On Being Your Authentic Self (guest post and film for The Listening)
Read my words on The Listening's blog
Short promo film I created to showcase the general experience of The Listening.
As my life has been in a fairly consistent state of flux since ... forever, the concept of "being authentic" (and no, in case you are worried, I never use the #liveauthentic hashtag).
For me, being authentic has less to do with searching and finding but more so with simply being still and realizing what and where you actually are.
Nick George, founder of The Listening, asked me to create a guest blog post in honor of tomorrow's session. If you attend, you'll likely see me doing a bit of photojournalism for Riverviews Artspace.
You may also see me perform a song and poem. No promises. But it's likely.
In the meantime, you can read my guest post on The Listening's website.
From negligent alcoholic to dedicated parent and doing yoga
You can change too.
Header image from a recent shoot with James River Yoga.
—————
I just realized that as I type these words, I am somewhere past the two year mark of practicing yoga, two years of engaging in a lifestyle and pattern far different than I would have ever conceived for myself — even up until the exact point where my switch finally flipped from progressively unhealthy to getting well.
I have been many things in my so-far short life. Thirty years is not a long life, but it sure feels like it sometimes, like my experience is a living cassette tape played (and worn) at 2x speed to fit in an extra 30.
I have been a college newspaper editor and columnist. An intern at a mom-and-pop newspaper. A high school literature teacher. An intern at a culture and arts magazine that highlighted the avant-garde leanings of Buenos Aires, Argentina. And let's not forget the years of my life spent in restaurants, serving soft drinks to kids, decaf to seniors and microbrews to coeds.
I have been a copywriter and a “reporter” for the propaganda wing of a well-known (for good or ill) institute of higher education. A newspaper designer and copy desk jockey. I left to try making more money as a car insurance salesman. It did not go so well.
I worked at a retail store for 18 months for less than the local poverty rate, while expected to operate as $50K/year marketing professional. Then I worked as a content manager for a counseling brand which, ironically, led me to depression, anxiety and extreme distractibility.
Throughout most of these experiences, I was married (we split at the end of 2015, but remain friends). I tied the knot two weeks and one day past my 21st birthday, with a year of undergraduate Christian college yet to go. Having grown up in the restrictive environment of WWJD bracelets, “go-against-the-flow” T-shirts, dogma-driven re-creations of pop culture references, and Vacation Bible School — where everything “outside" was considered unquestionably bad and everyone inside unquestionable — one is led to dip a toe into the pool of non-restricted life.
You quickly find the water is welcoming, warm ... and suddenly overhead.
I became an alcoholic, arguably in the few weeks preceding my marriage, which leads my therapist to suggest that I have a genetic makeup prone to addiction. It took me eight years and three children to emerge from no less than a slight buzz (if not a full-on blackout) on a nightly basis. That emergence came in August 2013, not long before I started yoga and right in the midst of when I stopped writing almost entirely, and instead spent my time taking pictures and shooting films at most every opportunity. I even squeezed small music video shoots in during my unpaid lunch breaks from my marketing gig at the retail store.
It took me going deep into the alcoholic pool, so to speak, to finally find my way out by means of the drain. I had lost all semblance of my childhood faith in 2010, a tumultuous summer that was less of a turning point in life and more of a completely destructive period of painful upheaval (the effects of which have yet to fully play out). The de-conversion pulled me even farther into alcoholism (age 25), into a three-year chain of late nights that I wasted on getting wasted. Those nights turned into mornings that sat heavy on my chest, like the 1,000 elephants in the bedroom that kept me from engaging with what was most important to me, what meant the most and for that which I labored so much to secure: a love for (and of) a beautiful spouse, otherworldly amazing daughters, a home I own(ed), a passion for lyricism and a desire to take up my post in the infinite tunnel of lamps and mirrors that stretches throughout time and place.
Simply stated: I was too depressed and full of toxins to roll off the couch to play in the sandbox or to crack an egg.
