Both Eyeballs
“Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning hath made thee mad.” —Porcius Festus, procurator of Judea from about AD 58 to 62, to the apostle Paul.
At least once in nearly every episode of the Three Stooges films, Moe Howard uses the first two fingers of his right hand to poke the eyeballs of Larry or Curly (or Curly Joe or Shemp); the attack was so popular that a Stooges defense emerged, wherein the victim quickly lifted a vertical hand in front of his nose, and Moe received a between the fingers web bruise.
I mention this only in passing, because I’m going to Moe eye-poke the very next fundamentalist who attacks my use of intellectual sources outside those commonly touted among the Chosen by quoting the second of these two semicolon-joined sentences without acknowledging it was directed at the apostle Paul, who was the Much-Learned One—and yet remained a Christian.
You’ve been warned.
04 May 2008 | Comments [1]
Sea Change
This afternoon, approaching a white Cadillac stopped at a traffic signal, all my preconceptions were dashed, one by one. From a distance I first noticed a University of Tennessee sticker in the window, a bold orange “T”. Certainly a football fan. A little closer, and blue block lettering stood out against the back of the trunk lid: U.S. Air Force Retiree. Military type. Probably a wing nut. I searched for a yellow ribbon. There was none. Instead, a slightly smaller bumper sticker read “DEFEND THE NATION” in black Helvetica Extrabold Condensed. Underneath, a red script font spelled out, “Fire the Republicans.” Finally I saw the Obama ‘O8 tag.
Sometimes I think the tide may be turning.
01 May 2008 | Comments [1]
Joni Thursday
“Still I sent up my prayer / Wondering where it had to go / With heaven full of astronauts / And the Lord on Death Row / While the millions of his lost and lonely ones / Called out and clamored to be found / Caught in the struggle for higher position / And the search for love that sticks around....” —Joni Mitchell, “Same Situation”
If you had asked me at age 35 whether I would one day transform, chameleon-like, into a reclusive, bitter, unbelieving old cynic, I’d have laughed at you, snapped my fingers, and produced a bouquet of paper flowers from up my sleeve; but now I see myself degenerating further into the stereotype with each passing day. The magic was nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Democracy? Discarded words on ancient parchment. Religion? A bald poseur masquerading behind a Wizard of Oz facade. Few things are worse than the malaise of failed romanticism, bankrupt patriotism or empty faith. I suffer from all three. Nothing is worse than passion turned into blind anger.
Now and then I feel a flicker of the old fire, but only when I see passion ignited in others’ eyes. (Usually hers—ranting about another social injustice, determined to fix things.) It happens less and less these days. Outside an occasional rabid diatribe from a fervent neocon, I mostly encounter the eyes of the living dead, reflections of my own dull orbs, hopeless and disillusioned at their cores, their owners stumbling from one disappointment to the next.
I wonder what it all means.
01 May 2008 | Comments [0]
Tilt-a-Whirl
Love is a carnival ride: the Tilt-a-Whirl. You walk, feet ringing on the metal up-and-down platform, clutching hands and searching for an empty car. The red- and blue-enameled steel clamshell opens wide for your pleasure. You climb in together, slide over the naugahyde seat and pull down the chrome restraining bar. All aboard, and the big machine groans into action, tentatively at first, the clamshell rising and falling, quarter turning left and right. You look at one another and hope for the best. The pace picks up and you lean with the spin until, thrown against one another, everything becomes a matter of physical proximity and centrifugal force. Then you’re in it all the way, whirling, spinning, laughing, screaming, all hands gripping the bar as bodies lurch and collide; and it’s really love, the whole dizzying, awkward dance of it. No one else exists but you two in the mechanical clamshell, reeling past the carnival lights, a black sky full of stars, and a blurred quarter moon.
