Something, even nothing?

"Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me hungry...have too much to eat. Let me ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere--be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one blessed piece of living is ever lost."

- Francie Nolan in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

This sounds like a prayer I would pray. Or at least a prayer I would have prayed before coming to New York City. Living in the suburbs of Chicago, I was terrified of languishing into a life of passivity, complacency, boredom and insensitivity. Since I’ve been in NYC, I can feel my fear shifting. Now, I am more afraid of drifting to an extreme. Here, the rich are so rich it is repulsive. The poor are so downtrodden they reduce themselves into a huddle of dirty blankets.

I think recently it has been my distant interactions with the homeless that have most affected me. Seeing them coiled up on the subway, often smelling so strongly like manure that other passengers switch cars as soon as they step on. In fact, my theory is that they make themselves smell so horrid so that they can have an entire car to themselves in order to remain isolated in their shame. These unfortunate souls do not acknowledge the living occurring them and they make every effort to not be acknowledged by it. Their pain has reduced to them to the point that they don’t even have faces—the distinguishing mark of a human—because they hide completely within blankets and hooded sweatshirts.

Francie Nolan thinks if she can only live her life in the margin of extremes then she will at least know she is alive; then she will be carpeing the diem. But I think she is mistaken. It is in the extremes that you forget to live.

The rich drift through life on the gentle waves of cash that put them into a slumber or they obsess with money to the point that they forget there is more to life than a bank account. The homeless daze out in hopes of disappearing. And, contrary to Francie's eagerness to dream, even dreaming all the time can also be a curse—just ask a war veteran who can’t shake his nightmares. I think all three of these (even the rich if you can get them to really be honest. See here for example.) would trade in their extreme existences so that they can live again.

Sometimes by being something, you can end up being nothing. Sometimes it is in the mundane that radical living happens most often.

Discuss. Expound. Agree. Disagree...

Prints on a Sidewalk

Pigeon feet beside
Two tiny soles:
Befriending
The dove, a child
grasps, stepping
In wet cement.
Till it flies.
And he remembers
Dinner at six.
Never knowing
The past pursuit is now
All the while
Caught.

Settling

There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born there, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size, its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter--the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these trembling cities the greatest is the last--the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from Italy to set up a small grocery store in a slum or a young girl arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh eyes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company.

- E.B. White, Here is New York

I have the privilege of being one of New York’s settlers. I came to this country (for New York is a country in its own right) with two suitcases in tow and a cryptic quest before me. In exchange for my passion, this city promised to give me nothing less than a life—my shelter, my food, my employment, my friends, my church. And so far, the trade has been quite lucrative. My budget is squeezed as tight as a fat man on a rush-hour train, but according to the cost-benefit analysis of life experiences, I am making out quite well. In fact, I’m doing so well that I have the joined the elite rank of poor, crazy settlers.

Yes, I have settled. And I have embraced New York with the intense excitement of first love. I’m not so settled that I feel completely New-Yorkified, but I am settled enough to feel the process beginning. And ah! What is better than the nascent rumblings of, not a transformation, but an expansion of one’s core? There are few things more satisfying than to have spent so much time waiting for the train to come, and knowing surely it must come, and then finally hearing it. Then seeing it. And then jumping on and heading into a dark tunnel. NYC is still a dark tunnel for me, but I have as much confidence that the MTA will get me to work in the morning as I do that the Lord will get me to my unbeknownst-to-me destination. That is because I’m not driving and heck, I can’t even see a thing out the window except movement. And I am moving. I’m progressing, growing, expanding and stretching.

Each day, on my ride to Manhattan, there is a majestic moment when for about one minutes the train rises out of its channel to gasp for air and cross the East River. On the way to work, I can see the sun darting off the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan skyline. On the way home, I’m struck by the beauty of the man-made lights that dot and speckle the bride and the buildings. I look forward to this part of my commute and unashamedly gaze out the window as New Yorkers keep their noses in their books or make a quick call while they have reception. But before I know it, it’s back to the dark tunnels again because we must keep moving.

NYC may still be a dark tunnel of uncertainties for me, but I've been blessed and enriched by many moments as glorious as that occasion of crossing the river. Shopping and coffeeing in Soho. A Vegan dinner, a drink and an archetypal East Village bookstore with an old classmate. Lunch with new friends on the East side of Manhattan. Touring around the upper east side and 5th Avenue and leisurely enjoying all its high-class pleasures. Strolling through the Met while engaging in deep conversation with a new friend. Church and worship and the word preached! Reading poetry in the New York Public Library. And all the mundane pleasures of living a new life. As a result, I have absorbed enough of the city to get into my blood.

