I Used to Be Smart.

Ben looked past his reflection in the window out into the yard. It was the middle of an Ohio winter. Everything was brown. Dead. There was no snow on the ground, and though the sky was blanketed by thick grey clouds, there was no threat of snow. There was no chance of anything but this cold brown winter.
He watched his mother working furtively in the soil next to the front porch. She was doing her best to plant a box of bulbs before Roger came home. Ben understood his mother’s uneasiness. It wasn’t that Roger had any problems with the bulbs. It was just that he was Roger. He wouldn’t be mad. That wasn’t it, he just had this way of making everybody around him feel small. The winter had made Ben feel small enough already. He couldn’t stand to shrink anymore.

Ben was sprawled on the couch. He had his feet on the coffee table and he was halfway paying attention to the a commercial for The Complete Elvis on VHS when Roger came into the room.
“Feet off the table.” Roger said.
That was all? He couldn’t even hassle him in complete sentences? Ben wanted to talk back, but he didn’t care enough to start a fight today.
Roger couldn’t resist sharing his opinions the commercial that was droning, “Elvis isn’t dead,” he said.
Always. This was what he always had to endure. Ben didn’t really care enough about it to start a fight. It didn’t matter if Elvis were dead or not, he was just sick of Roger’s opinions on everything. He was sick of how nothing could ever be what it was with Roger. So Ben rolled his eyes and eked out a half hearted protest. “Right, Roger,” he said, “and there wasn’t ever a moon landing, and Jimmy Carter was a Red. I’ve heard it all.”
“No. We’ve been to the moon. I saw the rocks. But that wasn’t the moon on TV.” Roger paused. “And Jimmy Carter was a Red.”
This was always what started it. Roger always went off half-cocked with this stuff. Ben could keep his mouth shut most days. Some days he managed enough effort for half-hearted sarcasm. More frequently he started a fight. Some days, he pretended to be interested. He liked to have something to laugh at.
Roger married Ben’s mother two years after the accident that killed his father. Roger worked for a magazine that was called Under the Watchful Eye. It was a rag. Every month, Roger “researched” some new conspiracy theory or creature sighting and for a few thousand words he entertained odd realities of clandestine international cabals bent on world domination or he speculated on the evolutionary origins of Sasquatch and lake monsters.
Roger was huge. He was easily over six feet tall and his shoulders were twice as wide as Ben’s. He wasn’t quite forty yet, but his hair had gone grey. For the three years that Ben had known him he’d had a big grey mustache that gave him a kind of walrus quality. His only shirts were in solid colors—blue, grey, or black—and he was rarely without the camouflage jacket that looked less like a relic from Vietnam and more like the product of a mail order Army surplus catalog. He was an absolute cartoon.

It was beautiful the day of the accident. Ben had been doing an adequate job at the constant crisis management that was being fifteen. Ben didn’t mind school. His grades weren’t the best in the world, but they were good enough that they didn’t get him trouble with anyone. Ben was a decent enough looking kid. He kept his dark hair trimmed short, but rarely felt like brushing it. It usually lay were it fell, and that worked well enough. He had big, dark eyes that were just a fraction of an inch too close together, and a nose that was distinctive, if not a bit large. His parents hadn’t ever had much money, so he dressed simply. The same three t-shirts and two pairs of Levi’s were usually all he needed.
His dad had dropped him off at school that morning. It was early in the morning, but it was warm enough that Ben could tell that fall wasn’t close yet. It was the kind of day that would push his focus to its limits. He would move from room to room that day, staring out windows, wishing he could be outside—wishing he could just be somewhere else.
Ben and his father had always been close. They were inseparable through Ben’s childhood. Summer weekends always meant they were together somewhere—camping in the Appalachian foothills, or taking weekend trips to Lake Eerie—but the last year had seen them drift apart. They didn’t argue. Nothing had happened between them, things had just been different. The hours that Ben used to spend with his father were replaced by other things, sometimes by Ben’s occasional girlfriends, mostly the guitar he had gotten for his fourteenth birthday. It wasn’t much, a cheap Washburn finished in black. Ben had been taking lessons every Sunday since. He mostly sat in his room and recorded songs on a garage sale boombox, dubbing and redubbing his tapes until they wouldn’t play anymore.
It was odd, that day, that his mother was home. She usually worked until well after five, leaving him free to make all the noise he wanted. It was even odder that the police car was behind hers in the driveway. Ben never could remember many details, just pieces that would turn over in his head every day.
“Complete accident.”
“Don’t know who crossed the center line.”
“Nothing we could do.”
His mother’s eyes, red and puffy from crying. Her ragged breathing between sobs.
Ben didn’t remember fall that year. He just woke up and it was cold.

Ben’s mother had been introduced to Roger by a friend. For that first year after her husband died, Joyce rarely left the house except for work. Some nights she came home and Ben rarely saw her. The only clue that she was home was a thin light under her bedroom door. Most nights, Ben thought she was fine. He felt that she was learning to manage. Sure, she wasn’t the same as she had been before, but Ben thought that was okay. After all, how could she be the same?
Ben thought she had been doing fine until Carol insisted that she get out of the house more. They all sat around the dinner table, eating some casserole that Carol had brought over. Ben feigned fulness and declined seconds and listened as she diagnosed his mother’s mental condition.
“You have to get out more,” she said. “You know, move on. I know you’re think you’re doing okay, but you have to get back to normal life.”
Ben thought this was normal life. When you had lost someone, you couldn’t just pretend like nothing had ever happened. Things had to change. That was what his dad deserved, for things to change. That was the way it should be. His death should have created a hole. Why should they fill that hole up, Carol? You don’t understand what it means that he’s not here, do you, Carol?
Ben remembered hearing Joyce tell her that she wasn’t ready, it was too soon.
“Nonsense,” said Carol. “In fact I’ve got someone who would love to meet you.”

“Shut that shit up,” Roger thundered down the hall, “I’m trying to work.”
Work? “What the hell ever Roger, you’re just sucking Bigfoot’s dick!”
This was what their relationship had become. Ben would come home from school and find Roger hunched over the ancient beast of a typewriter he used (didn’t he know they had electric ones now), or on the phone with some whack-job from out west who was swearing he had been the victim of the latest round of probing perpetrated by extra-terrestrials.
Ben would retreat to his room and play something from “London Calling.” Maybe “Spanish Bombs,” maybe “Revolution Rock,” and Roger would yell. Roger would always yell. Ben would yell back. The recent months had seen the yelling grow more intense, and more vulgar. No matter how it began, it always ended the same, Roger stormed down the hallway, shook Ben’s locked door, and cussed in futility that, Ben’s “Smart ass was going to pay for this one.”

Ben couldn’t endure all of the yelling. It was, after all, just Roger. Roger could yell until he was blue in the face, and Ben didn’t really care. Headphones blocked most of the noise anyway. When the headphones weren’t enough, Ben had other ways of shutting Roger out. He had secret strategies. He would find ways to wall himself off from Roger. He would imagine that his heart was becoming harder and harder. Daily, he would add layers of concrete and asphalt until he was sure that he had tripled his weight trying to keep Roger out.
It was only when Joyce intervened that Ben felt any pain. As loud and forceful as Roger was, his mother was that much more subtle. She could bore down through all the layers he had created around his heart. She would usually knock after the last waves of yelling had subsided. Ben was usually still angry when she came in and sat on his bed, but he never could be angry at her for very long. Sometimes, she’d talk for a long time. She’d talk to Ben about Roger, about how difficult it was for a man to try to be a parent to a child that wasn’t his. She’d tell Ben that Roger just needed a chance. She’d beg him to just put forth a little effort. As much as he loved his mother, he couldn’t bear it. He couldn’t bear to give Roger a chance.

There were days when Ben couldn’t bear the thought of going home. He couldn’t deal with Roger. He couldn’t be yelled at his music. He couldn’t listen to those ridiculous phone calls with hysteric housewives who had been violated by extraterrestrials. On those days, he would walk. Mostly, he would walk out of town, across the empty cornfields, made dry and hard by the cold. He’d usually walk until he found the creek. It was mostly frozen, but in some spots the water would break free from the ice and trickle for a few yards before it froze again. He didn’t do much those days, He’d throw rocks at the patches of ice to see witch ones would break. He loved poking the big sheets with sticks and watching the cracks radiate out, spider-like until they broke apart and were subsumed.
On a cold, clear Saturday, late February, when Ben had heard enough of Roger’s rambling about “the constant and planned suppression of cryptozoological data,” Ben started walking. After crossing a few miles of dead ground he walked into the trees near the creek. The large flat rock that he sat on was cold when he touched it, but he didn’t mind. He wasn’t home. That was enough.
He’d been still almost an hour, lost in the interior worlds that he created, dreaming of sending his demo to Mick Jones and being discovered. Back through the trees across the creek, Ben heard the leaves crunch, and few dry twigs snap. It was probably nothing. Some farm backed up to this creek and cows were always wandering down into the woods where the trees blocked the wind. He looked to find the cow, thought maybe it would fun to throw some pebbles at it.
Nothing but trees and dead leaves.
Convinced that whatever livestock had made the noise had wandered away, Ben’s mind wandered away from the cold and the creek again. Minutes later, Ben heard the crack of dry branches again, this time closer than before. He snapped his eyes up toward the sound of the movement. There among the trees Ben saw a large brown patch of movement. It lumbered for a few steps toward the creek bed on two legs.
Ben’s mind ceased working. His sense received data—the cold of the February air, the crunch of leaves, the brown shape and its rugged fur. The clean smell of the dry winter air had been replaced by pungent animal smell, but Ben was so far unable to recognize that. Whatever he was seeing looked up from the leaves, glanced at Ben for the shortest of seconds with large dark eyes, and slid off among the trees, where it faded into the brown of winter.
Ben didn’t say anything when he got home. Roger was planted in front of the television, watching a documentary on Watergate and having a lively conversation with the narrator. Ben didn’t see his mother. He walked to his room and found his headphones.

