3 posts tagged “christianity”

Wasting drafts of stupid jokes, awkward greetings for unsendable letters.

        Dearest Cara,

By the time you read this, I will be dead.

No, wait. That's not it.

I try to get that stuff out of me before.

MJ is watching me from the floor, hypnotized between sleep and waking. Dad's asleep. I finally got my medicine today, and took it. My chest hurt for a little while, but I think I'm okay. At least, I feel like I'm okay.

Okay. Fine. Good. They all mean the same thing, which is usually "don't ask any further". Sometimes, it's "please, oh God, please follow up so I know I exist to somebody." But most of the time, it's polite.

Polite politics.

"Fuck off with your Goddamn questions" just makes people ask more questions.

"What? What did I do? What's your problem? Did you hear what this motherfucker just said to me?"

We like polite politics around here.

On the phone, a representative from the Democratic Senatorial Committee (asking for money) asked my dad how he's doing today. "Not. Too. Good." He answered. She sort of paused, of course, and then said she was sorry to hear that. She asked for money anyways, but he'd hung up the phone after telling her he was broke, and I was on the line already and I asked her a few more questions.

Apparently there are 28 Republican seats in the Senate open this term. There are 12 Democrat seats up, too. They'd like to win them all. They want our help. We have to get our government back under control.

I told her we had no money to give her, but if she sent us a letter, that she'd probably get some anyways. I asked her when the refund checks were coming out, and she said sometime in May, the first of them will be mailed to people. She said everybody gets $600.

I told her she could have some of that, when I get it. She didn't think I was serious and so said nothing, which I suppose convinced me that I wasn't being serious, and that I'm going to send nothing. She got herself off the phone. She's going to help get our government back under control. I hung up, too, after she did.

I don't care much about politics.

Tonight's a show. The French Kicks are playing; they've come all the way here to play an hour or so at Local 506. I know how a lot of their songs go, and they're good.

There's a black ant walking around in the kitchen - he just went under the table, and he's walking around down there. I don't know where he's going to. If I weren't real, I would make myself the size of an ant, and float around behind him and watch him all day. I don't know why, but God made me too big.

I'm so very grateful for the friends I've had. They've been good to me. So's my dad. He loves me and has hope that I'll be okay.

He thinks I'm going to be better than fine, because he says God's given me great gifts. I just have to shake this, whatever it is, off and I'll catch up so quickly. He says I have no idea.

I get mad at him, because I don't want to just hope for something that feels less tangible than a dream; I looked at my neurocog-evaluation yesterday and today and I feel every possible success I've ever failed at fall on me like a wall of tires and I'm sorry for myself. I imagine a life of not being able to really do anything, and the words of the report grind on me like yellow rope.

I remember reading, when I was a little boy, words from a progress report that my parents got about me when I was in elementary school. It started, "Patrick is a very bright youngster...", and proceeded to talk about me not listening in class. I remember thinking how nice those words sound, how good natured a person might be in order to write them, and how whenever anybody used my name, 'Pat' and 'Patrick' both, I felt like I would be a kid forever. Everybody older than me was always Older than me; I chafed against that, and the inscrutable faces of the Older Kids seemed pained and exaggerated and like they would never be like me again, which repelled me and fascinated as much as the Teachers' all-intending motherliness (which I know now was really more about just being willing to be loving than wisdom or maturity).

I remember once I saw a teacher be a sister to one of the kids.

I was young and I didn't feel like a "bright youngster" but it seemed to be a phrase that people thought should make me feel special, just as surely as they knew it would make my parents feel good. I'd be embarrassed, which once or twice made me say things just to get away from feeling singled out for something that made me stick out from the other kids. I wanted to get that mention over with as soon as possible. They'd tell me I was special, and I'd say "I know." They thought I was being rude on purpose, so they'd look at me sternly. You can ignore a kid or rationalize him away - they could figure I just wanted to go play and let me off. I would be thinking about the other kids, and I felt like they should be defended from any teacherly accusation that I was intelligent, different, special. I didn't ever know how. I felt like we should all be alike and like each other, and I really wanted them to like me, and I was afraid of being different to them.

