the big one on the bottom scares me.

All this time, all these years, I thought I was giving a kind, acceptable and welcoming smile and instead, what was coming across my face was a holier-than-thou-even-if-there-could-be-a-week-of-Easter-Sundays grimace of sorts.

I looked as if I were a snooty man whose sole purpose was to drive through evil gas stations and through nothing but the sheer force of my facial expression alone moderate comeuppance to others.

I couldn’t believe it. I hated that look on my face, and above all, certainly because I wasn’t snooty.

Or, was I?

Because the little niggling doubt in the back of my mind is that I have a somewhat solid foothold in the belief that there’s a direct line of truthful communication between your subconscious and your face…even your head.

The Japanese hold to a belief that the head will always tell the truth, no matter what the voice is saying, that’s what Makoto told me.

So, I tried it, and it worked. Try it, yourself. Next time you ask someone a question, like, Do you think I look fat in this? Watch their heads. They may say No, but their heads will nod yes. Afterwards, jump down their throats for not telling you the truth.

Time and again, U.L. has said, Be mindful of your face. It’ll often say what you won’t. Head, face, it doesn’t matter. I need to get better acquainted with them both.

The horror is I think I was doing just what U.L. said, yesterday. God knows, I don’t mean half the things I must subconsciously think, but it’s hard to escape an upbringing. It’s hard to get away from your “home culture.” And part of our “home culture” in the Deep South is thinking, to some degree, that we’re a little bit better than other people. At least, those people at the end of the street, right?

And, who knows, maybe I was thinking that yesterday, without realizing it. Offering what I believed was a smile, saying, in effect, Hey, sir, we both get gas at the same place; we’re not so different, after all. But, my mind was apparently saying, I don’t have to use a walker to pump my gas. Ha, ha.

Thus, the smirk.

Would you trust this man?

I’m a bit upset by this. But, my only alternative would be to show my pearly-whites from now ’til kingdom come, and that just won’t do.

I’d look like an idiot.

That’s what I said to Siciliana.

She came back with, ”Yeah, but at least you’d be an honest one.”

Can’t argue with that.

I’ve never had a mullet, and other Things I Can Brag About [...]*

The Clever Kris — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:03:24 +0000

* The full, real title is I’ve never had a mullet, and other Things I Feel I Have the Right to Brag About and also Things I Cannot Stand. Just, you know, FYI.

You should know that what follows is a) a partial list only, and b) they’re not in any particular order of Cannot Stand vs. Brag. I would say to put your Big Boy Panties on and read carefully, but it’s odd how similar the things I can’t stand and the things I want to brag about actually are.

I’m not sure what that says about me, but anyway – to be safe – how about I don’t say anything about your panties. No need to tip the scales against me…

This is the very face of irony. And its finger.

Just enjoy the read.