I was sick. Overweight physically and emotionally. Distant. Neglectful of myself, of those around me and allowed my so-called talents to dull. I subjected myself to the horror of clearly seeing the life I wanted to live while wondering why, over and over again, WHY I continued to act against it. An invisible figure, perfectly matched to my form, stood in my way down every pathway that could have proved infinitely more beneficial, lovely, profitable and enjoyable. I continued to wonder why I did and spoke such a way at such times.
I resisted the truth of it — too awful to comprehend in full and so instead of changing things, I persisted in foolishness.
That is, as I said, until August 2013 ... when a fully-grown doe jumped out onto a dark Virginian roadway to commit suicide beneath the front wheel of my vintage motorcycle.
Yet another venture that my then-wife suggested against with her sage-like clairvoyance. I slid 30 feet down the street, shredding my backpack. Remarkably, I hobbled away with minor scrapes and bruises. Two days later, I found myself on a plane to Los Angeles after accepting two invitations: to assist on a commercial shoot and to maybe give up drinking while I was out there in an effort to gain some physical and mental stamina.
(For the record, I was not intoxicated while riding the bike, but had been within the previous 24 hours and also immediately afterward).
Within 48 hours of no alcohol consumption and cleaner eating, I felt different. Sharper. More energetic. Present. I wound up in the apartment of famed rock-and-roll guitarist Warren Cuccurullo, whose many successes (world-renowned skill, multiple projects still ongoing, restaurants and a level of physique one cannot help but gawk at) he attributed to something he learned from his idol and former bandmate, Frank Zappa: He didn’t drink.
Aside from a sip at my friend's wedding a month later (wine made on location) I have not consumed a single drop of alcohol since, and doubt I will ever again. Everyone’s cognitive disposition and biology is different, but for me, I look back at that time (and the Instagram post) and give thanks to that doe who sacrificed her life — however unintentionally — so that I might regain my own.
It was in the following months that I began practicing yoga, and soon found myself at peace with myself and my surroundings while also growing more and more aware of how much of my life and love had been misspent. How much I had thrown away potential for just another night of IPAs and indie bands while my co-parent sat home wondering less and less:
When will he grow up? Where is he? When will he come home?
By the time I came out of this eight year hangover, many mistakes had already been made. No amount of yoga, meditation and gluten-free eating would unmake them. No deviation from my irrationally angry past would erase the trails that were left, would silence the vile, untruthful words I used to spill upon a person I love and respect above most others and, for reasons of puerile selfishness and addiction, I had forgotten how to cherish. The me that knew how had been drowned out and silenced (it’s all so painfully clear now) — but they're back.
All of this and more has pushed me from job to job, craft to craft, always seeking the peace and purpose that has been right in front of me all along. The peace I would never find in cigarette ashes, broken bottles and pot resin. The peace that is only found in loving well, loving often and loving incessantly.
Although, as said earlier, I feel decades older than 30, I also feel like a new human each and every day. On some mornings, I sense limitless possibilities for learning and capability, and on others I feel terror and vulnerability — like I am and adult who still doesn’t know quite how to stand better than a newborn giraffe sent out into the world with a disproportionate stature-to-experience stability ratio.
It’s hella frightening at times, but I’m beginning to wonder if that's the point.
I wonder if all of this living and learning, all of these life inversions that seem as inevitable as they are scary are pushing us onward into something real and beautiful and new. Perhaps instead of shying away from these heuristic flips, what I really need to do is dedicate myself to practicing them fully — like my crow poses, headstands, and shoulderstands.
The word yoga, in Sanskrit, means union. It is a union wrought from uncomfortable moments, often difficult to engage with and sometimes the last thing I want to do on any given afternoon. It’ll hurt. I’ll sweat. It will take and hour or so away from seeking another freelance client or from writing clickbait at a reckless speed to make the few dollars worth the time — all for the sake of creating noise, distraction and self-serving SEO rankings (which seems to be the one of the only marketable self-employed uses of a journalism degree, these days). But it always silences the internal voice, the voice that once called me away from my typewriter, down the street and into the bar. The voice that tells me nothing in this life makes sense.
