Cry Like A Baby

Shosha and I did one of our favorites. Plus, you get to hear us fretting in the background. Yay!

Back together again

So I've decided to blog again at least until the break is over...hopefully after. I need to get in the habit of writing again. I seem to have forgotten how. Words don't dance for me like they used to.

Yesterday I went to the Governor's School reunion party. It was fairly overwhelming at first. I had never been to one as I've always been away at school or adventuring or other such nonsense. So I met Mark and Will in the parking lot (I was terrified to go alone) and we went in. I felt so old. The lobby was bursting with a really intense (kinda smelly) energy, and I found myself searching rather dazedly for familiar faces. The only people from our class were me, Mark, Will, Thomasina Sarah, and Jonathan, though we met up later with our juniors, Philipp, Amelia, Rachel, and Anna Kate. And then there were just swarms of other people to wade through.

I saw George. We talked for a bit, but then he was taken off by autograph seekers. Evidently he's written a writer's manual. I talked to Madame Glass and Dana Howard , but mostly just meandered around campus with old friends, thinking of a time when things were simpler.

GS has changed a lot. I hadn't realized how much. Doug (an 03 kid now an RA) said that they'd had to really crack down on kids because of poor grades and insincerity. Perhaps this was inevitable, but I couldn't help but feel guilty as someone led in Dr. Uldrick to the gift unveiling. This may not have been what she meant...just another cool place for rich(ish) folks to send their kids.

It's funny how the memory works. We were allowed to wander around for about an hour before getting spotted by the security people as strangers. I kept smelling things that took me right back. A stairwell that smelled like a crisis. A hallway that smelled like a late evening aimless walk. An office that smelled like acceptance. And get I walked into another hallway that I knew I had passed through a thousand times and had no memory of it, startled to realize where I was.

It used to sort of depress me to know that GS and the life I had there can never be replicated. I am beginning to feel similarly about Bard, though perhaps less so. I thought that I could never go back. Never be that person again. Never be loved in that way again. Never shine like that again. But that's only part of the story. I came into my own in those buildings. I allowed myself to be important in that place. I took such ownership of my existence. After a rather isolated existence at Liberty, I found myself surrounded by friends. And not just everyday friends, but people my own age that held qualities that I didn't know existed. People whose hearts spoke to mine. It may sound horrible, but until I went to GS, I had very few friends that I admired, certainly I was not surrounded. I've never felt at peace with my generation (their music only hurts my ears!), but at GS I was.

But I take some comfort in knowing that who I became there didn't stay there. Maybe there have been times when I forgot that. I stayed out long and late last night with old friends, several of whom I had not seen in 5 or 6 years. And it felt like home. I felt at home in myself. I didn't have to try. I just was. I feel similarly about my time at Bard, but I was older then. GS was my groundswell, where my new life began. Those people I laughed and played with last night...we shared a bit of light...somehow related by a post-genetic imprint. I felt such love for the experience and (most of all) myself.

All in all a good night. I wanted to explain to my friends at W-O. I wanted to share but knew that such things couldn't really be relayed through words.

Sprinkled and Dunked

This is probably one of my favorite hymns of all time, and like most of my favorite hymns, it is a redemption song. It's one of those "come on down to the altar and give your life to Jesus" songs.

Among the favorites:

Great is Thy Faithfulness
Jesus Paid It All
Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross
Abide With Me (not an altar call song, but a funeral one...equally great)
Just a Closer Walk with Thee
Higher Ground
Farther Along
It Is Well With My Soul
In the Garden
Have Thine Own Way
Open My Eyes, That I May See
Take My Life, Lead Me Lord
Old Rugged Cross


I'm only slightly exaggerating when I say that I have done the rounds of all the major denominations of Christianity (and been confirmed in two), but I've probably spent the most amount of time in the bosom of the Southern Baptist Church (a bosom from which I have long since self-weaned). It's always a bit of shock when I go to various Baptist functions with family or for students/friends, and I spend most of the time squirming uncomfortably in the pew trying not to look offended. Until they start playing the music, that is. And then I remember that this is my spiritual groundswell. I remember that as a ten-year-old, I walked into my pastor's office and told him that I was ready to accept Jesus into my heart. I wrote a heart-felt testimony and my father read it tearfully at the altar as I waded into the fake river in a white robe and purple swim suit. And because the music meant so much to me even then, My mother and I recorded "I Have Decided To Follow Jesus" in the balcony of the church to be played while I was dunked. I would love to get my hands on that tape.