That Tuesday, he came home to find Roger at his desk. He had pushed his typewriter to the side, and he was staring at plaster of paris casts of giant feet. In his hands, he held a coarse tuft of red-brown hair. Ben usually avoided eye contact or engagement and headed straight for his headphones. Today, he was under the influence of powers that were not his own. “Is that?” he said.
“What the hell else would it be?” It was the kind of reply he expected from Roger. It was the kind of reply that would usually end in a profanity laced tirade.
“Where’d it come from?” was all he said today.
“I get it Ben. You’re playing your game today. The one where you pretend you want to hear about this so you can go make fun of me later? Write some shitty song about how stupid I am? I’m not wasting the time today Ben. I can’t.”
Ben knew that Roger’s response was fair enough. It was the kind of the thing he could expect from Ben. It was the kind of thing that Ben did. For a second, Ben felt the anger start to rise inside of him. He got hot in the pit of his stomach, and his brain swirled with all sorts of insults that he could throw at Roger. He wanted to give in to that anger, but something had changed. He didn’t want to make Roger angry that day. He didn’t want to be angry himself. “Sorry Roger,” he said. “I know I’ve done that lots of times, but I’m not this time. Swear.”
Roger’s posture softened. He didn’t sound convinced, but he offered some information. “Some redneck in north Georgia. Says this isn’t it. Says there’s more where that came from.”
“More? What did he mean more?”
“Don’t know,” Roger said. “He just said there was more. He said if I want in on it, if I want to break the story that he needs something from me. He wants a show of ‘good faith.’ Whatever the hell that means.”
The desire to mock Roger’s fervency was absent. “Why do you need more than that?” Ben said. “Can’t you just show everybody that?”
“Don’t you pay attention?” Roger said. “I get shit like this twice a month. Any jackass with a few tools and a dog could pull this off. Gotta be something more than this before I care.”
“Oh.” Ben said. “I see.”

About six weeks later, after school, Ben came home to find Roger at his typewriter, hammering at the keys—like always. They didn’t exchange words. Ben wondered what it was today. Maybe lizard men, or hyenas in Kentucky, maybe black lions in Illinois. He didn’t ask. He just walked to his room, dropped his books in a pile, and started the ritual tuning of his guitar. He was hammering out the opening of “In Hammersmith Palais” when he heard a quiet knock on his door. It sounded like his mother, but she couldn’t be home yet. He opened it to see Roger, walrus mustache, camouflage jacket, and holding a big manila envelope. He braced himself for the inevitable confrontation.
“Got something I want to show you,” was all that Roger said. Inside the room, Roger stood while Ben sat on his bed. “Remember that guy from North Georgia with the plaster casts and the dog hair?”
Ben did.
“I was low on stories, so I gave him a few lines, just for the hell of it. To fill space,” Roger said. “He sent me this.” Roger threw the envelope in Ben’s direction.
Ben pulled back the metal tabs and slid out an eight by ten printed on Kodak paper. He flipped the print over and saw a grainy black white of forest. In the lower left corner, out of focus, was a tall silhouette, striding with its long arms at its sides.
“Could be anything. Crazy redneck might have gotten drunk and put on a monkey suit for all I know. Doesn’t matter though. Bigfoot moves copies. We’re gonna double truck that blurry thing next month.”
“Double truck?”
“Yeah. Print it big. On two pages. Copies will move,” Roger said.
Ben wasn’t entirely sure what to think. He was pretty sure that he was just looking at a redneck in a monkey suit. It just wasn’t right, after all. It wasn’t tall enough. Its arms were too long. It didn’t walk like that.
“Anyway. I came down here because I have to call this guy tonight. Get an interview. Do a full write up. Thought maybe if you didn’t have any homework you could listen in if you wanted to.”
Ben shrugged his shoulders. “Sure. I might.”

That March had been as wet as the winter was dry. Rain, it seemed, was daily. Ben would normally be frustrated. That rain would often confine him to the house, but lately, he hadn’t had the same desire to disappear. He sat on his bed one of those Thursday evenings with his headphones on. Roger walked past his open door.
“Ben!” Roger didn’t have any problem yelling over the din of the headphones. “I was right.”
“You’ve never been right about anything,” Ben said.
He thought he saw Roger smile, but he never could tell with that mustache in the way.
“Funny. I told you the Bigfoot double truck would move copies. Sure as hell did. Most of we’ve ever sold. Jackasses didn’t know what to do when they had to print a second run. Magazine even got a call from the AP. They want to run the photo. I told you people love that damn monkey. I never did know why. Big stinky ape never does anything but look at you and run away.”
Ben laughed.
“And by the way,” Roger said, “turn that shit down. You’re gonna bust your ear drums.”

Ben didn’t intend to drink that night. March had been so damn boring that he had to get out of the house. The first week of April had come on cold and boring, but he convinced Frank to let him drive the sailboat of an Oldsmobile that he owned and met some friends at someone’s uncle’s farm. It was April, but it was still cold. When Dennis Brown passed him the bottle he said it would “keep him warm.” Ben didn’t think that there was any harm in a little. The fire kept his face warm, but every drink made Ben’s belly a little warmer, and that felt good. In fact, as horrible as that whiskey tasted, Ben was good with the way it made him feel. Even the horrible new wave music that his friends were playing was fine with him tonight.
On the drive home, he found the Oldsmobile’s transmission more difficult to operate than it had been. He thought the wet and the cold must have something to do with it. As he rounded the corner and pulled into the driveway, the transmission stuck in second gear and screamed across the quite Ohio night.
Ben sat in the car for a few minutes, gathering himself. Hoping his mistake had gone unheard. In the house he saw a light.
The scene ended badly. Roger greeted him, wearing a robe and dirty white underwear. Each tried to yell louder than the other. When Roger smelled the bourbon on his breath, Ben’s case lost all credibility.

The next few weeks were like any other Ohio April. Warmer days occasionally broke through, but mostly it was wet, and it was still cold. Ben sat in his room. Staring out the window. His guitar and all his tapes had disappeared after that night last month. He hadn’t spoken to Roger much. He caught the same pieces of conversation of about odd sightings and government conspiracies, but he didn’t listen much.
Lying on his bed, Ben was perfecting throwing a tennis ball off the walls. He had been perfecting the angle of hitting the ceiling, then the wall, then having the ball bounce back to him. He was lost in the rhythm of the “thump-thump-smack” when there as a big knock on the door that could only come from one man. He debated ignoring the knock, but when his ball caromed wildly off the wall under his bed somewhere, he decided to give it a go.
Roger was there, filling up the door frame. He wore only a faded grey shirt on jeans.
“Jacket at the cleaners, Rodge?” Ben didn’t try to hide the sarcasm.
“Listen, smartass, I want to show you something.” Roger didn’t even let Ben open the envelope this time. It was already there. This one was in color. It was still grainy, but the cameraman had managed to focus. Ben’s eyes found their way to center of the frame, where two big dark eyes—neither wholly primate nor wholly human met his own. “That jackass from Georgia sent me this. Says he’s got something even better, but the only way to see it is go down there. Says if I don’t get there by tomorrow, he’s going elsewhere with the story.”
Ben blinked a few times, and tried to process the grainy eight by ten.
Frank walked across the room and sat on Ben’s bed. He sat silent for a second, and looked up at Ben. “Look. I don’t expect you to understand this. I know you think what I do is stupid. I heard that tape you made. I know you think I’m nobody. What you don’t see yet is that you don’t know nearly as much as you think you do. You think you have the world all under control. You think understand what’s real and what’s not, but one day, you can see something and all that can change right in front of you.”
Ben wasn’t sure why, but he sat down beside Roger.
“That’s what I want to show people. That’s why I write this stuff. That’s why I stay on the phone all hours of the night with these loony people. Everybody is convinced that the world is a certain way. Everybody is convinced that the way they’re told it is, that’s the only way. But Ben, what if it’s not? What if the world’s different?”
Ben started at his bare feet. “Sometimes.”
“Exactly. Somebody has to show people that. Somebody has to let people know that they can’t trust everything they see. Somebody has to convince people that every ‘fact’ is the product of three lies. That’s what I do. This picture may be the missing link of evolution, or it may be some fatass from Georgia getting one over on me. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I make people see things differently. I shake people up.”
“Like Joe Strummer,” Ben said, more to the tops of his feet than to Roger.
“Don’t know who that is, Ben. But I talked to your mom. I’m going to Georgia tonight. I know you have school tomorrow, but she says you can come. If you want to. Your call, but if you’re leaving, we got an hour.” Roger walked out, closing Ben’s door behind him.

