The success of creating a weblog has only confused me. Sorry. Because I keep a pretty extensive set of personal journals, which leaves me at a bit of a loss as to what I should post on-line. And then it hits me. Of course. A theme. Ready?
This little account is answering the call, and becoming a repository for the Chronicles of One Prematurely Released: the story of a year in the real world, from the perspective of a kid who has no business being out of school yet: the life and voluntary hard times of a liberal arts educated, unqualified for anything, fiercely independent and just as fiercely at a loss for what to do next, brat of a catholic: me.
There will be gay bars, and a torturous job search, and a weird set of kin, and even a closet under the stairs. Stay tuned.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Thursday, December 20, 2007
so now I know...
Tonight was my first night at a gay bar. So now I know.
My first cross-dresser, for example.
And seeing so many attractive men -- hitting on one another. But not just men my age. Mexican men I'd put at 56, holding hands. Men who were gay long before it was fashionable, in any circle. The people-watching was fascinating.
Mostly I worked on one Long Island Iced Tea, which I found myself drinking out of a mason jar -- I guess that's how they roll at Georgies.... A young man assessed my outfit as a cross between "retro Seattle" and "naughty librarian", both of which I think he meant as compliments.
I was there for my friend Willie's twenty-second birthday, but sat mostly with a pleasant homosexual named Gerard, who marveled that the crowd tonight seemed about 30% straight.
I should have waited a little longer before the drive home.
My first cross-dresser, for example.
And seeing so many attractive men -- hitting on one another. But not just men my age. Mexican men I'd put at 56, holding hands. Men who were gay long before it was fashionable, in any circle. The people-watching was fascinating.
Mostly I worked on one Long Island Iced Tea, which I found myself drinking out of a mason jar -- I guess that's how they roll at Georgies.... A young man assessed my outfit as a cross between "retro Seattle" and "naughty librarian", both of which I think he meant as compliments.
I was there for my friend Willie's twenty-second birthday, but sat mostly with a pleasant homosexual named Gerard, who marveled that the crowd tonight seemed about 30% straight.
I should have waited a little longer before the drive home.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
he's soooo right
I'm into month two of Jacobs' saga -- I'm not sure how much of the progress is due to thoroughly enjoying the book and how much to some latent desire to finish before Christmas morning in order to justify having needed to purchase the book for myself instead of registering it with my dad as a holiday wish.
Anyway.
I've discovered a book to be recommended right alongside Christopher Moore's LAMB, and another favorite author. (I'm already raring to dive into THE KNOW-IT-ALL, Jacobs' encyclopedia project.) And I want a day job writing for Esquire the way I wanted to be a Jesuit priest when I started reading James Martin, SJ. But most importantly, I found a gorgeous and pristine three line distillation of my own undergraduate experience:
"I'm poring over religious study books, desperately trying to get a handle on this topic and every other. My reading list grows exponentially. Every time I read a book, it'll mention three other books I feel I have to read. It's like a particularly relentless series of pop-up ads."
Anyway.
I've discovered a book to be recommended right alongside Christopher Moore's LAMB, and another favorite author. (I'm already raring to dive into THE KNOW-IT-ALL, Jacobs' encyclopedia project.) And I want a day job writing for Esquire the way I wanted to be a Jesuit priest when I started reading James Martin, SJ. But most importantly, I found a gorgeous and pristine three line distillation of my own undergraduate experience:
"I'm poring over religious study books, desperately trying to get a handle on this topic and every other. My reading list grows exponentially. Every time I read a book, it'll mention three other books I feel I have to read. It's like a particularly relentless series of pop-up ads."
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Simply having a wonderful Christmas-time...
One of the perils of Christmas shopping is that, inevitably, I find myself staring blankly at the shelves, wondering what friends and loved ones might like to receive on a quiet winter morning, and cataloguing a dozen or so items that I wouldn't mind finding under the tree for myself.
It happened again today. And I should have known better. I should never have gone into a bookstore; I remain the only person in my family who likes to read.
