Grace and the grotesque :: Flannery O'Connor's birthday today

Flannery O'Connor
1925 - 1964
It's her birthday today.
She died when she was 39.

Recently I was asked to describe "grace." It was in a group setting, an important moment to sound good. I should have known they'd ask that question.

The answer I gave was really dumb. Beyond stupid. So bad I can't bear to paraphrase it here. That's probably why they never called me back.

Last night I finally read Flannery O'Connor's short story "The Artificial Nigger" as suggested by an MFA buddy who specializes in Flannery O'Connor. (I pulled the book out without realizing that today is O'Connor's birthday.) I wished I'd read that story before being called upon to describe grace because I would've had material to draw from. I would've remembered to understand grace is to see the grotesquery. (Not sure if that's really a word, but its one I like, and one I borrow from my MFA buddy.) And what makes grace so amazing is that the grotesque is so ugly.

Grotesque literature in the style of Flannery O'Connor is not overtly ugly. It's not literally ugly. It's not like those scary bat-like gargoyles that guard grand old cathedrals in Paris (which is what I first thought). Grotesque literature points to the hideous parts of our human nature that often come disguised as something caring, good, and nurturing:

A grandfather who denies his grandson.
A protector who degrades the kitchen help.
A religion that promotes bigotry.
A neighborhood watch who kills a kid in cold blood.
A mother who tells her child she's going to hell because she's gay.
A Bible study group who discusses benefits of the death penalty.
A living human being who can't describe grace.

So I botched up my response to "describe grace" really badly. And yet, why should I figure out how to describe it when Flannery O'Connor already did so supremely? If I'd only known.

Thanks much for coming over to the Charmer Blog. Wishing you all a lovely spring day.

With love, T

Majestic: The Visitor, the film

Haaz Sleiman, Lebanese actor who played
the role of the djembe teacher,
  Tarek, a total charmer!

I just watched the 2007 film, "The Visitor." All I could do was scribble down immediate thoughts.

Flippin awesome djembe.
Syrian man + Senegalese woman + uptight, depressed professor.
Depression awakens into purpose.
Epiphany.
Freedom.
New York City scenes.
Staten Island Ferry.
Beautiful women.
Charming men.
Stellar writing, acting, and editing.
Walter. There could be no other name.
International economics in the classroom and on the streets.
Twist on academics.
Falafel.
This movie comes to me thanks to a friend who loaned it to me last year saying, "I think you'll like this." (This has happened to me several times lately.)
I finally saw it and she was right, I loved it!
Remembering the time I, while driving our family minivan with the family in tow, mistakenly blew a cop stop while approaching the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and we were pulled over by NYPD.
It was early morning raining, we were sad to leave the family, I seriously did not see the security check point.
We were treated like crap. They made us turn over our vacation video film.
Remembering how I was thankful we weren't Arab, knowing we'd be screwed. We put on our full Minnesota and were OK.
(Later, NYPD sisters, LG and Vivian would tell me that the "bridges and tunnels" section of NYPD have an inferiority complex and that's why they treated us harshly.)
Weird this is all coming up while my family is in NYC. (Our tunnel incident happened in about 2003 or so. Post 911 when everyone was newly crazy looking for terrorists.)
Back to the movie.
Liberty, Statue of Liberty.
Skim milk and red wine.
Subway. Lots of subway.
Love. A love story.
New glasses. Seeing anew.
Insanity of detention.
Tarek.
Music.
"She's so black," said the Syrian mother.
Central Park.
Majestic.
Remembering when Bob and I attended a citizenship ceremony for a friend from Egypt. We all cried when they played that song, "And I'm proud to say I'm American, where at least I know I'm free."
Our friend didn't want other internationals to know she got her citizenship because she didn't want them to feel bad for their own situation.
She had to explain to us how important it was to not make a big deal out of it or even mention it.
Pretend.
Acne.
Equilibrium. They needed each other. There  was no charity.
"It's kind of exciting not to know."
"I think that happens a lot in New York."
Economics.
Queens. Dreary.
Power and the powerless.
Who is the visitor?
Ice.
Cold. Cold hearted. Cold stone. Stoned human beings.
Blue eyes.
Deportation = death.
"That's all the information that I have."
Hardened heart feels something.
Courage.
Intimacy.
"You forget.You think that you really belong."
Did I say flippen awesome djembe?
Broadway Lafayette. I used to pass through here twice a day.
Not enough Tarek. Haaz Sleiman is an incredible actor.
Cambodian hammered dulcimer. Remembering this exact instrument with Mr. Bun and Cambodian choir at  Christ Church in St. Paul.
Richard Jenkins. Incredible character actor. Nominated for 2009 Academy Award for this role.
Female lead, Danai Gurira, was born in Grinnell, Iowa, to parents from Zimbabwe. Went to Macalester in St. Paul (love that school) and got her MFA at New York University. (Just cool, all the connections.)
I wanted it to end happily.
I wouldn't have cared if it was simple and cliche.
I hope you'll watch it. Here's the trailer:

The relative dignity of not being noticed

cystalize

There are plenty of times you want to be noticed.