Quick as it starts, the iron beast creaks to a halt. Heads full of vertigo, you stagger around the walkway and down the stairs into the grass, and you have to choose: Do we walk this way together, past the barkers and the suckers queuing up for another shot at the ring toss, past the hotdog vendors, the merry-go-round, the house of horrors, the ferris wheel, the tunnel of love, into the parking lot and the pine scented air of reality, or do we stagger on, pretending the real world is nothing more than a strip of cheap ride tickets, drunkenly lurching from one silly amusement to another?
29 April 2008 | Comments [2]
A Rainy Morning in Hell
Rain falls from the sky in great acidic drops; they sizzle and steam when they strike the ground. Asphalt bubbles, and the pavement is still hot under your feet.
Small children play mumbletypeg with a switchblade they got from their mother’s intimate apparel drawer. Inside, besides the knife, they found Iron Maidenform bras, leather thongs with poisoned thorns, razor sharp stainless steel sex toys, and an autographed promotional photo of Sylvester Stallone as Rocky next to Rudy Giuliani dressed in drag, starring in “Rocky XXXVIII: Iron Fists at la Cage aux Folles.” When you pass the toddlers on the street, they rush over and begin gnawing at your ankles with their pointed teeth. It is then you recall you have a date later in the evening to see a movie with their mother.
Craven crows, perched on the sagging roofs of buildings, swoop down now and then to peck out your eyes with their black beaks. The pain is excruciating, but a part of you is glad you can no longer see the atrocities around you. Almost immediately your eyeballs grow back, the horrors return, and the crows lick their beaks, anticipating their next feast.
You travel to the same job every day, where you spend eight backbreaking hours putting blasting cap firing pins in bombs that will be patriotically dropped on brown people. Randomly, a faulty cap explodes, searing you with pain as several digits or a limb fly across the building (always injuring another worker). The member regenerates and your demon boss growls at you, “Get to work! Whadda ya think this is? Vacation?” Once a year you get a paid vacation, and you spend it crawling up the anus of a whale.
No one loves you. No. Really. No one loves you. Not even your pet dog.
You earn just enough money to miss paying your bills. Some months you think you’ll have enough to pay for electricity and turn on the air conditioning; then a brownout occurs.
Tap water tastes like goat urine. Coca-Cola will sell you bottled water for a portion of your weekly salary, but it tastes like sheep urine. Everything potable or edible is lukewarm. All food, by federal mandate, contains maggots.
You have to attend church on Sundays, where you listen to a rasping preacher scream about the perils of hell. No one ever speaks of God.
Did I mention no one loves you?
George Bush is president. Then John McCain.
28 April 2008 | Comments [1]
Flesh
The surgeon’s hands resemble those of Mary’s in Michelangelo’s Pietà—they are slender and have long, tapered fingers. I expect a weak handshake and am surprised when it is firm, dry and brusk: the mark of a professional. His face is assured and kind, but somewhat disappointing. In photographs I have seen, he sported a mustache and resembled a thin Emiliano Zapata. Associating the two gave me an outlaw charge. Still, I know his politics are left of center, and I smile when he mentions Che Guevara, who also studied medicine. We make small talk and joke a bit, and then he gets down to business, explaining the procedure carefully and asking whether I have questions. I have none.
Minutes later, pumped full of lidocaine, comfortably numb, I cannot feel his scalpel at work, but my body realizes something is horribly wrong; my heart races, my face flushes, and I fight an adrenaline urge to leap up and flee the room. I chatter instead, making inane conversation to pass time. I hear what I think is scalp being lacerated, but the surgeon assures me it is only the sound of the blade moving in the scalpel handle. To my ears it is more like a band of razor-toothed termites nibbling away at my flesh and my mortality, and it dawns on me that—apart from women who take me inside them and perhaps take away something of me with them—I will never have a more intimate relationship with another human. This man chips away at my mortality, subjects my skin to his will, understands the machinery underneath my frail protective sheath better than I do myself. It is unnerving. It also makes me vulnerable, and in a flash I understand how a patient might confuse a physician’s love of his work and a gentle bedside manner with personal affection. Just as a poet or musician’s work is sometimes confused with the artist, so a work of surgical art might be confused with its practitioner.