It feels like our entire system is inverted right now. Few things feel substantive outside of spending time with the people I care about and practicing that which generates not money but inner and outer peace. We are faced with the reality of one bozo presidential option over another, while the only candidates who do seem to be authentically humanitarian are considered to not have an Icarus-the-pig in a hell-bound blizzard’s chance of getting elected (or much less, making a difference). We are faced with the quandary of doing what enriches our plotlines vs. what lines our pockets. We opt for the latter, and then wonder why the world is in bass-ackwards turmoil.
We seem to be choosing the same foolishness again and again, if for no other reason than we are used to it. History repeating itself. Dog to its vomit. Fool to folly. The Ego making sure we continue to confuse our limited thought patterns for our identity.
I predict either doom or transcendence. What other options are there? Because if there’s anything I’ve learned in the largely silly and ill-managed years I’ve spent on this planet, it’s that the status quo leads to nowhere but a cruse controlled careen on a windy mountain roadway. Things get better or they get worse. Stagnancy is a myth. As much of a myth that we need only bide our time and wait for some other person or entity to step in and save us from our own inactivity.
That's never going to happen. Change can be sparked by events outside of ourselves, but it can only be sustained through internal dedication. Through coming to terms with our very own foolish hearts and minds and deciding to walk another path.
For me to come so far in alcohol abuse as to now be counting the years of sobriety, for me to go so far away from angry as to now be idyllic in my pursues of unity and peace, for me to have once ignored the very things that are now the only pursuits I give any real lasting shits about, I know that you, dear reader — soul of my soul, consciousness buried in negative self-talk, fear, and disillusionment — are capable of doing the exact same: inverting your life.
There are two ways you can go about it:
Practice, so the labor and pain becomes your joy.
— or —Play roulette: Dive even further into the chaos of needless suffering — and, through the sheer agony of it, come out either reborn or dead.
The choice is yours.
(If you want to see the physical proof of what I am talking about, here's the before-and-after:)
That's me on the far left, Fallen Leaf Lake, California (September 2013).
Me in April 2018: 70 lbs., several addictions, and many emotions lighter.
How would you like your life to be different? What's standing in your way? What can you do about it today? Let's chat in the comments section.
Poem: The Anatomy of Daughters
The Anatomy of Daughters
Breath too human to the smell.
Complaints too momentary to consider.
Alternating cereal scoops: hand and spoon.
Inconsistent dress; ill-suited for all weather;
Bright, happy, and free.
Roundness in the face brings pause ...
The mystery and masque of living.
Golden starshine through a hundred thousand strands
Growing longer from the source,
Prone to the tangle, the break, the fall.
Strength in each vulnerability.
Being in every new death.
Hope in all disaster.
###
Unstuck in space and time
It has become obvious that I'm unstuck. I'm in a perpetual state of leaving and going to all at the same time. Even while I'm sitting here writing this, I'm thinking about where these words could possibly go, and how I have to leave this job and go to another within a matter of hours.
I'm always going and leaving, which leads me to wonder which places am I leaving from and which am I coming back to. In short, there is no place that I go to where I finally "am" and that when I leave it I will eventually come back to it. I'm going off to somewhere else where I will eventually leave and then return to. All of it.
I'm realizing that the idea of coming and going is nearly irrelevant. I simply "am" wherever I am -- in one constant and permanent stream of nowness, and it's infinite, because when I inevitably die and decompose, the matter that formerly made up my skin, teeth, blood, flesh and these days mostly hair, will dissipate through the earth and the atmosphere, only to be recollected somewhere and become something else.
The point becomes to make sure that wherever I am in this moment, that I am making the best of it and not giving too much thought to what I have done or could be doing in the future. It's irrelevant, because neither of those timescapes exists. It's only what I'm doing in the moment that has any actual meaning, what I'm doing to build upon and enrich my forever current state of being.
