A Good Man Is Hard to Find

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.  

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. 

- Flannery O'Connor

Listen to Bessie while you read this.  She's never, ever a bad idea...

Tonight, I taught Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find."  Although I've read it several times before, this was my first time using it in instruction, and as is always the case, I learned an incredible amount about it through the process.  Sometimes I think I get more out of teaching the stories than my classes do from being taught.

Tonight, the moment of transformation that takes place for the grandmother really struck me.  The whole way through the story, she is obsessed with things that are surface or things that are gone.  She romanticizes the Old South where every old homestead was a plantation, where every plantation had hidden silver waiting in the walls,  and where "gracious living" with dress codes and manners marks the worthy.  She believes she can tell a "good man" based on what he looks like, what his speech patterns are, who his "people" are.  She believes herself to be a good woman, a Christian person.

And then reality comes crashing in, quite literally.  

When she is staring down the barrel of the gun, for the very first time in her life, all the externals she has used to insulate herself from real application of the religion she gives lipservice to are stripped away.  There is no protection to be found in her white gloves and navy straw hat.  There is no grace given because she has manners and respect for the place she's from.  Her comfortable life which has allowed those moments before where she's been snide, snobby, or indifferent to the suffering of others is on the verge of ending.  Only in that moment does she understand the reality of the world, the reality of her faith.

She reaches out, and in her sudden and total acceptance of someone who is going to reject it, in her compassion for someone who is going to take her very life, she connects to the core of Christianity.  The same woman who callously ignored the needs of the little child on the roadside is reaching out to the Misfit, and when her hand touches him, something far more significant occurs.  She becomes the thing she's only been pretending to be.  She becomes a good person.

And it's dangerous to be genuinely good in a world that prefers superficiality.  It's costly.  At the end of the story, though, even after she's paid that price, she still smiles.  Something that the Misfits of the world cannot take away even through violence remains.

I need to read more O'Connor.  She's portraying something she calls Christian realism, and the combination of those two concepts intrigues me.  I'm going to be thinking about this one for a long time.  

The Cure

I have been feeling really bad today.  It started this morning at church.  I subbed on the organ for the morning service, and they had baby dedication.  Then there was a presentation from a summer missionary full of all these beautiful children in need of families.  Also appearing were various announcements for all the weddings and showers that everybody seems to be having.  Every single button that I have that can be pushed was being ballroom danced across.

So I loaded myself in my little white car and drove to Walmart to buy pet food and Diet MD since I was totally out of both.  And I cried.  Embarrassing ugly crying.  Thank God I was in my car where nobody could see or hear me.

Usually, I'm okay.  Most days, I'm fine.  I stay busy, and my life is a good one.  I love what I do; I love my home; I love my friends and family.  I do not stay in a woe-is-me mindset. (And here's I'm going to have a slight Bob Dylan interlude because of reasons.)  I can honestly say that...

Most of the time
My head is on straight
Most of the time
I’m strong enough not to hate
I don’t build up illusion ’til it makes me sick
I ain’t afraid of confusion no matter how thick
I can smile in the face of mankind....

Most of the time.  Today was not most of the time.

I did what I could to try to pull myself out of it.  I made a skillet of faux tacos.  I watched the last three episodes of season three of Orphan Black.  I took a little bitty nap with a purring cat.

None of it worked. The overly-chirpy alarm on my phone went off, and I felt like hurling it into the wall.  Seeing those horrible technicolor rainbows around the lights and feeling for all the world like my head was about to crank up with a migraine, I pulled myself into a decent pair of jeans, loaded my red Peavy Foundation into its case, and reluctantly headed back to the church.

Only a few of us were there for our evening jam session since several of the people who usually show up were gone this weekend, but those of us who were there worked on a fun little song for the night service, and I found myself starting to feel a little better.  I tried to work on a few walks for it, and to be honest, they didn't go so well because of how badly I was feeling, but just having the instrument in my hands was somehow comforting.

The hymns for tonight were full of accidentals, and by the time we got to the specials, all I wanted was to crawl under the pew and sleep awhile.  Our music director announced the song, and I trudged up to the front, picking my bass up along the way.  We started to play, and the congregation started to sing.  The song had some silly lyrics to it, and we sang it over and over again.  Every time we went around, I found myself feeling a little better.  By the end of it, I was smiling.

The music is somehow a cure.  I don't know how it should be that this is true, but for me, it is.  Sometimes the relief comes in just listening to it, to a song that reminds me that I am not alone and that there is still hope.  Sometimes the words are the most important part. Tonight though, it came from shutting out everything except my fingers on the finger board and strings of that old bass keeping a steady rhythm.  There was comfort in every part of it, in the pull of the strap around my neck, in the weight of the body in my lap, in the smooth glide of the polished maple against my hand, in the press of the strings against my fingertips, in the mathematical and logical patterns of notes that were creating the music.

Part of me wishes I could have sat there on that front pew and kept playing forever.  That's not the way the world works, though.  Sooner or later, the music has to end.

The trick is to find a way to keep the good inside even when the instrument is back in its case.  I have to admit I'm still working on it.

Brother

This song.  This. Song.  

I don't have flesh-and-blood brothers, but this pretty much sums up the way I feel about my close friends.  I think it's a beautiful picture of what real friendship is supposed to be, a place where both people are protected and valued, a place where we hold each other up and hold all the broken pieces together.

This has been on my mind quite a lot lately as something I should share with a particular person.  Every time I hear it lately, I think of that individual, but things there have gotten weird.  Instead of bothering that person with it, then, I'm just going to put it here.  