Recently, we went back to our old Church in Clemson to listen to the wonderful Roger Lovette (most sensible, poetic, liberal-minded Southern Baptist in existence) who had come back to town and out of retirement from Alabama for some anniversary or another. And, by God, if he didn't make me cry. Truth be told, I was in a bit of an emotional pickle. This was only shortly after I came back to South Carolina after my NYC fiasco. I just sat there and sobbed. Roger Lovett isn't as slick as most Baptist preachers, but he knows how to wrap your heart around a story and make it feel like he's just talking to you and no one else. And to top it off, just to make sure I knew my place, we sang "Just as I Am, Without One Plea" and I had I not had some iota of self-dignity, I would have stumbled to the altar right then and there. There I was, wretched and broken and wounded of spirit. And there it was, such easy forgiveness. Thankfully, I stayed in my seat and sang the damn song.

I'm not embarrassed by my faith, if that is what one can call it in its current form. It's real and not fabricated so I don't feel the need to apologize. Maybe it is just self-delusion, but it doesn't feel like it. I could never in good faith go back to any of the churches that sprinkled my childhood and profess to believe what they were selling. The God of my childhood has been unmasked and there isn't really a return to that, though I have to believe that there is a future for my faith. I've searched for many years for a spiritual community that rests easy in both mind and heart with little luck so far. I miss the storytellers and mesmerizers of my childhood, just as I miss their easy answers and security. Liberal Christianity seems cold and sterile, but I suspect I just haven't found the right place yet. It's a problematic place to be.

A started story

My grandmother, Mary Moss Harbinger, kept her gallstones in a mason jar in her avocado green Frigidaire for almost thirty years before she died of colon cancer. “Entrails is tricky, hon,” she said to me the last time she was able to walk to the bathroom. “You had better pray you take after your Daddy Baz’s side, because us Mosses got piss poor innards.” Daddy Baz, who had won the title Most Hateful Man in Deluda, SC a million times over, was the one who was paying me forty dollars a week that summer to sit with Grandma.

Another beginning

We go down to Gnat Creek in search of poems on a Friday afternoon in early May. Three weeks to convince our unimpressed faces of the merits of Donne and Pope, is what the State curriculum has awarded this group of budding adolescents and Miss Reason has reached the limits of her abilities in this endeavor. Truth be told, I have little fondness for poetry, despite my love of the written word, save for a particular poem concerning a moose’s face being as sad as the face of Jesus that Miss Reason keeps tacked up by the pencil sharpener in her classroom. But there are no moose in Camilla, although Paisley Mitchell tells me that there could be moose in Camilla if only Jesus wills it to be so. Paisley’s sorrow, kept hidden behind a face that looked like it was forever smelling something foul, is that her little brother, Fenner, drowned in a fly fishing accident three summers ago. They told her that Jesus wills us home to him when he sees fit, and the will of Jesus has since been printed upon Paisley’s every thought, poor thing. But I know that most of my classmates, Paisley included, would not see a moose in their lifetimes. I really wanted to see a moose so that I could see if his face really did look as sad as Jesus’s face, but then I realized that I don’t have a clear picture of Jesus’s face to use in comparison. So now I figure, if I see a moose in my life, fine, but if not, I’m not going to feel bad about it. A metaphor is a metaphor, and not to be taken too seriously. This Miss Reason must know.
I am at the front and Lloyd Murphey's at the back taking his precious time, as we all march like distracted ants behind the football field and down the kudzu bank, and that’s strange to me because Lloyd is supposed to be my boyfriend, but he doesn’t seem very devoted. Poetry has the best chance on Lloyd because he’s been to Paris twice but doesn’t have any friends except me. Miss Reason told us that all the great poets spent a lot of time in Paris and then committed suicide because they were so miserable and alone. I’m only Lloyd’s girlfriend because he’s my neighbor and my mother has made me walk home with him every day from the bus stop since he moved here eight years ago. I told I’d walk home with him, but I wasn’t going to be his friend, and my mama said Oh yes you will. I used to tell him at least once a week that the only reason I was his friend was so I wouldn’t get hit. He always said that he appreciated it.