It's always now. It always has been and it always will be.
It's infinite. Like an abyss staring into another abyss trying to make sense of it. Or, better yet, mirrors standing face to face. We're all doing this at all times, simply reflecting other people and everything, which is also reflecting itself. Infinity.
This is significant for creativity. At least it is to me in this moment. Knowing that whatever I do is a reflection of my environment and how I interact with it, and how that "image" is reflected again and again without end. The simple way to say it is that "everything is connected," which I believe to be true, but I believe that phrase is a misdirected oversimplification.
I believe that in the same way holy texts use the phrase "I am," that "We are." And it doesn't matter what happens tomorrow or in the future or after we die. Because it all will just be whatever it is, so it's ridiculous for anyone to do anything other than to just "be" and "do," since that's all there really is. Outside of that, it's all just distractions keeping us from being fully present and actually living.
My mind is so caught up in it's own constructs and endless loops that I fail to "do" more than I actually do. Even 90/10 would be an overly-generous ratio.
But enough of that. I'm approaching the precipice where my continuing to write this could begin to infringe upon "doing" and become more of a now waste. The only way, then, to be there, it to just jump into stream. And instead of letting it carry me along for a ride or, worse yet, sinking or trying to swim the other way, I'm charged with more than simply swimming with the tide: My task (or my life's purpose) is to create currents of my own.
Now and forever.
The Weeds series finale: Terrible, great and ponderings on my existence
Note: Spoilers lie ahead, if such things concern you ...
Weeds — eight long years I've been watching this show. Eight. And less than a week ago, the stash finally ran out.
I'll admit my joke was terrible, but oh so in-line with the absurd/maudlin/corny tone that Jenji Kohan's series (d)evolved into having.
Jenji (who likely will never read this), I mean you no disrespect. What you created took an level of effort and creative fortitude that I cannot yet fathom, but critics will caw and scratch none-the-less. I don't consider myself a critic, though. I believe most critics are people who attempt to tear apart creative works as an expression of their jealousy for not being able to create something themselves. Especially literary and music critics. So, no — I'm not a critic, just someone who enjoys watching my own experiences and understandings interact with various forms of content, especially within mediums that I want to use for my own work.
The finale shows life for the characters some 10 to 15 years after the previous episode. Nancy's young half-Mexican son is now a teenager (and appears to be less of a Mexican than Louis C.K.). I kept waiting for the show to pull back from the odd ghost-of-Christmas-present-esque flashforward, but it was "real."
Kohan added a few nods to the beginning by including characters we've not seen since the first few episodes, accompanied by self-aware jokes that stretched just as far.
When the series started, the general consensus was that it was fresh and unruly -- unlike anything we had seen before. But with each new change of scenery, the show jumped so many sharks that it became impossible to tell exactly where Kohan had gone wrong. Andy, the one character who seemed adamant to not become a overly-lit caricature of of himself, held on a unique and dynamic character throughout most of the series, but at the end started to shed layers of complexity until he too became overwrought and predictable. Nancy, the main character, became the worst example of this downward transformation (a negative arc).
The final episode ballooned with sentimentality. It reduced the series to near-slapstick comedy (half-Mexican son causes his bar mitzvah to implode, but still enjoys the afterparty dressed as Tony Montana).
To Kohan's credit, not all was low-brow. If you wade through the miasma of a self-aware finale, there are a few gems, my favorite being Andy encouraging a desperate and unseasonably youthful Nancy to seize her freedom and pursue her true identity. I love how she seemed to receive the exhortation as a Sisyphean sentence. He meant it to be a Promethean one. Nothing in the entire series better captured the essence of her character.
* * * * *
Like I said, I've followed the show off-and-on for about eight years. I am not sure what continued to drive this compulsion past the point where I came to hate Weeds (somewhere in the fourth season). It's probably the same thing that sparks my unwillingness to leave a party before it's absolutely dead, to not stop halfway through a novel (except Mine All Mine — sorry, Adam ... I did enjoy you in person, however) or to stay up far enough into the night to ensure tomorrow will be a rough one.
