Chapter 1 An Escape Plan

I don't think it's betraying a confidence to admit that, for a while, the principal places for gambling in Mississippi were the Mayflower Cafe and the Jackson Country Club.  It was at the Country Club that I'd play my card.

Although very few of my friends did, all of my dad's friends knew that I was critically unhappy in my life in Jackson.  Of all Daddy's friends, I had an affinity for Rowan Taylor.  We shared an appreciation for art, women, and whiskey.  He asked me once, "what is it you want out of life, son?"  I had no answer for him.  

When I said what I said, my father looked at my mother and his mother, who had dubious expressions on their faces.  "Whatever you feel like you need to do, I'll support you, but come see me in the morning."  My father's office was at most a hundred steps from where I had set up camp in a corner of one of our five conference rooms, the one we opened mail in, with two computers, a scanner, and a printer.  "Come talk to me in the morning." meant that he was taking what I said seriously but that we should talk about it alone, lest it upset his mother, which it did.

There were men in Jackson who became concerned that Mississippi was developing a bad reputation around the country and around the world.  One of their responses to this was to dress modernly and adapt modern designs for their buildings and offices.  The result of this effort was buildings like First National Bank, Capitol Towers, and The Sun-n-Sand Motel.  Dumas Milner was a prime mover in this modernizing trend, and so was my father.  

For some people, the Capitol Street Gang was betraying our sound Southern Heritage.  The criticisms didn't change anything.  Mississippi was moving into the sixties if it gasfaced the navy.  When it came time to move the Country Club from West Jackson to North Jackson, many members wanted a Greek Revival style like an antebellum home, but Dad and Rowan and Dumas Milner and a few others pushed for what we now know as mid-century modern.  My Grandfather was one of the ones who preferred the Greek Revival style.  Ultimately the modernists won out, and although several remodelings have tried to hide the building's base design style is still very evident.  

Daddy didn't play golf or tennis.  For some people, membership in the Country Club was a sign you'd made it in the world; for Daddy, it was a sign to the rest of the world that we weren't quite the mindless savages we appeared to be on television.  At least not all the time.  The Country Club provided us a great place to swim, although I don't think my father ever actually witnessed this.  Usually, we were just dropped off by my mother and told to put these elastic bands around our ankles with numbered tags on them.  I suppose so they could identify the body if we drowned, which no one ever did.  At least not to my knowledge.

One service of the Country Club Daddy used was the Sunday Buffet.  Organizing outings to the Country Club for Sunday lunch was something of a statistical ordeal.  Starting from Galloway, we had to get my Grandparents, My father's family, his sister's family, and any visiting relatives to the Country Club and in line by twelve-thirty or we'd be standing in line for an hour before anyone ate.  For a ten-year-old, it was a challenge to keep my shirt tucked in and out of trouble until we got to the table.  For a twenty-four-year-old, it was more a matter of lasting in line, still suffering from the effects of the Saturday night before.  

For some time, Daddy and I had been discussing how unhappy I was in my life in my job.  I'm an extremely object-oriented person.  Like my father, my happiness depended almost entirely on my relationship with my work.  Unlike my father, I wasn't in anywhere near the right field for my talents and skills.  This conflict was leaving me very empty and unfulfilled.  I'd given up on my art in hopes that it might help me align myself with what my job actually required.  

Being competent but not good at my job was a problem.  I'd been through that with school, but that problem I could blame on my reading problems.  This was real life.  I needed to excel, and I wasn't.  

At that point, my job was to help organize twenty-seven other office supply companies into a buying cooperative and coordinate our core inventory system and develop a catalog and purchasing history program for what became known as the Office Supply Ordering System that we were members of, but decided to develop on our own.  My father began moving me into more of the marketing and advertising part of the company.  Although my performance was sporadic, the programs I was involved in were successful.  Although people thought I had potential and had some technical skills nobody else in the company had, it was becoming clear that I was very unhappy, and it was affecting my performance.  I wasn't going to be the success my father, and his uncle, and his father were.  For me, that wasn't good enough.  I needed a plan.

Knowing that I wasn't performing anywhere near my capacity made me feel like I was constantly disappointing everyone.  Knowing that the things I could do much better meant nothing to the people who depended on me made the situation much worse.  I felt like a fraud.  "Take the money and shut up.  Life should be this easy for everybody." Some would say.  I was constantly aware that I was wasting an opportunity many would kill for.  It didn't help to know this.  I felt like a spoiled asshole who should just go along to get along.  I also felt like if I died, it wouldn't be so bad.

