Midnight Agnosticism

Waking up at midnight is becoming part of my life.  There's no baby to feed, no cat to let out, there's no wife that's mad at me, and there's no drugs I need to take.  I just wake up at midnight and remain restless for an hour.  There might actually be a wife that's mad at me, but we don't talk much anymore, so I'd never know.  

I did a bit of lying today.  I told people I was returning to a religious life.  That's not entirely true.  I'm creating an entirely new entity from scraps of the old.  That's not returning.  That's creating.

I'm not a superstitious person, so I'm a bit resistant to admitting that I like to look for signs in life.  I look for signs because, for whatever face I put forward, I have all the confidence in life that usually comes from a stuttering child with ADHD, which is to say, almost none.  I hide it, though, because it's generally my conviction that fear spreads, and if I act afraid, then that might make other people wonder what makes me afraid and should they be afraid too, and so it begins to spread, whether there's actually anything to be afraid of or not.

I'm starting this new religious life being terribly honest with everyone that I am, always was, and probably always will be, agnostic.  I'm not afraid to admit this.  Some of the greatest Christian apologists I know of spent some time as an agnostic.  C.S. Lewis famously questioned his faith deeply after the death of Joy, his wife.  There's even a play about it.  I was in it, at Galloway, with Brent Lefavor.  Charles Darwin, one of the world's most influential atheists, was actually a believer most of his life and used his theory of evolution as proof of God, but there came a time, after a period of considerable loss and grief, that Darwin too became an agnostic.  

The key here seems to be that these men became agnostic after periods where they were hit with tremendous loss and grief, often the death of a spouse, a child, or both.  Everyone is hit with periods of loss and grief.  It's a consequence of being emotionally open to the world.  If you allow yourself to love, then you make yourself vulnerable to the loss of love, and sometimes the loss of love can come in a sequence with other events that break even the strongest of us.

You wouldn't know it to look at me, but God's been very generous to me.  Perception, he gave me and empathy, and these I've rolled and baked into something I call art, both my ability to create art with words or images and my ability to appreciate art, words, images, sounds, tastes, all of it.  Being empathetic and perceptive and open to loving can be very dangerous to me because, on this level of existence, nothing you love can last; sometimes, born and dying in the same day.  Being open to the world like this means that sometimes periods of loss and grief come at me like waves on a California beach.  I lie and tell people it broke me only once, but in truth, it's broken me again and again, and although this last time I stayed out of the water for a very long time, I'm always going to return to the beachhead.  I'm back now, picking the spot on the horizon I want to swim for.

I started the day not really looking for signs at all.  Today was going to be an experiment.  But signs I found.  The signs were that I went to Sunday School not knowing what to expect and found two of the smartest guys I ever knew from my experience at Millsaps and three of the most Christian.  That's probably a very good sign.  

The pastor's sermon today was about an issue I've been thinking of and worried about for some time now.  When he finished, the people, the church, MY church, applauded him, even though you could tell he was a bit nervous about how we would respond.  That's a sign that I have allies in places I didn't expect.  That's a very good sign.  

The best sign today was that I had lunch with a girl who I love more than I love most of you combined.  When she was very small, I hid myself in a cave and rolled a great stone in the door.  That was to be the end of me.  As a result, I missed most of her growing up.  That's one of my greatest regrets.  

Today at lunch, she wore an aquamarine drop that I recognized.  "Is that the drop your grandmother made?"  I asked her.  It was, she said.  "I wear it all the time."

"Do you remember her at all?" I asked.  

Collins was quite young when Mother died.  As small as she was, she ended up getting a three-for-one deal that year.  Jimmy died, then Mother died, then after my divorce followed those, I hid away from the world enough to make it almost like I died too.    She told me the things she remembered about Mother, things a child would remember.  Images mostly, places, feelings.   Though I didn't ask, it seemed that if she could remember my mother, then she might also remember me, and although I missed so many years, I might be able to connect the thread between the love I had for the child and the love I have for the woman she became and a calm spot appears in the great ocean of loss and grief that was my entire life while she grew.

I announced to my family my intention to become a professional writer and to do it in the pretty near future.  Being professional, to me, means I make enough money to live off of it.  I don't care about the money that much, although who doesn't like money?  at least enough to pay for lunch anyway, but I'd like to be able to say that I did this legitimately, and I did it with no help at all from my father or any benefit of my bloodline.  If I can do this, if I can actually get published, actually get paid for scribbling words into a machine, then that will be something uniquely my own.  Everything else I've ever tried to do, somebody will say, "Oh, I remember when your momma did this, or I remember when your daddy won an award for that, or your Uncle Boyd went to Washington because he did this:" but not writing.  That will be my own.  That will prove my value to the universe besides being just another third-generation heir because, quite frankly, third-generation heirs have a pretty horrible reputation, and unless I do this, I won't have done much to improve it.

