Trey's Days No. 6

Tennessee told us a while back we could blow out the candles because now-a-days the world is lit by lightening. As a cold front blows through Little Rock a massive thunderbolt strikes the stately marble dome. Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and Iraq crackle with the voltage of revolt. Under the dome in Wisconsin a storm of workers clambers for a collective voice. Around the world Tibetans spark any flint they can find to light Beijing with enlightening. Four Amish children are swept to their drowning by the Kentucky rain of climate change. And in my heart thunders the voice which would speak with a deafening clap. Tennessee knew it. Now-a-days the world is lit by lightening. Can we pretend to not know why Obadiah Elihue put God on Parker's back? Be still and know that I am God, cries the Psalmist from the mist of our oblivion. Once you know you can't not know and so we're stuck with it. We who made our messes now must clean them up. It's no wonder when the angels speak they open with “Fear Not!”

“Food Inc.” struck me like a shock in the gut. Cows standing knee deep in putrid waste, antibiotics coursing through their veins to keep the bugs at bay. Pigs scream like babies as they watch their sisters electrocuted before their eyes. Crowded chickens get their beaks chopped lest they peck each to death to get some air. Ground water groans in a choke of chemical sludge as Monsanto feeds the corn that gags the cows. Yet I get up hungry and wallow off to Wal-Mart clutching my Yarnell's Gold Rewards coupon . Not the least bit squeamish we've been trained to tune it out, that voice that says that's God on Parker's back. The burning tree looms on the horizon, but who can beat free Yarnell's?

Dick Cheney's heart runs on a machine now. Halliburton paid in advance for any advancement that would keep their favorite son alive a little longer. BP paid too. Cheney more and the shrimper less. It was more peaceful to not know. Ignorance of the collusion between our elected government and the corporations for whom they work was bliss. Knowing is such an irritation, like heart burn only in the mind. The grocery store, the gas station, the TV crime drama all look a little different now that Parker has the face of God on his back and the burning tree is on the horizon blazing. Blind oblivion is more tricky now with the sky lit up by the lightening of that swift storm. We cannot ignore the drowning Amish babies another second. Climate change is not a victimless crime.

Now that the oil no longer boils up in the Gulf we are encouraged to forget. A green myth of clean coal beckons us to forget. Pundits at Fix News obfuscate to obscure the data. Besides we gotta eat! And there are a couple of scientists out there who doubt it's the hand of man that drives us toward the cliff. Lulled by sweet confections, delighted by dramas where good guys win and coupons in the mail for free glut, we just look away when pigs scream, babies drown and pelicans loose primordial nesting grounds. The whizzing of NASCAR thrilling us to sleep is overpowering. Oscar's bright lights blind us in our dream of glamor. Blinking but not seeing, we drink the salt water of wanting and thirst for more and better and different. To see the face of God on Parker's back we have to stand between the mirrors and look just so, but the second we do it we see plain as lightening. Bang dawns the truth like the whack of a broomstick on bear shoulders. Red whelps mark the face of God. Once you know you can't not know. “Who's there, I ast you?” “Obadiah, Obadiah Elihue” the whisper thunders.

We turn our heads as if we expect someone behind us to give us the answer. The sky has lightened slightly. There are two or three streaks of yellow floating above the horizon. If we are still and look we can see a tree of light bursting over the skyline. And as Flannery brings her story of Obadiah to a close she has him leaning against the tree, crying like a baby. And so it is with us. The grief at what we have done, what we have allowed our appetites to do looms large in us and will not be denied. But we know instinctively the angels who whisper “Fear Not” know something. We see the organic farmer on the side of the road with apples, corn, peaches and peas, Monsanto nowhere in sight. A soft cleansing light falls gently as we gather groceries with our neighbors, from our neighbors. As we can and share, we stand between the mirrors and see the face of God, on our backs forever with eyes to be obeyed. We get up and look toward the dawn wiping away the tears shed for the pigs and cows, the Amish babies, and Dick Cheney. At the end of a storm is a golden sky and we walk toward it.

Trey's Days No. 5

2-23-11

Orange Sweater Vest

I was sure we had nothing in common. He was tall and lanky, I not so tall and not lanky at all. He was black. I'm white. He had a decided limp from a gun shot injury in a ghetto shoot out. I was spared. He grew up in the federal housing project in Little Rock, I in a middle class neighborhood in Memphis. He calls the “Dunbar” home. I don't. He wore an orange sweater vest. I wouldn't.

He began to tell his story. He talked about how he had low self esteem. Thinking back to when it began, this self doubt, self loathing, he recalled a day he “crapped his pants at school.”

“I was sick and I crapped my pants. It was sticky and it stank and all the boys were laughing. Flies were swarming around me. Ever since that day every time somebody snickers or whispers I know they're talking about me.”

I was stunned as I listened. I hadn't thought about it in years. I had been wearing a red Christmas vest. It was the day we got our picture taken with Santa. My mother and grandmother were picking me up from school to go to Goldsmith's basement where Santa waited in the “Enchanted Forest.”. Somehow or another it came over me suddenly like a wave of nausea. Before I knew it it was too late. My utter humiliation exploded around me in a cloud of fragrant nature. It was psychic devastation, complete defeat at the hands of my own bodily functions. It was too late. There I was sitting at my desk at school and it was too late. I like my friend in the orange sweater vest sitting there in my red Christmas vest faced as he had done everyone's worst fear.