Ramblers in the wilderness we can’t find what we need
Get a little restless from the searching
Get a little worn down in between
Like a bull chasing the matador is the man left to his own schemes
Everybody needs someone beside em’ shining like a lighthouse from the sea

Brother let me be your shelter
I’ll never leave you all alone
I can be the one you call
When you’re low
Brother let me be your fortress
When the night winds are driving on
Be the one to light the way
Bring you home

Face down in the desert now there’s a cage locked around my heart
I found a way to drop the keys where my failures were
Now my hands can’t reach that far
I ain’t made for a rivalry I could never take the world alone
I know that in my weakness I am strong, but
It’s your love that brings me home

Brother let me be your shelter
I’ll never leave you all alone
I can be the one you call
When you’re low
Brother let me be your fortress
When the night winds are driving on
Be the one to light the way
Bring you home

And when you call and need me near
Sayin' where'd you go?
Brother I'm right here
And on those days when the sky begins to fall
You're the blood of my blood
We can get through it all

Brother let me be your shelter
I’ll never leave you all alone
I can be the one you call
When you’re feelin' low
Brother let me be your fortress
When the night winds are driving on
Be the one to light the way
Bring you home

Brother let me be your shelter
I’ll never leave you all alone
I can be the one you call
When you’re low
Brother let me be your fortress
When the night winds are driving on
Be the one to light the way
Bring you home
Be the one to light the way
Bring you home

Not Yet

I went to a craft show in Jackson a few weeks ago, and at the entrance were several animal rescue charities.  One of them had brought in dogs and cats to be adopted.  I put my hand up as a makeshift blinder and rushed by.  Once my friend and I were past them, I assumed I was going to be safe.

Not so.

We walked around looking at the booths.  We stopped to talk to one of my favorite potters and to buy one of his awesome dragons.  We dodged various unreasonably large baby carriages.  And then we turned one of the final corners.

The entire booth was covered in colorful paintings of pit bulls.  Roux's sweet pitty smile was on every canvas.  I felt like someone had slugged me in the stomach.  I couldn't breathe.

The booth belonged to a pit bull rescue from the north of the state.  They were selling shirts and paintings to raise funds for their organization.  I had to walk by it, and I'm embarrassed to say that it took me quite a few minutes to get myself collected again. I finally composed myself enough to come back, and I got some information from their group.  When I got home, I put it on my coffee table and left it alone.

Several days later, I checked out their website.  All those beautiful faces, all those brave hearts in need of a home... I fell in love with all of them, but one stood out.  She was an American Bulldog, and I sent a question to the organization about her.  Unfortunately, while she is good with other dogs, she views cats more as snacks than friends, so she is not a good match.

It's still so hard missing Roux.  Yesterday, I was in Big Lots, and they had the silly little dog Halloween costumes out.  It made me instantly think of how wonderfully patient Roux always was with being dressed up in silly outfits.  She wore reindeer antlers, New Year's hats, angel wings, and absolutely rocked a winter sweater.

I look at Chewie in his chair, and he seems lonely.  Yelldo does not play; he's too old.  I think about how much Chewie would love to have someone to romp with, but then my eyes track across the room to my cats, Pearl and Dillon.  They're peaceful and sociable.  What would happen if I brought a new dog I couldn't be absolutely sure of into their lives?

So it's not time yet.  Not yet.  When it's time for someone else to join my furry family, everything will fall into place.   We'll all be ready then.

When It's Too Late

After a busy day, I checked my messages.  I had a text from my mother.  My uncle had died.

He was the last of my father's brothers, the one we hadn't had anything to do with for years and years.  The estrangement began when my grandmother passed away.  His wife and her child put on quite the show.  After that, years passed.  The last time we saw each other was about fifteen years ago when he was doing coast-to-coast trips driving an eighteen wheeler and stopped in Bloomington to see me.  I remember that visit being a good one, and I had hope that maybe my family would pull itself together. Then my grandfather died, and insanity on a level not even Hollywood could imagine occurred.

My feelings are in conflict.  On one hand, a member of my family is gone.  I feel that I should feel something profound.  On the other, so much ugliness and sheer crazy resulted from almost every encounter with his wife and stepchildren that absence was not just the best policy, it was the only rational one.  I didn't have the overwhelming sorrow I had when Dad's other brother, the middle son, passed away.  Instead, this strange confusion came in.

I always thought there would come a time somehow when the two brothers would pull together again.  I don't know exactly how I imagined it happening or why I thought it would after so long a time of separation.  Deep down, I guess I believed that one day something would heal the rift.  Isn't that the way families are supposed to work?

Maybe some wounds don't heal.  Maybe sometimes, no matter what the beginning connection, actions sever the ties clean.  Cause and effect.  Karma.  Something....

Or maybe the chance is always there until the time runs out.  I wonder, although I am not going to ask the question, if my father ever thought they would reconcile.  Was it ever in the back of his mind?  Was it in the back of my uncle's?  

His family continues their ridiculous behavior even after his death.  They deliberately left out his two brothers in the obituary.  They listed everyone else down to the family pets and the military branch in which he served, but they refused to acknowledge that he had not one but two brothers.  As my students would say, "Just petty."

And maybe that's fine.  It is now in every way too late for mending fences, after all.

Tired

Unexpectedly, Dad was able to come home this evening.  I am thrilled to have him out of the hospital, but getting him in the house was more than challenging.   Who ever would have thought that four simple stairs would create a problem of that proportion?  It took my uncle, my cousin, my mother, and me to get him in. God as my witness, if I ever build a house, it will have at least one entrance that is flat on the ground or easy to "ramp" by throwing a piece of plywood across low, low stairs.

Part of it was because no pressure can be put on his chest.  That means he can't be pulled by the shoulder, can't grab and pull with his arms, can't really do much except hold his heart-shaped pillow and let us get him up by creating a type of sling using his shirt.

He did the first step from the car and the first of the four steps fine, and then the day caught up with him and his knees went to jelly.  We managed to catch him, something that isn't easy to do if you're trying to dodge a giant chest wound, a huge wound on one arm, and so on.  We managed to get him up the stairs to the deck rail, and after that, into a rolling computer chair.  Eventually, we got him in the house.  Then we sort of reversed the process to get him from the computer chair into his big comfortable living room chair.