Ben stepped out of Roger’s Oldsmobile in a Wal-Mart parking lot somewhere in north Georgia. A man waved to them from a dirty truck across the parking lot. Ben looked down at his feet. The asphalt was warm in the Georgia sun. He heard Roger’s footsteps move across the parking lot toward the truck. In the cracks of the asphalt, Ben saw pale green plants doing their best to push through into sunlight. The first signs of spring.

“Damn,” Donny thought, “this girl looks like she owns the place.” He couldn’t often be counted on to be observant, but had gotten this one right. She was propped against the gas station counter, all of her weight concentrated on one elbow. She was wearing an obnoxious green shirt. He thought it was about the right color for cartoon Martians. It certainly didn’t suit much else. It was wrinkled all around the bottom, like it had been tucked in all day and she had only just pulled it out. Her baby was screaming on the floor.
“Ain’t that baby a pain in the ass?” he thought. It was tiny. Pink and round and screaming. Miss Martian Green was tireless at the counter.
“Do you have any buy one get one free left? Maybe some Camel 100’s?”
The clerk behind the counter was digging through stacks of cigarettes, and the girl’s singular effort was invested in assuring that this haggard clerk was willing to exert the necessary effort to locate the right box.
“Damn it to hell. I just wanted a Mountain Dew and a can of Grizzly.” He almost said that out loud. Nobody could have heard it over the screaming pink thing in the floor anyway. Satisfied with the retrieval of a black box of Camel 100’s trimmed (appropriately) in pink, she ceased badgering the clerk.
Donny would later have to admit to himself that he did want to see what she looked like. He couldn’t quite wait until she turned around. He wasn’t disappointed. Not exactly. He wasn’t exactly overwhelmed, either. She wasn’t ugly. Hell, he could see why someone would want to make that baby with her. But she wasn’t nothing special either. She was just a girl, like all these other girls in this town. Her hair was unremarkably brown and pulled back into a ponytail. Her face was covered in freckles, which he had always kind of liked. Her eyes were a little far apart, but that didn’t make her ugly. And honestly? He didn’t really notice what color those eyes were. It didn’t matter to him. He half-smiled at her as she passed, and took his place at the counter. “Can of Grizzly. Wintergreen. Long cut.”

“So how in the hell did I get here?” he thought. He was standing on a hill in Clay County. The wet Appalachian spring had fed the little creek that ran between them and the cabin so deeply that it crashed all around, swelling over its banks, all muddy brown and white capped. They had come to a clearing, out of the tall trees that would soon have shaken off all of the drear of winter and traded it for familiar shades of green. That girl? Martian green and Camel 100’s? She was Cath, and she was behind him. And that round, pink, screaming thing? She was Ella, and he was carrying her. This cabin had been her uncle’s. She had never known him. After her father had died, she found a newspaper clipping wrapped around an old key in the back of his closet. She had had an uncle, and he was a bootlegger. This was his place, untouched for years. They had come to see if there were any secrets inside.

Donny really didn’t think enough of her to think that he would ever see her again. The only thing remarkable about her that day was the amount of time she put between him and nicotine fix. Interfering with that was one of the few ways to get his attention. Donny had never been very remarkable himself. He had spent all of his twenty-two years of life in this town. It wasn’t much, just a little stop on interstate 75 in the middle of Kentucky. He had graduated from high school, and he never really liked it. He worked on the same farm that had hired him since when he was sixteen. He was good for that kind of work. He never played sports in high school—too damn much running—but he was a good sized man (“a big ol’ boy,” they said at the farm), and worked hard. They had started him with a weed eater. He hacked at fence rows until his jeans were permanently stained green. He graduated to hay tosser and was rewarded with an extra twenty five cents every hour, black fingernails, and the ability to produce the loveliest black phlegm. Now? He painted. He was dizzied by fumes in tiny barns, and dizzied by heights on tiny ladders and always wore some badge of indelible paint somewhere on his body.
Donny didn’t really have a beard, but he hated to shave, so usually wore a bit of barely tolerable stubble. He had been tanned by his days of outdoor work, and he usually wore a faded Texas Longhorns hat pulled way down. Cath hated that hat more than anything he owned. She told him that. A lot. Donny wasn’t really too concerned. He liked that old hat, and he was going to keep liking that old hat.

“Ain’t no point sitting here, babe!” Donny said, “Let’s go see what’s in there.” He started across the little foot bridge that led to the cabin. After a few steps, he turned, and saw that Cath hadn’t moved. She stood still. In front of her, in both hands, she held the key to the cabin. It was the kind of key Donny thought belonged in the movies. It looked liked it would unlock pirate treasure or secret passageways. That was sort of what Donny was hoping for. Pirate treasure, he thought, was probably a little too much, but he was fine with a secret or two. “Come on! We gotta get in there and see if left any secrets for us! He might’ve thought some of that stuff died with him, but we’ll show him!” He watched her for a few minutes and she turned the key over and over again. He didn’t have time for this. “Ella,” he said, “can you tell your mama to come on?” Donny thought he had heard the word “scowl” before. He thought that was probably the look she was giving him.
“Don’t you tell me what to do Donny Jones. You know better.”
He did.

The second time he saw her, he didn’t even know it was her. He was bored as hell one night, and decided to drive around town just to see what he could see. Wasn’t much else to do, he figured. Sometimes he needed to go some place where he could get his mind quiet. Some place where he didn’t have to think about working or paying bills or any of that other stuff that made his mind so full of noise he couldn’t think straight. He stopped and bought a pack of cigarettes and went to the little park by the creek. He liked to come here and sit on his tailgate. That was all. He just liked to sit there. Summer had been doing its best to turn into fall, and moon was unbelievably close that night.
“What if that ain’t real?”
Donny almost dropped his cigarette. He composed himself and turned to see that girl with the Martian green shirt and the Camel 100’s.
“What if that moon ain’t real?” she said. “What if it’s just this big joke? What if there’s some man, three counties over with a big projector and he just makes those pictures of the moon on the sky? He usually does it about the same, but sometimes he gets bored so he makes it look different, just to keep us all interested. What if that was all it was?”
By the time she had finished, she was sitting on the tailgate beside Donny. He hadn’t said a word yet.
“Can I have one of those cigarettes?”
He handed her the pack.
“I might need that lighter.”
He hadn’t even noticed. His fingers fumbled with the little plastic lighter, trying to gather himself to hand it to this odd girl who had deposited herself on his tailgate. What in the world was she? Coming from nowhere? Saying things like that? “You might,” he finally said.

“I wasn’t trying to tell you what to do, not exactly. I just thought since we had come all this way you would want to see what was in here. I mean, what was that point? What was it you called it? Your ‘fact-finding mission’? Didn’t you say all that stuff about how you wanted to see where you come from? What was that one thing you said? Something about seeing what’s in your bones? Don’t you want to go find them secrets?”
“That is was I said, Donny Jones. That’s exactly what I said. This is mine. It doesn’t belong to anybody but me and I’ll do whatever I want to with it Donny. Whatever the hell I want. Now you bring that baby over here to me.”
When she was determined like this, Donny couldn’t do anything but obey. He marched over to the girl holding the key and surrendered her baby to her.