Walking to the car I felt the dread of humiliation that only bodily functions can arouse. Made pristine at the hands of doting mother and grandmothers, taught to be fastidious by a band of neat-nicks I walked to the car like I was walking to my death. As I climbed into the back seat, my grandmother beside my mother in the front, I carried this cloud of fragrant humiliation with me. The first sound out of my mother's mouth was a sad sigh, followed by “well, lets get you home and get you cleaned up.” Granny said nothing. My utter humiliation was complete. How would I ever live this down? What's a man to say when it is so obvious that even at the ripe old age of six he still needs a diaper. Crushed, I began the process we all must learn at some point, the process of constructive forgetting.

And it was completely forgotten, stored away in the file of scars that are too painful to see, the scars we all store in a secret place hidden even from ourselves, hidden so well that only one who shares them can bring them out. But out is was now. The tall lanky black man in the orange sweater vest, the man from the projects, a man from Dunbar had found my secret shame. He was telling me that was the source of his low self esteem. Oh my God! Seen against my will and surprised at the unexpected suddenness of that total exposure, one of my deepest and oldest wounds lay open in the healing air. This lanky limping dude knew me better than I knew myself. And he was brave enough to tell our story. And it was our story!

His power began to spill over and I started lapping it up. He just told a whole room full of people in the middle of a luncheon my darkest secret, a secret I had kept all these years even from myself. The psychic power of ancient humiliation began to ebb away. That hard kernel of disgust, of self loathing and doubt stored in the darkest recesses of unconscious memory started to soften in the warm light of this courage. Emanating from the orange sweater vest where that lion heart lay open and alive was the stuff of life itself. Seen and heard the self loathing exposed gets loved into life.

So sure we had nothing in common I was prepared to listen charitably, courteously. Now knowing he knew my shame I could take heart. We had everything in common. His shame was my shame. His healing could be my healing, his courage my aspiration. So there it is, the deepest darkest hidden shame buried forever uncovered by the man in the orange sweater vest. I love you brother, and I am forever in your debt.

Trey's Days No. 4

2-11-11

Old One Answers Young One's Question About Peace: A Koan

Old One said, “A teacher of the Law came down from the Mountain of God and spoke to the people, “The Lord said, Thou Shalt Not Kill!” So naturally there followed many bloody wars and much killing. It was a huge blood bath.

Young One asked, “Master, how is it that the Great Law, 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' was followed with much killing. How can this be?”

Old One said, “Make peace with your question.”

Young One went away perplexed.

Another time they were talking and Young One asked, “Master, you said the Great Law, 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' was naturally followed by much killing. How then is there hope for the world?”

Old One said, “Once the son of a slave stood on the high steps at the feet of the Emancipator of the slaves and said 'I Have a Dream” And so, naturally, there followed much rioting and luting and burning of cities.

Young One, almost afraid to ask said, “Master, how can this be? How could “I have a dream” lead to riots?”

Old One said, “Make peace with your question.”

Frustrated, Young One pondered this.

Later, they were just sitting and Young One asked, “Master, if the Great Law 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' led to a great blood bath and if 'I Have a Dream' led to horrible riots, what hope is there for the world?”

Old One said, “Once a great teacher said the Way of Inner Peace is the Heart of Japan. So naturally The Emperor invaded China and established concentration camps for the resisters, and the pilots killed themselves in service of the Great Heart.”

Young One was angry. “Master, you say the Great Law 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' led to great killing, and 'I Have a Dream' caused riots, and the Inner Peace that is the Heart of Japan made the Emperor invade China and the pilots kill themselves. How then is there any hope for the world!!!”

“Dear Young One,” Old One said gently, smiling “When you have made peace with your question, the world will be at peace. Until then, let's have some tea.”

Trey's Days No.3

2-2-11

My grandparents were visiting. Some neighbors were over too. I was in the fifth grade. Science class was getting interesting so I decided to demonstrate to the folks assembled what I had learned about centrifugal force by spinning a bucket of mud and rocks over my head. It was heavy and when it got exactly overhead it stopped dead in the air, mud and rocks came tumbling down on my head, and everybody except me and my Dad laughed. My Mom heehawed, cracked up as she and I would have done together if it had been anybody else but me. My Dad didn't laugh. He took me in the bathroom to clean me up and told me how proud he was of me for trying my experiment even though it didn't work. He explained that most of the time experiments don't work. That's why we call them experiments. And when they don't work we fix them and try again. He suggested I put something other than mud and rocks in the bucket. Then he and I laughed about it together and he told me again how proud he was of me. That's my favorite laugh; comforted by being able to laugh at myself in the safety of the bathroom with my dad wiping mud off my head like the aftermath of some rite of passage. I remember his tender touch. By the time my mother told me she was sorry she laughed, I was on to another related but much bigger experiment; pretending I didn't care.