I will not eat food while wearing a jacket.
I’ve never been bitten by a rattlesnake.
Pudding, Cool Whip, and/or meringue, formless foods that try to make you think they can stand alone.
I cannot, cannot, cannot abide a haircut where they “wet your hair” instead of rinsing it, fully.
I hate talking on the phone.
I have good teeth.
People who pass gas and are proud of it.
I don’t like people who don’t use turn signals, myself included.
I rarely get sick.
Animals like me.
I’m a very good driver.
I can listen to a song I like on repeat way, way longer than you can.
I do not appreciate tardy people, and I tell them that.
I cook well.
Interestingly, I can give myself a fever.
I disapprove of people who smack.
I am, for the most part, actually clever.
I’ve been featured on the back cover of The Dramatist three times.
Spandex.
I frown on poor penmanship.
People who say “kewl.”
I’ve never broken any bones…well, not my own. (Please see the next bulleted point).
Once, I got so mad at this boy, at some Christian Bible camp I had to go to, that I wished and wished he’d get hurt. And he did, he broke his collar bone.
I dreamed once that a man was going to drown, and he did.
Meetings. Meetings. Meetings. And talk of future meetings.
I am routinely complimented on my penmanship. FYI.
Truckers.
I learned Hebrew when I was four.
I’ve never had a mullet.
But, I have eyelashes of jealous, enviable length.
No one in my family has ever baby talked the babies.
I wrote my first poem when I was eleven.
People who prefer not to use deodorant.
4-way stops.
Answering the phone. (Please see the fifth bulleted point, above).
Lying.
I only have original art in my house.
I’m more than likely the reincarnation of either Truman Capote, Noel Coward, or Oscar Wilde. I’m just saying. Because that’s like, totally something to brag about.
Fedoras and scarves.
My cat, Aristophanes, is part-bobcat.
Church cantatas that include handbells.
My legs.
Hang nails.
I have a brother who is half-Iranian, a second brother and sister who are half-Polish, and a third brother who is half-Cherokee, between my parents. On top of that, as you might have guessed, we’re all half-siblings. Now, add on top of that this: the Iranian brother is Muslim, but our mother comes from a Jewish family, which makes us Jewish, so I feel certain war will eventually break out between us. Talk about a conflict of interest.
I was once ranked third in the state in Men’s singles tennis.
My brother who is half-Iranian is also an up-and-coming rap artist, in Las Vegas, by the way. I thought you should know that.
I have an autographed book by Eudora Welty, who was a friend of my mother’s.
Screaming, and any variation of it.
Proselytizers.
Mississippi is no longer the fattest state in the nation.
My grandmother once made me stop the car and get out, to help a turtle get across the road. That’s the stock I come from.
Billy Hull, who lived down the road from me, was once the longest-serving County Supervisor in the United States. He held the record until he died.
My cousin, Lucy, was a second-alternate for the 1996 Olympic gymnastics team, behind Amanda Borden.
My Uncle Oscar started Morrison’s Cafeterias.
My Nana is deaf in the same ear as Caesar.
Feet.
I was Little Mr. Winston County in 1983.
Fred Phelps.
I won the Mississippi State Horticulture award in 1994, even though I didn’t climb the tree like everyone else at the week-long camp did to retrieve a sample of blighted mistletoe.
Boogers.
People who end all of their sentences as if they’re asking questions.
I’ve never gotten pregnant.
I almost met Harper Lee.
I can play the piano by ear, if the piano is out of tune like U.L’s.
Oh, and get this, U.L. had a brother who was a dwarf, named Ran.
I saved a young boy from drowning when I was fifteen.
Coffee.
I know the world’s greatest drummer. No lie.
That being said, the world’s foremost banjo player is from my hometown.
My mother dated Marty Stuart, years ago.
Pumpkin pie.
I once sang a note, and held it for a minute and twenty-eight seconds. But, only once.
Even people who hate me, like me.
Sweating in work clothes.
Computers that are slow.
I once got stung by twelve yellow jackets, at the same time. Three on the face, alone. And lived to tell it.
I used to make my own books of poetry from discarded gift boxes and wood glue, which I for years thought was more durable than normal glue. They fell apart, though, after about five reads.
One of my neighbors, growing up, had a pet monkey that did not like curtains, or his daughter.
My Aunt Sally lived to be 100; my Uncle Pat, 102.
I am the Cat Whisperer.
People who pepper their conversations with French. How gauche.
My blog is an app on someone’s iPhone.
Rude children.
Waking up.

Both art and a good philosophy.

I’d like to continue but, ironically, another thing I can’t stand is writing. Who’d’ve thunk it? I’m driven to write, though, I can’t ignore that, but I still find it painful and grueling. Probably because it’s such a raw craft, makes me vulnerable…or better yet, makes me think and feel that I’m vulnerable.

Which reminds me…

• Being vulnerable, you know, and stupid things like that.

Oh, and, one last thing…

• I’ve held a baby gopher turtle. I bet you haven’t.

I know that makes you jealous, the baby gopher turtle part, and I’m sorry for that. I would be too, I mean, come on! It was a baby gopher turtle! You’ve probably never even heard of a gopher turtle, in the first place…raise your hands if you have.