I remember the kids who'd struggle, and this one kid in particular, Matt, who was very funny, a natural athelete, seemed to fear no authority, and I thought he was really clever and everybody thought he was cool. He had all these older brothers who were discipline problems and achievers, real Guys. He was kind of vulgar because of his brothers. I went to Pre-K with him. I remember feeling this desolation, this utter distance from people my age, creep up on me, and by the time I was 7 I'd become nobody. I had a few friends. I remember wishing, hoping that I was going to grow up right. I liked those kids, and I liked the ones who didn't really like me okay except for the fact that they didn't like me, and I remember the powerful, awful feeling of rejection that tore through me when our class first learned as a group how to criticize one another. I knew the Older Kids did. I remember this girl calling me a know-it-all on the playground, and I didn't have any idea what to say. I sure didn't think I was; I didn't mean any harm, I didn't think anybody was stupid. I didn't understand. I remember her eyes got big, and she looked like a grown-up adult person, lines in her face appeared. I remember thinking she looked like her mom for a moment - her mom was a lady who was younger than most of the other moms, and athletic, 'cool', and very beautiful. I remember talking about who had the coolest mom, and I remember halfheartedly trying to make my mom seem cool, but my mom was very shy around the other moms, and was kind of pedantic with the kids, so she never really got entered into the running. She was more of a 'mom' mom, I think was what we came up with. I remember, a year later, on the playground, which was becoming less playing and more merely 'talking' by the month, thinking that that girl, whose name was Angie, was going to be very beautiful. I remember wondering if she'd be mean and prideful when she grew up, or funny and relaxed and maybe even spiritual. She was clever, but she was darker than me, and her family went on cruises, and both her parents were Cuban as I recall, and so I felt apart from her by a thousand years.

I felt alone, but that God is real, and that He was Peace, and I didn't believe the stupid banners at church that said so, but I believed Him, even though I couldn't remember even way back then, when he'd first told me He was. But I remember that I could remember a time before I knew, and I thought that it was all important somehow. I remember playing with my little cars and thinking about God, and looking out the window at something beautiful like a red sunset  in the sky or the idea of seeing Saturn if I got my telescope right or the fragile but perfectly-placed like the tall, gold pole with the black VHF antenna on it that perched above the roof and looked like a line drawing, and feeling that I should run and tell somebody this unintelligible thing: that it's good, and that it's important, and that it's holy, and that's important. And that I liked them. I remember being upside-down, looking at the light in the blinds, or the natural cursive in the dust, or the beautiful vivid mud I could make in the little garden space made of bricks that we'd always had big plants in, and that my grandmother would come and garden with us every so often, and all the snails, and know that it was an emergency somehow. I remember wanting to be a poet, despite the fact that I thought that being a poet meant you were a serious-looking young man with dark hair and a long face who wore lots of brown wool clothing and wrote only in inky black pens on letterpads, and as a poet you were a person who wouldn't talk very much to people or make a lot of eye contact, and you were demure and would always stop your writing to serve them. I thought that didn't sound like much fun, but it was worth it if God said so. I didn't know much about poets, and nothing I've ever learned about poets since I was four years old has ever made me want to be a poet, and I thought poets were decadent, bored people who wore clothes they dyed themselves and smoked cigarettes and talked about flowers like they were sunsets: and would garden and wear their flowers too, as if that wasn't fatally presumptuous and just bad taste. I felt like if I could be a good poet, I'd settle for wearing the wool, because I knew I'd be allowed to take it off and be a regular person. I'd only have to wear it long enough so people would know that that's what I wanted to be. And then, after they saw me, I could take it off.

Everyone has to know, God made this for them. It's supposed to be for you. I don't remember thinking it was for me. My dad would give us lots of chocolate ice cream in bowls, and I knew that was for me. He would tell me it was. My dad taught me a lot, and I learned a lot on my own, and I saw a snail on the deck today.

I had a sea-green book I would read called 'Catholic Catechism for Adults', with a smooth cover and it was from the 60's, and in it I learned that being spiritual was very important. I would find it and read it sometimes after playing or after dinner or before praying with my dad and my sister. It was always in my dad's nightstand, on the bottom drawer. There would sometimes be holy cards there, which I would stare at the pictures of saints, but mostly read the backs of. The book and the holy cards and the rosary that was sometimes in there and the magazines all smelled like wood. Because that's what the inside of a drawer smells like, you know?

I prayed that I'd be spiritual, and could see then a clear, and difficult path through my loneliness and into adulthood. I feel like I've been stumbling on and off that path ever since I didn't decide to start walking it for the rest of my life then. My dad was a good man, and he wanted me to be a good person, too. It was his book, and I remember eventually asking him if I could have it some summer when I was still very much a kid, because I thought ownership was adult and if he passed it onto me I could learn it and face the challenge to be holy. He said sure like it didn't matter. He was always telling me that possessions didn't matter, and I remember trying to tell him 'that they matter to me', because I didn't know how to tell him that I wanted it because it was his, and he was good, and I wanted him to know that I wanted to be good like in the book, and that I wanted his help. I remember that book.

He was always saying that I was just like my mother. I figured I knew what he meant, because I felt like I saw the resemblance, and I knew he was disappointed when he said that, and I remember trying to use my little toy ideas to convince him that it was okay. I remember climbing onto him by his work uniform, and smelling him because he smelled like grease, and his metal ball point pen would poke me or scratch me, and I loved him so much when he came home from work. He would play the piano and drink bourbon, and I loved his songs.