I realize this is mostly wasted time, which scares me, as I have only so many hours in me to answer some of the show's central questions:
- How am I to exist?
- Who am I?
- How am I to earn a living?
- What societal norms am I to reject?
- In what should I raise my children?
Maybe it's those same questions that drive my compulsion to keep seeking, regardless of how "right" or "wrong" the places are that I'm looking.
The trick, then, is to be able to channel this into my creative efforts, and not put on another episode of Workaholics at 1:30 a.m. on a Thursday.
A Farewell to Friends
This week marks a major shift in the Lynchburg, Va., creative community. We are losing four individuals who helped shape and evolve the artistic atmosphere here in our city — Chris and Lauren Baker, Myles Katherine and Dave Justice — to Portland, Or.
We’ll try to forgive you, Portland.
To celebrate our departing friends’ time as Lynchburg creatives, The Keep Colony hosted a multi-act concert and artisan fair on Aug. 4. There were performances by Lynchburg bands Poppa Smurf and the Last Unicorn, The Hawk and the Rumor with Victory Garden, Matthew Paul Butler and Thee Vandal Choir, and Rugby (Chris Baker’s band), and also performances by Goodwill Falcon, of Norfolk, Va., and Gull, of Philadelphia, Pa.
After pushing the limits of the local noise ordinance, we shifted the party to favorite watering hole Rivermont Pizza and finished out the night by watching one-man-band Gull play a skull bending set on guitar, vocals and drums.
As of this writing, our friends are traveling west in a caravan of vehicles stuffed with music gear, MacBooks, DSLRs, cats and whatever clothing they had space for. We bid farewell to our friends and look forward to seeing what they accomplish, but always hope for their return — even if only for a visit.
- This post first appeared on the (now defunct) website for The Keep Colony.
- Visit the site to see photos by Matthew Foster Addington and links to the performers' content.
How I've come to quit my job: A courageous journey or a quarter-life crisis?
"Give your character stakes. Real, primal stakes." -- Blake Snyder, Save the Cat!
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At this moment in my life, I am 27 years old. I've been married for 6 years, and in January my wife and I will be having our third child (gender TBD). As of this writing (10:02 a.m. ET on Monday, August 13), I'm supposed to be rushing to clock-in and get my headphones on, and otherwise just be ready to sit in the call queue in anticipation of another phone call that could mean a auto insurance sale.
That is no longer the case. I put my two weeks in at my "real" job las week, but they sent me home the following day. A the end of those two weeks, I won't have health insurance either.
To those of you who know me personally, I know there is likely one of two things running through your head:
- You're an idiot
-or-- No guts, no glory
I imagine the reality of this situation is somewhat true on both counts. But the time has come.
Don't misread me -- I am thankful for the position I just left. It was a great company that provides a great commodity, but the actual function of my position wasn't something I could physically bring myself to do for 40 hours per week. At the risk of sounding pretentious, I am of the creative temperament and born during the information and technology boom of the 80s; my head is full of movie and literature quotes. I'm a writer of screenplays, short stories, marketing material and (I hope) a few novels.
Traditional employment does not suit me.
During the last 5 years I have held four "real" jobs. The last two combined barely account for a single year. There's something that happens when I get in an office setting, particularly in an office setting where I'm not able to practice what I'm good at. In short, I lose my head. The day-to-day experience is similar to being crushed beneath an ever-turning stationary wheel. I'm pulled up around the circumference of the wheel from time to time, but only to be thrown back beneath it to further feel it's grinding force.
To me, this is not life -- working in a such a way that I am in a perpetual state of exhaustion and broken of spirit. I see others in similar situations and I'm pained to see it. To me, life isn't too far from the art of storytelling. There needs to be, as Blake Snyder says in his book Save the Cat!, "Real, primal stakes," for a story to have any real significance. The stationary lifestyle of working 40 hours per week in an environment that progresses me neither personally nor professionally is not a life with any risks. It's the safe life, a boring and otherwise inconsequential existence.
