Discourse

So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find as quickly as possible someone to worship. But man seeks to worship what is established beyond dispute, so indisputably that all men would agree at once to worship it. For these pitiful creatures are concerned not only to find what one or the other can worship, but to find something that all would believe in and worship; what is essential is that all may be together in it. This craving for community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity from the beginning of time.

—The Grand Inquisitor, Fyodor Dostoevsky

       He sits there by the fire, his head bent down a bit, the skewer stick in his hand. I see his profile perfectly. I could easily draw it in the dirt with my stick while I look at him if I wanted to. He is that clear, that close.

        His head swivels toward me and then back again, "So what did you think of all those people there, at the opening?" he asks.

        “Oh, me? Well, I'm a snot about these events. I'm not intimidated by them like I used to be, with all the artsy fartsies and the uptown psychologists and academics hanging onto each other in tux and gown, sipping or slugging their drinks.” I realize in saying this I’m far too aware of my all-purpose black cotton-spandex blend dress, mid-calf length, one strand of mock-pearl necklace with matching drop earrings, patent leather pumps and my non-alcoholic glass of syrupy slush at these parties. “But I still can't get into them. I don't understand these people. I don't know what the difference is exactly, but I always feel the outsider. I’m as educated as most of them, enough of them anyway. I figure it's class, that I'm from the wrong side of the tracks." I know all too well that I get to be the underdog thinking like this. Poor me. No head start in the game of breaking through ceilings.

        He nods his head, “Yeah,” he says, a loss of air near a sigh. “I feel that too. Who are they anyway, really? Probably tells us more about ourselves than about them. But most of the lot are from the wrong side of the tracks too. At least, originally. So it’s a quandary why I rush to the outsider position.” I’m wondering why he does as well. I’ve heard his mother has money and gives him substantial allowances from time to time. And “the who” I heard this from was him.

        But I don’t muddy the water by bringing this up. I introduce another “who” instead. “Who was the guy with the big head and the long neck?” I ask. He laughs a lengthy dribbling laugh. Since I’ve made him laugh, I add, With the skinny legs that didn’t seem to connect properly in the middle.” I know this because he wore a suit with tight pants like a hangover from The Beatles. But skinny pants are back these days. It was his torso that got my attention, as it flopped and slumped over his belt as he nervously twittered on his iPhone.

       He is still grinning when he says, “Oh, Sammy. He always comes to all of these. Shows up alone, though I met his wife once when Gerrie and I went to some private video showing or some such thing.

        “He didn't seem to enjoy this one,” he adds. “Kept pulling up his shirt cuff, looking at his watch. Basically stayed in one spot, drinking, thumbing his cell.” He’d come out on the deck when I was there with Brian and Kurt, listening, while Kurt elucidated his poetry. “I like how Kurt can meet most anybody on their turf. Kurt is a turf kind of guy. I’m a little jealous of him… in that way.”

        “Uh-huh,” I half agree. “When that's happening, I always want to be able to do it too, you know, oiling the social gears. But then when I get away from it, I think, nope, I don't really wanna be so placating. I always half expect him to go round robin and get a consensus when an opinion is thrown out there, not just about his poetry but about any subject he’s engaged in with others. He's so into everybody expressing themselves. Maybe that’s what makes his poetry accessible, but poetry’s not supposed to be accessible is it? Isn’t it supposed to have references to mythology and insider allusions to philosophy and literature that most of us don’t know much about?”

I know I’m being snide, but I don’t care. I get to because I can’t stand these people, and it’s my lifelong buddy I’m talking to, the talk we have out at my place in the country once a week, when we can smash it into our schedules. We’re roasting wieners tonight, having homemade hotdogs with chili, by a bonfire that took too long to start in the wind, in our coats, on the day after Indian Summer has passed, and the temperature has dropped, is continuing to drop as we eat and talk. We want the outdoors as long as we can, especially after last night’s claustrophobic party. It was an art opening of Brian Mayfield’s latest swirling landscapes on mylar, some as scrolls, with poetic text by Kurt Winegarden in little hand-carved framed plaques to the side. After the steady stream of attendees ran to nothing, Kurt walked around reading his poetic annotations to us posted at intervals around the room.