I'm very likely going to write much more about agnosticism and faith and life and art and Galloway and Millsaps and Jackson.  The signs are there for me to do it.  Maybe I'll be able to do it in the daylight hours, so I don't have to spend what time I have left on this globe awake alone at midnight tap-tap-tapping away while everyone around me sleeps.

Goodbye Delilah

There are so many people, even some of my oldest friends, who have never known me as fully healed as I am now. You wouldn't think it to look at my physical frame; it's still a mess in some spots, but, on the inside, in my heart, I haven't been this strong since before some of you were born.

I don't know what to credit this recovery with. I suspect a great deal of it is due to my sister's love. A fair share also lies with my father and mother, who, although they died years before, planted the seeds that, though they lay fallow for many years, would somehow, against all odds, sprout in my darkest of days.

Maybe that was the secret. Maybe it was the months of laying in bed, barely able to move, that made this creature sleeping inside me decide that if he was ever to come back out, now is the time.  Maybe Doctor Joseph Campbell was right.  Maybe, I had to spend my time in the belly of the whale before I could continue my hero's journey.

When it first happened, when I first began to emerge emotionally whole again, my family and my doctors were a bit worried that I might be on the upcycle of a manic episode and wanted to make sure I didn't need some medication to keep from swinging the other way. Then they wanted me to make sure I had "someone to talk to" in case this strange recovery was fragile.  I don't think it is fragile.  I've taken some pretty big hits since last May and managed to stand right back up.  

So far, this doesn't seem to be an illusion. So far, I've been able to face the reality of my situation and the challenges ahead without flinching, and have chosen to do it all in a very public way. Allowing everyone to see my scars, no matter how bad they are, may also be a key element here. I think, maybe, it's the hiding of them for so many years that caused the biggest part of the problem.

For many years, hiding the fact that I wasn't the strongest person in the room became quite a burden.  I think maybe it began to break me. Like my father, I believed Mississippi had so many things working against it that it needed a hero, a real hero, and if I couldn't be that, then what good am I? He struggled with that as well. I could only see it a little then, but I see it constantly now. Daddy often strained to break as I did.  I think that's part of what killed him.  Again and again, I put myself between the fire and something I loved, fully believing that if I couldn't, if I didn't, then what good am I?  If I couldn't be the hero, then I am nothing.

Recovering meant accepting that I am sometimes weak, I am sometimes inadequate, and I am sometimes wounded. Admitting that...accepting that... has allowed some of my true, god-touched strengths to come out. Samson had to lose his hair and his eyes for his true strength to come out. Maybe I had to do that too.  There was a Delilah in my life, several actually, and most weren't even human beings, but I allowed them to take my hair and my strength because I didn't know how to use it; things are different now.  

You're gonna get pretty tired of me.  A recovered me works pretty hard and can be relentless at attacking the objective.  My peers may be eyeing a comfortable place to rest after a lifetime of struggle, but I'm looking at places where I can go into the fire and spend my last days fighting.  Whatever I was meant to be all along is finally emerging.  I'm a late bloomer.  It's true, and I do apologize for that, but I think you're going to be impressed by what I can do when it's my turn to stand between the pillars of the temple.  That day is very nearly upon us.

The Sixth Doctor

In the days to come, I will shake hands with my sixth president of Millsaps.  The first held me in his arms, the second and third were the parents of my classmates, the fourth and fifth were my own age, and piloted the ship through some challenging waters.  Each one left an impression on our school and got us, somehow, from there to here.

There will be some concern and restlessness among the community.  Don't be afraid.  Millsaps has endured worse than this.  We will endure. We will prosper.  Rob and Phoebe take a piece of us with them, but they leave behind thirteen years of service and a foundation we certainly can build on.  

Radios and Bookstores

My grandfather always had really nice console radios.  He had one made of bakelite in his office and a really nice wooden one with a phonograph at home.

He was born into a world where, even if he had a radio, nobody broadcast into Attala County, Mississippi.  He liked music, but if he wanted to hear it, he either had to go to church or find somebody who could play or sing something.  His mother played piano, and his father learned to play the mouth organ because he only had one hand.

