Sucker

Trey's Days No. 8

Sucker

In sleepy suburbs, moneyed mansions, bullet pocked projects and raw row houses, hardening of the heart happens. It happens in children. Their eyes go from open oceans of wonder to cat eyes cocked for danger. Hands go from open palms waiting for sweets to fists clinched for smashing. But how? How do hearts get hardened?

Flannery O'Connor tells the story of a little boy called “Sucker.” He was adopted and felt adopted. He shared a bedroom with his older step brother. He idolized him and would do anything he said. Once Sucker jumped off the roof because his older brother told him if he held an umbrella it would act like a parachute. Sucker got pretty banged up earning his nickname.

The time came that Sucker's step brother was feeling better about himself, having a girlfriend, and started treating Sucker better. They were friends for a brief period and Sucker got the love he craved from his older brother.

“His face seemed different now. He used to look timid and sort of like he was afraid of a whack over the head. That expression was gone. His face, with those wide-open eyes and his ears sticking out and his mouth never quite shut, had the look of a person who is surprised and expecting something swell.”

Then the girlfriend left. The older brother felt bad and started taking it out on Sucker. After that Sucker changed. He hardened when that love was taken away: “Afterward I could remember the change in Sucker's face. Slowly that blank look went away and he closed his mouth. His eyes got narrow and his fists shut. There had never been such a look on him before. It was like every second he was getting older. There was a hard look to his eyes you don't see usually in a kid. A drop of sweat rolled down his chin and he didn't notice. He just sat there with those eyes on me and he didn't speak and his face was hard and didn't move.....All of that was two or three months ago. Since then Sucker has grown faster than any boy I ever saw. He's almost as tall as I am and his bones have gotten heavier and bigger....He's gotten up this gang of kids and they have a club...On the door there is some foolishness written in Mercurochrome saying 'Woe to the Outsider Who Enters' and signed with crossed bones and their secret initials.”

Flannery's tale of the hardening of a heart got me thinking about how it happens. Every time I see a news story about a kid being charged with a felony I wonder about their childhood. How do we make a child who can commit horrible crimes, who appears to have no conscience? I think Flannery's Sucker gives us a clue.

I had a cushy childhood. We had everything we needed and most of what we wanted, and yet I felt poor. It seemed there was always somebody who had more, or better, or different. My cousins came to visit us from Connecticut in their little Piper Cub. They'd take us up for a spin over Memphis and spend the day before they flew off for the coast. Suddenly, lucky to be invited, I felt less than. We went to a church where a lot of the people had Cadillacs and BMW's. We had a Ford--less than. My parents and grandparents loved us very much and provided well. But I was gay--less than. My dad loved me too but in an effort to make a man of me he could be pretty abusive--less than. I was never comfortable in my own skin. Now all this sounds like whining, and I am grateful for the blessings I had, but there was enough abusive ridiculing for me to identify with kids who had it worse. Hardening of the heart also happens in middle class homes where there's plenty. Thinking back I remember how the hardening of the heart can happen. Children can be very cruel, and my parents advice was to ignore them. I learned how to harden my heart and do what it took to get through school.

“What are you looking at?” a voice boomed across the locker room. I was horrified. As I heard the voice I realized I had allowed my eyes to come to rest on the bulging red briefs of a cocky little athlete. We were in the ninth grade and he seemed to be one of the more blessed among us. And considering he was parading around the locker room in red bikini briefs one might be forgiven for thinking he wanted us to notice. When I heard his accusing voice I knew immediately the “ignore them and they'll go away” strategy needed to be kicked into over drive. Turning away I ignored him, and sure enough it worked. Each time the “ignore them” strategy worked like an invisibility cloak, my heart hardened a little

I was not the boy my Dad wanted. I didn't want to play baseball. I didn't like places that he liked. I remember a time he took me back into the cypress swamp in north Florida. It was dark and the dripping moss and swarming bugs made my skin itch and I didn't trust him. I was afraid and I cried and begged him to take me out. He was mad. He drove the boat back to the house as fast as it would go. He didn't speak. Knowing I had disappointed him I was ashamed. My heart hardened a little. I knew I was a disappointment but I also knew I had to stand my ground. Like Sucker, I had to harden. I had to be a survivor in the face of a father who wanted a different son.

Once I felt warm spit soak through my hair. I reached up and touched it. I smelled it. I gagged. Darrel, the tough kid who lived around the corner sneered and laughed. Instead of hating him, somehow it made me admire him in a strange way. Knowing I had not been the son my Dad wanted, of course someone so self-assured, so masculine would loath me, would spit on my head just for fun. It seemed natural after a time to be reviled by boys more like ones my Dad would have wanted. My heart hardened to the reality that the ones I wanted did not want me. They would use me, taunt and abuse me, and I would learn to act like I liked it. After acting “as if” long enough that becomes reality. The twisted truth was I learned to hate myself and in that self loathing sought out ones like Daddy, ones who had disdain for fairies. A hardened heart can take it.