They were in her mama’s basement when the question popped out of Donny’s mouth. “Hey baby, who is Ella’s daddy?” He was lying on his back, with Ella extended up high, tossing her a little and catching her. Ella giggled. Cath stared.
“Buy a vowel, dummy!”
Donny knew that she had heard him. There wasn’t any way she hadn’t heard him. Pat Sajack wasn’t that damned interesting. “Baby, you hear what I said?”
“Yeah, Donny. I heard what you said. Plus. You didn’t say it. You asked it.”
“Well?”
“Well yourself,” she said.
They were in Donny’s truck the next time he asked her. Ella was strapped in the car seat between them, and the country station was playing an old Waylon Jennings song about mamas and cowboys. “Does Ella ever get to see her daddy?”
“Ella doesn’t have a daddy. She’s only got me. That’s all she needs.”
“Of course she’s got a daddy. How else did she get here? You find her under a cabbage leaf? Somebody leave her on your doorstep in a basket with a note? Everybody’s got a daddy!”
Cath wasn’t defensive, just matter of fact: “Everybody but Ella. Everybody’s got a daddy but my little girl. She’s the only little girl in the the world that doesn’t need a daddy. She just has me and she just needs me.” She put her hand on her girl’s warm chest and looked out window. She wouldn’t be answering any more questions today.
The third time Donny asked the question, he finally got the hint. They had left Ella with Cath’s mother and gone for dinner at the Mexican restaurant. After a few margaritas and and too many fajitas, they decided to drive around out in the country, like they used to. About three miles from town a tequila-emboldened Donny said, “Baby, why is that you won’t answer me whenever I ask you about Ella’s daddy? You embarrassed about it or something?”
“No, Donny. I’m not embarrassed by it, and I told you that we’re not talking about this.”
“If you ain’t embarrassed,” he said, “why don’t you just tell me then? You know I don’t care. It could be anybody. It could be that crazy man that walks around downtown with his finger shoved up his nose waving at all the cars. Wouldn’t bother me none. Your baby could have an old booger eating daddy, and it would be all the same to me. I love you and Ella. It don’t matter none.”
He couldn’t see her roll her eyes, because she was staring at the trees whipping buy her window. “Yeah Donny, that’s it. Ella’s daddy is the man who picks his nose and waves at all the cars that go by. I sure hoped you would never find that out.”
There was an edge to her tone that Donny hadn’t heard before. She was biting in a way that she had never been with him before. He didn’t appreciate it. “Now look here baby, I don’t like how you’re talking to me. I wasn’t trying to be mean. I was just trying to tell that it really don’t matter none to me. That’s all. I just want you to know that’s how much I love you too. It could be anybody and I wouldn’t care. Why don’t you just tell me? You think I’m gonna quit loving you two? You think I’m going to be embarrassed? Or laugh at you? I don’t understand it baby. What do you think I’m going to do.”
“Did you ever stop to think,” she asked, “Donny Jones, that maybe it’s not about you?”

Donny didn’t understand. He had found that happened to him often in life, but this time, it was different. It wasn’t math problems, or history, or the periodic table. It was something different. She was something he needed to understand. If he didn’t understand her, Donny didn’t think he could understand anything. But right now, she seemed completely apart to him. The way she was staring off in the distance, turning that key in her hand, told him he might as well go to the other side of the bridge and knock it down, board by board, because he couldn’t cross whatever divided Cath from him.
They must have been silent for thirty minutes, the rush of that creek the only thing that filled the silence until she finally spoke up.
“I always did wonder what he looked like,” she said. “I’ve got this picture in my head and his face is wrinkled all over. He’s not old or anything. He’s just got all these wrinkles. You know what I’m talking about? The kind that you only get when life was hard. The kind that make your face look like it’s hiding something. Wouldn’t his life make him look like that? Always on the run from something? Always hiding secrets from everyone around him? Always making sure he didn’t get too close to anybody who could do him harm?”
“And why do you think he did it?” she continued. “Why did he pick this life? He could’ve been all kinds of things, but instead, he was a bootlegger. He could have worked in the mines like all of the other men around here, but he didn’t. He chose to do this. He chose to break the law every day. Why do you think he would do that, Donny? Why would he choose a life that nobody else could share? What would make him decide to always be an outsider like that?”
“Maybe he was just mean. I know some guys like that. Just plain mean.”
“I don’t know, Donny,” she said. “I don’t know if he was mean. You ever think sometimes there are just people who know too much? They just understand too much and that makes them different? It makes it so they can’t be like everybody else. No matter what. It’s like they’re broken. So they do wild things. They fill their cars up with corn liquor and they run from the sheriff. You ever think that?”
Donny didn’t think that he had ever thought much about people like that.
“Maybe he was like that. Maybe he just knew something that was too much.”
“Baby,” Donny said, “we can find out. Let’s go over there and see what he’s got. Hell, might be some of that old liquor left. Might even be a ten pound sack of paper money sitting around over there. We don’t know until we go see for ourselves. It’s like you’re peeking through the keyhole, when we can but the whole door down! We got all his secrets right here for the taking!”
Cath didn’t move. “Sometimes, Donny,” she said, “I feel I’ve been carrying something. I’ve been carrying something heavy a real long way. And it seems like there’s a long way to go yet, and all I ever want to do is put it down. But I can’t. I just can’t. You think my uncle ever felt like that? Like the liquor was just this heavy old thing that he wanted to get rid of but he never could?”
“I don’t know, baby, but I intend to find out.” He’d had about all he could take. Donny Jones wasn’t going to ask questions when the answers were just across the creek.
She stopped him dead in his tracks. “Donny, do you remember that time when I first met you? When I asked you about moon?”
“Of course I do.”
“Sometimes I wonder if it’s not just the moon. Sometimes I wonder if it’s everything. I wonder if everything isn’t just this big joke, Donny. I wonder if someone isn’t watching us all and making all of this happen. And I wonder sometimes, if maybe he gets bored. He gets tired of everything happening the same way all the time. Just like that moon. Sure it goes from full to a little sliver, but that’s just different versions of the same thing. So sometimes, he makes one that’s completely different. Just to keep us guessing. So hee makes one that’s just not like all of the others. It may look like all of the others, but, Donny, it’s just not the same. It doesn’t matter how hard she tries, she just can’t be like all the others. It’s not like she tries to be different. She does what comes naturally, but it doesn’t matter. She’s like that moon. Some folks may stare at her and say it’s beautiful, but really they’re just all afraid that it’s the end of the world.”
“I don’t understand, baby. I never thought that moon was anything but beautiful. I never could take my eyes off of it.”
She stopped turning that worn key and looked him full in the face. “I know, Donny Jones. I know.”
Donny smiled. He thought he finally understood this girl. Since that first day he saw her, he never thought he could understand something like her. He said, “Let’s go, baby. Let’s go see what’s in there.”
Cath looked at her baby, then at the key, and finally at Donny Jones. “Donny Jones,” she said, “Hold my baby.”
“‘Course” he said.
Donny never would understand what happened next. He lifted Ella above his head and laughed in the sun of the early Kentucky spring. He saw, from the corner or his eye, a freckled arm fly through the air, and a key tumbling end over end until it disappeared into the muddy froth of the creek.
Cath smiled at him. “Some things, Donny Jones, we just don’t need to know.”

Rising oil costs might not be so bad.

Here’s what I mean: if high gas prices localize Americans, then there is virtue in expensive oil.

I believe that localization is a good thing. It is how people were meant to be: connected. Connected to each other, to their communities, to the land on which those communities were built. Connected to their food, the cost of growing that food, the land on which the food was grown.

Cheap oil, largely, has shattered these connections. Cheap oil has allowed us to live miles from where we work. Cheap oil has allowed to us to shop in neighboring towns. It has allowed us to send our kids to school miles from their homes. Cheap oil brings us tomatoes from Mexico in the dead of winter, and apples from New Zealand when American ones will not do. All of this has fractured us.

It’s not cheap oil’s fault. Cheap oil just happened to be around to fuel all of human vices. So, it’s not the oil, or even the oil barons that I blame. It is the basest of human natures. Our desire for the bottom line, our failure to see past the veneers of slick marketing. Our unquenchable need to compete with those around us for bigger and better.

If high oil prices can scale this back, who am I to complain?

If high oil prices mean that it is cheaper to eat the tomato from my back yard than to eat the one “drenched in diesel fuel” (Michael Pollan) from Mexico, then I cannot complain. If high oil prices mean that neighborhood stores close to our homes outpace the big boxes on the fringes of our towns? Then order more fives and sixes for gas station signs. If the price of crude necessitates higher bike sales, a new pair of walking shoes, and re-imagined urban planning, then I’ll pay through the nose. If Exxon-Mobil’s record profits mean that I must become creative in my choices—choices about food, work, shopping, schooling—then keep those stock quotes high. If the life of the futures market means that I must think about what I do instead of taking for granted the ability of my car (and its wake carbon gasses) to take me anywhere I need to go on a moment’s notice for a marginal sum of money, then may some trader get even richer. If expensive oil is what it takes to make us whole again, perhaps we should all be breathing a sigh of relief, rather than plunging drills into our oceans to find a reason for a rollback.

When we live in an unsustainable way, on the foundation of an unsustainable resource, then there will eventually be a correction in our lifestyle. There will inevitably be a difficult time of transition when we are forced to rethink how we do life, because our fundamental assumptions about access and transportation are being questioned. That seems like it’s not so bad.

I didn’t do much last Friday.

I woke up later than I should have.

I cooked breakfast—eggs, toast. Like usual.

I fried some potatoes for lunch. They were quite good.

I read for several hours, and then I went to work.