I didn't mean to write all this here, but I miss my dad while he's asleep and I meant to just tell this next part, but this is still true.

We listened to this Gershwin I downloaded for him in the garage today. "Rhapsody In Blue." If I could do anything in the world that was good, I'd put my heart to write that. It's a beautiful, beautiful speaking piece, and I feel the call to say things that way just as surely as God made me and just as surely do I feel my body's broken and worry that none of my wheels will ever turn that way and I wonder at what I was made to be. It's a great gift, somehow - even to feel inside yourself, what it is that you could-might be.

I wish with all my heart and none of the rest of me that I'll learn from my mistakes. I miss all the people I love so much. The wise, the gone, and the going.

I was young and I knew it.

I've developed a need for the road, or a craving, feeling my feet against it, the rhythm. Running reminds me how I share breath with the trees. I get a chance to free my mind, break out of my thoughts and give myself over to the effort; the longer, the better. Walking up my driveway, covered in sweat and exhausted, all my pines and maples looking down on me, I feel like maybe I could grow as tall as they are. It's good to feel tall when you're on your own sometimes. Much as I wish, among others it isn't often so.

Today was Holy Thursday. I think this is the first time I've felt 'right' being a part of Easter stuff. We remember how Jesus washed his disciples' feet after he broke bread with them. Father Dan told us: this service is either a piece of theater, or he is a great hypocrite, if he would not devote himself to being there for us in our pain, suffering, and darkness. He admonished us to remember one other.

After the Mass, the Eucharist was on display for us to pray before in the gym. I found mom afterwards, and papi was waiting for us in the car. She took her car home to watch her novelas while we went to get some food in 'ours'. Tomorrow morning, they are going to DC. I've got to work tomorrow night.

I get the next couple days to myself.

Hunting for a CV joint kit for the Tercel. Apparently the boots are cracked, and this eventually means that the drive axle will wear out or break on us if we wait too long to replace the whole thing. If this house weren't so depressed, we'd be out there and on top of it.

I, at least, hope to work up enough fire to go to the gym today. The only other option is to put on a sweater and go for a walk. As beautiful as these days are getting, with the new flowers and all, I probably shouldn't be alone with my thoughts.

"It's not in the hands of an abbot."

"What isn't?"

"To dismiss one of the brothers."

Dad picked up a few books he special-ordered from Borders yesterday, and he's a man obsessed.

I'm looking out the window, and across the breakfast table, he's reading, an old, bent pair of glasses sliding down his nose. My coffee is cold next to me. Stupid laptop.

"It's beautiful that Peter Grace reconciled with Brother Leo right before he died."

He's talking to me about a millionaire philanthropist whose wife, a "very spiritual woman", was of common cause with the monks. Her husband, after a falling out with them in the 60's, remained estranged from their community for many years. He died of cancer in 1995. But, before he died, he wrote a letter to old Brother Leo, the monk who almost got dismissed over the odd scandal that ensued because of this, seeking his friendship.

Brother Leo promised him that he always had his love. My dad says it's a mistake in the book, or at least, that it's extremely irregular, but Peter Grace is said to have been buried on the grounds of that abbey.

What is grace?

After a good talk with a monk at one of his monasteries last week, fond memories of old names and places have rekindled something in him. He went out and got these books he was recommended, a history of Spencer abbey and a dedication to one Brother Leo, a man my father knew in Argentina, and he's been poring over them ever since. He keeps a notepad by him in order to write down things that these books help him remember.

The monk was Brother Michael. When my dad left that monastery for South America, his given name was vacant: this Michael he talked to was the one who adopted my father's name. My dad was also Brother Michael. They hit it off immediately.

It's always intriguing to hear of him speak of this past life of his. I wonder what it means to a man to look back on so much time of his life, so much time since? I listen, familiar with most of the stories right now. It makes me a little sad, to see him a little sad. I keep asking him if he thinks he'll find mention of himself in these books; I think it would be fun to see my dad's life mentioned in a book about important things or holy people, but I think he's even annoyed by the question.

A little bush out back has some new white flowers.

Yesterday afternoon I raised a little window in the kitchen, and nobody noticed it. Now, we get a slight, cool breeze every once in awhile.

Dad's going to physical therapy today.

Right now, he's taking a nap. Or at least, he's supposed to be. You can feel the pressure his slow footsteps make from just about anywhere in the house, even without the creaking wood to tell you where he is. I sense he's up doing something, upstairs.

I better go.

"The Lord, He lifts me with His strong arms.
  oh yes, He does."