        “Yeah,” my buddy says, pulling his coat tighter across his chest, not bothering to zip and button to keep the chill out in a way that will last. “That bothers me sometimes about him, his willingness to be popular. Hey, he’s a populist poet. Nothing too terrible in that. I hate the labored, self-conscious poetry of James Merrill and his ilk. But I was glad when Kurt suggested that we go upstairs after his truncated speech there at the end of the tour. I was afraid that we’d be expected to do something, like maybe have a lively little discussion or some such.”

       “Discourse,” I throw in. When he looks at me puzzled, I say, “Academics have discourses, not discussions.”

        “Oh, right,” he says, but doesn't laugh. “Right.”

        “What do you think Paula would think of the annotations in the brochure that the local celebs had given Brian’s paintings?” I pause. When he doesn’t say anything, I add, “I was sorry she wasn't able to be there.” Paula is a local reviewer-celeb, reporting her two cents worth in the Vine and Times on every new opening in town. Paula is Gerrie’s best friend so Dave hears her opinions, therefore her reviews, before she writes them.

        “Ah, well, we will hear from her when she returns from the City, in a review, no doubt, but had she been there, she would’ve taken everything in, saying nothing or very little to anybody but digesting it whole. She’s got this scene down. Now, what she would have written about it, that’s something else. But knowing her, she would’ve thought the new reception rooms were too precious with their Japanesey paper shades on the lamps, Egyptian hand-painted reproductions on the wall, by hired Egyptian miniaturists, oh yeah, and carefully arranged dried eucalyptus and aromatic herbs in tall vases, orchids floating in crystal saucers and posh sofa chair and couch. Have I missed anything? She wouldn’t have. Oh, the tightly woven carpeted walls, now that was a touch. She would’ve told me later how wonderful some women with butch haircuts and wearing Dockers would’ve looked sitting on that couch and then laughed.” He says this without a smile, poking the fire with his stick. When the tip breaks off, he swears lightly, takes a steak knife he's left stabbed in a tree and begins to hone the end back down. What he says next comes out in little jerks with each slice of the knife. “I just thought, boy, let my two kids off in these rooms, huh?” He reaches over and jabs two marshmallows onto the new spear he’s made and watches them ignite in the fire. He likes them over-roasted, falling off the stick as he catches them, jumping them around in his hand to cool before finally popping them in his mouth. Through his chewing and swallowing he adds, “It’s not a place for kids, I get that, but this chummy-clubby feel of the thing gets to me. Do these people live ordinary lives or are they on stage like this all the time? I look at them and think they fit. They seem to be at home in this environment. Then I wonder why this matters to me. Do I really care?”

        “For me, that’s where it’s at, really. Why do I go, if I don’t care so much? And what I’ve come up with, when nobody is around, and I pull the shutters closed so nobody can see my face, I think—I want to belong, that’s the awful, terrible truth of it. Not only do I want them to accept me, I want them to approve of me. God.” I spear my roasting stick in the grass to the side of my chair. It quivers beside me threateningly. Leaning back, I say, “But it’s not them, per se. Anyway, I don’t think it is. It’s their context, you know, what they stand for. They have a position in the cultural holy of holies and I don’t. Don’t ask, because I’m not even sure what that means exactly. What is this elusive something or other that’s so understood and valued by them? They lay claim to a meaning behind art and poetry, what it is, that I can’t or don’t understand.” I sigh and stare at the fire. I’m saying far more than I intend, even to my closest friend, but I don’t seem to be able to stop myself. “What it boils down to is that I believe they know something that I don’t. It makes me feel stupid, inferior, and I can’t figure out if they’ve made up this whole construct called ‘culture’ that is meant to keep us, sorry, me, my unknowing kind, out of their insider something or other or if this arts-culture thing is real and of value to know, like an important knowledge or language that I haven’t had access to and don’t know how to learn or acquire but should.”

I think he might admonish me for being too hard on myself, or agree that he’s in the  same boat. Instead he says, “They do have their share of altars in the corners.” He’s alluding to the little shelves with precious collectibles here and there in the room. I’m assuming this is his way of pointing out their insider preciosity. And although he’s told me that he feels outside of their sphere as well, he doesn’t reassure me that he’s truly in the same place I’m feeling.