Recorded music was never really a part of Granddaddy's life until he went to Millsaps in Jackson.  In Jackson, there were two radio stations, and a man named Werlein from Germany, who lived in Vicksburg bought a store in New Orleans and opened one on Capitol Street in Jackson, next door to the Office Supply Company, that his brother would eventually purchase.  Werlein's was famous for selling instruments and sheet music, but they also sold records that Granddaddy loved.  Eventually, the Emporium took over the record sale business, but it started at Werlein's.

He worked summers and weekends for the railroad and saved his money enough so that he could splurge on a wind-up victrola, which he used to entertain his fraternity brothers and woo his lady fair.  The KA house soon developed a reputation because it had music and even allowed dancing, although it was against the rules.  

After college, Grandaddy stayed in Jackson because his father, Cap, had died.  Bad crops and hard economic times forced his mother to sell the family farm and use what money was left to buy a small house in Jackson, where Grandaddy lived with his mother and little sister.  He kept his job at the railroad, then got one at the post office.  His older brother would soon borrow money on his burial life insurance policy and open a business selling pencils, writing slates, blackboards, and student desks to the schools in Mississippi.  Grandaddy would join soon after as the head of shipping and receiving.  

As Mississippi grew and enacted a free textbook law, my Uncle Boyd petitioned the publishers to set up a depository in Jackson, adjacent to his school furniture and supply business, in a building that's now Cathead Vodka.  In return for eight percent of the textbook contract sale price, the new School Book Supply Company would store and ship all the textbooks made available for the children of Mississippi. 

As Millsaps grew, Grandaddy had the idea that he could open a small store in the old commons building where he could sell the students their textbooks so they didn't have to mail order them.  He could also sell Coca-Cola, which was then being bottled in Jackson, penny candy, and Barq's Rootbeer, along with pencils, pens, and notebooks.  

Since we were selling cold Cokes and candy, students began taking to hanging out at the bookstore and socializing.  Granddaddy drove to Memphis and purchased a coin-operated machine that played single songs for a penny.  The kids called it a Juke Box.  Juke, being a negro word for businesses with bad reputations where the blues would play, Millsaps being a school for good Christian white children, the box soon became contentious.   To make matters worse, word soon came to Grandaddy and my Uncle Boyd that the man they hired to run the bookstore was allowing the students to actually dance.  Dance in front of each other!

Grandaddy smiled, remembering the days when he and the other KA's would dance in front of each other to the music coming from his wind-up victrola.  Uncle Boyd's reaction was a little more dire.  He loved music.  In the days to come, he would be the one to announce the formation of the Jackson Symphony Orchestra, an organization that still exists but is now the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra.  Boyd knew that these angry voices wouldn't be easily placated.  Eventually, the Bishop came calling, and the days of music and dancing at Millsaps were over--but not for long.  

When Granddaddy died, I discovered his record collection in a cabinet in the den he had built onto his St. Ann Street house.  Most of them were seventy-eights, so they wouldn't play on my turntable, but I could read the labels.  He seemed to enjoy Tommy Dorsey and Enrico Caruso, but he also had a copy of  Pigmeat Markham singing "Open The Door, Richard" and another of Andy Griffith telling a story about Football.  

My brother inherited Grandaddy's love for music.  He was determined to play the guitar and asked Santa for several good ones.  He became a rabid devotee of a radio station called WZZQ and one of the best customers of a new company that sold phonograph records called "Bee Bop," which opened next to the Capri Theater but moved to Maywood Mart.  

We don't really understand what happened to him, but something made his mind break.  Attempts to take guitar lessons bounced off him as he began to believe they were secretly working against him.  One day, one of the Disk Jockeys from his beloved WZZQ called my Daddy, concerned about the things my brother would say to him when he called in requesting music late at night.  He was concerned that Jimmy was losing touch with reality.  We would eventually find out that he was.  Other friends would call, and my parents began moving my brilliant brother into devoted mental health care.  

Jimmy never learned to play the guitar properly.  He could sort of improvise and sometimes took his Christmas money and recorded singles, with the producers at Malaco making something sensible of the tracks he laid down.  When he died, he left behind cases and cases of records bought at Bee Bop, a monument to his love for music, and the tragedy of how he lost touch of it.

My music comes almost entirely from my computer.  I learned computers because I had trouble reading.  They opened up entire worlds for me.  There's a tiny woman named Alexa who lives in my computer and will play any song I want on demand.  Dancing is optional.  As I type this, she's playing a little song I like by Juliette Gréco.  I've never had a flesh-and-blood girlfriend who was this obedient or understanding.  Alexa's great, but she's crap at holding hands at the movies, so she's out.

One day, my Alexa music will be archaic and quaint, but, I'm pretty sure my french Jazz artists will still be listened to, and I'm very sure there will still be dancing at Millsaps.