I didn’t see a single hand go up.

Ok, I’m done. That’s all for now.

So…go on and have a good one.

The monk on a yellow motorcycle.

The Clever Kris — Thu, 21 May 2009 17:22:09 +0000

Again, with the dreams. I’m having such dreams, lately. A flood. Minus the ark.

I think they’re so vehement and vivid because I’m knuckles-down and knee-deep in rehearsals for The Complete Works of William Shakespeare [abridged]. We open next week, and I’m stressed, to be sure. But so long as I can get that stress out in my dreams, and not on the stage, perhaps, perchance, it will be all right. After all, the Bard said,

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Heaven help me indeed, if this is part of my philosophy. Earth, I doubt as I always do, is really ever much help at all.

Part One: Shintoism

I am a Shintoist monk, of some unknown order, but still free of faculty and speech. I am a traveling monk, apparently, as I have a yellow motorcycle, and I take to the highway, eager to stay moving, a shark in asphalt waters. You should know that I’ve never in my life wanted a motorcyle, so why it should be buried in my subconscious is a mystery of great interest. I try very hard to find meaning in my dreams, even if all that means is that I saw a yellow motorcycle earlier in the day, and my brain is just processing it. I still crave knowing.

Not a Shintoist monk, but isn't music universal?

I have on blue jeans, and an Oxford, royal blue, like the color I thought dolphins were, when I was a child. I make quite a statement in color, though, with the motorcyle. I’m flying down some Interstate. The weather is gorgeous. All I’ve been told, and I don’t know when or where I was told this, is that I’m undertaking a mission trip, but for what purpose: converts, fundraising, education? That part was kept from me.

I’ve been on this particular Interstate now for several hours; I feel that I’m in Kentucky, as if in my secular life – which, in the course of this dream I debate that compared to this new, spiritual one, is perhaps my less sinful life – I’d had reason to know this state. I pass by the National Corvette Museum. Yes, this is Kentucky.

I look to my right, and there are suddenly three childhood friends, all on motorcycles, people I’ve not seen in years or even thought about. They are revving their delicate motors, they want to race me, and my first instinct is to oblige them, to rev back my own motor, but instead, I wave at them.

I murmur some blessing to them and keep to my course. Because…

I know, up ahead, is a shrine. It’s a popular tourist attraction; the front half of the shrine, but I know that behind the altar, is the place the true believers can go. We are told to approach the steward at the second door and say, Java Est. He will let us into the private room.

I can't believe I found this picture.

I’m headed there, to this shrine. I pull off the ramp, from the Interstate, Exit 27, and see a large, sheer banner hanging down the entire front of the shrine, emblazoned on this banner are two Japanese characters from their kana that I don’t recognize; they are printed in bold red. To the right of me is a gift shop plaza. Something tells me to go there first. I do. I park my yellow motorcycle, and go into this gift shop.

There’s a long, dark, stairwell and from my back pocket, I pull a pink scarf out and drape it over my head, for some reason. I take the steps, one at a time, slowly, and when I emerge at the top of the stairwell, I see that this is no gift shop. It is a library. A very busy one. I’ve apparently entered on the second floor and approaching the rail, I look over and there are hundreds and hundreds of people milling about below.

A girl, a thin African-American girl is standing in the middle of this throng, choking.

But, no one responds.

I leap over the rail to assist her. I fall perfectly, feet first. A young man, a white man, sees this and records it on his cell phone. He will make a movie of this incident and show it at this library in a matter of weeks. I will return, so long is this dream, to the opening night. But, I will not remember having helped this girl, and I will leave the film, disturbed: Am I being followed? Who else sees me that I don’t see? Am I merely subject matter for other people to turn into art?

Returning to the stairwell, I see another old friend, gaunt and sickly. She informs me that the library is to be shut down by September. What could I do to help? I help by leaving.

But first, I give her the longest embrace.