National Public Radio recently ran a story on crime among the youth of Chicago. During a time in which over all crime in Chicago is down, youth crime, particularly killings are rising at an alarming rate. In a years time 700 children were hit by gunfire and 66 died. Students are being exposed to risk walking to school. In 2009 we saw the viral cell phone video of Derrion Albert being beat to death. How can it be that while crime over all is down children are becoming more violent?

I heard a stranger tell his story the other day. He shot up cocaine, got shot up in gun fights, learned how to harden to the hard reality of living in a whore house. He didn't know his mother was a whore until one day he was ogling a “tall pretty white lady”, and she said “It'll take twenty-five dollars.” Twenty-five dollars? “What's she talkin' 'bout?” Then it dawned on him. All the partying, the men in suits, the pretty women, the drinks, the music; it was all for hire. “My mammy run a whore house!”

A hardened heart is well equipped to run a hustle, some game or other to get hooch, blow, whatever is required to make it go away, that screaming pain. A roll of bills and some stuff stands between a hardened heart and annihilation. Sucker's clinched fist and his little gang stands between a hardened heart and annihilation. Even in my own protected childhood I too learned it, how a heart can harden. We all learn it. And that's how we know what it means to be a child who winds up standing before a jury, charged as an adult, in a world where hardening of the heart happens to children. Each of us, if we think back, can remember the times when our once open wondering heart hardened to some hard reality. That's the remembering that brings up the compassion in us that can't be killed. Underneath lies still the open wonder of a child, soft, warm flowing feeling before the hardening of the heart. Can you remember?

Trey's Days No. 7

Encouraging friends cheer, “Write, write, write.” “Glad you're on the right track.” “Wonderful, beautiful, keep writing.” But I was broke when the door handle in the car broke as I was returning from an errand intended to take me back to where I was before philosophy, before Dr. E's non-theist faith dawned, before “too much education”. The sagely Vajrayana mother said the symbolism of that broken door handle must not be lost. But country folk will tell you, “What's wrong with her is she's got too much education.” And they'll ask, incredulous, “What's all that philosophy for anyway?” Sitting there on a sack of seed the old planter admonishes “Yeah, but you gotta eat!”

Flannery O'Connor has the writer's mother say, “When people think they are smart—even when they are smart—there is nothing anybody else can say to make them see things straight, and with Asbury, the trouble was that in addition to being smart, he had an artistic temperament.....she had observed that the more education they got, the less they could do. Their father had gone to a one room school house through the eighth grade, and he could do anything.” Enduring Chill indeed! But that's not the end of our story.

How does the writer write? How did Carson and Flannery, Tennessee and Truman make it from mind to print, stomach growling pressed against the spine? Can we serve God and mammon? Rice and beans can get old when all there is is “too much education” and the spark of an idea. Then the angel Super Moon shining in the sky delivers the Sparkling Host of the Insatiable Mind and whispers “Fear Not!” And just remember, “There are those this very day that would be glad to get a little rice and beans.” Gratitude in all things is the salving balm.

A tiny quiet woman priest in Christ Church's pulpit hits me with a glimpse of Glory. Suddenly Annie Dillard's crash helmet makes sense. Lashed to the pew, a glimpse is all it takes, and the gentle deaconess reminds me to be grateful, and I am, for being thrashed about. I make a list, which starts and ends with my people, people who have been the hand of God through thick and thin, the banker hierophant, the physician deaconess, the councilor friend who help answer the call. Thank you all.

Thomas Hart Benton had a wife who made hats. She worked to earn money while he painted and drew. It was all he could do. Truman, Flannery and Tennessee with words painted too. What else could they do? Who supported their work? How did they make do? Someone will support the work, but who? And then there's that angel again with the Sparkling Host of the Insatiable Mind rising like a super moon in a biography of Henri Cartier-Bresson, reminding us to trust, to write, to make our art. Fear not, but wear a helmet. Nice timing--stomach growling. The angel in the form of Cartier-Bresson, in the form of an Appalachian bishop, in the form of a tiny priest, in the form of Annie Dillard's crash helmet reminds us to hold on, to trust and expect to be thrashed about. Oh, Japan! Holding out would not be possible alone, but we are not alone, Japan you are not alone—the angel reminds us—do the work and dare to dream.