Once we'd gotten him settled, Mom had to go back to town to pick up all his prescriptions. He came home from the hospital with four pages of medications, some old, some new, and some to be stopped.  All total, he's taking 21 medications right now.  Some are AM meds, some PM; some are once-a-day, some twice, and one annoying iron pill has to be taken three times a day.  It's all so complicated that I sat down and made a checklist/flowchart for it all, and then I sorted the meds into four different boxes/baskets.  Hopefully that will make it all a little bit easier.

We worked on trying to get Dad to eat, but we only managed to get a tiny sliver of toast and a cup full of applesauce in him.  He swears he will do better tomorrow.  I hope he really will.

Five hours after he first rolled into the yard, I had reached the limit of there was that I could do tonight.  I'd made two documents/charts (thank God for my mad teacher Word skills) to track his vital statistics and the aforementioned med chart, sorted out all his old meds and put them in storage so nobody gets confused, helped him change clothes to what he plans to sleep in, worked to transfer him to the bed with the help of Mom and our handy-dandy computer chair (CRAP, but we are getting a wheelchair tomorrow even if I have to rob somebody for the money for one), assisted Mom in pulling together the elaborate mosaic of nighttime meds and treatments, eaten three pieces of toast for dinner, and checked all his gadgets to make sure they're charging for when he might want them tomorrow.

This is what I came back home for.  I knew this time would come, and I knew I'd need to help pick up as much slack as I possibly could.  I just don't think I was prepared to be as tired as I am right now, especially since this is not even really "day 1" at home.  Hopefully, he will continue to improve.  If we can just get him semi-mobile again, then a lot of the physical side of things will slow down.  If not....well....I always need a workout, right?  The only important thing is that he is getting better and in a comfortable place to do that.

After

You know you've been at the hospital too much when you know which vending machines have "quirks" about taking quarters, scanning cards, and holding certain items.  You know you've been in the CCU waiting room too often when you know either by name or by face all the other "long-term" family members waiting for visiting hours, when you share a smile between you as one of you enters the room, when you contemplate the "new people" waiting on someone in surgery as a temporary phenomenon.

It's hard to believe it has only been a week.  It feels like years and years.  While it's not quite over yet (we're waiting for all the final bits to finish so Dad can come home), the worst part seems to be behind us.  Dad is chomping at the proverbial bit to come home, and they've disconnected most of the IVs and machines.

He already seems like he's doing better.  I don't know if it's increased blood flow, stress relief, or changes in medication, but he seems much more focused.  We've heard doctors and other people who have had bypass surgery talk before, and they've talked about having a "new lease on life."  At the risk of this post turning into a mass of cliches, that is exactly what it seems like.  I'm so excited for him.  I know how much it was bothering him mentally that he wasn't able to do the things he wanted to do anymore because of the pain and exhaustion caused by the blockages.

Even though I did not go through any physical changes myself, nevertheless, I do feel different.  Some things that seemed terribly important to me before all this began just really don't matter at all now.  Other things have waxed even as the others waned.

What I expected to be a fairly placid summer has turned into something transformational for my entire family.  It is always hard to tell whether the changes will be good or bad when they come so suddenly and on such a massive level.  I guess we will just move forward into the after and see what comes next.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow....

Today, I got up, grabbed an air tank, dodged a highway worker making a poor choice on a narrow bridge, filled the tank, dodged the same stupid guy on the way back over the bridge, and filled the leaky front wheel on my lawn mower.  Then I spent the next three hours riding in increasingly small circles in various sections of my yard until all the ugly upthrust seed Vs of the Bahia grass were gone.  My shoulders and back got too much sun, and I'm hoping they will decide to stay at "freckle" and not move up to "sunburn."

I had to do something, and mowing can be very meditative.  I turn up a random playlist on my phone and because my mower is pretty old, I have to put most of my attention on making sure it is actually cutting right.  It's not go-kart fun, but it will do in a pinch.

Finally, late this afternoon, Dad called to say everything has been cleared for tomorrow.  The surgery is officially on.

So now, I'm making lists, laying out clothes, packing up things I'll need during the interminable wait.  In a few hours, I'll go lie in my bed and stare at the ceiling.  Then tomorrow will be today, and we will see what we will see.

Fordite

"Fordite, also known as Motor Agate, is a unique automotive enamel material with an interesting history. The original layered automotive paint slag 'rough' was made incidentally, years ago, by the now extinct practice of hand spray-painting multiples of production cars in big automotive factories. 

The oversprayed paint in the painting bays gradually built up on the tracks and skids that the car frames were painted on. Over time, many colorful layers built up there. These layers were hardened repeatedly in the ovens that the car bodies went into to cure the paint. Some of these deeper layers were even baked 100 times. 

Eventually, the paint build-up would become obstructing, or too thick and heavy, and had to be removed. As the story goes, some crafty workers with an eye for beauty realized that this unique byproduct was worth salvaging. It was super-cured, patterned like psychedelic agate, and could be cut and polished with relative ease!"  - taken from fordite.com 
__________________________________

I'm obsessed with this stuff.  In addition to mad housecleaning, I am also using the internet as a tool for avoidance of reality, and as I stumbled through the rabbit hole of Etsy, I came across Fordite.

As the history blurb above details, this is a reclaimed thing, something that occurred as an accident, a nuisance byproduct for the auto industry.  How beautiful this nuisance is, though.

I wonder who the first person to notice the internal loveliness under the unsightly exterior was, who the first person to scratch the surface and find more than was expected.

Fordite, or Detroit Agate, isn't produced anymore.  Technology changed the manufacturing process, and this side-effect doesn't happen now.  What I'm sure the industry looked at as a waste now fetches as much money as some "real" gemstones, especially if it can be proven to have come from a particular auto maker, model, or factory, for example the Corvette factory in Bowling Green, KY.  I even saw one piece marked as "mustangite."  Guess what it was supposed to have come from?

