Resurrection

Like many kids in the mid-western city where I was born, I was raised Catholic. I attended our neighborhood Catholic school from kindergarten all the way through high school, and then even went so far as to graduate from a Jesuit university. I consider myself fortunate -- and I would even dare say typical of folks my age -- in that most of my memories of my Catholic education were pretty positive. By the time I was in school, most of the nuns of the "old regime" -- the "whack 'em with a ruler if they're not paying attention" school of classroom management -- were either dead, or were getting too old to teach. Not that that didn't stop a few of the old broads from trying, but they were thankfully a dying breed. Most of the nuns I encountered were very kind. They could be stern at times, yes, but also funny and wise and suprisingly hip. They were good people.

I am no longer a practicing Catholic, although Catholicism is sort of like herpes -- once it's in your system, you'll always be a carrier. No, I am no longer a practicing anything. I find religion sociologically and anthropologically fascinating -- I'm just not interested in belonging to a church. I am not much of a "joiner", for one thing. For another, my relationship with God (I do believe in a higher power) feels very personal to me -- not something I want to proclaim to all. Although I have to say -- last fall I went to an Episcopalian service with Bug to hear his offspring sing in the kids' choir, and it happened to also be the Blessing of the Animals. The church was full of adults and kids with their dogs, cats, hamsters, snakes, turtles, bunnies and other creatures. It was the best service I ever attended. If I found a church where animals were welcomed to every service, I might actually consider joining -- there was something lovely and humbling about celebrating with the animals.

All this to say, like most fallen Catholics, there are certain times of year when I feel the "tug" of old rituals and deeply ingrained stories moving me to act. I'm sure all religions are full of great stories -- they would have to be to have lasted so long. Everyone loves a good story. The stories I'm most familiar with are those I grew up with -- those of The Bible and Jesus Christ. And to me, that's just what they are -- stories -- more metaphorical than real, which as far as I'm concerned, does not diminish their power. Those early Christians sure knew what they were doing when hooking up their stories to pagan celebrations. There are certain times of the year when we need to be reminded that all is not lost -- that the darkness will pass -- that new life can spring from even the deadest of places. Even from the grayest asphalt of mid-western cities. Even from the saddest of fallen Catholic souls.

Hallelujah.

Walk With Me

walking from blu on Vimeo.

Moving back to the land of sprawl and cars, cars, cars has been hard on this ol' gal. I learned to drive only a year ago out of necessity (and the desire to conquer a fear that had grown over time to rather epic proportions), and I'm glad I did -- it's good to have options. But I don't like what it's done to me. Driving isn't healthy. It's changed the way we live in the world -- the way we shape the world around us, the way we structure our time, the way we interact (or not) with each other. Driving is all about the destination -- about getting from Point A to Point B as quickly as possible and filling the in-between time with as many distractions as possible (phone calls, texting, eating, putting on makeup -- it's amazing the things people try to accomplish while driving).

Come walk with me. Life is all around you -- on a lovely day, all of humanity is out in full-force: there's an elderly couple digging in their garden, there are kids of all shapes and sizes on bikes, on skates and skateboards, boys wrestling in the grass, girls gossiping on front stoops. Babies are as abundant as rosebuds in early summer -- pushed around in strollers by teams of moms and dads, slung on hips, toddling unsteadily across lawns and playgrounds. Dogs trot happily alongside their humans. Cats lounge on porches, or stare longingly out of windows. As you walk, you pass a shop you hadn't noticed before -- you go in -- it feels like a discovery. You leave the shop with a used book, or a new pen, or a homemade fudge brownie -- or maybe nothing, but you know you'll be back later. You keep walking and almost step on a severed Barbie head -- no sign of the rest of her body anywhere around -- you pick it up and put it in your pocket -- a souvenir. Or maybe you find a lone earring -- something a little gaudy and young, lost by a teenage girl while in an argument with her boyfriend over how come he kept talking to Maria, that skank, all night, instead of her? You are surrounded by stories -- stories of love, betrayal , abandonment, despair, hope, joy -- behind every door and window, laying on sidewalks and in storefronts and propped up against dumpsters in alleys.