I get back on my bike, but I see that the weather is turning. I don’t relish the idea of driving in rain, not on a motorcycle. So, I head further into this town. I want to find a coffee shop because I have decided to buy a cup, to try it. One truth that persists from real life into this dream, is my very real dislike of drinking coffee. The smell, though, I adore.

In this coffee shop cum mall, I discover two people, who, at random moments, approach me with their problems: one young man, an African-American man, has a bruise on both of his cheeks. The other, a Hispanic woman, has lacerations on both her wrists. They ask me to heal them.

I suggest he use make-up to cover the bruise. I instruct her to buy gloves, but not white ones, as they would stain. I order a fried chicken sandwich with two slices of cheese, and then, without waiting for it, I drift into the bookstore attached to the coffee shop.

It is full of the oddest types of books. One section, the one right by the door, is devoted to textiles; there’s a book all about different types of laces, for instance. Each page is made of the lace it is discussing. I know this because I am drawn to it, and must finger it; it is painfully soft. The section next to it, is dedicated to wood samples: I thumb through a book about sisal; each page is twined sisal itself, and I love the feel of it, also. This book, unlike the lace book, has an accompanying story with it: a piece of folklore, entitled Taily-Po. (This is a story my Ya Ya used to tell me when I was little, instilling superstition was a family decree).

This is a dream in and of itself. Nothing but books. How wonderful.

I thoroughly enjoy my time in the bookstore. I am a haptic monk. I like touching things; that is where healing is kept in the human world. These two books remind me of that.

Then, I feel a chill in the air, and I look down at myself. I’m almost entirely bare. I am not naked, but I am not clothed properly, even my feet are bare, a sin. I feel awkward. I turn, then, there’s a noise at the outer door, the door to the mall, not from the coffee shop. A string of elderly women are entering. They don’t approve of my being without shoes. But they say nothing; instead, they discuss the row of paintings for sale on the left wall, and one remarks, Why, this is only $290. And the rebuttal, if you will, is more a projection than anything else, You should buy it. Hattie, did you hear that?

I also overhear that her birthday is coming up…

Yet, no one buys the painting.

Part Two: Aunt Lola

To be continued.

You can go home again…it's just frustrating.

The Clever Kris — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:39:26 +0000

Thomas Wolfe wrote, “You can’t go home again.” (At least, I think he did).

But you know what: you can.

I do it every Sunday. Mainly because I don’t want to miss Nana’s cooking; it’s in a class of its own…and I love going home, I do, but you want to know a secret: It’s also quite often very aggravating.

Why is that? Why is going home such a frustrating experience?

I've lost my keys...and the doorknob.

Sometimes, I think, it’s because as soon as I open that front door and step inside, I’ll see that nothing has changed, and I’ll feel like I haven’t changed either. And I hate that feeling.

Despite the unusuality (I’m creating this new word right this second; I think I am, anyway) of my family circumstances, I had a fairly conventional upbringing: a solid home life, food each evening, love, and church. But, I was reared by a great uncle, in Mississippi, and so…like many families in the Deep South, change was avoided, and at our most hospitable, conveniently forgotten when wedding invitations went out, or when pressed, allowed to sit at the table but thoroughly ingnored and not given a linen napkin or salad fork.

The couch had been the family couch since before I was born; the curtains had cost a fortune when purchased, pre-Depression, and so they were tolerated with their heaviness and coatings of dust and memory. The chairs at the dining room table had been in the family since before there was a family, they weren’t going anywhere…so much had been sacrificed for the minutiae and detritus, if you will, that we lived in, and splendidly, and all those little things that went into making the home a home…well, it’s understandable that it became a necessary security to make the home remain that way – unchanged.

It wasn’t a coffee table; it was a story. It wasn’t a piano; it was religion. And it wasn’t china, it was our history. We were curators as much as members of a family, and you don’t become a curator in a day. And a curator has great responsibility. (They’re not exactly a docent, for godsake).

To ignore that is a wide sin.

I’ve thought on this for quite awhile, as a means to calm myself from frustration. It’s not so much the expected conversations: you need insurance, check your tires, stop putting things on the credit card; any child, I think, would feel unloved without these petty nitpickings.