It would be demoralizing if we got an education only to find that there's nothing to do but go back to what was possible before. Why would we go to school at all? Not for Profit by Martha Nussbaum rings in my head. The gift of the Sparkling Host is for the world. Give it! Give it now. Are we crazy to think that God will feed the belly even as She gives the gift of the Insatiable Mind? The angel appears again with that Sparkling Host. “Fear not!” Give it to the world. Just give it. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. Bombs away--write, write, write.

It's the insatiability of the mind that fuels the art. When Thomas Hart Benton's wife had a friend visit from Missouri, the friend asked, “How can you stand to live like this?”--no heat, kerosine lamps in the middle of Manhattan, a dresser drawer for the baby's crib—Mrs. Benton replied, “My husband is a genius.” He painted what he saw, went back to Missouri and drew the people there. Blacksmiths, white hooded Klansmen, the “S” shaped curves of a blue black woman dancing like there's no tomorrow. Now we've got his murals in the Missouri state capitol and the Truman Presidential Library, and they call him the king of the Regionalists.

Thomas Hart Benton and Henri Cartier-Bresson saw it, and Flannery and Carson understood. Truman and Tennessee knew too. When the angel has delivered the Sparkling Host of the Insatiable Mind the old white bread of before will never do. There's no going back. Write, write, write. Trust, clean house, help others. And the angel said, “Fear not!”

When we heard the title “For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide When the Rainbow was not Enough” it rang. We knew! But the Sparkling Host of the Insatiable Mind might be more than enough. Glimpses of glory might be more than enough. Any more would blow our circuits. They're already smoking; keep a fire extinguisher by the desk. Sparks fly in the stream of consciousness where angels shatter the sun into Carl Parker's sundogs. Crash helmets strapped on, lashed to the pew-- thanks for the warning Annie. And the angel said “Fear not!”

Paul Newman said one time that if you hear someone who is successful in the arts tell their story and they don't mention luck, they're lying. He was humble and considered his success to be mostly looks and luck. Serendipity is a word that has been used to describe the way in which the artist encounters circumstances which enable her to do her art. Setting aside those materialist messengers who tell you to be realistic and trusting in luck means having faith. It's faith that tells us to trust that if we give our art breath and life the world will meet us half way. All the Nelle Harper Lees, Truman Capotes, Tennessee Williamses and Paul Newmans, the Thomas Hart Bentons and Henri Cartier-Bressons, and yes all the yous and mes, know all we need to know at a certain time when despair has run its course. There is a place in heaven for those who pray, and a place for the artist who trusts that daring to dream calls the angels. Fear not. Your time and mine is nigh. Remember, at first Moses said no. But Aaron came out to meet him and went with him back to Egypt and the words were put in their mouths; “tell ole Pharaoh, 'let my people go!.'” Just go!

If you are one as I am who ingests the Sparkling Host of the Insatiable Mind as it rises and hears the angel whisper “Fear Not”, know that your time has come. Trust, dream, make your art. The world—illumined by that rising super moon resting gently on the wings of the angel—hungers for the present of your gift.

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.

Trey's Days No. 2.

1-22-11

His nose sweated beads of liquid in a steady slow ooze for which he carried a little white towel and dabbed every few minutes, especially during parts of his lecture which he found exciting. His belly shook and the buckle of the giant belt which went around the widest part of him bounced up and down. His favorite personal anecdotes, of which there were hundreds, involved his days at a prestigious Protestant seminary in a big city, where he was encouraged to play scholar. It is clear after a few minutes of his pedagogy that he is first and foremost a Protestant preacher whose forte might not be scholarship.

Now, there were days when a lesson in ethics got taught by one of the authors on the reading list in his “Ethics and Society” class, and the lecture was thin enough or short enough so as not to completely obscure the message. Most days one question from a smart mouth could hijack the agenda and send him off to that time in seminary when “...we were in 'Kant' class and everybody's eyes just GLAAAAZED over and I said....” (punch line, followed by forced laughter from the 'audience.')

One of those days when a philosopher of ethics was able to break through the noise came when we read “The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. LeGuin. If you haven't read it and want to, stop here (spoiler alert). It's a haunting tale of a little Utopia whose blissful existence depends on the perpetual suffering of a scapegoat. When citizens reach the age of majority, they are shown the suffering boy on whose torment they depend and they have to make a decision whether to go on enjoying the good life in Omelas at the expense of the suffering scapegoat, or to walk away.