I have found a piece on Etsy that I really love....well, probably more like five pieces, but still...and when my money from the AP reading comes, I am going to splurge on a piece.  Aside from the incredible visual appeal of it, I like the symbolic reminder that it's what's under the surface that matters, that the world rarely takes the time to look for less-than-screaming-in-its-face-obvious value and is prone to discard things of beauty and rarity.  It's a lesson worth remembering about a tendency worth avoiding.

I don't think that's too much philosophy to hang from a silver chain, right?  If it's too much for you, I guess you can just enjoy all the pretty colors.  To each, her own.

Type A

Today, I exerted my Type A-ism over the only thing I can control right now, my own house.  I got up, made coffee, cranked the Dance Workout playlist on Spotify, and started cleaning.

I vacuumed, steam cleaned the kitchen, dining room, and bathroom floors, did laundry and put it away, stripped my bed and put my feather mattress out to sun, emptied and reloaded the dishwasher, washed and replaced my slipcovers, took out the trash.  Every little thing felt like a stitch to hold the fabric of life together.

There's more that needs to be done, shelves to dust, a piano and an organ to detail, a shower curtain to replace.  Once I'm finished inside, there is a whole world of yard work. I am going to hold this line.

What's the alternative?

Recently

Sometimes, it seems like your life can drastically change from one moment to another.  Like somebody has flipped a switch from one position to its opposite.  Final.  Complete.  You were *this*, but suddenly you are *that* instead.

I have been having a chain of these events during the past two months.  Instead of the gradual shaping that life does on all of us, the water over the stone, the windstorm shaping the dunes, things lately have been all dynamite and sinkholes opening up.  I have yet to figure out the extent of it all.

For one thing, I lost my Roux.  She had what they decided were several small strokes, and finally, I sat in the back corner of the teacher's portion of the school cafeteria and made a decision to let her go.  I have not been able to go back into that space since that day.  I lost something more than just her.  Some part of my heart just snapped off and quit.  I am not sure I am going to be able to get it back.

And then there's the friend I treasured who has thrown me away.  Looking back over the past few months, I guess it's been coming for awhile. There's no comfort in that.  All it means is that I've been stupid a very long time.  I'm hung between pain at the loss and sheer anger at once again being the one to whom it mattered more.  I can't get over the fact that I never seem to learn.  

After that, I sat in a very large room and graded papers for eight straight days.  This may not sound like much to you, but it becomes a form of meditation.  The focus required strips away everything non-essential.  The breaks that are taken allow only certain key concepts to float up from under the weariness of the job.  During this time, I came to a very significant realization about some things.  An opportunity came to me during this same time to make some changes.  I took it.  I am still not sure what the outcome of it will be, but that still small voice in my heart told me that if I didn't even try to take this, then something like a total ossification of my soul was going to take place.  

And then I came home.  My parents came down the day I got back to have dinner, and in that way they have, they told me that my father's doctor had ordered a heart cath for Thursday, two days away.  They hadn't told me about it because...and sing along because you know the chorus....they didn't want to distress me with it.

 So Thursday came, and we went through all the same motions I did not so very long ago when another big part of my own life changed, the sign in.  The cath lab waiting rooms are small, private, as opposed to the larger room for the ICU/CCU/Outpatient surgery.  I am always grateful for a small waiting room.  I cannot stand to look around and see all the faces filled with misery and fear.  It presses down on me like a stone on my chest, and I can't breathe because of it.  Mom busied herself with preparations for something she was working on at the church.  I took a deck of cards, found a battered brown coffee table, and played solitaire over and over.  I lost much more than I won, but the movement helped me block out the interminable creeping of time.

The doctor finally came to see us, and the news was not good.  A surgeon would have to look at the results and make a recommendation.  The cardiologist had exhausted all the means at his disposal, and the blockages and damage were severe.  Basically, Dad could have died at any moment with any exertion.  And someone shifted the gears on the machine of my life again.

When the cardiovascular surgeon came to see us later that afternoon, he brought unexpected hope.  Bypass surgery was possible.  It will be complicated, but at least there was an option.  Another shifting of the gears.

Now we're all waiting.  Thursday will be the day.  We'll see who we all are at the end of it.  

Literary Epiphanies

I went to the annual Eudora Welty teacher workshop Friday.

Getting there was nightmarish.  Ice had gridlocked the entire city of Jackson.  All roads in and all roads within were obstructed by wrecks.  The dreaded "stack" where I-20 and I-59 go their separate ways was completely closed.  Insanity reigned supreme with selfish motorists refusing to move out of the way of incoming emergency services.  I personally sat about five miles outside of Brandon for 45 minutes, engine off, waiting for some accident I never saw any trace of to be cleared.

When I finally got to Welty House, I was late.  I scurried in and took up a seat in the back.  The two stories we were to have read before arriving were already under discussion.  I quickly got my pen out and started filling pages of notes.

These moment where I get to be a student again are precious.  I love to learn, feed on it just as much as I get nourishment from any kind of food.  I don't know how people function who never take in new knowledge somehow.  I always feel like my brain is like a pool, and if no new material is added, I swear I can feel it getting stagnant and brackish.

The two stories we were contrasting were "The Wanderers" by Welty and "The Dead" by Joyce.  I've been on something of a Joyce kick lately (the Moderns in general, but Joyce particularly).  F. got me started on the Joyce, an author I had avoided for years because of all the pretentious blather he gets in my field.  I can't think of another author who has more of what I have always thought of as the "Emperor's New Clothing Syndrome" attached to his name than Joyce, by which I have heard people who quite obviously had no more idea than the man in the moon what was going on in his works loudly discussing him like they were going to get some kind of celestial brownie points for doing so.  In any case, at F's urging, I decided to see what the fuss was about.