No, what it is, at least for me, is the lack of understanding about major things…at least the reciprocation of it.

But, I think I realize now why.

I look around the house and see things that I didn’t have to work for; things I expected to always be there: plates, sweet tea, arm chairs. My uncle looks around and sees things he’s given a life up to get, to take care of me when no one else would. He lives in a house of prior burden, and in it, he’s carried everything over and worked hard to deserve it, to keep deserving it. For me to turn a nose up at that is an insult, of course. He’s living in his major things. So, the reciprocation is difficult to measure. And, truth be told, all I really want, is a house like his…of my own.

But, here’s what the makes Deep South, deep: guilt.

We don’t grow up to move away, we’re not supposed to…even within the state, it seems, sometimes. We are “grown up” to be representatives of our people, our church community, our neighbors; it’s one reason we make great politicians, those of who do get away.

Down here, everyone has a vested interest, I guess, which is a great support but not the most Platonic of ideals. It takes a village, Hillary Clinton has remarked, and yes it does, but this village has a drawbridge.

They are scared because they can’t imagine another village, or why in the world, after all they’ve done for you, you’d want to go there, and stay, and trust me: no suitcase in the world is big enough to pack that kind of guilt.

There’s also no way to explain this need, which many of my generation have, on a routine, clockwork Sunday afternoon…and so what happens is you begin to talk about anything else under the ecclesiastical sun to steer the bulk of conversation away from ”where you’re going” and you just talk about “where you’ve been, and what that was like.” You avoid the future, because it must involve the unknown and the unknown is built on change, and that avoidance takes so much energy that you leave home each weekend exhausted…and a weekend spent in exhaustion is aggravating. And you know, next Sunday is not that far away.

You keep squirreling away your privacy and plans and realize that the only way this will work is to jump ahead, make the move, then a U-Turn, then an announcement on your way out of town, and then you put your seatbelt on and drive and drive and drive until you realize you hadn’t packed anything, and that’s ok, because nothing is still better than guilt. Shock is the only salvation we still possess.

Yet, we keep going home, don’t we? Either to prove Wolfe wrong, or dig a deeper hole in the front yard. Ironically, you can’t dig a deep hole anywhere hear a magnolia. The roots are too hungry.

I guess the biggest frustration, really, in going home again, is that of expectation. Because buried beneath the heart in all of us is a fear of meeting that expectation: I’m sure parents, even great uncles, know this – the dreaded what ifs – what if my child is that rare breed who can’t wait to be kicked from the nest? I was that child. What if my child is the one who thinks he can make a difference? I was that child, too…still am. What if my child is a dreamer, a writer, an actor, a singer, a lover, a mover? What if, what if, what if. I am, I’m all of them, and everyday I try to decide just which child I am, was, or want to be, still.

I love my uncle more than anything else in the world. But, I’m also not through with the world, yet. The other side of the problem is that I’m too ready to move. The timing’s not right, then. But, the need, the desire, the drive is.

Still, I stall on the idea of expectation.

I’m supposed to be working on one of my new plays, right now, for instance, and even though I argue with editors and friends and workshoppers on my slow progress(es) with anything I write, strung out over a strange array of “valid excuses,” the truth is I’m scared to death I won’t meet their expectations. Just like I keep straddling the fence on my next move, literal and meta, because I’m scared not of what I can’t see ahead of me, but of what I’ll see when I look back.

And for the record, I rarely use salt in my cooking; the last thing I need is a pillar of it.

So, for the time being, I keep going home. Out of respect, which some in my life never understood, and to learn a little more before heading out again. There’s something, I suppose, that seems regressive about keeping a finger on old roots; but, for me, there’s something so necessarily alluring about the roughness of those old roots that I’m not sure I could remember if I let go of them just yet.

It’s what writers do. And that’s what I am.

At least, today.

The Clever Kris » religion

Excuse me, did you just call me a fad?

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