And it was good. Quite good. I didn’t do much. I didn’t worry about much. I kept peace with the things around me, and I came home tired with full pockets.

Can anyone ask for anything more?

i saw a zombie in the park yesterday.
he lilted along, early in the morning dragging
one foot behind the other, leaving tracks
in the dewy grass, no doubt looking for
some commuter to make his breakfast.
and i saw a zombie shuffling up the street
arms spread wide, shoulders at odd, varying heights
galloping toward some straggler
who will substitute for
cold cereal and stale muffins.

and i remember what it was like that night
when i spun you around to a song i had heard
too many times to even notice that it was playing
and i remember how wevpulled against each
other so that if either of us let go we would
have fallen to a heap on the floor.
and i remembered as we made our circle on
that floor that everything dissolved behind us
and everything was a blur but the smiles
that we couldn’t possibly wipe from our faces.

i should be in bed, but i feel like writing something. so here i go.

i know that’s 2008, and i know that there’s a lot of water under the bridge, but there are certain things that have happened in america that still deserve thought and reflection. seven years later, it’s stuff that we’re still dealing with. they’re events that have shaped the national discourse, and events that are shaping the presidential election.

i’m thinking, i guess, about 9-11, but i feel like i’m thinking about more than that. i feel like i’m reaching further back, and going further forward.

i’ve been, for the last few days, thinking about what i call “american culpability.” that is, how “at fault” is america in the world? our national discourse does not allow this kind of questioning. to ask these sorts of questions still ends up with labels like “unamerican” or “america hating” or “freedom hating” or even more divisive charges of “siding with the terrorists.” thankfully, i’m not part of the national discourse, and i don’t have to speak on those terms.

i heard the question the other day, “what should we have done? if we shouldn’t have gone to afghanistan, what should we have done?” i heard someone answer, “nothing.” i disagree. we should have taken a long look. we should have dropped the pretense of our ridiculous national pride, and asked “why?” in a genuine way. somehow, the terms got all confused. those who controlled the discourse starting talking about “why they hate our freedom” and “why they want to destroy our way of life.” we weren’t allowed to ask what we had done to cause them to “hate our freedom.” we should have, i believe, taken the world seriously. rather than this ridiculous brand of “homeland security” based on fear and paranoia and marginally justifiable wars, we should have engaged in a brand of homeland security that relied on self-sufficiency, that allowed us to remove ourselves from all of the entanglements that breed resentment in so many parts of the world.

our immediate response was to look for heroes and enemies. we needed cowboys and we needed indians. someone needed to shoot the guns, and someone needed to die. rather than engage the radical muslim world as savages who needed to be subdued, our response should have been to engage them as people, and to attempt to understand all of the ways that we had infringed upon their values.

those who control the discourse would have us believe that is impossible. that those people will not stop until the bodies are stacked high the streets of american cities—while we stack the bodies in their cities. when we conduct ourselves without empathy, those who oppose us will respond with the same lack of empathy. too many people would have us believe that is naive.

there must be a solution for american short-sightedness. we must begin to evaluate things based on what they will do to the people of the world, and not simply how they will benefit us. we cannot constantly plunder foreign lands and cultures in order to maintain a lifestyle that is utterly unmaintainable. we must engage in significant reflection on who we are, and how we are treating people in the world.

there must be an alternative to our current brand of existence in the world. we must live in way that it is a defiant superpower that assumes that it can meet any challenge with its might. history has taught us what happens to such arrogance. we simply cannot afford to be so short sighted.

there simply must be another way…

Yesterday, quite by accident, I discovered a Thomas Merton book that I forgot that I ever bought it.

It’s not really a big deal, it’s just a little paperback that has some of his drawings and some prayers from his journals. It’s probably not of interest to anyone but a nerd like me.

But that’s not so much the point.

The point it is, I opened it and read a bit. What I found was something that I have forgotten to have existed.

The faith I found Merton engaging was something more genuine than I’ve been seeing.

I’ve been mistrusting of faith lately. I’m afraid of engaging anyone’s ideas, because they all feel like a trap. It feels like they’re luring in me, telling me that if I accept this set of propositions, then I must become as they think I should be. It feels like a trap for them to tell me that I should stop drinking beer, find a nice girlfriend, and start voting Republican.

When I read Merton, I didn’t see any of that stuff. Merton’s faith, it looks like to me, it willing to let people be people on their own terms. His faith isn’t forcing people into some arbitrary mold of what people should be.

There is room in Merton’s faith for the other, it seems.

That’s a big deal.

with my mind filled with everyone else’s thoughts, i try to find a space that is my own.
most days i’m not even sure why.
when i try to be quiet and find what lies beneath a surface constantly plugged into headphones and televisions, i find that there is not much there.
i consume much, but i exist as very little.
i think very little.
i am affected by very little.
i chew over very little.
instead i devour it. i gnash at it and swallow it and rid myself of its presence.
and after the gnashing of teeth i do not think of it again.
i continue as i always have.
i go as i am pushed.
i follow as i am led.
i take in everything and am transformed by nothing.
i wondered if i have peddled away the most important parts of me for things that collect dust on shelves.
i wonder if i am that man who forfeited what he truly was to get a little piece of what could never do him any good anyway.

is it different now? now that i’m older?
at this place where i’ve got the problem of knowledge without the wisdom of age?
where cynicism has misplaced youthful ideas but is not yet tempered significant reflection?

it feels some days like those people who had it so much worse might just have had it so much better.
they may have died at 45 and only bathed on holidays, but they were freer.
they could retreat beyond this cacophony that is constant connection.
they had no cellular cords to cut.
they did no battle with the constant din of targeted marketing.
the work of their hands was the sustenance of their life.
and it was hard, but i wonder if it was not good.

is it any consequence that all that is billed as the stuff that will make our lives better
is the stuff that makes piles and piles and dollars?
and the stuff that has no place in the “free” market is the stuff that generates no revenue for anyone?
is that just coincidence?
am i just a madman? Ranting about conspiracies to capitalize on the human search for happiness and belonging? is that who i am?
am i crazy to question the assumptions of this thing we’ve built? crazy to wonder if progress is good? crazy to wonder if the american dream only exists in the minds of the people who are selling it? crazy to imagine how life would be if we did it differently?
am i crazy to wonder what life is like in a sphere where i can question the fundamental assumptions?
crazy to think that questioning power is less my right and more my duty?
am i crazy to re-imagine life and wealth and power?
am i crazy to question the cult of marriage and its millions of dollars?
am i crazy to question the cult of children and its million dollars?
am i crazy to laugh at all of these notions of success that shackle us to things that we never wanted anyway for the sake of a life that cannot make us happy?

who knows. maybe i am.

Last night when I couldn’t sleep, I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling and getting all tangled up in my sheets, and I started, as I usually do, thinking.

For no particular reason (or maybe for a very particular reason, who can ever tell?) I started thinking about all this religion stuff that has been rolling around inside my brain lately, but has yet to find a home in anything very concrete, and, in that weird state between puzzling something out and wishing like hell I would fall asleep, I assigned myself with the thought experiment of creating a church. Normally, the things I think in that space just before sleep really are ephemeral, and they disappear. Something about this stuck.

I started with a desire to peel away all pretense. I thought that was essential. Any church I was going to start would be, from the beginning, completely devoid of grandstanding and production value. Those things are entertaining, but I have trouble finding them authentic. That, I thought, would no doubt be the mood of things.

So in that mood of utter lack of pretense, what sorts of things would we be about? Why would we even be undertaking the project in the first place? I came up with (something like) this: we would acknowledge that we are utterly broken people living in an utterly broken world attempting to join with God in his work of fixing that world as revealed in the person of Jesus.

That seemed to say it all. It puts the focus where it should be: on the person of Jesus. It allows to move away from and past all of the truly disgusting baggage of Christianity and focus on an authentic telling of the story of who Jesus was, and how that story should effect our lives. From the start it acknowledges our former and perpetual brokenness, and places that brokenness in the context of a world that is also broken. It looks to be something that can serve as a foundation for a new kind life spent imitating the revelation of God in Jesus, while being cultivated in such a way that it takes a step back from all of the baggage of Christianity that alienates people from the message of Jesus.

We would have to acknowledge that our recovery from this brokenness is a slow process. While some people (even people in the Bible) may have experienced miraculous, instant conversions, we will probably not. We will acknowledge that our transformation happens so slowly, and it such odd, stumbling increments that we may not even recognize that it is happening at all, but our situation in a community of like-minded individuals will ensure that, even when we cannot see how we are changing, the people around us are constantly helping us to become something more like Jesus.

Such a view of transformation will ensure that we value our honesty. It will ensure that this slow process of transformation is not something that be envied, and that those who struggle with even the most elementary principles of the conversion will absolutely not be alienated because they struggle and freely admit those struggles. We will freely admit that we are small-minded, mean, vindictive. We will be honest about our drunkenness, our laziness, our pride. We will stare down the strange animals of our sexuality, admit that part of being exists, and be committed to the work of transforming that essential part of our humanity.