(Side note about that:  He sort of had to prod me a lot, and I was fairly grumpy and grudging with my acceptance. You would think by now I would just accept what F. said and go on.  He is the one who got me to listen to Dylan and at least a couple of other things I had decided that I was not going to fool with because of all the loud-sounding nothing that surrounds them.  He is right about things I will like to a degree that I do not understand.  I haven't reached the point of just going along with it, though.  I am aware that it is a character flaw.  If you try to push me toward something, you can be pretty sure I'm going to move it to the bottom of my list of priorities or refuse it altogether.  I know this behaviour is hardheaded and almost certainly unwise.  Can't seem to fix it, though.)

I was surprised when I liked what I was reading.  There was none of the deliberately abstruse stuff I'd always heard of.  The stories were engaging.  I finished Dubliners quickly and moved on to Ulysses.   I got about halfway through it before the semester started jumping up and down on me with its great black jackboots, so I am still plowing my way through it in doses.  It requires more concentration than Dubliners, more than most works I've read in my time studying literature, and while I like that about it tremendously, at the end of a long day, I don't always have that to give.

In any case, when the conference rolled around this year and I saw the pairing of Welty and Joyce, I was pretty excited about it.  I had never really thought of them together, but when I saw the titles, putting them together seemed perfectly logical.  Both are acutely interested in place and how it shapes culture and the characters they present.  I expected to learn a great deal and maybe figure out how to put both stories into the course syllabus I'm always in the middle of tearing apart and putting together, a little like faithful Penelope and her permanently unfinished weaving.

What I did not expect was a sharp and personal revelation.

Both stories have at their heart a trapped wanderer who has to lose what is precious to become free.  There are two different reactions reflecting the drastically different world views of the two different authors behind them.

Both Welty and Joyce were themselves wanderers.  Welty left Jackson for a long time for school and travel, but she had that permanent and inexplicable need to return that seems to be something we take in with the waters here in Mississippi.  She came home to take care of her family when they needed her.

Joyce left Dublin, that big city that felt so small, and refused all aspects and claims of its culture and practices.  He refused even to kneel at his mother's deathbed.  He was constantly seeking something somewhere else, yet his writing stays eternally tied to Dublin, picking it apart piece by piece in his works. For him, there is a paralysis that settles over life in Ireland, something caused by politics, religion, family.  All of it was a crushing weight that froze an individual in place, and in his stories some who are trying to escape come to a realization that they are not what they thought they were, become "sadder and wiser" because of it.

Welty, too, feels the power of place over her characters.  Family ties and cultural expectations reach out and twine around her wanderers, too.  She has a gently satirical eye for all the human frailty and foolishness that is a part of every community.  Unlike Joyce, though, I think Welty can see that there is good mixed in with all that stuff, too.  Her Wanderer, Virgie, has gone out and come back.  She has given up years of her life trying to fulfill the requirements of family and cultural duty.  As the oldest daughter, it's her job to take care of her mother.  At the end, when all the ties of family and property and obligation fall away from her, unlike with Gabriel in "The Dead," a sense that she is going to be okay now comes.  She has been changed, shaped, by all her experiences and decisions, but there is hope at the end.

And that is a critical thing.  That is the thing that I kept missing in Joyce.  I enjoy his stuff, but at the end of the day, I miss that glimmer of hope.  Maybe it's a Mississippi thing.  I see the same difference when I compare Faulkner and Hemingway.  I love them both, but there is usually a comfort at the end of Faulkner that I cannot always find from Hemingway.

I have to believe that this possibility of hope and comfort *is* present if we will look for it.  I think Welty gives it to us maybe in part because she comes back to a place that is probably not exactly where she wanted to be but she lives in it and makes something of it.  Instead of it becoming a stagnation that destroys, for her, it becomes an exercise in seeking the good, finding it wherever it appears, the garden, her friends, the ridiculous, the beautiful, the everyday miraculous.

I want to be more like Welty.  I, too, feel completely trapped here.  I am a wanderer who came home, and I can feel the weight of obligations and cultural issues sitting on me like bricks on bird wings.  Sometimes, it almost feels like there's not enough air to breathe.  I don't want to be like Joyce, though, and just lump the baby and bathwater together as I toss it all out the window.  There *is* the possibility of hope and comfort.  There are lessons to be learned if I persist.

Hamlet (you knew he was showing up sooner or later, right?) says that "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so."  I have been so focused on all the things I do not like about being home that I am forgetting there are a great many good things here, too.  I think it's time to adjust my focus.  Lincoln famously said, "Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be."  Time to pick Welty's Wanderer instead.

Lost and Found

I lost a friend recently.  

Maybe that's inaccurate.

I lost my ability to trust a friend recently.  Let's start there.

I've known that person a long time.  We've been a support to one another through a couple of nasty things.  That person is precious to me.  

Then came the lie.  Now I don't know how to feel. 

It's hard for me to trust, anyway.  Whether it is fair or not, I frequently realize that I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for the stick that hides behind the carrot.

Of course, things broken can be repaired much of the time.  The Japanese sometimes even mend precious vessels with gold making something that could be seen as loss glorious.  My own multitudinous scars are things I see as badges of survival.  They aren't pretty, to be sure, but there is a pride in knowing that what made them didn't unmake me.

Sometimes, though, there is too much damage for something to be salvagable.  When trust breaks, gold can't fuse the pieces.  I am not sure what can.  Maybe time.  I'll have to see....

Decisions, Decisions

So many choices.  I wish sometimes that life wasn't an endless stream of choices.  I know that's foolish because the ability to choose is precious, but sometimes I feel like my mind gets blisters and calluses because it's turning things with sharp edges over and over trying to find where they fit.

Right now, I have one of the biggest of decisions to make.  Do I stay or do I go?  Pro and con lists do not help; they balance.  People I love and trust are also arrayed on both sides of the issue.  

I stand here looking around, and I love this place so much it is almost a physical pain.  I love every part, the physical setup, the changes I've made to make it my own, precious people I have met.  I love the potential, the what it could be.

