Monthly Archives: April 2015

Duct-Tape: The Fifth Force of the Universe

25 Saturday Apr 2015

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The silence in the car was punctuated by Allie’s sniffles and Desiree’s snores. You’d have thought one would have cancelled out the other, peaceful baby making happy mommy and all, and after about five miles, I tried logic.

“It’s not like they hurt her,” I said. I knew I sounded defensive. “And we did spring her on them at the last minute. And they had all the couch pillows underneath–”

“Shut up, Henry!” Allie yowled. Desi woke up and began to cry. I couldn’t blame Desiree. She’d been a good sport. But when Alison walked down the stairs and saw our five-month-old duct-taped to a wall of my best friend’s man-cave, something changed in our marriage, and not for the better. Before tonight, I’d always thought that “good sport” described my wife as well. Guess not.

Maybe it was genetic. We’d spent the night bailing my pouty and ungrateful mother-in-law out of jail after a drunken spree with her four best buddies. They had all won motorcycles on a trip to a game show in New York. Instead of selling them to cover the taxes, they had named themselves the Hogettes, and proceeded to act like it.

So when we got the call, we thought we were making the right decision when we dropped Desi off with “Uncle” Jaffe and his poker game instead of hauling her to Night Court with a gaggle of septuagenarian biker chicks.

Jaffe ran the town’s auto body shop and tutored the high school kids in physics in his spare time. He had a theory that duct tape could do anything, and I was willing to admit it did just fine as a baby wall-chair. He’d even noosed Mr. Daddles next to her without so much as damaging his plush. It made sense, as there was no space in Jaffeland that could even remotely be called “child-safe.”

But when I pulled up to the house, Allie snatched Desi out of her car seat as if she’d rescued her from ravening wolves pursuing the chaise. “You can sleep on the couch tonight, Mr. Thinks It’s Funny! Maybe you can make yourself a blanket out of duct tape.” We have a door at the top of the steps to the bedrooms and all, a leftover from when her mom used to live in the house, and it slammed and clicked. Lucky there was a powder room downstairs, I guess.

So I went on the Internet and then back to Jaffe’s, seeing as the hardware stores were closed, and he fixed me up. Can’t say it didn’t take me a while, but I made me my blanket out of duct tape. All different colors, too. Man, it pissed Allie off that next day.

What’s a fella to do?

Wonder and Grace

14 Tuesday Apr 2015

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Katrina and the Waves are playing “Walking on Sunshine,” and I’m tryin’ to feel good. Not too hard to do–just got back from aqua-aerobics and it’s the First Official Day of Spring, meaning that I stuffed my sweater in my backpack and sauntered forth, tattoos all alive-o!

My dentist had the crown snapped back on in a jiffy, and we are waiting to hear whether my insurance covers bridge work. I can chew stuff, but I’m hyperaware of it. This makes eating a far more mindful experience. Jon Kabat-Zinn would be proud of me.

I went through this last week with the previous column very much in mind, albeit in the back. One of the things that is slowing down my self-inquisition is that the only definition of faith I hear in my head is not a catechism’s, but a joke my friend and former father-in-law tells: “Preacher man says faith is believin’ in what you know ain’t so.”

I know that’s how it works for a lot of people. They shrug it off as a Mystery, and go their way. But I’m just not built like that, so I’m falling back on what I closed with last time: A sense of wonder and of grace.

I’ve realized that my sense of wonder has in fact remained intact as what I consciously experience as a material thing that moves me to profound joy and sometimes tears. Perhaps the best examples of this are the Where the Hell is Matt? shorts. (Clickers, go watch if you’ve never seen them. Come back to me when you’re done with whatever Internet wondrousness you get carried away on.)

For the non-clickers: These videos are of Matt (who’s just some guy) in various locales around the world, doing what he admits to be just a little sketch of a dance, being a human bobbling his limbs in the universal symbol of celebration. Sometimes he is smack in the middle of other people’s ethnic dances. There is something compelling about them, and they went viral.

Then what I consider the real joy explosion happened: All around the world, they started to pre-announce Matt’s advent (you can sign up on his website) and groups of random people would flash mob there and start dancing too.

I imagine some alien seeing one of these announcements, and grabbing his friend and expostulating, “Come, Xpinthis. The bringer of simple joy comes. Let us go and join the worship.”

Because at its best, dance is worship–of aliveness, of movement, of humanness. Is it not a wonder, that the primal holiness of music calls us forth to move with it? And I would say that that feeling of connection, whether we have collapsed in a pile of sweat, or have just been swaying in our seats with a tear in our eye–is grace.