But there it was. A J Jacobs has produced a memoir called The Year of Living Biblically, a chronicle of the months he spent trying to take every rule and regulation he could find in the pages of Scripture (from not stealing to not wearing clothes of mixed fibers) -- literally.
It was calling my name.
I'm not sure if "Thou shalt not buy for thyself in the Christmas season" is actually in there, but I'm pretty sure I broke something walking out with my new purchase. Regardless, I'm looking forward to seeing what Jacobs' encounter with Biblical literalism produces. For a couple of reasons.
(1) Applicability of Scott's "Hermeneutics of Hospitality" course from Spring Semester senior year -- I wonder if Jacobs found the "No interpretation necessary!" version for his project.
(2) This guy's last project was to read the Encyclopedia Britannica in its entirety and write a memoir about it. I admire without question a person who can launch a full-immersion intellectual project like that JUST SO HE CAN FIND OUT WHAT IT WILL DO TO HIM.
(3) The first page is a montage of photos chronicling that year's untamed beard growth.
Wish me luck.
It happened again today. And I should have known better. I should never have gone into a bookstore; I remain the only person in my family who likes to read.
But there it was. A J Jacobs has produced a memoir called The Year of Living Biblically, a chronicle of the months he spent trying to take every rule and regulation he could find in the pages of Scripture (from not stealing to not wearing clothes of mixed fibers) -- literally.
It was calling my name.
I'm not sure if "Thou shalt not buy for thyself in the Christmas season" is actually in there, but I'm pretty sure I broke something walking out with my new purchase. Regardless, I'm looking forward to seeing what Jacobs' encounter with Biblical literalism produces. For a couple of reasons.
(1) Applicability of Scott's "Hermeneutics of Hospitality" course from Spring Semester senior year -- I wonder if Jacobs found the "No interpretation necessary!" version for his project.
(2) This guy's last project was to read the Encyclopedia Britannica in its entirety and write a memoir about it. I admire without question a person who can launch a full-immersion intellectual project like that JUST SO HE CAN FIND OUT WHAT IT WILL DO TO HIM.
(3) The first page is a montage of photos chronicling that year's untamed beard growth.
Wish me luck.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
The Zoo Story
The St. Petersburg Times has been running a nine-part special on the life and times of animals at Lowry Park Zoo -- check it out at
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/webspecials07/special_reports/zoo/
The series' excellence speaks for itself if you bother to check it out.
Chapter Five appeared in this morning's paper, complete with a profile of the zoo's politically dashing and privately enigmatic CEO, Lex Salisbury. Almost at random, the reporter notes that Salisbury wrote his master's thesis on the topic of "heat exchange rates in parrots from New Zealand."
My reaction: For goodness' sake. A master's thesis topic -- written on something that could actually be studied and known.
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/webspecials07/special_reports/zoo/
The series' excellence speaks for itself if you bother to check it out.
Chapter Five appeared in this morning's paper, complete with a profile of the zoo's politically dashing and privately enigmatic CEO, Lex Salisbury. Almost at random, the reporter notes that Salisbury wrote his master's thesis on the topic of "heat exchange rates in parrots from New Zealand."
My reaction: For goodness' sake. A master's thesis topic -- written on something that could actually be studied and known.
Friday, December 7, 2007
without asking anyone
Welcome to the obligatory, epically overlong post of the first-time blogger.
On to its occasion.
I didn't pick up anything by Ayn Rand for years because all I knew of her writing were black-and-white flyers, xeroxed and posted intermittently down the halls of my high school, trumpeting scholarship money ($1000) for the best essay that could be had on the subject of Atlas Shrugged.
That my best friend made it through The Fountainhead our senior year and loved it couldn't quite wash white the scarlet shame of prostituting one's capacity for critical thought toward books I wouldn't have heard of but for the money attached.
Now, safely out of college, I wish I had been a little less discriminating in throwing my hat out for $1000 scholarship offers -- but you can't change the past; you can only get a job and work on paying it off. Two jobs, if you pick an industry where no one can afford to hire anyone full-time. That's the current Florida tourism industry for you. I pick up shifts as a server in one restaurant, and a bartender in another.