At this point, I'd been involved in two relationships, both ended with the other party deciding they wanted to be with someone else.  The first was perfect, no harm, no foul; we went our separate ways with no hard feelings.  I wasn't so lucky with the second one.  She wasn't willing to let me go until I'd spent almost two years helping her dad out of a jam and making sure she had a chance at a college education.  At no point was she willing to make any sort of commitment to me, but should I ever waver in my commitment to her, I'd receive a lengthy and tearful phone call to reconsider.  One day she said, "sometimes you look at me like you hate me."  "I don't hate anyone,"  was my reply.  I think she knew I wanted to escape from everything, including her, but she wasn't ready to go it on her own.

I couldn't love my partner.  I couldn't love my job.  My art was in abeyance, and it'd been two years since I'd seen a movie that I really liked.  I needed to do something.  To change something.

I had a plan to escape.  I'd been thinking about it for a while.  The idea thrilled me, but it also filled me with doubts and regret.  Escaping meant leaving behind every person and every responsibility I had in Mississippi.  Maybe it'd work out, maybe it wouldn't, but I would be far away and separated from everyone either way.  There was no guarantee this would work, but I thought I had to try something.  Telling my family would be difficult.  Lunch, Sunday a the Country Club was the soonest time they'd all be together.

"I've sent in applications to USC and UCLA for their film program.  I'd like to join their undergraduate program, then move on to the MFA program at either school."  I said after the plates were removed and Bubba's Sanka coffee was served.

Silence.

My father looked at my mother, then his mother.  There was a hurt look on her face.  "That's California," she said.  "Yes, Los Angeles,"  I said.  That I might try and escape this life they'd laid out for me since my mother announced she was having another child had never crossed anyone's mind.  What I was talking about was a betrayal.

"Come talk to me in the morning" was my father's escape plan from discussing my escape plan.  

géant brisé

When introducing him to his readers, Hugo describes Quasimodo: "One would have pronounced him a giant who had been broken and badly put together again."  

Even before my body was actually broken, there was never a time when I didn't feel exactly this.  I doubt if there will ever be a better interpretation of the book than the 1939 RKO version with Charles Laughton.  At the end, with Frollo vanquished and Esmerelda freed, Quasimodo sits alone in the battlements of the cathedral beside one of its famous gargoyles and laments his life, "oh, why was I not made of stone, like thee." and the camera angle changes to reveal the immensity of the cathedral and the smallness of Quasimodo.  

A feeling of isolation is part of the human condition.  We are every one trapped inside our own minds, spending our lives trying to discover ways to reach someone, anyone, before the lights go out on us.  I've never met anyone, not the strongest, not the most beautiful, not the most intelligent, who didn't have feelings of brokenness, of isolation, guilt, and loneliness.  It's always been my gift and my curse to see that behind the eyes of the people I meet.  It's one of the reasons Southern men tend to make humor out of self-effacing.  "I am weak.  I am broken. But you need strength from me, so I'll make a joke of it."  

There is a giant of untapped potential inside all of us.  Even those who you think couldn't possibly do more have infinitely more potential inside themselves.  Bragging is a combination of recognizing those untapped reserves and an apology for not producing them.  Some of us are better at releasing the giant inside of us, but I've never met anyone who was good at it, and I've met some amazing people.

Broken giant is a lonely existence.  Our closest companions are stone simulacrums, made twisted echos of ourselves, but without heart or emotion.  They have an advantage over us, always, because they do not feel, and feeling will almost always have moments when it tortures us, whoever you are.  

In discussing his career, Laughton said that Quasimodo is the character he played that was the most like him.  That's been interpreted as a reflection of his sexuality or his weight, or his lack of physical beauty, but I always saw it as a reflection of his humanity.  We are all broken giants.  The bells and the gargoyles are much easier for us to communicate with than each other.  We all sit alone on the parapet of life's cathedral, watching the happy people of Paris below us, envious of the unfeeling stone.  Like Quasimodo, whoever you are, life will, at times seem like something for others, but not for you.

Kings and Rubber Cigars

Today is the epiphany, or the theophany if you're Coptic, which always seemed a better name for me since the point is that the day represents the revealing of the theos, or Godness of Jesus, roughly "God Appears" in English. (apologies to those whose greek is far better than mine.)