William James talked about the “hideousness” of enjoying a utopian existence at the expense of one wretched scapegoat on the edge of things, whose perpetual torment is the price for that utopian bliss. But honestly I think I would have been one of the ones who stayed in Omelas. There are several reasons we can give for staying. One, because walking away presumes that we have an ethic that is superior to the whole community, which is suspicious. Two, walking away does not free the wretched scapegoat. And three, staying allows for the possibility of a dialogue in the community that might find a solution to the scapegoat dependent nature of things. It may in fact turn out that utopian bliss is not scapegoat dependent after all. That was a myth. One sure way to find out is to free the scapegoat and see.

Similar to the Omelas conundrum is the village Shirley Jackson creates in “The Lottery”, (spoiler alert 2). Communities in both stories have to decide whether to continue hideous systems in order to maintain the relative happiness of the community. In “The Lottery” when some of the villagers say they are thinking about quitting the practice of regularly choosing by lottery one among their number to be stoned to death, they are told that quitting might lead to going back to living in caves. It seems a story told generations ago by the elders still holds sway, and no one dares stop the old practice for fear that ancient warnings might come true.

After watching a couple of documentaries,“Food Inc.” by Mark Kenner and “The Corporation”, by Achbar, Abbott, & Bakan, it appears that all of us as consumers either feed the machine, or feed the machine while making efforts not to. In a sense when we walk into a grocery store where there are thousands of selections which are available all year 'round, we are choosing to feed the corporate system that makes it possible. All the cruelty to animals, use of hormones and antibiotics in food, exploitation of migrant workers, de-forestation of the planet, pollution from chemicals used in agriculture, etc. becomes ours. By continuing to participate we are the ones who stay in Omelas, the ones who continue the lottery, who continue to punish the scapegoat in order to maintain the wonderful life we have all come to expect. In our case the scapegoats are animals who live lives of unimaginable suffering, workers who are treated like animals, a planet that groans under the weight of unsustainable practices, and our own bodies which are over fed on the wrong foods.

And yet, even knowing and accepting this, I wonder: who were the ones who walked away from Omelas? Where were they going? Did they know? What if the villagers in “The Lottery” stopped the macabre practice to see what would happen? Would they really go back to caves?

We have a choice in our world to not participate in the corporate raping and pillaging of our planet and the systematic abuse of working humanity. But how? How can we free ourselves when we live in a world in which we are so inextricably embedded in a corporate system, where the 24 hour market is a way of life, where mass production and year 'round consistency seem like necessities, where the corporate label seems to offer some security? We are warned by corporate opinion makers that we'll starve and be cold if we try to unplug. The back-to-the-landers didn't age so well they say, and ultimately had to come in for dental work. But some persist in testing the old myth that freeing the scapegoat will bring down Utopia, stopping the lottery will have us back in caves, that without the Monsanto corporate farm we'll starve.

Today on National Public Radio there was a story about a swap meet of sorts where folk swap canned goods. Not the kind you find at Kroger or Walmart but jars of beets, honey, okra, peas and pickles, they had grown and put up themselves. “Put up” for our youthful citizens means taking vegetables from a backyard garden, at the peak of ripeness, and putting them “up” in jars for eating later like my grandmother used to do with fig preserves. These swap meet participants were young and old, men and women, every color and stripe. They increased the variety of their own gardens by swapping with their neighbors. And there are many communities joining this growing trend, growing, canning and swapping.

It is with mixed emotions that we are forced to notice that Walmart started carrying organic vegetables because their customers asked for them. We would be right to have trepidation when a manager whose sole motivation must of necessity be profit, appears to embrace the earth friendly alternative. BP after all invests in solar power, or at least advertising that mentions solar power. Our choices here are not as clear as walking away or not, stopping the lottery or not. It's complicated! But we can rest assured that once we know we cannot unknow. Once the unintended consequences of our habits are revealed, we really do have a simple choice. We can choose right this very minute to live into the adult awareness that our glittering city depends on a whole underclass of scapegoats. We can choose right this very minute to change one small habit and then another to move Omelas closer to freeing the scapegoat. By making one small change and then another, we can test the myth that if we stop the lottery we'll wake up in a cave. We can dismantle the earth raping, labor abusing, corporate profit machine, one little change at a time. And when we reach the end of our journey and it appears that we have failed, we can dare to trust that we are going to join the ones who walked away and we will know at last where they were going.

I have to admit I was tempted to walk away from Professor Preacher's Ethics class. Overcoming the impulse to walk away had its reward though. Enduring the parts that were objectionable, sacrificing my selfish desire to have it just as I would have it, yielded the lesson of the ones who walked away. It seems inescapable that all the personal anecdotes about big city seminary were just part of a community experience that had at the heart of it something wholly good. It makes me grateful that at least in that one instance I didn't walk away.