Sometimes, though, the what is crushes me, weighs down on me like that pile of stones they used in Salem, one burden at a time until I feel like I can't even breathe.

Am I still doing any good?  If I stay, will I keep doing any good?  Does it really matter if I'm here or not, or am I just a replaceable cog in a massive machine?  If this particular gear slips, will the harmony of the engine even shift?

I feel like I'm in the long dark night of this particular portion of my soul.  With something as important as this is to me, being uneasy in it affects all else.  

I wish I had some clarity.

Late Night Grande Hotel

And maybe you were thinkin'
That you thought you knew me well
But, no one ever knows the heart of anyone else
I feel like Garbo in this late night grand hotel
Cause living alone is all I've ever done well

~ "Late Night Grande Hotel" - Nanci Griffith

I don't have anything left.  It's all gone.  Maybe it all had to be dumped out so something new could come in.  We're not to that point, though, so I can't tell you.  I'm not hopeful.

And I used to be.

I miss the me that was hopeful.  Now, I fake the optimism, try to keep the mask in place, hope the seams and the cracks and the patches don't show too much. I stay as still as possible, try to smile a lot, use misdirection when needed. I'm not as good at it as I used to be.  Probably, I'm getting worse every day.

I feel like a bird with broken wings.  I stare up into the sky, and I know that used to belong there.  I can't get any altitude, though.  All I can do is flutter and wish.  I've been knocked down too often.  By Fate, maybe.  By careless hands that never meant to hurt me but couldn't quite help it.  By my own foolish wishes.

Tomorrow, I'll get up, and maybe the world will be roses.  Maybe my wings will be healed.  I wonder, though, after so much time lost, if I would even remember how to fly if they were.  I'm not hopeful.

And I used to be....

It Comes In Like the Tide

The dark comes in stealthily, like the rising of the tide.  At first, it laps at the toes.  Walking is still an option despite the sensation of the solid ground being eaten away from under the soles of the feet.  You might totter, wave your hands for balance, and press on. It isn't serious.

But if you don't watch it, it is.

Suddenly, before you even know it, you're in it knee-deep, waist-deep, chest-deep, and it's cold, so very, very cold....

You'd swim, but the currents pull from below with an obscene hunger.  You'd cry out, but in the dark, there is no one who can hear, no one at all.

So you start out with the best of intentions.  If you can just hang on for awhile, it has to back off, drain away, let you put feet on solid ground.  It can't last forever, can it?

But even if you watch it, it does.

Sooner or later, even the strongest of swimmers gets a cramp.  Sooner or later, even the most optimistic eye stops believing there will be light.

It comes in like the rising of the tide, and the world below you disappears.

Oyster Crackers

When I was young, I went on a vacation with C., my best friend.  For some reason, we chose to stay in the room while my parents went out to eat.  We were tired or sunburned or something.  We had been on a semi-disasterous innertube rafting trip on a river in Tennessee, and we were likely exhausted.  I seem to remember a great deal of portage and falling off innertubes.  In any case, it seemed a good idea at the time. 

Only we got hungry.  And it went on so long.

The hotel was near nothing, so walking to a place to eat was impossible.  We looked through the room, but there was nothing and no vending machines.  All we had to eat was a bag of oyster crackers we'd bought to throw at the ducks in the nearby river.  So we'd eat them one at a time, laughing hysterically because there was nothing else to do.  We had no transport, no options.  We just waited, trusting that sooner or later, food would come because we'd been told that it would.

Many hours later, my parents returned, and they'd had quite a lot of trouble finding us (and themselves) food.  In the non-touristy place we were staying, apparently the sidewalks rolled up quite early.  We wound up with a couple of very nasty hamburgers in styrofoam takeaway containers. 

At some point in your life, I am pretty sure most of you, gentle readers, have had this hamburger.  It is the ultimate disappointment.  Dry-hard bun, pitiful cold patty, rubbery technicolor orange cheese, frightning tiny pickles, limp lettuce, and no condiments to speak of.  We ate them because we had no other options.  They weren't what we'd wanted (that restaurant had not been open), but they were what we had, so we made do.

Certain things have happened to me in the last two days that have impressed upon me the notion that I'm still sitting around waiting for things that were promised that just aren't going to come.  I'm still trying to tell myself that I can be content with something that is less than what I really wanted or expected.  I am tired of it.  It's time to do something about it.

I don't know what, and I don't know how yet, but it has been impressed upon me that I must start looking, or all I'm ever going to have are things that do not satisfy me.  Stop-gap has become my whole life.  I'm sure it was a gradual thing, something silent and stealthy slipping up like some form of comfortable quicksand, but this is enough.

I'm putting you on notice, world.  I am done with oyster crackers and piss-poor hamburgers.  I refuse to believe that's all there is.  I refuse to believe that's all I'm worth.  If that's all you can offer me, it's time for you to get to steppin'. 

Graceland

 After years of being curious, I finally got to go to Graceland last Wednesday.  My best friend and I got up, ate a hotel buffet breakfast, and braved cross-town traffic to arrive in an nearly-empty parking lot.

We paid our fee, passed through a queue and an unexpected photo stop, were handed the headphone set/audio guide that has become de rigeur at tourist attractions, and loaded onto a small shuttle bus which rolled across Elvis Presley Boulevard, through open gates, and up a small hill.
And there it was.

I am not sure what I was expecting.  This wasn't it.

Maybe I just expected the sort of excess that one sees in the homes of Hollywood elite today, flash, excess, too much of everything to be a truly livable space.  Instead, what was there was a home.  Large, spacious, elegant, but still a home.

Our little headphoned herd passed through the large front door and on either side of us were the home's public spaces.  There was a formal parlor, furnished in white, gold, and blue, on the right, and to the left, there was a formal dining room, the height of elegance for the time period in which it had been decorated.