Then it is done, the wound closed with sutures, and the offending part of me whisked away under a sterile drape. I sit up and talk with the doctor briefly, but his mind is already elsewhere, and any intimacy is forgotten. It is not me he loves, but his work.
Later, discussing the procedure over the telephone, I am reminded of the personal relationships that led me to the table, and of the tragedy that facilitated it. “Every story has two sides,” I am told. I want to ask, “When did I ever live in a binary, black-and-white world? When did I lack a subtly nuanced grayscale?”
No human is a perfect saint, nor a perfect sinner. God knows I am plagued by hosts of angels and demons. We land at last on a continuum, buoyed or submerged by our own shuck and jive. We’re all in need of mercy and love, every mother’s son and daughter of us. I buy everyone’s story—and no one’s—exactly as they tell it. We tell the truth as we understand it, and every one of us is in a sense a liar, because truth, like time, is relative: only God understands absolute truth. I am no one’s judge.
What matters to me—and to all those like me who come to a place where they require a surgeon’s skill—is someone stepped up to the plate. To me in that moment, he was angelic. If I prefer to find the angels in everyone I meet, that’s my business. I don’t demand it of others. It just works for me.
(And if I fail to find angels in most Republicans ... well, that’s my business too.)
(I’m kidding.)
(Honestly.)
24 April 2008 | Comments [2]
Mid-Spring
American Dream: Mid-Spring
Yes, I am lazy. I can’t help it. Spring has bees droning and grass greening and shrubs bursting color. Who can stay indoors, chained to a desk, making words? It takes Herculean effort to write even these few lines. Now Hercules has left the building.
22 April 2008 | Comments [0]
Equine Hair
The horse and I have both let our manes grow a little wild this spring. For her, a wild mane is no issue as long as she can see the grass to graze; she will not be ostracized by the other horses because of her uncultivated hair. Not so for a late middle-aged adult human. My choices are nearly limitless, and many will include ridicule as a matter of course. My wicked hair already elicits whispers. God only knows what it will incite once I dread it.
20 April 2008 | Comments [0]
Spinach
The glass and chrome Indian restaurant, named for a musical instrument, is lit by the glare from automobiles outside. Overhead a Bollywood soundtrack drones, “Hare Krishna, hare Rama, Rama Krishna, Rama Rama...” or something to that effect. The air is spiced only very slightly with curry. Diners are segregated, Anglos planted in the far corner and Indian couples perched at a center strip of tables. This is deliberate, as patrons are not allowed to seat themselves. After the waiter tops our glasses with water, we fill our plates from an ample buffet. We eat a variety of things, most of them vegetarian, all of them delicious—and very hot. In particular, a spinach dish elicits my companion’s vocal approval. Through tears she says, “This is wonderful. I wish I had the recipe.”
“I know it,” I respond.
“Yes?”
“They cream the spinach with milk taken from sinful cows roasting in hell,” I say in a parched voice.
“Shush!” she commands, glancing up to see whether I have been overheard by others at nearby tables. “I can’t take you anywhere.”
16 April 2008 | Comments [0]
Re-Envision
Reggie, listen to me. Don’t you think it’s time we tackled the myth of the Thumpers?
What, dear boy? And leave poor Tess dangling up there all by herself?
She isn’t dangling. She’s levitating.
Same thing, if you ask me. But no. The Thumpers will have to wait at least one more day. Will you pass me that bowl of clover?
But why?
Because sometimes you have to step away from your immediate surroundings and re-envision your place in the world.
I see. I think you’re stalling.
Too bad sheep can’t shrug. I’d give you a profound shrug. Sometimes one paints pictures with words; other times he tells stories with pictures. Even very bad pictures.
And the Thumpers?
All in good time, Mr. Impatience. All in good time. Now. The clover?
13 April 2008 | Comments [0]