        “Lots of altars,” I agree, glumly. I decide to throw in the towel.  “I went forward and saw my relatives going forward to accept Jesus too many times for me to get into any altars, even if they are the cultural votive kind." I hear all too well how I’m attempting, once again, to deny my need to bow at their altars, before their gods, while only moments before I’ve admitted that I want to sink to my knees every time I go into their Temples of Art, with them standing all around in worship.

        He laughs. “No sage smudging, huh?”

        “Or any-kind-of-quasi-religious devotion,” I say, sticking to my guns.

        “Really?” he asks. I see he’s getting ready to take the sting out of my judgmental  proclamations, right when I’m wanting him to give them added punch . “Well, their enthusiasm for art and culture is okay, I suppose,” he concedes. “That doesn't take anything away from me, not really, but I've always found it hard to sit quietly and emote—isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?—become overtly inspired or enlightened in those rooms, like they’ve been designed for you to do. Maybe, I just don't do well when a context, as you call it, announces how I’m supposed to think, act or feel.”

        What he says opens me to confession. “I struggle so hard in those rooms to just be appropriate. But then I realize the tremendous, overwhelming, prodigiousness of what ‘being appropriate’ actually means, what I concede is behind it. If I can’t be like them, I think, at the very least I want to appear to be like them.  It’s the only way ‘being appropriate’ with them could possibly happen for me. That’s if I remain who I feel I am. But when I catch myself thinking like this, that’s when I start getting mad. I see what I'm doing.”

“You mean  you’re caught up in FOMO.”

        “FOMO?”

        “Fear of missing out.” When he sees my face, he laughs big, truly laughing himself  into a near fit. After he quiets down, I go on.

"You know, come to think of it, my mother felt like this in church at a certain time in her life, when belonging to a community was so terribly important to her.  She kept going forward and going forward after each alter call, trying over and over to get 'the joys of Jesus,' and it never happened to her, and she just couldn't understand why she couldn’t love and worship what they did. All the people around her were getting it, and she couldn't, and they weren’t very helpful about telling her how to get it, when she asked them. Then she started thinking that Jesus decides who gets it and who doesn’t—that He was the one holding it back from her. I have to tell you, Dave, she actually started getting better, started becoming normal—well, her normal, not theirs, of course—when she began thinking like this. She wasn’t one of the elect, the chosen ones, so screw the whole venture.

“But these academics are shrewder, you know? They don’t leave you hanging out  there in the wind. They have a plan of conversion. They point you toward where you’re supposed to go to get help—to the library and the collection of ninety-five thousand editions, to the advisors who send you to all the classes that lead to degrees, to the professors (in other words to them) who guide you to the dissertation committees who point to your work and have you write and rewrite it for years, telling you that you’ve almost got it! And if you work just a little harder, you’ll get it like the ones on high.” When he doesn’t say anything, I rant on. He’s listening, and I need this audience because I’ve been through it and need to pull it out of hiding where it’s festered for years.

        “One Sunday morning in church, my mother went forward for the umpteen time. This was at the First Baptist Church in our hometown—the big church, with the big clock tower that chimed out the hour of each day and on Sundays, calling all the good souls to worship, to hear the big preacher with the doctorate in front of his name—not Reverend, but Doctor, you understand. This was big stuff in our town. Every Sunday the First Baptist was on the radio, live. Every Sunday I was sitting in the choir. And I had watched my mom do this Sunday after Sunday, feeling embarrassed and upset that she would subject herself to self-abasement like this, time after time, leaving herself so vulnerable to the judgments of others. Of course, this was her point, but finally I just couldn’t stand it any longer. So this one Sunday, something snapped in me. Suddenly I was on my feet as the pastor started walking up to her, turning her by her shoulders, once more, back toward her seat. He didn't even bother to take her to the back after the service and pray with her as he once did. He just leaned over, said something in her ear, probably like, ‘I'm praying for you,’ and ushered her back from where she'd come. This was radio days, the days before such programing was on television, so his attitude wasn’t available for beyond the congregation to see.