In the middle of October I took a snowball full in the face from another bartender's Oasis machine. (An Oasis is basically a blender, but of an intimidatingly efficient variety as far as its ability to render ice cubes to icy pulp.) The conversation that ensued traversed the obvious (he was bored) and meandered among thoughts of things he would rather be doing, to the inclusion of re-reading The Fountainhead.
It was on this recommendation that I finally took it out from the public library, and for the first hundred pages couldn't put it down. Now I've made it all the way through the end of Part Two, and find my attention captive to the great Howard Roark's response to the bewildered sculptor Steve Mallory. Mallory asks, "What do you want me to work on, Howard?" and Roark replies, "I want you to work without asking anyone what he wants you to work on."
I don't think it will be of any use to anyone trying to structure an essay on Atlas Shrugged worth $1000 if I point out one thing glaringly obvious about The Fountainhead: in this world, the heroes don't bow to tradition. They don't worship the forms collectively held to be beautiful over centuries past, and they don't derive self-worth from collective approval in the present. They don't care what others think of them or their art at all. So Roark's comment to Mallory is a critical instance of the invitation some of us need to rediscover our integrity.
In Rand's universe, at least.
But as a reader, I've joined myself to that universe, at least for the last few weeks, and likely the next few, as I negotiate her world by way of what my own has taught me, and perhaps learn the better or worse to negotiate my own world by way of what hers (in turn) is teaching me. And the question of the hour, is what will Mallory produce, without any external reference to what others would commission him to produce.
The question of the hour, is what I would be writing if I had no audience and no stage in mind to write for.
Before you try to get ahead of me, the preceding blog is not my answer.
I do have an audience to write for, and a stage. Ten months from now a religiously-themed convention will occur with or without my involvement, but the powers behind it have asked me to be involved by writing them a play. They've given me almost as free a reign as Roark had for the Stoddard temple, and I guess my fear is that even the foundations will draw a similarly scandalized disapproval.
Here are the first few lines.
(Darkness)
(We hear the voice of a MINISTER, far away.)
MINISTER: We make our beginning in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
PEOPLE (louder; we are in their midst): Amen.
MINISTER (still far away): If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
(sound of kneelers unfolding and PEOPLE shifting position for general confession)
(We hear the hushed voice of JONO, closer than the MINISTER, and getting louder as he makes his way past various PEOPLE, whose surprise and necessary movement in turn becomes audible.)
JONO: Sorry. (Oh!) Pardon me. I'm so sorry. (Pause. Now he is right beside us.) Ahem. (Pause. Hisses:) MALLORY.
MALLORY (hisses back, utterly foiled in her plot of ignoring JONO): WHAT.
JONO: Shhhh! I'm just wondering if you would be able to help with communion later in the service.
MALLORY: ...Are you serious?
JONO: Wish I weren't, but we're short an acolyte. Knew I could count on you.
MALLORY: Jono! You...
JONO (fading): Excuse me again. Ah! Forgive me, dearest...
(At once:)
MALLORY: God.
MINISTER: Most merciful God,
PEOPLE: I, a poor, miserable sinner...
(Fade out. Fade in the last strains of a postlude. JONO and MALLORY are taking off pectoral crosses/albs/cinctures in the sacristy.)
JONO: Thanks again for that.
MALLORY: Don't worry about it. Try to realize you're short an acolyte before confession next time, all right?
JONO: Always.
MALLORY: Jono? Did you hear me?
JONO: I'm having a thought is all.
MALLORY: Jono --
JONO: You know where the minister says, In the same way also after supper he took the cup -- blessed it -- gave it to them and said, "Drink ye all of it, for this is" -- I forget how the rest goes -- but do you think he's saying "Drink ye all of it" like, "Drink ye'all of it" or "Drink ye all of it," because I don't know --
MALLORY: Jono...
JONO: -- and it would be an easy enough thing to check, right? Either we get the "all" in English out of a Greek collective, second person plural, or as a modifier for "it", it being the wine --
MALLORY (firmly): Jono, shut up, please.