In most traditions, it celebrates the day the Magi followed the star of Bethlehem to pay their respects to the baby Jesus. "Magi" is a Persian word usually associated with Zoroastrianism, meaning "priest" or "philosopher," but often translated to "wise men" or "king" in English.

The Magi are only mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew. It doesn't mention their names, their countries, or even how many there were. There being three of them, their three different nationalities and their three names are all part of supernumerary and not canon Christian traditions.

Much of the traditions we associate with the Magi come, not from the Gospel, but from the Old Testament, particularly from Isaiah predicting the coming of the Messiah. They bring gifts to the newborn "king of the Jews," or "the true king of the Jews," or "Messiah." Their presence and their naming the baby "King of the Jews" is what first reveals Jesus as the Messiah, and so that's why we celebrate it. It also predicts the next step in the Jesus story, where the acting King of the Jews, Herod the Great, seeks to destroy the baby before it can take his throne, forcing the holy family to escape to Egypt, much like Joseph did.

In English tradition, Ephiphany is associated with wassailing, or the visiting of orchards to procure their cider, which should have a reasonably strong alcoholic content by this time of the year, so it's a good day to get smashed and sing. In the American tradition, you're also supposed to have your Christmas decorations down by today, so you can start putting up your Valentine's day decorations.

We three kings of Orient are

Trying to smoke this rubber cigar

it was loaded and exploded

spreading us ever so far

How to Paint: Lesson One

If I'm gonna do this painting thing, then I'm gonna do it for mastery, not to pass the time because I got nothing better to do.  That sounds like a bold statement for somebody who quit doing it for almost thirty years and was only moderately talented to begin with.  All that's true, but I'm just that kind of an asshole.

I have weird ideas about art.  They're similar to my weird ideas about religion.  Both involve chasing something you can't ever touch and most never catch even a glimpse of.  Beauty is a fundamental force of the universe, both creating and destroying; it is a principal motivator in whatever game God plays.  It's a principal element in what drives him to create, essentially us, as well as everything else, but then also to destroy the same so that its fleeting temporal nature magnifies the intensity of its value.  That its overwhelming power can exist only in the liquid nature of time encourages us to persevere, even though we are meek and puny in the face of beauty.    

Because art and beauty have no structure or definition, I figure if I go about it also without structure and definition, then I'll just get lost and confused and probably drink myself to death like Hemmingway.  Just kidding about that, although losing his path really is how Papa died.  Watercolor is a new medium for me.  That's good, though.  That means I can't use shit I learned when I was sixteen as a crutch.  I have to learn all new disciplines, all new methods, and perspectives.  Since I'm moving into the second half of a centenarian life, I have to be mindful of constantly learning new things to keep my mind exercised to prevent its decline.  I've seen what happens when it declines, and I don't want that.  Since music, dance, and science seem out of the question, art must be the way to go.  I'm not spending the rest of my life learning new words for scrabble.

All of that unnecessary verbiage aside, here's the plan:  five new watercolor paintings a week.  They may be exercises, or they may be an attempt at finished pieces, but there must be five of them, at least nine by twelve inches in size.  Because all my research so far says that drawing is a key element of watercolor, then I'll need to do at least five drawings a week, separate from the painting, although they can be used to prepare myself for a painting.  Draw it once as a drawing, draw it again as the underpinning of a painting, like so.  That's a total of ten hours a week working on this project.  That's nothing.  I used to spend twenty-five hours a week sitting on my ass at scrooges.  This is a lot more productive and a lot less likely to lead me into chatting up a woman who might ruin my life.  The food won't be as good, though, and sometimes I really miss whiskey and tobacco.  There may be weeks when I do ten paintings, but there have to be at least five.  It's too easy to "think about" painting without actually doing it.  I did that for longer than some of you have been alive.  

None of this is to say I will be any good.  None of my efforts to paint or write or draw or sculpt or act is to "be good" or seek approval; it's about whatever that's inside me needs coming out, and it won't leave me alone unless I let it.  There were times in my life when I would do these things and not tell anyone, not my wife, not my mother, not my father; it's not about that.  What's different now is that I've found that it's actually kind of nice if I share what I'm doing.  Sharing is good like Mrs. Nelson said.  Naps are good too, but I've napped too long.  It's time for work.