If you drive all the time, everywhere you go, you miss all of this life. All of this beauty and sadness and violence and tenderness. Get out of your car. You know you want to.

Keeping it All in Perspective

So, I went out for lunch this past Friday with a friend I hadn't seen, or been in touch with, for about 20 years (thanks, facebook). She arrived, we hugged and exchanged compliments ("You look great! You haven't changed at all!"), ordered our food, and sat down to begin the process of catching up on the past two decades. Suddenly, I felt light-headed, faint. She was asking me questions, but it was all I could do to breathe. I apologized, explaining that I was feeling a bit dizzy and faint. At that moment, I fully understood Ricky Bobby's (Will Ferrell's character in Talladega Nights) urge to strip down to his underwear and run around the race track screaming -- had I been the lead character in a comedy film I might've stripped down and splayed myself out across a row of tables, laying in people's chicken salads and hummus, causing everyone around me to recoil in disgust as I'm led out of the cafe', big globs of salsa & bean dip dripping from my Hanes Her Way briefs.

Side note: Why would that not be funny? (because I guarantee you, a general audience would be groaning in disgust over such a scene). Why is it that middle-aged, soft-bellied guys can strip down to their tighty-whities, smear food all over their bodies and run around and it's funny, but if soft-bellied, middle-aged women do it, it's pathetic and disgusting? This begs further investigation for another post.

Anyway, it wasn't a film, it was real life, so I remained fully clothed and relatively composed as I said to my friend "Would you mind taking me home right now?"

It has been a rough winter, to be sure. There's a reason I called this blog "Incredible Exploding Head". I keep feeling like something's gotta give.

Thank God for Monty Python. Life can be so difficult, so sad, so painful -- it can be a challenge at times not to let it all get to you. Sometimes the only thing for it is to watch "The Fish-Slapping Dance", and just revel in the sheer absurdity and silliness of it all.

Gatherers

Sometimes, when I'm feeling nostalgic, or restless, or just plain lost, I walk around my home and pick things up -- here's a very small round, smooth stone-like container with a crystal inside, given to me by a now long-lost friend many years ago in Kansas City; here's a small animal skull I fished out of a bin labeled "miscellaneous skulls" in a store in SoHo; here's a little bisque figurine I found buried in the dirt in West Virginia. There's something about the tangible nature of these objects -- holding them and looking at them -- that brings me great comfort -- they remind me of who I am, of where I've been, and of the people and friends I've had the great good fortune to know. They somehow bring me back to me.

That said, I am not really a collector -- I find "collections" to be rather cloying -- shelves and shelves of essentially the same thing -- frogs, or elephants or angels or salt & pepper shakers or what have you. Once people find out you collect something, you can never get away from it -- every birthday, holiday, you're bombarded with more "Precious Moments" or "Beanie Babies" until you've no choice but to turn over whole rooms of your home to your collection, with special display cases and lighting. I suppose it's something to do -- something to occupy your mind so you don't have to think about where your life went so wrong that all you can do is sit in a room full of "Cabbage Patch Kids" and weep for your long lost youth.

No, I am a scavenger of sorts, a gatherer. When I was a kid, I wanted to be an archaeologist, and that fascination with "unearthing" things -- old letters, recipes, notebooks, objects, bones -- has stayed with me my whole life. Everything has a story to tell (it's up to us, the gatherers, to discover what that story is).

I have moved quite a bit over the years, and have gotten rid of a lot of stuff. A "rule" has sort of emerged regarding what to get rid of and what to keep: if an object has a good story or a good memory attached to it, or if it just makes me really happy, then I keep it. My house is full of good stories.

P.S. First saw this beautiful video here. These three blogs -- even cleveland, Squid ProQuo and Letters of Note all have inspired me to think about ephemera (love that word!) and collecting and gathering.