JONO: -- and I mean it would just be an interesting theological point either way, right? -- radical inclusion of all the disciples at the institution of the sacrament -- I wonder if Judas was there, do you think? -- or else a firm enough injunction against wasting the host to make you wish for the good old days of Pastor Schroeder; remember when he'd wrap up communion by just swigging the rest of the contents of the common cup?
MALLORY (breaking): Jono, I said shut it! Just shut it! What is with you today? Can you stop (words fail) being yourself, for one damned minute...
JONO (after a long pause): Yeah, mate, sure. Hey. How long have we known each other?
MALLORY (defeated; exasperated, aspirated sigh): Haaa... Junior high.
JONO: Sixth grade.
MALLORY: (bitterly) Sixth grade's junior high --
JONO: February of the sixth grade, Liberty James's twelfth birthday party. Dance party, remember? We didn't know each other but we were both invited, and I had the misfortune to be wearing that awful pair of khaki pants that bunched impressively at the zipper whenever I sat down. And the girls were all making fun of me, right, and you were right there, lost in thought or something, however you get, and they said, "Look, Mallory, Jono has an erec -- "
MALLORY: There are eight state laws that prevent you from saying that word within a hundred feet of the consecrated host.
JONO: Liar. Anyway, I knew you'd remember.
MALLORY: (sighs) Yeah, I remember. I said,
JONO and MALLORY: "Sure, that happens to me all the time."
JONO: Best friends ever since. You didn't even stand a chance. And how long have I been like this? (No immediate response.) How long have I been myself, as you...so delicately put it? (Again, no reply from MALLORY.) The whole time, kid. The whole time. (Settles in for the story.) So you tell me. What's with you today?
Still to come: Mallory's answer.
On to its occasion.
I didn't pick up anything by Ayn Rand for years because all I knew of her writing were black-and-white flyers, xeroxed and posted intermittently down the halls of my high school, trumpeting scholarship money ($1000) for the best essay that could be had on the subject of Atlas Shrugged.
That my best friend made it through The Fountainhead our senior year and loved it couldn't quite wash white the scarlet shame of prostituting one's capacity for critical thought toward books I wouldn't have heard of but for the money attached.
Now, safely out of college, I wish I had been a little less discriminating in throwing my hat out for $1000 scholarship offers -- but you can't change the past; you can only get a job and work on paying it off. Two jobs, if you pick an industry where no one can afford to hire anyone full-time. That's the current Florida tourism industry for you. I pick up shifts as a server in one restaurant, and a bartender in another.
In the middle of October I took a snowball full in the face from another bartender's Oasis machine. (An Oasis is basically a blender, but of an intimidatingly efficient variety as far as its ability to render ice cubes to icy pulp.) The conversation that ensued traversed the obvious (he was bored) and meandered among thoughts of things he would rather be doing, to the inclusion of re-reading The Fountainhead.
It was on this recommendation that I finally took it out from the public library, and for the first hundred pages couldn't put it down. Now I've made it all the way through the end of Part Two, and find my attention captive to the great Howard Roark's response to the bewildered sculptor Steve Mallory. Mallory asks, "What do you want me to work on, Howard?" and Roark replies, "I want you to work without asking anyone what he wants you to work on."
I don't think it will be of any use to anyone trying to structure an essay on Atlas Shrugged worth $1000 if I point out one thing glaringly obvious about The Fountainhead: in this world, the heroes don't bow to tradition. They don't worship the forms collectively held to be beautiful over centuries past, and they don't derive self-worth from collective approval in the present. They don't care what others think of them or their art at all. So Roark's comment to Mallory is a critical instance of the invitation some of us need to rediscover our integrity.
In Rand's universe, at least.
But as a reader, I've joined myself to that universe, at least for the last few weeks, and likely the next few, as I negotiate her world by way of what my own has taught me, and perhaps learn the better or worse to negotiate my own world by way of what hers (in turn) is teaching me. And the question of the hour, is what will Mallory produce, without any external reference to what others would commission him to produce.
The question of the hour, is what I would be writing if I had no audience and no stage in mind to write for.
Before you try to get ahead of me, the preceding blog is not my answer.