 

In Which Our Heroine Chews through a Strap

10 Friday Apr 2015

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Monday, April 6: I had four teeth out last Thursday afternoon. Today is Monday, and I’m dunking and gumming a danish at Au Bon Pain, having paid my $4.70 writing rent for an hour. ABP lacks Starbucks’ cave-like allure, but its brighter decor and better table selection attracts people having conversations, always a cheering milieu for me. There are only two others soloing it today, although one is goofing off on his Kindle, pen and pad neglected before him. (Yes, you. I see you.)

I am due to see my dentist in three or so hours, because the oral surgeon popped off one of my crowns during the procedure. I’d very much appreciate a little more chewing real estate right now. For the last three days I’ve had nothing but pasta (not al dente, alas), dairy in all its soft forms, and Jell-o® Instant Pudding. I thought this would be spiffy, but found something obscene in the rice bowl full of it: Treat and Dinner are two different things. On my way home I’m going to get some “nutritional replacement drinks.” More sweet stuff. Yum!

Useful Fact You Are Finding on the Internet: I thought the “several days recovery” meant “until we return to steak.” No, children. No. Maybe the nitrous oxide plays into this, but the oral surgery isn’t so much oral (as in dentist) as it is surgery (as in gaping bloody wounds needing to heal.)

I came home as perky as a mouthful of gauze could allow, my one concern being whether I would drool on the T–and then it was Saturday afternoon.  I remember my son making sympathetic noises and fixing me ramen noodles. I guess this means I sort of fasted on Good Friday for the first time in years. Do I get Jesus Points for this?

If not, I’d better have racked some up for singing two services on Easter morning. 7:50 call, y’all. I – AM – MIGHTY!

Another tip: If you are a singer and ever in this predicament, do all the dumbass face and mouth exercises your vocal peeps have ever taught you, as soon as you can without swearing. They matter.

*****

In the library now, having killed enough time and spent enough money in places lacking restrooms. I have an hour to go before hiking back up the street to find out my crown won’t go back on, I just betcha. I have been having flashes of being homeless: Lots of stuff to schlep–backpack and purse and a wet bathing suit in a plastic bag and a small parcel from the post office–and a book.

While wandering about, I went into the local spiritual bookstore, from whom I buy the shiny rocks my bestie in New Hampshire loves. This store can outfit you from tarot deck to incense, and that’s what I came for this time–incense and some pretty buttons for my cap. For some reason, they always have Anne Lamott right in front of the register: impulse chewing gum for the soul-stuff. I haven’t read her in years, not since I still had all my teeth and my faith and could chew God.

But I bought her latest on a whim, and left the store wondering, “Just what the hell was that all about?”

 *****

Once upon a time my spiritual jaws were in top form: After long and prayerful consideration, I pushed aside all the “no” and “I can’t,” and entered formal discernment in the Diocese of Baltimore to become an Episcopal priest.

Things went well enough for about half a year, and then my faith was extracted by giant pliers of Life, leaving behind bleeding caverns where I had also once had a home and family (which I admit were fragile to begin with.)

I fell down the rabbit hole: I had been battling too many stressors for too long, and this loss triggered my illness. You can accomplish great things while hypomanic, and I put together my ragged little pieces as best I could and crawled back to grad school, and after some more upheavals, at last I got well, and crawled back out of the hole. All I had left with which to chew God was a lacy bridgework of outward and physical signs criss-crossing the horrific gaps it left in my soul stuff.

I have a good life now–but now that I am comparatively well, I have been grappling with a sad and bitter question: Was my faith only a symptom of my illness, all that joy and sense of purpose just mixed up with the dreaded “religious ideation?” I have recovered from bipolar disorder I and dissociative identity disorder–have I recovered from God as well? Was that extraction not a tooth, but a tumor? Many good and kind people would say so; would congratulate me for coming to my senses. But then why do I feel so sad?

Because I do, and not even Jell-o® Instant Pudding can make it go away. I miss that life. I miss the magic of driving half an hour on a cold spring morning to light the new fire of Easter.

When my faith got pulled, tooth by tooth of it, and I was left sore and still numb in a homeless shelter in New Jersey, I ran into a wise priest who heard my story over tea and gave me permission to be angry with God. I clung to that, both the anger and the permission, and when my head told me to get my ass back to church, I did it, despite the hollowness of that cheated feeling filling my torso. So I joined choir because I knew that shaky as my soul stuff was, my Performer was intact, and it would bring me back to church,

It’s been nine years, and I have come to love that choir for its own sake. I’ve become a much better singer, but my sense of wonder, of grace, has remained cold and stiff, lying on the margin of my plate unchewed.

Dead or hibernating? And what happens if it comes back?

I’ve been dipping into Lamott, and having the feeling that something in my soul stuff has gnawed, or gummed, its way through a strap. But I don’t know what is now loose; I am both shaken and stirred, and as my tongue warily taps the forbidden places in my mouth, I am coming to face that I must do the same inside. And may God have mercy on my soul stuff, because it no longer knows where it is.