Therefore, I'm embarking on an experiment: Is it possible for me to support my family through alternative employment means, to make money on my own steam and not through an expected base paycheck, regardless of my performance? We shall see. I've thrown myself into the shark pool and I'm bleeding profusely.
There will be slight shift in this site during the weeks to come. A new layout perhaps (UPDATE: done!), but also chronicling of my (mis)adventures as someone who has made what many will see as a foolhardy error.
So watch and see the train-wreck or observe as the garden of my words and efforts continues to grow. Either way, something has to happen. And if I fall face-first to the ground, the dirt will taste sweeter than the honey of ordinary success.
Prose & Pizza, Volume I: A recap
To help recuperate money spent on throwing a two-day music festival in September 2011, my friends and I organized a literary reading at our local pizzeria and watering hole, Rivermont Pizza.
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I’ve been known to do foolhardy things -- to get an idea in my head and pursue it to its furthest extreme. An example? Right now comes to mind. Many of my efforts outside of my employment hinge upon Lynchburg's art scene, and what I’d like to see it become.
Specifically, my friends and I put on the Hill City Roots (a.k.a. Seven Hills Folk Festival) music festival in September, when everyone and everything told us it would not happen. Everything was working against us, even our own haphazard schemes toward organizing it.
It did happen. Albeit, the turnout was not what we’d hoped, but it wasn’t anything surprising. Same weekend as one of the biggest parties downtown Lynchburg throws every year. Same weekend as Randolph College’s alumnae weekend. Same weekend as Land Jam. But it happened. And we learned a lot.
So, it’s nice when things fit together without much in the way of glitches. The Nov. 10 Prose & Pizza, Volume I, reading at Rivermont Pizza has given us a much-needed embrace of afirmation. Kick-ass posters and handbills were designed by Gabriella Muglia and printed by Bright Images. And our readers (Adam Davies, Chris Gaumer and Vic Sizemore) were amazing, which came as no surprise.
The turnout, however, pushed the limits of our expectations.
I arrived on location at 7:20 p.m. that night, coming straight from working on the second installment of the Rivermont Pizza Christmas album. We set up, had a couple of drinks and waited for the crowd to trickle in.
Except “trickle” isn’t quite accurate. The small, graffitied room swelled with 70 people before we had a chance to check our watches.
Vic, one of my closest friends, kicked everything off. It could have been the beer, my over-analytical nature or a combination of several factors, but I perceived a disengaged stillness in the room. I wondered if people were paying attention at first, and remembered that I botched the introduction.
“Who is this white guy with an afro?” they must wonder. “And this reader wearing a Big Lebowski T-shirt -- why should I listen?”
Whether my thinking was based on reality or just nerves soon became irrelevant. Lights sparked, pair-by-pair, in the eyes that exchanged glances with familiar eyes.
It was clear: My boy’s got skills.
Vic finished his reading. It was a story that developed and revealed itself in the way that only good stories do; a story that the audience becomes engrossed in and really experiences. John Gardner calls it the “fictive dream.” You forget you’re reading a story or listening to someone read to you, and simply exist in the dialogue and subtle details.
Flannery O’Connor said that a great piece of fiction can’t be described to people who ask you what it’s about. You just have to read it. In the same way, I doubt anyone walking away after Vic finished could have explained to anyone what his story was about. The listener did, however, know what it was about because he or she experienced it -- in 1080p HD.
The crowd’s enthusiasm did not wane as the evening progressed. Chris Gaumer (another good friend of mine of more than eight years) adjusted the microphone, took a breath and took off.
I’m sure I had a stupid-ass grin on my face the whole time, but I wasn’t alone. My friend Leah could sit up straight for only so long before her torso lurched forward in laughter.
Was it that good. Yes, it was that good. And it was in Lynchburg.
Eat it, naysayers.