It seems I’ve begun generating heat and light and so maybe now this place won’t be so dark and cold.

Sands of Granite

[Sands of Granite]

Factor in the sands of granite
That obligate a shape
by setting sedimentary.
Once a verbal speck.
Then a sauce-stained countertop.

And rub love’s weather with a spoon.
Precipitation stirs, eroding
roofs down to the cold brow of a basement tile.

Layer on liner, I repel—
Rope and resistance—
Like a proved watch on a string
Down the gutter of last June’s sediments
Into the heavy sea.

The red kitchen crust
Cracks like the voice of scared devotion,
making the distance between “me too”
and you a pyramid.
Add a cabinet of polished deserts
And I’m hanging

On ancient geography.
Bruised by an evolution
Of flashing lights and cops and tracks
Of deposited trash stickers.

Hitting bottom and licking
The bowl of old bricks,
My tongue needed relief
And my log needed a canal
Before the cavity caved
And the heart shaved
Itself into the shape
Of regret. And was set.


Copyright 2007

Another Convention

A Tribute to John Ashbery: An Imitation of “The Other Tradition”

[Another Convention]

They all went, some wore snagged notions
Braided into their hems, whispering the haste
Of the era, and indeed Jupiter spits its rocks
From the wrought-iron black balcony while
Apologetically dabbing its mouth, and all emotions shuffle
In the dirt under the stairs when she’s sweeping:
The eternal flow of traffic, the blisters,
The nostalgic Mickey Mouse waffles, and through it
The whistle of my generation streaking conscientiously into farces
Confusing night, dripping sex into syrup at every moment
Past the telescope: the wrong end of it all.
Only then did you stare into the television,
Unable to focus the billions of pixels taking their place, or
Scribble the subliminal. More beds
Were brought, and light bulbs smashed, but the sounds
Tattled on its waves so that no one heard how it happened
After Jesus waited outside. People on the first
Circus tightrope, squatting up and down, until splitting
Five hundred decibels across the horizon
And the show was canceled on Ohio’s border.
The string on my finger
Says they lost you, after a shower, in your tented towel,
Literate as a mosquito in a doctor’s office.
The tightrope life was higher then. Swaying, each of the
Gypsies has a new fortune for philanthropists
Who weren’t steady enough to finish, forfeiting their costumes
To the event, and how, though spectators
Wrung their towels dry, if only to nearly
Fly away, yet still bogged down in a dreary faker
After that stuffy self-awareness years before,
Now the song of the street has muted itself
Over the magnanimity of the spectacle. You found this
Perfunctory, and stuck up your eyelids toward the lamp,
Painting your pictures on the globe, not seeing
Or caring, although everything must die musically
And all things released, told yes and no
Caught in and out of the twisted iron bars
They have so much trouble remembering when your
Forgetting
Redeems them at once, as the moon claims the sky.

Why I Make Art

My culturally savvy pastor sent me this paragraph from a Christian theater blog he stumbled upon and asked me this: "As an artsy, Bobo-ish, literati type [note: I found that description both humorous and flattering], are you sympathetic, semi-sympathetic, or skeptical of the following comment:"

I realized today that I do theatre because I quest for Truth. It's not that dogmatic stuff that fundies snobbishly label "absolute truth," nor is it a relativized, "whatever-you-believe-is-fine-for-you" postmodern brand of truth--and it's certainly not the kind of martial, menacing truth that political opponents are flinging in each other's faces this time of year. The kind of truth that I am after is the truth of me being more me than I've ever been before, of mining things that are Real But May Not Have Existed Before I Found Them. Does anyone other than the actor understand this kind of truth? I don't know. Call me elitist, but we are elite. We are a priesthood. The material we mediate? I liken it to a rare, shy flower that refuses to bloom if you look at it directly. Fragile and pink-skinned, you can see the fluids pulsating just beneath its veiny, paper-thin petals. . . breath the wrong way and it will turn in on itself and wilt.

This is my response:

I am very skeptical and semi-sympathetic. Yes, artists quest for truth. And yes, they feel like the truth they search for is unappreciated and misunderstood. But, it is completely arrogant (which is different from being elitist) to say that one is "mining things that are Real But May Not Have Existed Before I Found Them." Artists do NOT create ex nihilo (even if they emphasize the mining over creating). Artists are not God. They cannot find something if it didn't exist before. That statement is ridiculous and it is using the typical artsy rhetoric of "let me impress people with 'deep' philosophizing (and spell words the British way) even though I am not actually thinking about what I may be saying."