We will be people who acknowledge that we are full of mixed emotions and desires. We will not treat belief as some sacred cow, but we will readily acknowledge that some days we just don’t really think that any of this is true. We will not pretend that we have some fierce love for a God that is impossible to understand. We will admit the ready impossibility of having a relationship with something that is ineffable, and readily embrace all of the difficulties that entails. We will admit that, most days, we stare out into the distance to find the “something more” that we have always been told exist, and that we see only blackness. We will admit that we search our hearts to find some stirring of a fire that we have been told should be there, but instead, we feel only blackness. We will search our minds to find the things that should exist and infallible proof that some being exists, and we will find only more questions. We will not be afraid of using the hard words or facing the hard emotions. We will back down from no intellectual or experiential challenge about faith, especially when those words, challenges, and emotions exist in our own hearts. Yet, we will be utterly committed to the transformative work that we set out to participate in from the start.

In that way, we will be free. We will be free from others’ expectations of our faith, and we will be free from our own expectations of our faith, allowing ourselves to be transformed by our willingness to release all of the things that we take for granted.

Dare we? Even in the place between wake and sleep when the rules of reality have less constraints over our minds, dare we imagine such a thing? Dare we re-imagine the things that become the formative narratives for our lives? Dare we be bold enough to commit to such an incredibly messy project? Dare we commit to each other and throw our lives together in a way that acknowledges that we’re better to go down together, since we’re certainly going down apart? Dare we be bold enough to offer the realities of our very dearest selves to people that we know we can trust with our very lives?

I don’t know.

Dare we?

There is a part in Wuthering Heights where Catherine Linton is preparing to tell a story to Nelly Dean. As she begins the story, she warns Nelly that she must “take care not to smile at any part of it.”

I read Anne Sexton’s Transformations yesterday. As great as Kurt Vonnegut’s introduction to the story was, I couldn’t help but think that if I was an editor, I would only preface Transformations with a single sentence — Catherine Linton’s admonition from Wuthering Heights.

It’s been years since I’ve read any substantial amount of poetry that was written by Shel Silverstein (who doesn’t love hearing about Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout who would not take the garbage out?), so when I had to read Sexton for class, I can’t say that I was overjoyed.

What I found when I got inside Sexton’s work was something I had not expected. Upon learning that I was reading a reimagined collection of the Grimm borthers’ Fairy Tales, I was simply curious. When I saw what Sexton had done with those Fairy Tales, I was floored.

There is a very real way in which Fairy Tales are the formative narratives for our childhood. While perhaps not Grimm’s alone, there are any number of morality tales that are used to shape our values and consciousness, to a degree that the stories are told and retold, imagined and reimagined. They have such a high rate of cultural absorption that finding people who cannot recite these tales from memory alone is a difficult task.

What is unique about Sexton is that she takes these formative narratives, and really does transform them. From the formative narratives of innocent childhood, they become the formative narratives of a messy adulthood. Like any successful artist, Sexton’s poems leave her readers staring themselves right in the face. Whether she’s reimagining “Snow White” as a tale of what happens when an institutionalized pursuit of an unattainable standard of beauty drives people to madness, or transforming the tale of the twelve dancing princesses into a story of innocence stolen, Sexton has an uncanny ability to be true.

As stunning and important as all of that was, what I will keep from this book is something completely different. What it seems like Sexton is really engaging is the reality of being weird. It is abundantly clear that Sexton has realized that there are certain people who exist outside of the realms of cultural norms. For whatever reasons they will not (or cannot) buy into the established cultural assumptions. This seems to be the case for nearly all of Sexton’s characters, and she seems to be intensely concerned with what happens with these characters attempt to exist in a framework whose conventions and assumptions they won’t accept.

On my first reading, I felt like that was where the real power of Sexton’s work was, in the way that she was able to explore those places. In lots of ways, Sexton uses Transformation to name what is unnamable, to explore the places of human experiences that are either too painful, too unacceptable, or simply too outside of convention to name with anything other than the language she uses. She faces what is unsayable, and finds a way to name it. It’s rarely attractive, often awkward, and sometimes terrifying, but it is utterly true, and beautiful, and valuable.

And I dared not smile at any part of it.

I have to start with a warning.

This post involves something written by a Bronte. If you’re anything like me, the mere thought of that makes your eyes glaze over. I understand. Just give Emily and I chance here.

If you’ve ever read Wuthering Heights, then you know that one its biggest themes is the treatment of the other. The novel’s (arguably) antagonist, Heathcliff, is Bronte’s other.

A reasonable argument can be made that the novel’s conflicts all happen because of Heathcliff’s otherness, and how other characters react to that state of otherness.

(Okay, so far I’m writing a lit essay, hang with me.)

Because I’m weird, this idea of Heathcliff’s otherness has been knocking around in my head all day — specifically, the descriptions of Heathcliff, and why his otherness was so unnerving to the characters in Wuthering Heights.

I don’t want to give away exactly where I’m going — but while I describe Heathcliff, think about the current American political scene.

The first description of Heathcliff is physical. He’s of dark skin, and of indeterminate, but presumably gypsy origin. He speaks a different language than the family that adopts him. From the beginning, Heathcliff is undoubtedly the other.

This utterly unnerves everyone around him. He suffers constant abuse for no reason besides his status as the other. He never relinquishes that status. He remains so much the other that even at his death, the question of his indeterminable origins haunt the people that knew him, leading them to view him as something demonic.

Pondering all of this in class today, I wondered if this was something we had moved on from — and I was immediately struck that it is not. I found myself becoming….outraged at all of the ways everyone else still treats the other, and how we, as a culture, STILL have a complete inability to deal with anyone that is different than us. We NEED to construct our realities in certain ways, and when things threaten those realities, we are still unable to deal with them.

As I continued to think of this dark character of indeterminable origins, a thought immediately struck me. We’re dealing with the exact same issue right now. A dark man with murky origins is running for the nomination of his party for the office of President — and we are utterly unable to deal with his otherness. We mask it all kinds of ways — we blame his associations with other controversial figures, point to a voting record, or the tiniest of rhetorical inconsistencies. However, most of us are utterly incapable of dealing with Obama’s status as other. He exists outside of the worldview that we have necessarily created for ourselves, and he threatens all of the ways that we have constructed our world. And, 300 years after Wuthering Heights, we are STILL utterly unable to deal with Heathcliff.

I saw the sticker on your truck.

It was dirty, and half torn off, but I’m sure you mean it just the same.

USA: 1
Iraq: 0.

Is that all you think this cost? Our one to their nil? We found some people who were different and defenseless and bombed them into submission, and that’s a win?

Is there no more to the story? Our thousands dead? Their thousands upon thousands dead?

The trillions of dollars that could be used to do good and war diverted into deception and destruction?

Cashing in any good will we had with the world for the sake of some fool’s crusade?

Or is it still just “Mission Accomplished”? Us: 1, Them:0? Good: 1, Evil:0?

Whatever you meant, I sure as hell hope your team won.

I haven’t been to church in months. I can’t say that I miss it. I remind myself that I should go, but it’s mostly out of a sense of duty and nostalgia.

I haven’t thought much about things like God lately, or approached anything that could be considered a “relationship with God.” (Is that ever in the Bible, by the way?)

That’s very odd for me. Those two things have been an incredibly significant part of my life for a lot of years.

So what the hell happened?

I don’t have any problem with the idea of Christianity. In fact, I still find it quite amazing and the absolute best way to live life. Who can have a problem being created by an utterly loving God who is the ruler of the entire universe? Who has an issue with loving the other with the same intensity as one’s own itself? I could go on for days. Looking at Jesus finds little that it objectionable. It finds things that are tough, odd, and downright impossible, but little that one can object to simply on principle.

But yet I am lately finding myself with absolutely no motivation to participate. At all.

That has to be a problem. I don’t think that once can believe in something without believing in community and participating within community. To believe something in solitude is cheap and disingenuous. If faith doesn’t put a person in dialogue with a community, then I think that faith is pretty useless.

But, I have no desire to participate in any of the incarnations of American Christianity that are around me. I could write a novel (and maybe I should) on why I don’t want to participate in those things and don’t find them faithful to the goals of their namesake.

So I don’t participate, and largely grow apathetic. I wish I could believe myself to be strong enough to participate as a dissenting member of a community with the goal of reform — but I know that I will inevitably succumb to the groupthink and conform.

So where in the hell do you even start with something like that?

(I was tempted to give an apology of this…thing I’m writing, but I’ve decided against that. The writing is the only apology I need.)