Someone told me once that “I don't care” is the biggest lie in the world. I don't know. I came home one day from school and reported to my Mom that the boys at school were making fun of me and calling me names and I just couldn't stand it anymore. I cried. She was very sympathetic and troubled but had little to offer in the way of a defensive strategy other than “If you ignore them they'll go away. You can't let them see it bothers you.” I've been ignoring them now for over forty years and it would appear she has been proven right. She didn't say how long it would take.

Truman Capote used to be on TV from time to time when I was a child in the 1960s. I used to cringe. He made me even more uncomfortable than Liberace. His lispy little girl voice, his affected mannerisms, his snide sense of humor gave me moments of sympathy with the abusers who couldn't stand the likes of Truman and would gladly have stomped his face given half a chance. Our Memphis of the 1960s was a violent place and there were many targets. What other people thought about you could get you killed, apparently. One became less sure as time went on in that strange summer of 1968. Suddenly everything was different. It was a time to be careful. The Truman Capotes were wise not to draw attention to themselves, yet there he was for all the world to see on the television.

I hoped and prayed it was not true but somehow I knew instinctively that I had something important in common with Truman. I also knew instinctively that things would not go well for me if I didn't hide it. When my mother said “ignore them and they'll go away” she couldn't have imagined how the Truman Capote beacon shown from my forehead and how that blessed curse of being the fag who used big words rang like a gong in the bullys' ears. We Trumans, we queer boys had bully magnets, were bully magnets. We got to see a world not obvious to everyone, a world through the lens of the bully magnet.

Fairy, fagot, pansy, queer zinged like darts across the recess air making the company of girls a safety zone. Truman knew what I learned, that the Nelle Harper Lees were ports in a storm with their fantasy games imitating the adult world where ridicule was more subtle, less violent. Naming dolls and choosing their clothes seemed somehow less extreme than collecting bee stingers on a leather belt. Besides, where's the imagination in that? I did not know at the time something that Truman knew early on. Those silly girls games, those little safe harbors were the artist's training ground, a rough and tumble sport of the mind not for the obtuse dart zinger belt stinger boys.

And just as Truman found women in his life for whom his glaring homosexuality was not a challenge, all of us who grew up queer in the South at a certain time found them. My grandmother's Aunt Daisey Griffith who lived in the Houston Hotel in Dothan, Alabama was one. We would visit her there from time to time when I was a child. I was fascinated by the life of one who seemed to float on the cream of a world that had disappeared out from under her and she didn't seem to notice. She wouldn't be made to. Her fragile 4'2” frame would not outlast the old guard that watched over her delicate routine. Her husband Floyd had been in the timber business in Bonifay just over the Florida line and it had not been very long since they ruled the roost. It was not exactly clear who ruled the roost in south Alabama in the late 1960s. It was no longer a certainty that it would be the Floyd Griffiths.

As she came down from her suite to breakfast by the clock in the coffee shop on the first floor, her sweet world of pink Austrian shades and perfect little suits of jackets and skirts ran like a machine in a bubble. Meanwhile Alabama swirled around outside unheard except through the RCA color television, which had an off switch. And there was the newspaper by the front door in the morning, but the gentleman who delivered it and who had stood by the door of that hotel for two generations found his daily march little changed by the stories of marches, sit-ins and historic bus rides. Can two worlds live side by side and not know each other? We remember how they can.

The “Iced Water” spigot on the porcelain lavatory and the conditioned air that cascaded from the big metal vent near the ceiling insulated the Griffith suite from the sticky steamy world outside where black storm clouds brewed for people of all colors. That invisible difference which Truman dared to make so hideously visible added heat for the lightening of that storm. Truman joined a small band of voices giving spirit and image to what it meant to be one like he who took refuge with women at a time when one dared not challenge, when just being was the challenge. And that's what was so trying about Truman. Sitting there between Granny and Aunt Daisey in a cocoon where being invisible and silent was rewarded with vanilla ice cream, cool air and Miss America in color, the possibility of being visible and heard was a most uncomfortable challenge. One can't hide one's color but one can hide one's inner Truman, at least for a while. But then there's Truman, not hiding at all. A most uncomfortable challenge.

The mud is all gone now. Daddy's touch took it away and left the lesson of trying again. Truman on TV was part of that lesson too. It was Truman who refused to hide between the granny and the aunt, who refused to settle for vanilla ice cream and Miss America but fluttered off to New York and Italy and a thousand other places and into my living room in Memphis. Truman was the leader in the greatest experiment of all, to be oneself. If Granny and Aunt Daisey offered a moment of comfort from a by gone era, the anointing in mud offered what Truman was teaching . We have no one but ourselves to be, even when we have mud on our heads. If the world doesn't understand or isn't ready then maybe we have to become Other Voices, Other Rooms. Maybe we have to breakfast at Tiffany's when the Houston Hotel is long gone and all the Aunt Daiseys and Uncle Floyds have gone to live in the musty smell that rises from the felt of a roll-top desk. And when that time has come, and it will come, Truman will rise ever himself, for Alabama and all the world to see, shining, washed and new.