If you could hear me speak, where would I begin?

I've been going back over my students' memoir projects this week. Some of them just hurt my stomach. Most of them chose to do post-secret cards even knowing that it would not be anonymous. It just seems like some of these kids are so desperate to let someone see behind their tough facades. Just a glimpse.

I hate Iraq and all them terrorists.

I took pills for my ADHD

I love the Middle Ages

I am afraid to die because I don't know what comes next, even though I say that I do.

I wrecked a stolen car.

I accidentally backed a four wheeler into my Dad's truck. I told him that a cow butted it.

I have a tattoo on my hip that no one has ever seen.

I hate the word panties because my uncle used to say it.

Sometimes I wish that me and Dan had a baby and had our own family.

My sister had to bail me out of jail when I was arrested for being high.

Pictures of horses calm me when I have a suicidal thought.

I had a breakdown and was put into a crazy house and everybody in my family knows.

I used to sneak out at night and do X

I can't tell time on a regular clock.

I hate cheerleaders, but I'd do anything to be one.

I got drunk for the first time when I was 13. I came home and threw up all over the house and told my mom I had food poisoning.

I eat salads every day so that I won't get fat, but I'm still fat.

I write poems.

My mom still tucks me in at night and kisses my forehead.

I feel ugly and fat all the time. I wish I could be skinny and beautiful.

I don't take my medication in the morning even though I'm supposed to.

I'm afraid my parents are going to die before I grow up.

They still think I don't know...He's my biological grandfather.

I'm afraid I won't be able to depend on anyone.

I have pigment on the top of my eyelids.

I have starved myself since I was twelve. I am always hungry.

I have had two abortions and I am really sorry.

In my own opinion, I thank that American should be made up of Southern folk and that's all.

I only eat twice a day because I am scared of getting fat.

I am terrified of going to sleep because I have horrible nightmares.

I play video games for over 6 hours every day.

My grandpa shaved my face when I was little.

I can't cry.

Most days I wish I would fall asleep and never wake up.

She's my drug and I'm addicted.

I feel like I'm growing up too fast and I blame you for that.

I need to go back to church.

I lie for him.

If I knew I wouldn't get caught, I would rob a bank.

Notice how most everybody's the same? Everybody adapting and accepting to each other...pushing the ones that are different to the outside? Would it surprise yhou if I told you my favorite color was green?

Sometimes I just want to run away...but where would I run to?

I know what people say about me, but I pretend not to hear so that it doesn't look like I care.

Whenever anything goes wrong, I always feel like it is my fault.

I'm afraid I won't be ready when Jesus comes.

Sometimes I make long distance phonecalls to complete strangers.

I love cutting grass.

I was once an accessory in the stealing of the gator from Berea High School.

When I am home alone, I walk around the house naked.

I was sold back into slavery.

I wish I was kidnapped.

I am scared of cotton balls. I imagine them being stuffed down my throat and choking on them.

I don't like girls, but I can't be gay.

When I was in Kindergarten, I faked sick every day so that I could go home.

The doctors say that I am bipolar, but I don't take my medicine.

I got raped all because of the alcohol.

I have weird dreams that come true.

It took me 4 times to get my learner's permit.

I love writing.

I always chew on gum because I am afraid that my breath stinks.

I still get butterflies.

I peed on my step-dad's tires about two weeks ago.

I stole dip from my daddy when I was 10 and now I am addicted.