We looked into a couple of bedrooms tucked down a small hall, and then we went around a corner to the kitchen.  It was here that the contrast of the two parts of the house really struck me.  The kitchen was described as the heart of Elvis's home, and I could tell the difference automatically.  It looked like a place real people could cook and eat and sneak down to raid the fridge in the middle of the night.   In fact, there was a stairwell that would allow just that. It looked like real people had at one time had real lives there, not just a set for photo ops or a display of conspicuous consumption.  

The downstairs rooms and even the famous Jungle Room felt the same way.  The private spaces of Graceland were comfortable and functional, full of expensive things, perhaps, but not a museum, not a slick spread in a magazine.  People used and enjoyed those rooms.

I liked it quite a lot.

The divisions he'd created, the idea of a public formal space in which he could meet those who perhaps were not close to him, is a very Southern thing.  The formal front parlor has been around for a long time.  I found it interesting that he had continued that tradition in his home.  He had enough money to have created anything he wanted, but what he created was a home.

Of course, the house itself is only a small part of the tour.  The outbuildings that have been converted or added are storehouses of memorabilia, costumes, personal items, and above all, gold and platinum records.  Trophies of all kinds were everywhere.

We finished up in the memory garden where the graves are.  People were snapping image after image of the graves, and to me, it felt a little odd.  To me, the graves were a private place, and the neverending parade of tourists, myself included, seemed a little inappropriate.  I admit that I've toured cathedrals of Europe, and I certainly took pictures of Dante's monument in Santa Croce and Shakespeare's in Holy Trinity, but this hit me differently.  I felt like I'd crawled over a fence and invaded someone's privacy.

We loaded back up, were carted across the road, and got off in the miniature theme park where we'd started.  We dutifully toured the automobile collection, browsed in shops, had our photo made with Elvis through the magic of Photoshop, got pressed pennies, bought the obligatory t-shirts.

We took a break and ate a hamburger and a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich with some of the best fries I've ever had in one of the two restaurants on the Graceland property, and the 50s diner decor included the obligatory beautiful Wurlitzer filled with Elvis's music.  We listened, ate, and took a minute to refuel. The whole time, though I couldn't stop thinking about what Elvis himself might have thought about this whole thing.  He had tried to make a home, a refuge for himself and those he loved.  He hadn't built a palace to excess, although he certainly had the financial means to do so.  This means that he treasured that space and what it represented.

So would he have been okay with what it has become?  Would he have seen it as just another part of the business, or would it have bothered him that we were traipsing through his kitchen, snapping photos of his formal parlor?

The question continued to resonate with me all the way back out to the now-filled parking lot and all the way down I-55 to my own refuge.  It lingers still.

Retro-Eco

The really fabulous thing about living out here in the country in a house various members of my family have lived in for more than 50 years is that many of the tools of the past are still around ready for use.  Sometimes, they break down due to natural age, and I have to make the decision as to whether or not it is worth it to replace them.

One item I have never had a moment's qualm about keeping in repair is the old-fashioned clothes line my grandmother had situated in the back yard.  She had hers originally strung through huge old fence posts and cedar trunks more than head high.  Even cedar gives up eventually, and the second year I lived here, I had to figure out what to do about it.

The vocational center at school has a welding program, and my dad had them build me a new set of posts, huge steel Ts, to hold updated line.  We set them in quick-setting concrete, strung them with the plastic-sheathed steel cable, and it was ready to go.

Until Katrina dropped a tree on it.

Some time later, we dug up the pole, took it back to school, got the top bar rewelded on, and reset it in the ground.  Since that time, it's been standing sentry like Granny's version did for so many years.

I don't use it all the time, but when I wash all my bedding, quilts, comforter, sheets, all, I use it to sun dry all of that whenever possible.  Today, I got up, stripped down the bed, took the feather mattress out and draped it over a porch stair rail, and began the process of laundering all the fabrics.  Then I carried each load out to the line and hung it up.

Even though it's an old-fashioned thing, I like it for several reasons.  First of all, it keeps me from having to run my dryer and heat up my house unnecessarily.  Even though the laundry area is out of the way, there's no reason to make things harder on my poor old air unit than they have to be.  Second, it's nice to feel like I'm somehow saving electricity.  It never ceases to amuse me that so many of the things that people now embrace as "eco-friendly," my grandmother did on a daily basis because that was all there was.  I suppose there really is nothing new under the sun. Finally, I love how it feels to sink down in the bed at the end of a day of cleaning and smell that freshness that only comes from something dried outdoors.

The only real drawback comes in the form of a never-ending worry that it's going to rain.  It's always a sort of lottery.  Today, for example, I went to Wal-Mart earlier, and I carefully checked the weather forecast before I left.  Nothing but clear skies.  While I was wheeling up and down the aisles, my phone chirped at me, and when I looked, a severe thunderstorm warning had showed up.  At that point, there was nothing to do about it.  I just sighed and moved on to the pet food, hoping I could get my shopping done and get home before the bottom fell out of it.

Well, the skies are still sunny although now and then a threatening cloud passes by.  In a couple of hours, I'll go out and gather everything in, make up the bed, finish up the chore.  When I do, I will feel connected to my Granny.  I remember going out to the clothes line with her to gather in the towels or Grandaddy's overalls.  I remember the little bag she'd made that fit on the clothesline that held wooden clothespins.  It's a small thing, but they are the ones that matter.

Uh-oh.  Even as I typed that, I heard thunder.  Time to get the clothes off the line, I think.....

A Total Futbol Neophyte Looks at Messi

Today, it seems like every friend I have who has kids spends half their year ferrying the kids to soccer and the other half to a sport played with a stick (softball, t-ball, baseball). When I was a child, we didn't have soccer as the ubiquitous kid sport. It didn't start to become popular in our area until I was well into high school.  I think my high school got a team together when I was a sophomore or a junior.