        “There was something overly solicitous in his manner, even while he was being dismissive, with her exposed like this, so I stood up where I was, and said, ‘Leave her alone.’ Everyone's heads turned up to me as I made my way past the altos and sopranos in the choir loft, down the stairs to where she stood crying, her head bowed. I must have looked like a stripped-down version of Dr. Whoever in his divinity robe from Harvard, my choir robe billowing behind me, arms outstretched toward Mother. I said loud enough for everybody to hear in the back rows and on the radio as well, “Leave her alone, do you hear?” And as I put my arms around her shoulders, out of the corner of my eye I caught the Doctor’s hand slither up and push the microphone's button to off. I've seen that motion in memory for years, when this comes to mind, how he lifted his arm out of that Doctor of Divinity robe of his and turned her off. And then it hit me, full in the face, with such force, I almost fell over. It's a show. It's all a performance for all who are watching. They’re on stage, as you say.

        "I took my mother out of their church that day, walking down the aisle with her, looking members of the congregation in the eye as we passed, most of them not meeting my gaze as they sang the final stanza, the fifteenth stanza of the altar call, and I walked with her across the street from the church and down the block to our car. We’d come late and missed a spot in the on-the-premises parking lot. I don't remember where Dad was in all of this. I don't remember whether he was there, came later. But what I do see in memory is how she and I sat in the car together, her sitting next to me, me behind the wheel, me turned toward her, holding her hand, with her sobbing, “I try and try and I can't understand how to do it. I don't know how they do it. I want to, but it just doesn’t happen. How do they get it and I don’t?" Her tears were so terrible it took my breath away.

        “I was angry, so angry I could’ve slain all of them in that instant with my bare hands or like David, with a sling and a single stone, felling the monster in them all,. And I have to say, I did feel righteous, beyond them, into her suffering, because I saw it every day. They didn’t see, or even think on it, until Sundays, and then, when they saw, they couldn't open to it. Or wouldn’t. I’ll never know if they recognized what it was at all. If they did, they never let her know, to my knowledge, nor any of the members of our family. They were embarrassed by it, is what they were. So I said to her, ‘Momma, did it ever occur to you that they are lying?’

        “And I will never forget the look on her face, her smeared make-up, her looking up at me like I was some stained-glass window, letting in the light.

“'No,' she said, through her tears, a small shudder rushing through her throat and hands.

“‘Well,’ I said, ‘think about that possibility. These people can't tell you what to do because they don't know. Maybe, just maybe, it's an act that they’re into, and they think it's the experience.’

        “She began to rummage through her purse, finding and pulling out a Kleenex from a rolled-up wad she had in there, for God's sake. I don’t remember her ever without Kleenex, actually. It’s like she came prepared for her public suffering. This is when I realized the shame and humiliation was part of her actions. She didn’t need to just suffer. She needed to whip herself because she suffered, in front of them. She had her own act going on, but it was based on genuine humiliation. She cried out, almost in that Biblical way, ‘They’re so happy, so at peace, it seems to me. I want that peace, that happiness, that understanding that they have. Why can't I get it too? Why does God turn his face from me?’

        “And I did a mean thing probably because I knew she was listening, really vulnerable. But I was desperate to get through, and so, I said, the only truth as I knew it. I said, ‘It's never going to work, Momma.’ Yeah, I said that to her. It seemed cruel then, but it turned out to be the right thing to tell her. And because I had her attention in a way that was hard to claim in those days, I quickly added, ‘You’re too smart. They think they’ve got it, and they don’t, and you know why?’ She shook her head, looking at me with hope in her eyes. ‘Because they never doubt that they do.’”

Dave nods his head, but he asks, “Are we still back on the party thing?”

        I laugh, then say, “Yeah, I am. It’s not about religion. It’s about confidence, no, that’s not quite right. It’s about trusting yourself, not exactly against them so much as trusting what you know, believe is good enough. Regardless of what you’re attempting to understand, you have to find out for yourself. And Mother had no choice. She’d come far enough in her quest to belong to her own person, how she wanted to be in the world—even if she didn’t know what that was or how to be it. She could no longer buy what they were selling, what they wanted her to be and how they wanted her to be it. I believe that a lot of craziness is just that. Really, I mean it. Just that.”

He looks at the fire a long time, poking the sparks with his stick, the fire that needed another log to keep it going and that we both were choosing to let it die out. “So you’re telling me, she quit trying to find Jesus?”