There are many times you wish not to be noticed.

This blog post is about the latter.

Once, about 15 years ago I had to leave the office early because of food poisoning. You know that feeling. Headache escalates. Nausea grows. You calculate if you can get home before your vomit, or if you should wait until you vomit and then make your way home. I'd decided to make my way home before heaving up the Chinese food from the night before.

I was working in Manhattan and going home meant a 45 minute subway ride to Brooklyn. I decided I could do it. To tell you how sick I felt, I'll tell you this: I didn't ask my boss if I could leave, I told my boss I would leave. (I'm old school and generally I don't "tell" my bosses anything. Often to my detriment but that's another blog post.)

I left the office, made way to my train stop, and sat miserably as we snaked through the bowels underneath the city. I made it as far as Canal Street, about five stops or so, when the heat of stomach bile steeped in my throat. I would be throwing up soon. Vomiting on the train seemed like a pretty low option. Vomiting on the station platform was a far more desirable choice and that's what I did. Next stop I barely slithered off the train and upchucked my guts all over the platform as others moved off the train, upchucked more as the train departed, and upchucked more as people gathered to catch the next train. No one noticed. No one cared. No one removed their bored facial expressions. No one even looked up from their reading material.

In hind site, I could be wrong because how would I have known if anyone noticed or not? I was staring straight into my own puke, prepping for more heaving. Still, at least the perception of not being noticed was a glorious experience. I gave thanks to God that I wasn't in the Midwest where strangers would have rushed up to me asking how they could help. I got on the next train that came by 15 minutes later, feeling sorry for whoever would discover the puddle of my stomach contents and be forced to clean it up. I hoped that some hungry rodents might get to it first. I went home and lay in bed all day, grateful that my personal pride remained mostly in tact thanks to the anonymity.

Yesterday was another day I was glad to not be noticed. The occasion: crying at my desk at work. The tears flowed steadily for hours as much as I tried to stop them. My alibi would be allergies, had anyone asked. No one did. No one noticed. And I was grateful. At least I could be somewhat alone in my misery. Old school me at work again -- since my body wasn't spewing vomit or blood or a communicable disease, I didn't feel justified in leaving. Plus, the whole point of being in the office was the cause of my crying so it would've been doubly stupid to go home.

I vowed not to blog about this, but here I am. The self discipline lasted about 36 hours for it was yesterday morning when my family pulled out of the driveway on their way to a Brooklyn spring break without me, because of my "vacation time snafu." Let's leave it at that. It's probably my own damn fault for wanting to go to grad school. I want it all, evidently. When I realized I couldn't go to spring break, of course I insisted that my family go without me. There was no choice. At the last minute Bob, feeling really bad, reconsidered the trip, and I said, go!

But I tell you, when that dented up silver Buick pulled out of the driveway I wasn't thinking about all the things I'd been wanting to do for at least two years. I wasn't thinking about sleeping, reading, watching TV, catching up on movies, or cooking. I wasn't thinking about progressing my book or my essays. I wasn't thinking about the quiet I've longed for, the slowness I've craved, the solitude I've missed. Nor the yoga, biking, or walking I've been badly wanting to do. Nor eating while sitting down, taking normal showers, hanging up my clothes, brushing my teeth longer than 30 seconds, or picking up all the crap on the floor of my car. I wasn't thinking about the 100 miles per hour I've been living too long and how I would have some so called down time.

I was only thinking that I wanted nothing more, positively nothing more, than to be crammed into that car full of stuff on it's way to a cheap motel in Ohio en route to Brooklyn, New York. I only wanted to be with my three lifelines. In that moment when the nerdy suburban sedan drove away from me, my priorities suddenly crystallized. My husband. My daughter. My son. That's all I wanted.

"It isn't normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement." -- Abraham Maslow. I saw this on my twitter feed today and it occurred to me that I may be experiencing this kind of "rare psychological achievement." Not that I want to. This truth is surely, sadly known already among those those of you who have lost a lifeline. You just want him back. You want her back. It's crystal clear.

So I played mind games and cried all morning, in relative dignity. I'm better now. But still playing mind games. Working on a way to heave-ho the sick feeling without anyone noticing. I've got some ideas. And I've got a little help from my friends. (Awesome, incredible, amazing friends, by the way. Thanks all! xoxo)

Thanks for coming over to the Charmer blog.