I almost got a girl pregnant and I really didn't love her like I told her I did. I thought my life was ruined until she was she wasn't. I broke up with her and found me someone I reallly do love.

I don't know how to use a debit card.

I was addicted to tobacco in the 5th grade.

I collect old coins.

WHere were you when I needed you?

My family pretends like we are happy to hide the shame.

I can't swim by myself because I think something will come up and grab and drag me down with it.

I'm scared of getting fat again.

I can't cry except when I see a dead dog on the side of the street.

I always make As, but I am always anxious about my grades because I don't want to fail.

I'm afraid of becoming like my dad.

I might be an alcoholic when I am older.

She thought I loved her.

I would rather eat deer meat than any other meat.

Not all black people run when it comes to doing your homework. I do my homework.

I suffer from premature hairloss.

I go to stores and try on shoes and clothes that I will never be able to afford.

I tell people that I hate reading, but I love reading.

I used to think that papayas were mangos.

I hate sex, but I have it all the time.

I started dipping in the 4th grade.

I never finish my antibiotics.

I don't want to have boys.

I still get whipped at home when I get in trouble.

I love English class, but I can't read very good.

My grandpa raped my mom.

I wet the bed until I was 14. I am still terrified of wetting the bed.

My mom sells meth.

Every day when I get off the bus, I think I will find my mom dead from killing herself.

Sometimes I wish that my teachers would adopt me.

I stole an ipod from one of my best friends.

I sleep in class becuase I don't understand anything.

My boyfriend hits me and I don't care.

Naked

A short short story by yours truly

You don’t know a thing about dead people, not one GD thing.
How did it start? It started with brown paint smudged on her chin as she lay on the ground looking at the ceiling.
Or it started when Adam looked down and saw his nakedness, the sweet taste still on his lips, when first he hated.
Or it started with a father who feared.
Or it started when a child had been born of the dead, cut like the pit of a ripe peach from the lifeless form of her mother, one-half heathen, one-half saint, one-half dead, one-half alive. The child had seen with her own eyes, smelled it in her nostrils still clogged with amniotic fluid, felt it run through her very own veins in those minutes between her mother’s death and the cutting of the chord.
They say you are not really born until the day your mother gets out of the birthing bed. Here I am still waiting. I never finished this thing. One-half born. One-half unborn.
The Reverend had been born again. Born so many times and ashamed of his nakedness every time. Born until he didn’t notice any more. All the way born from a long line of hard men. Born to spread good news, to drain the love from his own heart and give it away.
His daughter, who is she? One-half fire. One-half water. One-half alive. One half-dead. Born again, but not all the way born. Ashamed of her nakedness.
The brown smudge of paint on a woman of unwelcome blood, born only once, and unashamed of her nakedness. Naked, proud, who gave her love away and kept it for herself as well. The sister of a dead mother come to love like the Reverend could not.
Would not.
It started with brown paint, a lost job, a secret witnessed from the bottom of a closet, and an empty seat in the Reverend’s church.
Or it started with a prairie dog on a TV screen, and a heartbroken woman who would not go to church, between a girl who had never seen a prairie dog and a man who was ashamed of his nakedness.
Or it started with a girl who wished she were an orphan, but only half-way wished.
If only they knew what it felt like under my skin, in between my skin and muscle. If they knew about that place, they would take me away from here.
Let us consider the color of the Reverend’s face:
Pink, the color of the meat of a watermelon when he was calm.
The color of a wet brick when he was irate.
He was irate most of the time. Like when he came home from church to find the woman watching prairie dogs on the television, proof that she was not ashamed of her nakedness.
Sometimes people throw things when they are angry and leave a purple knot to prove it. She threw the flipper at him today.
And what if a woman who had enough love inside for herself found that sometimes anger was stronger than love? What if she got angry at her nakedness? What if she forgot to care?
And what if the Reverend forgot what it felt like to be born that first time? What if he forgot what he needed? What if his face turned the color of flesh dipped in a vat of hot oil.