For no real reason at all, I threw the thing as hard I could. I reached down and found something violent and I just ripped across the parking lot with abandon. It was my only option. And as I watched it sail through the sky I hoped that someone would step in it. I hoped that they would be walking along innocently and that would step right in the middle of it. I hope that he would curse loudly at some damn fool who had thrown his gum down just where anyone could step on it and I hoped that he would always have that blue stain on the bottom of his shoe. I wished every bit of that in spite of you. In spite of me. I wished it all in spite of a deeply encoded sense of propriety that makes me open doors for the people behind and treat people with respect. I wished it in spite of smiling at strangers and washing my hands after I use the bathroom. I wished it in spite of doing all I could to make sure I did things the right way and treated you the way I thought a person should be treated. I wished it in spite of the way I kept everything together for you to see while I couldn’t hard stand to be close to you.

And there it was. There it all was. As that piece of gum arced across the parking lot in the slowest of motions, I said all that I needed to say.

(And if you read this, and you know it’s about you, I only hope you’ll understand.)

I’m not sure that I’ll ever forget the moment. It was one of the two weekends a month I got to see my Dad. We were spending Saturday morning like we usually did — sitting in his living room, in the middle of some mess that would never be passable at home, gorging ourselves on TV and contemplating some Saturday afternoon activity. I couldn’t have possibly been more than ten. The show was one that people of a certain age will remember well. Trendy (in that neon, early ’90’s, way) hosted a game show that pitted groups of kids against each other in various outrageous games for nominal rewards.

One of these games was some sort of giant crossword puzzle. There was, of course, some disgusting twist — the kids had to sift through some disgusting pile of goo in order to retrieve the letters, or something equally as outrageous. The pairing of teams was….unfortunate. One team was white. The was decidedly…not.

I’m sure I noticed. It was quite a contrast, and I’d like to thank that I’ve always been observant, so I must have noticed. However, I’m sure that I didn’t think it was much of a big deal. Though I grew up in Kentucky, I didn’t grow up in one of those towns that had the “one black family.” I’d always had black friends, and while I’m sure I had encountered racism before, it probably didn’t make an impact.

That day was shocking.

The way he said was so straightforward that I’m not sure if I was even initially shocked by it. “The white kids will win. Just watch.”

Although I can’t remember if I was observant, I do know that I was inquisitive.

“Why?”

“The black kids are dumb. They don’t have a chance.”

You can’t quite process that when you’re ten (or nine, or eight, or however old I was). I just remember being filled with this overall sense that he was wrong. Beyond that, I’m not sure. How does a kid react to that? It is, after all, Dad. He knows more than we do and we do it. While deep in my gut I know that he’s wrong. I do. But he’s Dad. Maybe he knows something I don’t.

What I hate is that he was right. I remember it so clearly. The team of white kids destroyed the team of black kids. It wasn’t even a competition. Almost from the start, it was clear who was going to win.

“I told you so.” Smug.

I just watched Easy Rider, and I’ve had this reading of the Declaration of Independence bouncing around in my head for the past week. I don’t have anything coherent to say about either one, so I’m just going to ramble a bit.

————————————————–

So Tom Jefferson said that God made us equal. All of us. Maybe Tom Jefferson didn’t believe that, but that’s what Tom Jefferson said. And Tom Jefferson said then since we’re all created equal, that the being that created us gave us certain rights that we can’t possibly deny. Some of those are the right to life, the right to liberty, and the right to find a way to be happy. Tom Jefferson also said that governments have the responsibility of protecting those right, and those governments exists because people agree that it’s okay to be ruled by people much like themselves. Tom Jefferson knew that sometimes, these governments don’t do their job properly. When that happens, those governments have to be replaced. But, Tom Jefferson thought, while we should think long and hard before we replace those governments, we should also be careful not to keep suffering under an unjust government just because that’s the only government we’ve ever known.

Tom Jefferson was on to something.

I could wonder all day about all the things Tom Jefferson said. I could marvel at the courage of all the men who laid their signatures to this document of rebellion. I could lament all of the ways that we’ve gone astray, I could wonder if our government is one of the governments that needs to be replaced.

But Tom Jefferson rarely lets me get that far.

I get stuck when he tells me that all men are created equal. Tom Jefferson, slave owner, tells me that all men are created equal. Who knows what Tom Jefferson meant? I don’t. I’ll never be able to figure out. Tom Jefferson was a man like a me, and men like me are complex creatures, unable to know what we’re thinking from one moment to the next.

I do know that we’ve done a terrible job of treating all men (and women) equally in this country. Not to sound some great moralistic trumpet from high on my horse. We do a terrible job relating to the Other among us. Hospitality has rarely been our strong suit. We’re more prone to fear, and that fear often leads to violence. We (and I MUST include myself) fear the Other and would much rather exclude what is different from us than take time to try and understand something outside the systems that we have set up to order the world.

So we react with violence.

We “remove” Natives. We dictate the level of pigment necessary to enter certain establishments. We assume that alternative lifestyles are necessarily deviant. We fear the Other. The story of American history can nearly be told by the ways in which we have sought to destroy the Other among us. We can define ourselves by all of the ways that we have trespassed our fundamental belief that the Creator created everyone equally.

Red-faced and screaming, we grab tightly to what we know because the Other is just too much. The fear that something different raises in us is so great, so deep, that we cannot imagine the world ordered differently. We react violently to anything that threatens our tenuous grip on how life should be.

We pretend that we’re free, but we’re all chained to our arbitrary concepts of reality and propriety. We’ve all sold our souls for a flimsy piece of pretend stability.

But, talkin’ about freedom and bein’ free? That’s two different things.

(This is probably me venturing into one of those odd recesses of my brain where nobody will be able to follow. That’s okay with me.)

I have lately discovered that there is a way of doing things that prefers complexity, and it is that preference for complexity that usually gets labelled as “weird.”

It started with reading. Something, somewhere, triggered a way of reading that moves “past the plot.” Books are no longer simply about what happen. Instead, they are transformed into vehicles for how the writer communicates what happens. The subterfuge becomes the focus. No longer is the question simply, “what happened?” A tally of who lives and who dies and where the money ended up is horribly insufficient. Instead, reading becomes a sort of game, puzzling out the motivations for stylistic choices, deciphering motivations, charting character dynamics, finding symbols. Perhaps it is because I’m an English major, and my grades depend on these sorts of things.

Perhaps has maturity has given me a preference for the complex. I start to notice it everywhere. Movies, like books, are no longer about the plot. There is a way, I am discovering, of watching past the plot. There is an analysis that goes deeper than simply what happens, who dies, who sleeps with whom, and where the money ends up.

Music, too, changes. While “past the plot” doesn’t hold true for songs, there is a way of listening that moves past simple catchy melodies and ingratiating hooks (while those still have their place). It starts to analyze stylistic choices, to dig into layers and layers of sound to view a song a vast composition. Sometimes it’s finding how the music serves as the vehicle for lyrics, sometimes it’s finding how the lyrics server as a vehicle for the music. Sometimes it’s songs that are beautiful enough to break your heart. Sometimes it’s songs that are so profane that they make you blush with embarrassment. They’re puzzles, with chords that never resolve themselves, frenetic energy that stresses you out, verdant textures that make you forget the passing of time.

It’s even made its way into other, odder, things. I’d rather drink a complex beer. While something simpler might suffice for sheer utility, and taste good. (Like Soulja Boy may be able to write a catchy melody, or Dan Brown an engaging plot.) However, there is something infinitely more interesting and intense in opting for complexity. Whether it’s a big stout that punches your tongue right in its face and then resolves itself with a thousand subtle notes, a pale ale that confronts with a bitterness that’s almost unbearable and then rewards you with the smoothest of undertones, opting for the complex is ultimately more intense and interesting.

However, if preferring complexity is ultimately more intense and interesting, it is also ultimately harder. In everything — in art, in taste, in relationships — it takes effort. It takes patience and desire. Sometimes, it even takes overcoming an initial objection to discover what lies underneath. (Bob Dylan’s voice, hops’ bitterness.) I think that makes it ultimately rewarding. There is a thrill puzzling through something as arcane as Chaucer and finally feeling like you can get to the heart of 14th century, and realizing that it’s not that far from the heart of the 21st century. There is a joy from getting so deeply immersed into the textures of a song that you’re no longer listening to it, but feeling it, with all of its dynamics, textures, and emotions. There is something joyful in enduring a beer so intense that you’re not sure you can handle it, and coming to terms with all of many ways that the incredibly different ingredients have transcended the sum of their parts to become something that you’ll puzzle over for weeks to come.

In a world of Dan Brown, Fergie, and Bud Light, why wouldn’t anyone opt for complexity?

Is it true what they told me the President said? That he needs me to trust him?

Forgive me, Mr. President, if my access to that resources is low.
Forgive, Mr. President, if I’m cynical to your appeal.
Forgive me, Mr. President, if I remember all of the ways that you’ve broken that trust in the past.
Forgive me, Mr. President, if I just can’t comply with your request.