What the World Needs Now

About a week ago, Onion and I were heading East to go see his ma. Being relatively "new" here still, we didn't anticipate the entrance ramp to the highway coming up on us quite so quickly, so we were in the wrong lane. Onion slowed down, put on his blinker to indicate he was trying to get over, and began slowly to inch his way towards the right lane... one car passed, another, then another. Thinking perhaps he had an opening, Onion started to make his move when one mightily-pissed off driver honked and screamed at us -- obviously, he either hadn't seen us, or had, but had no intention of letting us in. Being on the passenger side, I glanced over to see the guy we had enraged -- shaved head, some piercings, tattoos, snarling and cursing at us, showing us his middle-finger.

"Oh, fuck you!!" I suddenly found myself screaming back him. "Would it have killed you to let us in?!" This guy looked pretty big and mean, but in that moment, I wanted nothing more than to get out of the car and kick his ass. This is laughable, of course, because although I am not exactly small, I'm a pretty peaceful Bird by nature and not particularly known for kicking ass. The guy screaming at us probably kicked ass for a living. He sped off, quickly zooming past all of the other cars on the highway until he was well out of our sight.

I can still see the guy's snarling face, full of rage, screaming at me. And I can easily recall how incredibly angry I felt -- how much I hated the stranger in the next car, and how I wanted something bad to happen to him for being such an asshole. Onion had said "He's probably a really nice guy" and I replied "I doubt it. He's probably a selfish prick. He certainly drives like one."

Having been to counseling in the past (I'm one of them ruminators, remember?), I realize that my anger wasn't just about that one guy screaming at us. In that moment, that snarling face represented everything that's been pissing me off for weeks (months?) now -- both in my personal life and in the political arena.

I've been thinking a lot about empathy lately -- obviously, I could use a little work on this myself. I found this passage, from a commencement speech made in 2006 by then Senator Barack Obama:

The world doesn't just revolve around you. There's a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit - the ability to put ourselves in someone else's shoes; to see the world through those who are different from us - the child who's hungry, the laid-off steelworker, the immigrant woman cleaning your dorm room.

As you go on in life, cultivating this quality of empathy will become harder, not easier. There's no community service requirement in the real world; no one forcing you to care. You'll be free to live in neighborhoods with people who are exactly like yourself, and send your kids to the same schools, and narrow your concerns to what's going in your own little circle.

Not only that - we live in a culture that discourages empathy. A culture that too often tells us our principle goal in life is to be rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained. A culture where those in power too often encourage these selfish impulses.

They will tell you that the Americans who sleep in the streets and beg for food got there because they're all lazy or weak of spirit. That the inner-city children who are trapped in dilapidated schools can't learn and won't learn and so we should just give up on them entirely. That the innocent people being slaughtered and expelled from their homes half a world away are somebody else's problem to take care of.

I hope you don't listen to this. I hope you choose to broaden, and not contract, your ambit of concern. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate, although you do have that obligation. Not because you have a debt to all of those who helped you get to where you are, although you do have that debt.

It's because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. And because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you will realize your true potential - and become full-grown.

Yes. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. This is why I voted for this man.

I find it relatively easy to feel empathy for others -- unless they hurt me, or piss me off. Onion was probably right -- the snarling guy in the car probably is a nice guy -- probably has tons of friends and laughs readily, maybe has kids that he gently tucks in to bed each night. Maybe when he looked at my snarling face, I reminded him of every woman who's ever screamed at him about -- oh, about whatever multitude of things women scream at men for. Maybe he just lost his job. Maybe, if we sat down and had a cup of coffee together, we'd discover we had a lot in common. Maybe not. But I'm fairly positive we wouldn't end up screaming at each other.

Years ago, there was a play (later turned into a movie) called Tea and Sympathy. I'm thinking maybe it's time now for Coffee and Empathy.

The Ruminator

the thinker by Wilf

I read an article this weekend in The New York Times about depression. Turns out I'm a "ruminator" -- a person who, like a cow chewing its cud, "chews" over and over the same stuff in her head. People who suffer from depression are likely to be ruminators, as are artists, writers and other creative types.
I'm gonna go think about all of this for a bit.

But make no mistake, "I'll be back".