And it’s no easy thing what Chris accomplished -- standing in front of friends, students, colleagues and strangers, to lay dozens of hours worth of hard work out in the open. Especially when some of it dealt with the nature of his being beleaguered by ubiquitous bed wetting and therefore unable (mostly) to attend childhood sleepovers.
Novelist and Lynchburg College writer-in-residence Adam Davies did not fail to live up to expectations. He read a few scenes from the highly-praised “Mine All Mine,” with details that would have made everyone uncomfortable if they had not been so amusing.
And, Adam, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for the glass of Jameson -- warmed my soul, it did.
And thank you, attendees, for being there. Despite being packed in like bondiola rellena, you all sat through like champs, and we all had a great time.
Humbled and excited for our future events. Stay tuned as This Is Lynchburg takes our readings on the road -- we’ll be gracing various restaurants around the city for later readings, and will definitely host more at Rivermont Pizza.
Anthony Pisano: Regarding the discarded
I would like to share a film with you all. It is a snapshot of Anthony Pisano, an eccentric man whose East Village apartment in Manhattan looks more like an antique store than than it does living quarters. And as is mandated by the mindset of the causal stroller, individuals are wont to walk into the apartment and past Anthony, who sits out front of the apartment day and night watching people pass by.
"You can satisfy you're curiosity," Pisano tells them, "but nothing's for sale."
Perplexed, they slide further into the store/apartment and find a desk, a bed and -- if they're lucky -- a cat.
"This is my home," he says.
Mark Cersosimo and Kelsey Holtaway's short film, shot on a Canon 7D for Vimeo and their company Departure Arrival Films, shows how Pisano's home is the anti-store; a place where people walk in but cannot buy, they can take something home but no money will be exchanged. These people that walk into his "shop" bring him joy, which is evident by the deep crow's feet around his eyes, created by perpetual smiling through shared experiences.
Cerosimo describes the film as "a story of a man and his home," but it's much more than that. The film is a reminder of the importance of human interaction.
"That's important. That's life," says Pisano.
-- -- -- -- --
Header image sourced from film.
The dangers of reading biographies
As we approach our mid-twenties, most of my friends are still trying to sort out what it means to be themselves, and how to best go about doing that. We live in Lynchburg, Va., a city more commonly known as the buckle on the Bible belt, and not really for the high percentage of creative people that live in its historic districts.
Many of us — writers, photographers, designers, fashionistas, painters — went to a nearby university that yea-sayers regard as the Notre Dame for evangelical Christians. We found that the lifestyle outlined in the services and lectures to be “not for us.”
So we move on. But we’re creatures of habit, and look for other sources to model our lives after. This can be a movie (how many of my generation has woken up in the morning with swollen fists and a few bruises and thought: “You are not your khakis”?), a novel, a celebrity … but all roads seem to lead to Wikipedia. And — I’m just saying — Wikipedia may not be the best place for life inspiration.
* * *
A while back, I was hanging with some friends at one of their apartments. It’s the kind of place that offers no frills, but is remarkably clean, thus attracting a crowd that may not be making a ton of money, but haven’t quite yet given up on the idea of finding a well-paying job. We had just gotten back from eating at a cheap Mexican restaurant, so we were mostly inert. The news was on the TV, broadcasting an interview with a famous serial killer.
I sat a broken overstuffed chair and extended the footrest. Not broken to the extent that it no longer functioned, but in that it made a noise like the bones of a tin man cracking and groaning with age.
Jesse, a friend I’ve had since before I could walk steadily, sat next to me and showed me a book he found on our friend’s bookshelf called Desolate Angels.
“Is this that author you like?” he asked me.
“One of my favorites.” I said.
“Didn’t he kill himself?”
“In a way, yes, but he did it over a long period of time. He considered himself a good Catholic boy, and good Catholic boys don’t commit suicide. So, he drank a lot.”
Joe was also there. I met him on my first day of college. We connected over our fondness for books, and he has been one of my closest friends (and literary sparring partner) ever since.