I can’t say whether I was listening to conservative talk radio on purpose, or just in passing. However, there was no missing the intent of the loud man screaming at me. He was billed as the only man in America who “gets it,” and he was screaming from my speakers: “IF ONE AMERICAN, ONE AMERICAN CAN BE SAVED BY WATERBOARDING, WOULD YOU OPPOSE IT?!?!?!”

I know that he thought his question was rhetorical, and I know that he thought he had phrased his question in such a way as to make dissent impossible, and I know that he was just a disembodied voice traveling over radio frequency to my speakers as part of a diatribe, I had to answer him.

Yes.

If waterboarding — if any torture could save even a single American, I would still be opposed to it. Even if he could have objectively proved to me that waterboarding had saved some specific American life, I would still oppose it.

Why?

There’s an artist I like. I’m sure I’ve never professed my love for his music before, so this will come as a total shock, but Bruce Springsteen can condense it far better than than I can.

That you know flag flying over the courthouse
Means certain things are set in stone
Who we are, what we’ll do and what we won’t.”

If anything is true about this country in which we live — if I’m going to choose not to be cynical, and to believe that this country is founded on principles and those principles are indispensable for how we do life in this country — then I have to agree with The Boss. There are certain things that must define us as Americans, that will tell us who we are, what we’ll do, and what we won’t do.

I have to believe that torturing people, even if it means that something good comes out of it, is one of those things that we will be utterly committed to not doing.

It’s a funny thing, being an American. Very few of us chose to be born here. However, we’ve all become a part of this great experiment of (as Lincoln would say), “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” So how are we to conduct ourselves? How are those, ESPECIALLY those in executive positions sworn to uphold the Constitution supposed to act?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Thomas Jefferson was on to something.

Before I idolize Jefferson and the Founders, I’m aware of the problems. I am aware of Jefferson’s slave holding story. I am aware of the ways in which “all men”, the Founders, meant “all land-owning white men.” However, I also don’t doubt that we have transcended their inadequacies, and truly transformed the heart of our country into the proposition that every single person is created equal, and that they have all been endowed with the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

While our forefathers may have been small minded, can we afford to follow in those footsteps? If we have expanded the definition of “all men” to include all American citizens, can we do them one better?

Can we really believe that all people, everywhere, regardless of nationality, are created equal, and can we treat those people as if they were created equal? If we do that, we will not abide things like tortue.

It seems to be our duty to believe this. The great many of us did not choose to be Americans. We were lucky enough to have been born here. To reimagine that luck as hubris would be utterly disastrous. We are not privileged, we are lucky. We must treat this experiment that is America with great delicacy, because it is still unprecedented. We must not fail in carrying on the experiment.

And if we carry on America in name only, and turn it into something those who have gone before us would not recognize, then we have failed those who have created what we seek to protect.

Perhaps I’m making no sense, but I believe that we must have principles. We must adhere to those principles, regardless of consequence. If we must violate those principles to preserve America, than we have preserved it in name only, and our victory has been hollow.

whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.

They stood on the corner with their signs. Poster board and permanent marker. They had gone to no particular effort to make their statement. However, what they were after couldn’t be missed. They proclaimed in capitals, “IMPEACH CHENEY.” They seemed happy enough, standing in the rain, hoods pulled tightly around their faces, proclaiming their gospel on a busy corner.

I can’t say that I understood the point. They were in no center of power — not Washington, DC, not New York, not even Los Angeles. They were on a corner in Lexington, Kentucky, begging us to indict a politician who lives and works thousands of miles away. I wondered what they hoped to accomplish. Did they believe that they would ignite a grassroots campaign that would result in the impeachment of a vice president? Did they believe that they would somehow bolster the courage of the faithful and that their solidarity would cause them to rise up and seize the reins of power from the current administration? Did they hope to change the hearts and minds of all of those in the state who had, without doubt, voted in support of the current executive?

I can’t say that I ever figured it out. I would’ve like to stop my car and ask them, but it was raining, and I am terribly lazy. Instead, I did something that I don’t do nearly enough — I started to think. (I hate to use the name “Wendell Berry” like some sort of sledgehammer, but all of this is directly influenced by him, and I would feel terrible if I didn’t give the man credit.) I started to wonder about the notion of place, and I thought about displaced these hooded protesters must have been. They believed that the source of their problems was in Washington, and that in Lexington, they could somehow have an impact on what was happening in Washington, and they could have that effect simply by screaming really loudly. Not only were they misplaced, but they were woefully misguided.

Who knows why they were so upset with Dick Cheney? Foreign policy, domestic policy, energy policy, wasteful spending, bad aim? It could have been anything. Whatever it was, they were convinced, as I often am, that change happens from the top down. Change at the top of pile, they though, must roll downhill, and change has they power to achieve whatever objectives they are seeking.

The problem with such thinking is that it is dependent. While thoughtful citizens might work hard to have their voices hard, achieving their desires is essentially dependent upon someone else’s decisions. No matter what happens, my hooded friends are held at someone else’s behest. The names may change through the years, but the game remains the same.

What we need is to be independent. In our current system, we depend on forces outside of our control for any number of things. The way we consume ensures that we are dependent. If the structures on which we depend break down, we are unable to subsist. We do not gather food on our own. We do not secure shelter, warmth, or water on our own. We do not dispose of our own wastes. We may do one of those things for someone else, but rarely do we do them for ourselves. We have lost the ability to subsist independently.
That inability for independent subsistence has alienated us. It has alienated us from each other. It has alienated from the places from which we have come and the places in which we live. This alienation from places alienates from the consequences of our actions. Because we are placeless people, we are completely unaware of the consequences of our decisions on these places and on the people that inhabit those places.

We are unaware of how our food is produced. (Though, thankfully, that awareness is increasing.) We are unaware what sorts of lives our cheeseburgers lead before we devour them. We are unaware what it looks like to make that cheeseburger become our ninety-nine cent dinner. We have no idea how a cow smells, what it takes to make a cow fat enough to eat, what the cows do to the land on which they live. Our dependency has made us ignorant. This is true of any number of issues. We are completely alienated from the processes and the impact of our consumption. (Sidenote: this is why I love “Dirty Jobs.” Whether it’s the goal or not, it often brings to light some of the things of which we’re completely unaware.)

The solution is to arrive at some sort of independence. That does not mean that everyone should be a subsistence farmer. (It does mean that more people should be subsistence farmers) It means that those who are not subsistence farmers should be acutely aware of their place, and how they affect that place. They should be aware that local farms are good. They should know that subsistence farms are essential because they ensure the future of the land. A subsistence farmer is dependent upon his or her land, and he must maintain the good health of that land to live and thrive. That is, without a doubt, a good thing.

We must become independent of national and global systems and become parts of local systems, able to subsist by work and cooperation inside of the communities where we live. Only by such a connection to a specific places will properly care for the place.

There is no doubt that places need to be cared for. The way that we consumed absolutely cannot be sustained by the world around us. If we will not change the patterns of consumption voluntarily, we will be forced to changed them by crisis. By the time that crisis occurs, our situation may be too dire for our own salvation.

The question of how to become more connected to a place is as broad as are its answers. Some are simple enough — consume less, and consume locally. Buy used things from local people. Work close to where you live. Those are all helpful solutions. However, on their own, they will fail. The only way to become more connected to a place is to become genuinely invested in that place. The analogy of investment may be entirely too weak. Wendell Berry uses marriage as more appropriate metaphor. For Berry, it works well. He has an understanding of marriage (rooted in his own marriage) that allows the metaphor to work. The metaphor of marriage is one of absolute commitment, the inextricable tying of one’s future to some particular thing, be that person, place, or idea.

That binding is the only way that we can possibly find our proper relation to a place. When our fate is utterly tied to the fate in which we live, we will practice a proper kind of husbandry (to use Mr. Berry’s word). When our fate is tied to the fate of the land, we will treat the land as it should be treated. However, more than land, the marriage will change the way we treat the people around us. We will be aware that all the work we must do cannot be done by ourselves, and that we are tied to the people around us as much as we are tied to the land on which we’re living. It is the most appropriate, tangible living out of Jesus’ command to love our neighbors like our own selves. If we marry ourselves to some place, we will not be able to help it. The future of our self and the future of neighbors will be so tied that we will be unable to understand ourselves apart from the place and the people that we have married ourselves to. The cultivation of those relationships will be essential to our future.

To do this is a decided step away from the way that we are told that life should be done. It is a deliberate step to radically alter our consumption. It is a step to fight the seductive forces of advertising that beguile us and convince us of our unworthiness to ensure that the patterns of our consumption continues. It is a step that will subject itself to ridicule. It is difficult. It seems to be without reward. It is the slow work rather than the quick solution. It is radically countercultural. It requires imagination to even know where to begin. It requires creativity to live inside a system and counter its goals, aims, and methods. It requires the support from the community in which we have chosen to invest ourselves. It is an ongoing conversation that we have only just begun.