        “Yep, she left the church. She did. She didn't just suddenly stop going. It was an addiction, trying to find what they had, what they were worshiping, especially to find it right in front of them Sunday after Sunday, and on the air in front of the whole world as she knew it. When I think about this now, I think she wanted to show them that she was trying, really trying hard, to be like them so she could belong. But from that day on, she slowly began to withdraw, not from salvation, but from their salvation. She never went back to First Baptist but for a while she went to a little mission church on the outskirts of town, then she progressed to the love of a girlfriend, then to a break with me and my friendship, then back to a heartbreaking darkness away from everybody, even leaving Dad. But slowly she found a way that only she knew was right for her. She did it by going through one craziness after another and giving each up until she found what she was trying so hard to find, her own freedom to be herself. And in this way, she made her way back to us, but she had been transformed by the process.

        “You know, everybody talks about ‘authenticity’ now, and I guess that’s what it comes down to. What is bottom line for you, your definition of who you are by what is true for you. And finding that out is confusing and the search can appear a little crazy, sometimes a whole lot of crazy.” I pause a bit, then add, “You know, I heard Candice Bergen in interview once, when her show was so big on television—what was that…”

        “Murphy Brown. That was a great show.”

        “Yeah, Murphy Brown. Anyway, the interviewer had said something to her that intimated that Bergen was privileged because she’d come from, well, privilege. Her mother was a famous model and her father was, of course, Edgar Bergen. And I’ve not forgotten what she said to this interviewer. ‘It’s never easy being an individual.’ It’s so simple and direct. It’s stayed with me.”

        He looks off into the woods, the darkness.

After a long silence, he says, “That's the way I feel sometimes. Like I'm in and out of  crazinesses."

        “It’s the only way to figure out how to be truthful to yourself. You can’t just go on gut feeling. That’s the unexamined life Socrates was talking about. Course, you can make it easy and fall for some guru or religionist who spells it out for you.”

        He nods, “But how do you get to the bone, the marrow, you know? I'm like your mother. At times like we were in the other evening, I feel as though I'm outside the experience looking in.” He stops, says, “But that's it, isn't it? That’s the confusion.”

        “That's what I told Mother. It's what I still think, but I forget it a lot, you know? The cynics and skeptics say you can't get to the marrow, that there isn’t any marrow to get to, like taking layers and layers of unreality away until you get to reality, that the real you or truth is an illusion, a mental construct we’ve come up with to justify our self-righteousness. They think that reality is everything that’s going on all of the time. And the believers constantly make judgments about what's coming at them. Is this real? Oh yessss, this is the most realest! Or no, that's not real, that’s an illusion, or delusion. Or at the far end, the reality that we think is real is the devil's handiwork! It’s not easy to figure out, so they come up with Sacred Texts to keep it straight and sure. And then they spend their time interpreting the Sacred Text, a religious search that’s the busy work of a lifetime. The social one we saw the other night at the party, well, that’s the one-upmanship work, the insider work. Thing is, it’s always work, isn’t it? Keeping in and up with what’s the thing to be or do in order to belong.” I sigh. “Getting it.”

        He’s quiet a long time. “I’ve thought a lot about the other night,” he says finally. “And I’ve come up with this. See what you think. If you can be like a dog, you’ve got it right.”

        “Like a dog?” I ask, grinning, knowing he’s on a path leading to one of his witty wisdoms.

        “Yeah. The minute I get into trouble is when I stop being a dog, you know, like sitting down and listening, or getting up and licking people's hands soothingly, not for any other reason than listening and licking and sometimes just lying down and sleeping, and mostly knowing when to get up and leave.”

“Being simple.”

        “Yeah, but, more like not intending to be a dog, just being a dog. That’s what dogs do.”

        “Ah, you're playing Zen again.” I smile. 

“I don’t know about ‘playing.’ A dog doesn’t claim it’s a dog, chéri,” he says, getting up and reaching for his car keys in his pocket. “It authentically is one.”  

           

After his car is up the drive, and I see him turn onto the main road and disappear over the hill, the nasty little doubter in me thinks, “Yeah, it’s a heartwarming thought that dogs are authentically dogs, but what if somebody has shitted them up?” But I know this is a discussion for next week or the next so I turn to putting out the fire and going into the house to sit by another fire I make, in another fireplace. With a cup of coffee in hand, I’ll busy myself with thoughts on the correlation between the marrow in the bone and who I am.

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