Prior to this World Cup, I have not paid much attention to the sport.  I don't know why, really.  I have worked with international students for years, was in-country in Japan the year before they hosted and observed the building of the stadium in Brasilia two years ago from the heights of the TV Tower.  I have friends who are rabidly interested and have talked about it all the time.  I guess I just don't pay much attention to many sporting events.

This year, though, I had intentions to watch.  Admittedly, one of the main draws for me was seeing Brazil again even from a televised distance, seeing how all the preparations had come together, seeing if the general unrest that those preparations had stirred up had settled any. The World Cup began while I was in Louisville, and I turned on the TV in the Galt House one afternoon as one of the first matches was starting.  I was tired from a long day of hacking my way through the underbrush of essays, and I said, "Okay.  This is the year.  I'm going to do this this time around."  And so I watched.

Coming to a thing about which you know nothing is always both a humbling experience and a great source of the joy of discovery. I spent a lot of time looking stuff up online and trying to learn terms, rules, positions.  Thank God for Google, eHow, the FIFA site, and the millions of other sites made for newbies like me. The longer I watched, the more I began to comprehend basic things that my students probably absorbed with their baby food.  I discovered I liked the sport quite a bit.

The second game I watched in this World Cup had Argentina playing.  I honestly don't remember who their opponent was.  It was the first match in the opening round.  Right before it started, ESPN did one of their dramatic little mini-highlights of Lionel Messi.  I watched it with a little bit of interest and settled in for the match.

And from that point forward, pretty much all I saw was #10.  He's sort of amazing.

(Which I know is not new news.  Bear with me.  And while I know he is considered to be one of the best players in the world right now by people who actually know what they're talking about, I'm still going to tell you why.  This is my space.  I can do what I like.)

Ronaldo was made much of early on.  He had a different haircut for each match, including at one point a zigzag with a gold stripe painted in it. (Where and WHY did he find the time to go get a new 'do?) Apparently, according to the ESPN announcers, he was met at his hotel by a topless model.  While these things in and of themselves are not crimes, in the games I saw with him, he always seemed very conscious of his own glamour.  While I don't doubt he's good, I find that whole over-the-top attitude and lifestyle very boring.

Then there's Messi.  His is another one of the big glittery names at this World Cup.  The announcers chant his name like it's a litany required for salvation. Games he's not even playing in make mention of him. The corporate sponsors splash him on screen for almost every product.  He's drinking Pepsi, gulping Gatorade, operating at "god level" for Adidas.

Normally, these are things that would make me put him in the same big-business-sports-star box with Ronaldo.  I just couldn't do that to Messi, though.  The longer I watched him, the more I realized that his hair is the last of his concerns. I love to watch him play for several reasons.

One, he does things that are very hard but makes them look graceful and easy.  He doesn't showboat as I've seen some of the other young ones try to do.  To watch him move the ball is a kind of magic. (And no, not the "bippity-boppity-boo" kind, but thank you, Gatorade.  I have that flippin' song stuck in my head for DAYS every time I see that commercial...) Every time the ball comes near him, things get interesting.  He can take it away from others.  He can move it himself.  Apparently Maradona has said that it's like "the ball stays glued to his foot," and that seems about right to me.  It's beautiful to watch.

Two, he is not selfish.  While right now, the big media phrase is "Messi Dependence" for Argentina, this isn't because he isn't passing and giving his teammates a chance.  I love him for that.  In the last few matches I've seen with some of the other one-name demi-deities, too many of them wanted to hog the ball at times when a wise pass would have meant a goal.  Although Messi has done the majority of the scoring for his team in this World Cup, it isn't because he believes he's the only man on the field.

Three, I respect him because he always looks just a bit uneasy when the cameras are following him around during the pre-game stuff.  He doesn't simper or smirk or smolder into the lens. I perceive his expression as being one of resignation.  He can't do anything about it, but man, he wishes they would get that thing out of his face so he could concentrate on the important matters ahead.

Four, I love to see the rapport he has with other players.  My favorite example of this came when Argentina played Nigeria, and Messi and Enyeama were clearly giving each other friendly crap after Enyeama saved one of Messi's goal efforts.  The next time, Messi got it past the incredibly-good Nigerian goalkeeper, and still there was no pouting. It was an example of what sport SHOULD be to me.  It wasn't personal. They were sportsmen who could each appreciate the skill the other had. They might have been opponents, but that didn't mean they were enemies. I've seen him do that several times, sometimes with people he plays with in his regular league, sometimes not. For him, there is still joy in the game.  There are some others on the pitch who could take a lesson from that attitude.

Five, I saw pictures of him with his son.  Oh my God.  How totally precious.  Somebody retweeted his birthday post last week, and it was him with his little boy in his arms.  He had an expression of total happiness on his face. He has his son's handprints and name tattooed on his calf.  How can you not love someone who loves his little boy that much?  ESPN showed his wife carrying the little boy into the stadium before one of the matches, and he has a very small Argentina jersey with number 10 and the word "Papi" on the back.  Pardon me for having a girl moment, but, "AWWWWWWWWWWW."

Six, he does good things off the field.  He served as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF.  He makes sure children who need medicine (as he did when he was a child) have access.  He gave money to restore the oncology wing of a hospital and train their doctors abroad.   His foundation additionally works to promote and ensure educational opportunities are there for those in need.  He gives back.

Seven, finally, (and to your eternal relief, no doubt)  to me, he's just beautiful.  Sure, I suppose he's not classically handsome in the way that Ronaldo considers himself to be.  When he smiles, though, or when he looks up and grins after a score, how could anyone possibly prefer that overly-groomed Portuguese?

I am looking forward to tomorrow's matches. If Argentina get past Sweden and should the USA manage to get by Belgium (about which I refuse to make predictions in either case), it's theoretically possible my national team might be facing my favorite player.  I'm not going to think about it much, though.  Instead, I'm just going to enjoy another day of Messi.