And yes, actors are priests. So are bakers. So are doctors. We are a common priesthood of believers. God does not view artists any more highly than a cashier. Why? Because we are all working with what he has given us. Artists are copy-cats of God--there can be no artistic pride in that since un-originality is the feared enemy of art. The pride of an artist ought to be in his/her ability to see something the way God has already seen it and already created it and then sharing that with others who were not aware of that particular perspective. Thus, the material of artists is not that which is "real but which has not existed before I found them," but rather their material is that which is real but which limited humans did not know existed until God revealed it to them through their art. Art is simultaneously a means of discovery and a means of communicating a discovery. Even in the theater, you cannot say that you are on a quest for a truth which has not yet existed, because all that is truth already exists, whether an actor discovers it on the stage or not.

Furthermore, to liken what this person calls their material to a shy flower is 1) A bad analogy because a flower that refuses to bloom is closed and a closed flower is more sturdy than an open one. And truth is not fragile. It is steely strong. 2) Theater, and art in general, is not about delicately sustaining a fragile flower and hoping that if you stand still, hold your breath, and stare at it really hard it will open itself up to you. Art is about getting a sledgehammer and beating through our dense heads, sinful nature, calloused hearts, sealed eyes and trying to find layer after layer of delicate, profound, harsh, etc. truths. Kafka says, it is the ax the breaks the frozen sea within us. Now, sometimes this sledgehammer might need to work through nuances of language, a gentle scene on the stage or a silent rest in a song, but it must have an impact. Art is not about doing nothing (not breathing, not moving too fast, not speaking). Art is proactive! It is about trying to pry open that flower petal by petal and seeing what is hiding inside. And the flower only humors an artist if its creator gives it permission to allow its petals to be peeled back. But when the artist becomes privy to what is inside, it is the greatest privilege. And that is why I want to make art.

The Ubiquitous Self

A presumptuous appendage to Walker Percy's Self Help Quiz found in his Lost in the Cosmos

(21) THE UBIQUITOUS SELF: How the Self finds itself in everything, which results either in arrogance, humility, or suicide.

Question: While standing in the grocery store deciding what the best value of toilet paper is to buy, an old college acquaintance comes up to you, shows both surprise and excitement at seeing you, and asks how you are doing. But before you can answer, this friend launches into a rant about the last package of TP she bought and the pros and cons of certain brands. You respond by nodding politely and zoning out while thinking about what kind of cereal to buy next. Then you hear about the ultra-sandy TP her roommate bought and you immediately jump back into the conversation. What drew you back into this acquaintance's toilet paper world?

(a) You are obsessed with finding the most plush TP in order to avoid a sandy rub.

(b) You are environmentally conscientious and you know that sandy TP has been proven by muskrats in Ohio to be harmful to creek beds, and so you feel it is your responsibility to share this fact with your friend.

(c) You know that either you join in the conversation now and try to wrap it up or you will never get to your Honey Nut Cheerios.

(d) Human beings are only interested in that in which they see themselves, and if you wait long enough, you will see yourself in everything. At the store, you could relate to your friend's sandy plight because your roommate recently subjected you to the same thing. And so, because you could see yourself in her story, you were immediately hooked.

(CHECK ONE)

Thought Experiment: Think about anything. Then decide why you are thinking about it. What's its relevance to you? How did the thought come to you and thus how did you come to enter into the thought? In some way the self is not only in your thoughts, but in the object of your thoughts. Now think about something else. Once again, did you find the self in the thought and in the thing? Now try to look at something, listen to something, feel something, anything. Were you able to do so while leaving the self behind?


Regardless of what you answered to the multiple choice question above, the self was embedded into your friend's TP tales because one's self is ubiquitous to itself. This can be a horribly depressing thought if you are one who does not want your self to be disseminated unto the ends of the earth (or at least the ones you venture into). Or it can be a revelation that results in hubris because you are drunk with the possibilities of perpetuating yourself. Or it may make you feel utterly insignificant because you are only one part of a million zillion other parts and have no particular claim on anything for what is not rare is not special. Or it can make anything interesting to you because with a little reflection, you will discover that you should have a vested interest in everything.

Thought Experiment (II): Try to find some theological truths that support the ubiquitous self. Think about how the ubiquitous self might/might not support some theological truths. Think about how this idea might become heresy. Now think about what your most successful toilet paper purchase has been and write it down so that next time you go to the store you will know exactly what to buy.