With love, T

Phantom of the amoeba-stick-man

"Mom, my teacher sugar coated her way of telling me my art project was bad."

This was 7th grade Boychild's way of informing me that he didn't get a very good grade on his art project, which was apparently a bunch of sticks that he picked up from the yard somehow made into a marionette. It was a group project, he said.

"Yeah, she said we needed 'more color' and 'more imagination' and whatever," Boychild said, rolling his eyes, emphasizing the teacher's words with a dull sarcastic tongue twist.

It reminded me of the time Boychild, while in kindergarden, brought home a daily amoeba-stick-man drawing. Pencil on lined spiral paper. A black circle with stubby short black hairs jutting out all around, with a somber stick face, black stick arms and legs projecting out from the head/amoeba. There was no neck nor torso. He brought one of these home every day of kindergarden. Boychild's four-year-old black and white number two lead pencil creativity. Other kindergardeners were coloring wild, flaming rainbows and ponies with a crayola 72 pack. Boychild drew black and white amoeba-stick-people. (I plan to make a collage of those amoeba-people to hang on the wall but haven't gotten around to it yet.)

Wait a minute, I know what this 7th grade art project is all about.

"Did you make a puppet version of your kindergarden amoeba-stick-man?" I asked with furrowed eyes, in my firm mother-knows-best tone. I may be stressed, tired, and brain drained, but I will not tolerate a 7th grade version of the amoeba-stick-man. This mother demands more.

"No, mom, I didn't," boychild said. "It had a neck and we used color...aqua!"

On the dark early mornings when Boychild had picked up sticks in the yard before bumbling into the back seat of the car so I could drive him to school, I told him I needed to see this art project when he was done. One morning, when the art project had been close to finished, we had driven about five miles to school, late as usual, when Boychild realized that he forgot his finishing touches -- two shoe boxes -- at home. We turned around, I think it was icy streets that day, returned home for the shoe boxes, and Boychild was about 45 minutes late to school. I played mind games with myself that missing my own breakfast and being late for my own job wasn't a big deal.

I was really curious about Boychild's art project and what exactly it looked like, how much thought and effort really went into it. But, evidently, somehow the project busted up, according to Boychild. "It broke," he said. It would be impossible for me to see the finished art project, the alleged amoeba-stick-man in 3D.

And then the news about the art teacher's "sugar coated" way of saying that it was a terrible art project. Flatly denied by Boychild.

So, since I'll never see the art project with my own eyes, who should I believe? Boychild or teacher? What do you do with a boychild who doesn't give it all in art, even though he says he does give it his all? Or maybe he really does give it all. Or maybe he just doesn't like art. Or maybe he doesn't like anything.

How is a human mother expected to exert this level of wisdom?

With love, T

Gambling away Monday morning

I don't know why, but family poker night is working for us. We are notoriously bad at family "traditions." We don't even eat dinner together, which is basic practice in household community building. Yet we can barely shop, can hardly cook, and can rarely sit down alone, let alone together.

I've noticed that when I do eat with other people, say, a friend, I always finish far faster than my companion. When I was a kid I could blame my fast eating on my three brothers and that's just the way we ate. Now days, I blame it on a chronic lack of time. I'm always in a hurry. Always.

Maybe that's just an excuse and I should just admit to a lifetime of bad manners.

Yet lately Sunday nights have taken a different tone around this house. We sit down together. We take time together. We deal cards and anti up together. We slow down together. We're learning about the true value of a poker face, which no one in this household but me actually has, although it hasn't served me so well. But hey, it's just red, white, and blue chips and not real currency. And the beverage in my kids' stemmed glasses is just pink lemonade and nothing else. We are not glorifying drinking and gambling. We have simply found something that we like to do together.

At last.

By about 7:30 p.m. it's pretty much over. Time to get back to real life. Laundry. Dishes. Monday morning. The dreaded Monday morning which can give some people nausea for a good part of Sunday afternoon. Monday morning could almost evenhandedly ruin a glorious weekend, if it weren't for family poker night.

Thanks for coming over to the Charmer blog. Wishing you all the best Monday morning you can possibly have.

With love, T

On being drenched

Writing as life taking.

"If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they're happy." -- Dorothy Parker

Writing as life giving. 

"Writing is not only a reflection of what one thinks and feels but a rope one weaves with words that can lower you below or hoist you above the surface of your life, enabling you to go deeper or higher than you would otherwise go. What excites me about this metaphor is that it makes writing more of a lifesaving venture." -- Phyllis Theroux

Which is it?