“Yep. I hear that,” Joe smiled at us from behind his laptop. The newscast had sent him wandering on the Internet to read about other mass-murderers.
“Who was that other guy who killed himself?” Jesse said.
“Hunter S. Thompson.” I made a gesture of fitting the end of a double-barreled shotgun in my mouth and pulling the trigger. With my free hand, I mimicked what I believed occurred to the back of his skull.
“Ahh, just like ole Poppa Hemmingway,” Joe said, still looking at the computer.
“Aren’t there a lot of writers who killed themselves?” Jesse said.
Joe and I tag-teamed to compose the grim list of literary giants who took their own way out. I explained how Sylvia Plath had done the job and gave my opinion as to why, and told him how Anne Sexton had complained that people would automatically accuse her of being a copycat when she decided to do the same; she was jealous of Plath’s brilliant career move.
“So did she end up doing it?”
I nodded.
Joe offered the final entry. “David Foster Wallace hung himself not too long ago.”
For a moment, the television’s noise filled the room.
“When I found that out, it really shook me up,” I said.
“I can’t say I blame him,” Joe said.
I gave him an uncomfortable smile but he didn’t look up from the computer.
“I kinda think I will too, after a while. Life just gets too damn depressing.”
I laughed, and hoped he would do the same.
“I’m serious — I’m already headed there.”
“Don’t be,” I said.
“Don’t be serious?”
“You know what I mean, ” I said.
“Well, that’s just how it is.”
* * *
Rest assured, Joe is still with us. In fact, he just texted me to see if I want to grab a beer later. Perhaps that’s a better trend among writers to follow (drinking) than putting down the pen for good.
Foursquare check-in: You are now the mayor of The Island of the Misfit Toys
My 4-year-old daughter Aurelia watched the classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer TV special for the first time this past Christmas Eve.
Silly as it may seem, it still captures my imagination in much of the same way it did when I was her age. I’ve always identified myself with the plight of Rudolph and his irregular olfactory appendage, and Hermey the Elf’s fascination for dentistry, and how their narrative reminds me so much of not fitting in for most of my life.
As a child, my friends and siblings were all out playing sports. I could spend hours daydreaming without even noticing it. Or I would read all day. It’s not that I didn’t play sports, I just never really cared about them. And that’s a sure recipe for pariah-dom for any American male younger than 18 years old.
Even now, at a time in my life and point in our social climate when it’s cool to be weird, I still find myself somehow different than my peers. It no longer bothers me like it once did, but it’s as if whatever situation I am dropped in, certain aspects of my capital-S Self are highlighted — usually things that I had been previously unaware of, and that distance me from others.
For example, I left the popularity rat race of high school and went to college. I had thought that by going to a Christian college, I’d be able to be more myself than I did when I was embarrassed by my religion in public high school. But after four grueling years of trying to reconcile what I said I believed with what I really felt (and even then after two additional years of living as a missionary and high school teacher in Argentina), I came to understand that I don’t and never really did have true faith.
Now there exists this unseen, yet palpable divide between myself and many of the friends I had made before coming to these admissions (saying “conclusions” would be a little to final).
Among my current circle of friends, I still exist as an anomaly: a misfit among misfits. I’m married and have two kids, but can still be found at our local pizza shop/bar/music venue several nights a week. I’m into Apple products and social networking, but I have this crippling fetish for typewriters (especially my Olivetti Lettera 32). I wear vintage clothing, drive a 1980 Volvo 240 wagon and read David Foster Wallace, but tend to be passionate about things in ways that my friends might not understand (and might not be healthy).
So, I’m a perpetual misfit. Or perhaps everyone walks around with his or her own bag of paradoxes, and I’m just more tuned in to my own peculiarities than I am to those of others. However weird I may seem to myself or my peers, though, I’ve learned to embrace it — discomfort and all.
*Note: This first appeared as a much shorter version on SoulPancake (the header image source), Rainn "Dwight Schrute" Wilson's side project.