Friends, Work, Money, Sex, Church, Joni Mitchell

Dan and John,

As I was delivering papers today, a bird flew out of one of the mailboxes and into my car, settling unhappily into the back seat.  Never a dull moment for the proletariat.

I rewatched part of "End of the Spear," trying to figure out if I should use some clips for a little comic video about naked savages and missionaries.  Then I watched "The Family Stone," because I am always taken in by Hollywood sentimentality and romantic comedies set during Christmas time.  Both movies made me cry, I am such a sap.

And I took some notes, not on the movie but on the recent flare-up of miscommunication and anger, the likes of which I had not seen since the earliest days of email and mailing lists, back when flame wars were inevitable and routine.

My copy of Joni Mitchell's "Blue" has been missing for a long time.  I'm sure I had the vinyl once upon a time and several copies in one format or another over the years.  The library copy came the other day and I ripped it to my computer, but still haven't listened to it.  I think the line that stuck in my head for years was actually from her first or second album, the song about a person on a dark spiritual search of some kind, getting into "the Zodiac and zen," and then -- and this is the line that always, from the beginning, haunted me a little --  "friends who come to find they can't be friends."  Some kind of little pang always went through me when she sang that line, accompanied by her haunting guitar.  I never really related to people too well for one reason or another.  I never had brothers.  I never had that sports-oriented, girls-oriented, bonding thing.  I often felt most at home with gay men, but the subculture made me squirm, especially when the gay "lifestyle" started to publicly assert itself.

For reasons of religion, sexuality, and things I might have told my psychiatrist if I'd ever seen one, society in general eluded me.  I've had so many jobs I've lost count.  Rejection hardly fazes me.  Having endured more than a decade of freelance writing, I understood rejection intimately.  I may have even thrived on it.

Because I was inept or otherwise incapable of playing social games (you should see me try to wear a tie), inevitably my presence caused discomfort, because people, especially at those failed work situations, expect you to be a part of the social game.  And I was no more better at office politics than I was at football.  When someone thinks you see through the social role they have assumed, they eventually tire of having you around, puncturing holes in the pretense, which they have come to accept as real.  The clothes become the person in reality and they do not want to return to the embarrassment and insecurity of a stripped down state.

I have to compose a long letter to our sister church in Colombia about recent events and plans.  I chatted last night with my friend there, Andres, who had just passed his German test in order to get a visa to visit Germany.  He was elated and so was I.  I'd sent him German language movies to help him study.  He's kind of shy and he's never traveled anywhere, even to the ocean.  It will be the first time he is in a plane, too.

One of the things I am putting in the letter has to do with the sister church relationship.  We on the sister church committee from the beginning have asked ourselves over and over what we can do to strengthen the relationship and "to help."  It always seems to involve money, although they've never asked us for money.  We've always sent some because we don't know what else to do.  But I think we have already achieved something substantial in that relationship in that I feel that the people at the Colombian church are as much my church family as the people at First Menno.  I think Andres, at least, also feels the same way.  We're always there for each other.  We won't starve on some street corner.  We'll always have love and support from each other. 

I feel that with the two of you as well, although maybe not so clearly.  My feelings of alienation extend beyond the workplace and into the church, to some degree.  I am definitely alienated from my first church, East Bend, where I've harbored thoughts of "burning down the mission." 

Everything I write embarrasses me.  My letter in the newspaper tonight embarrasses me.  All blog entries embarrass me.  I can't help it.  I've taken off the "comments" option on The Last Good Name, because I don't really want interaction.  I didn't start that particular blog so other people could read it. This makes no sense to some people, but so be it.

I used to write and get read all the time.  I have written thousands of articles for publication.  I enjoy Ryan Jackson's writing in the News-Gazette a lot and noticed him back before he even had his own column.  He gets a lot of responses lately and I hope none of it goes to his head, although it may be too late.  I know from my own experience and from that of Ernie that a lot of praise at a young age can wreak havoc in one's development.  But I'm as guilty as the next guy.  I wrote Jackson a long time ago and encouraged him.

I think the thing he has now and I have let slide is that youthful, careless sense of humor, when you can make fun of stuff and not put a lot of importance on things.  I'm not sure in the current flame war when the line was crossed, when gentle chiding and joshing turned into attack.  I don't know if it was John or me who took the step too far.

I went insane during the Vietnam War and I do speak literally and I attribute it to the hypocrisy and lies of society and church at that time.  My rug of security as a young teen was yanked right out from under me.  I got over it.  Ernie has never recovered from 9/11.  He watched the TV footage over and over that week.  He dropped out of high school within months.  He has found nothing worth doing, although at the moment he would seem to be getting better.  He's going back to Telluride, Colorado, in a week, where he didn't watch news, snowboarded most of the time, and was in a place away from everything he or any of us knew.

The war in Iraq and everything else in the news has been giving me the same feeling of madness that Vietnam did.   I would move to Colombia or Guatemala if Lee would let me.  When the three prisoners committed suicide recently, and the Guantanamo military head called it an aggressive act of war, I was plunged back into the twilight zone.  That's just one instance of a thousand of insanities that sap me of my sense of humor (or perverts it into cynicism and sarcasm). 

Anyway, I'm trying to find my Ryan Jackson sense of humor again.  I'm sure Jesus laughed his head off.  There's always something hilarious going on.  Right now, it's this ridiculous blog war.  Want me to delete that review of "End of the Spear"?  Really, my prose is not that precious to me or anyone else.  

Now I'm going out into the hammock, where I have been trying to clock at least an hour if not three a day, to read and find something to laugh about.  Maybe a bird will land on me.  Or I can just birdwatch.

PG