If you asked my husband it would probably be the former quote by Dorothy Parker, as he bears the load of listening to my endless frustrations regarding the lack of the second choice. It's not that my writing sucks or doesn't suck, that's totally beside the point. It's just that there is no writing. There is working, there is driving, there is living. Working, driving, and living are not all bad. It's just when you get a glimpse at the glorious panorama of all you could do, all the possibilities, and you see what others do, the teaching, the workshops, the publications, the conferences, the travel, the ideas, the performances, the growing, the lifesaving, the incredibly relevant essays on the here and now, the storytelling that makes people care -- it just makes you want something you wouldn't otherwise want had you never learned about it.

I think that's why I cling to David Foster Wallace, even though I've barely scratched the surface of his brilliance. Sure, his vocabulary is stratospheric, his voice complicated, yet only he could go on a cruise and write paragraphs about the sound of the toilet in his cabin. He seemed to long to understand the absolute ordinariness of everyday. And why it makes us all so sad, even though we mostly don't acknowledge it. He did. We're all just quietly frustrated by the working, the driving, and the living. His writing says, basically, screw the big stuff. Embrace the small stuff. Because the small stuff -- aka the working, the driving, the living -- is usually, in actuality, what's most important. (Easy for him to say, I'm tempted to think to myself, because he could write, write, write his hearts desire. Yet, he took his own life. RIP. His torment about the banality of everyday life was real, and tragically unresolved. I'm still sad about his loss, even though I'd never even heard of him when he was alive. He was born the same year as I.)

Tomorrow, though, Saturday morning, the small sanctuary of my time, I will gather up notes from three short interviews that took me a month to conduct, and write an assigned piece for The Lutheran Magazine, thanks to a generous editor. A piece that I hope will maybe, just maybe be relevant, clever, and surprising. It's about LGBTQ Lutherans. No, it's about faith. Really, it's about labels. Hopefully, it's about appreciation.

For now, I invite you to watch this three minute excerpt of David Foster Wallace's most famous writing, his Kenyon College commencement speech in 2005, now referred to as  "This is Water." (Here's the full transcript. Trust me, you won't regret reading it.)

Which of course begs the question, what is my water? Yours?

Tropical Steel benefit concert for Haiti

Today, we all came to church dressed in bright colors and tropical dress (me, and my Kenyan gear) and we worshiped to the Caribbean stylings of Tropical Steel. Our morning included a benefit concert for Haiti's earthquake recovery and I was pleased to be asked to deliver an update. I thought I'd go ahead and post my remarks here, just in case some of you feel moved to further support the effort.  Here goes:

Haiti is a tiny country on the west side of a small Caribbean island called Hispaniola. Haiti holds a rich heritage of culture, a long history of slavery, a hard record of poverty, and an incredible hero in the man of Toussant L'Ouverture, a slave who led an unlikely and successful slave rebellion in the late 1700s, mostly by sheer wit and diplomacy.

In modern times Haiti remains a complicated society and when a magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit in January 2010, it just got worse. The problem with natural disasters is that they always impact the poor countries, the poor neighbors, the poor people the hardest – because the poor usually live in the most vulnerable constructions and risky landscapes.

In that earthquake, nearly 250,000 people died, some 300,000 people were injured and more than 1.5 million people were displaced. Most are still living in camps.

Our Lutheran human service agencies are at work there, and in a big way. Thanks to the support of so many people like you.

Here’s a quick summary of what the ELCA is doing in Haiti:

·     About ten days ago there was a groundbreaking ceremony for a new resettlement village that will provide housing for 1,200 people

·     The village will include the construction of 200 solar-powered homes with indoor plumbing, a "green" sanitation system and community space that includes a children's playground and multipurpose community center.

·     Women-headed households and people living with disabilities will be among the village residents.

Other work includes:

·    Opening a vocational training center that will train in masonry, carpentry, and heavy machine operation and repair

·    The containment of cholera and the care for cholera patients

·     Increasing access to clean water and basic sanitation

·     Providing chickens to some 200 farmers to develop egg production coops

·     And plans are underway to build three schools and to train people to prepare for future disasters

But it’s not just what we’re doing. It’s how we’re doing it. We don’t just go into Haiti, or any county, as if we have all the answers. We’re don’t act like we’re “saving” people. Instead, we work through Haitians and Haitian organizations to bolster what they’re already doing. We work together, as if each other’s survival depends on working together. We work with both immediate and long-term needs. We don’t cut and run after media attention subsides.

I’ll close with a quote from Joseph Livenson Lauvanus, president of the Lutheran Church of Haiti: "We Haitians will not be defined by the rubble, but by restoration, for we are a people of the resurrection."

Thank you.

...

The plate was passed to benefit the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's Haiti projects. You can still donate online.