I do have an audience to write for, and a stage. Ten months from now a religiously-themed convention will occur with or without my involvement, but the powers behind it have asked me to be involved by writing them a play. They've given me almost as free a reign as Roark had for the Stoddard temple, and I guess my fear is that even the foundations will draw a similarly scandalized disapproval.
Here are the first few lines.
(Darkness)
(We hear the voice of a MINISTER, far away.)
MINISTER: We make our beginning in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
PEOPLE (louder; we are in their midst): Amen.
MINISTER (still far away): If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
(sound of kneelers unfolding and PEOPLE shifting position for general confession)
(We hear the hushed voice of JONO, closer than the MINISTER, and getting louder as he makes his way past various PEOPLE, whose surprise and necessary movement in turn becomes audible.)
JONO: Sorry. (Oh!) Pardon me. I'm so sorry. (Pause. Now he is right beside us.) Ahem. (Pause. Hisses:) MALLORY.
MALLORY (hisses back, utterly foiled in her plot of ignoring JONO): WHAT.
JONO: Shhhh! I'm just wondering if you would be able to help with communion later in the service.
MALLORY: ...Are you serious?
JONO: Wish I weren't, but we're short an acolyte. Knew I could count on you.
MALLORY: Jono! You...
JONO (fading): Excuse me again. Ah! Forgive me, dearest...
(At once:)
MALLORY: God.
MINISTER: Most merciful God,
PEOPLE: I, a poor, miserable sinner...
(Fade out. Fade in the last strains of a postlude. JONO and MALLORY are taking off pectoral crosses/albs/cinctures in the sacristy.)
JONO: Thanks again for that.
MALLORY: Don't worry about it. Try to realize you're short an acolyte before confession next time, all right?
JONO: Always.
MALLORY: Jono? Did you hear me?
JONO: I'm having a thought is all.
MALLORY: Jono --
JONO: You know where the minister says, In the same way also after supper he took the cup -- blessed it -- gave it to them and said, "Drink ye all of it, for this is" -- I forget how the rest goes -- but do you think he's saying "Drink ye all of it" like, "Drink ye'all of it" or "Drink ye all of it," because I don't know --
MALLORY: Jono...
JONO: -- and it would be an easy enough thing to check, right? Either we get the "all" in English out of a Greek collective, second person plural, or as a modifier for "it", it being the wine --
MALLORY (firmly): Jono, shut up, please.
JONO: -- and I mean it would just be an interesting theological point either way, right? -- radical inclusion of all the disciples at the institution of the sacrament -- I wonder if Judas was there, do you think? -- or else a firm enough injunction against wasting the host to make you wish for the good old days of Pastor Schroeder; remember when he'd wrap up communion by just swigging the rest of the contents of the common cup?
MALLORY (breaking): Jono, I said shut it! Just shut it! What is with you today? Can you stop (words fail) being yourself, for one damned minute...
JONO (after a long pause): Yeah, mate, sure. Hey. How long have we known each other?
MALLORY (defeated; exasperated, aspirated sigh): Haaa... Junior high.
JONO: Sixth grade.
MALLORY: (bitterly) Sixth grade's junior high --
JONO: February of the sixth grade, Liberty James's twelfth birthday party. Dance party, remember? We didn't know each other but we were both invited, and I had the misfortune to be wearing that awful pair of khaki pants that bunched impressively at the zipper whenever I sat down. And the girls were all making fun of me, right, and you were right there, lost in thought or something, however you get, and they said, "Look, Mallory, Jono has an erec -- "
MALLORY: There are eight state laws that prevent you from saying that word within a hundred feet of the consecrated host.
JONO: Liar. Anyway, I knew you'd remember.
MALLORY: (sighs) Yeah, I remember. I said,
JONO and MALLORY: "Sure, that happens to me all the time."
JONO: Best friends ever since. You didn't even stand a chance. And how long have I been like this? (No immediate response.) How long have I been myself, as you...so delicately put it? (Again, no reply from MALLORY.) The whole time, kid. The whole time. (Settles in for the story.) So you tell me. What's with you today?
Still to come: Mallory's answer.
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