Well, B.Dalton and Waldenbooks lost more of my business today. They're the only bookstores worth frequenting in Charleston, and I stopped by today. (The private nooks are outrageously priced. The only other chain is books-a-million, whose service is surpassed in irrelevancy only by their dumb title.)
They don't have a poetry section.
Why not? You sure as heck got me! When I walk into a bookstore, I want a place to go, a raison d'etre there in the first place! I want to feel loved!
Sigh. I was nearly reconciled to the absence of the poetry when I discovered in the literature section of Waldenbooks and in the sports section of B.Dalton a few copies of "Best-Loved Poems of Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis."
I stalked from the premises, deterred only by half-price christmas cards and a cheap anthology of southern literature. The nerve.
Wow. I woke up yesterday with an annoying headache, one which morphed last night into a killer migraine. I woke up this morning with throbbing brain, wanting to vomit. I took that as a sign to stay home from church. Out of his forty-something years of migraine experience, Dad gave me some Excedrin. I had breakfast, took the pills, and then plopped down with our dachshund Daisy for a long morning's nap.
I'm not sure what made the dreams go wrong. Maybe it was my incredible admiration (and envy) for folks like Natalie and Emily who can take great pictures like nobody's business. Maybe it was the Excedrin...
Whatever it was, all of a sudden I was on an airplane over the Pacific. Not in, but on. The plane was a blend of Boeing, Japanese tour bus, and big-city metro tram. I was on the outside, chatting with a flight attendant (Rick? Sam?). Strangely, we became fast friends, clinging precariously to this vehicle and discussing the meatier issues of our lives. Made it to America, where we both boarded another plane, this time headed across the Atlantic. Tired by now of such dangerous seating, we tried to find a place inside. No luck.
We were resigned to our lot and just about to takeoff when another flight attendant (Lucy?) announced that due to choppy air ahead, all persons over the age of sixty must de-board immediately. The plane slowed and we deposited a bunch of senior citizens on the tarmac, which allowed me a traditional seat inside. Unfortunately, the powers of physics were not with us that morning, and the plane was still insanely crowded. I had to share a seat with Rick, or Sam, or whatever his name was. He talked the whole way there.
When we finally arrived in Charleston, WV, I walked home. Home was on the edge of a neighborhood unlike any I have ever seen. The neighborhood held buildings close enough to one another and sized such that at any given hour, shadows and brilliant hues of light warred for control of the eye's perception. Here, my dream shifts from past tense to present. It is difficult to describe this transition, which makes me think that there are two different dreams at work.
I am home. Mom asks me to call and ask a local gas station about their hours. She wants me to pick some groceries up on my way somewhere, but I don't really know this place's location. As soon as I say so, a woman's voice comes through the cordless telephone describing where they're located, almost as if she has been listening in on my home conversations the whole time. I haven't even dialed, yet.
Soon, I am walking through a brick-walled alley on a cobbled path, guided by a woman's directions. Suddenly, she waves from an upper-story window in one of the brick walls. Her hair is wild and wiry, and her arms possess the thinness of old-woman arms, muscles sagging from the bone. She stares down at me with the uncertainty of a strange rodent, unsure as to whether I am friend or foe. Has she seen that I too hold a phone to my ear? A few more paces, and the wall opens up into an open courtyard with several pumps. The electric lights here remain on 24 hours a day, casting a fluorescent green ambiance over everything within 50 yards of the gas station. I am here. I take a picture.
Oddly, I'm very embarrassed that this woman has guessed who I am. I wave back in non-committal fashion, mentally marking this location in my mind, and pass on by the gas station. The dilemma is simple, really: either I stop and acknowledge that she has guessed rightly who her caller is and what he looks like, or I continue, foiling her in her attempts to ferret her rodent-like way into my life and pretending to talk to someone different on my cordless phone.
I choose the second option, mouthing nonsense words with no sound into my handheld receiver. She hangs up her phone. I keep walking. The road turns uphill as I continue past the eerie courtyard and alongside the windowed wall of the gas station. I see another woman within the gas station, an employee. She busily assembles small, four-sided paper cups of fries and then squirts gobs of butterscotch icing on each one. More picture opportunities. There are hundreds of ready-to-sell fry-cups lined up along every level space in her work area: shelves, floor, pans, coolers, the refrigerator and even the open windowsill by my feet -- feet which keep on moving up the hill.
After the gas station, I pass several darkened places of business: a laundromat, perhaps a bank, law offices. I give a violent start at the realization that peering out of the shadows on my left is a long line of carousel horses. Teeth bared, eyes rolling, manes flickering in the wind, immobilized in wood and gilt and pastel paint, they seem quite macabre and malevolent in the deepening shades of gray. I snap another shot, quite pleased, and then hurry on, wondering if the gas station proprietor still watches me with her gerbil-uncertainty from behind and above.
Acting casual, I heave a sigh of relief upon mounting the hill's crest, which is also a crossroad. Harsh afternoon light pours along this cross street, and I am grateful for the warmth of color. Another shot. I turn right, following this vein of sunlit ore through a chemical processing area. The only open ground here has been divided into rectangular plots, each one full of a different kind of junk. I notice a wooly Irish setter nosing through a patch of antique headlights. He gets a shot on my magnificent roll of award-winning film.
What happens next was confusing when I dreamt it, so no promises as to its description now. I know there were milling crowds, dead crows, and a gun. I protest that I am only taking pictures; people start shouting; colors whirl...
I'm not sure why I felt the need to post this. Maybe it will make sense to someone else? I awoke glad to have dreamt, and sure that I would remember every detail. Congratulations on reaching the end of it. G'night.
Well, I opened the day with gifts and sweet rolls from WalMart-- pretty standard fare for most of us. This afternoon, however, turned out to be a strange melange of meditations: mental handicaps, good poetry, and the Maclellan Scholars Program. (This last is a 60% tuition scholarship offered for the purposes of developing leadership at Covenant College. The intentions are great, but I believe Rizzo the Rat best captured the resulting stereotype of scholarship recipients: "Well hoity-toity, Mr. God-like shmarty-pants.")
So awhile back I was asked along with a bushel of other folks to read fifty-something submissions of variable quality for The Thorn, Covenant's annual literary magazine...
My roommate (Mr. Editor himself) asked us to choose about 40 for printing. One of us (a Maclellan scholar) responded that there were only seven items that he could stand to see printed. "I'm sorry," Jon responded, "but we don't have a million submissions to work with. I'm interested in reflecting the Covenant population in its creativity, such as it is." Or something like that.
What I'm wondering is whether Jon has the right to print stuff from who I would call "the least of these." C'mon, think in terms of being a wise steward. Can he do it? I mean, doesn't this Mac Scholar kid have the right as a supernaturally-endowed leader to lead the Thorn away from the mediocre and create something truly awesome?
OK, I'll put it another way: what right does a leader ever have to lead others away from the least of these? Can a Christian really do that? I kindof think it's taking the easy way out. The hard thing to do is what Mr. Editor does, in considering everyone's submissions and attending some poetry readings that are frequently... grating. That hard thing is walking alongside the least of these, especially when that means that Mac Scholar critics begin to associate you with the mediocre and decide to leave you behind in their quest for excellence.
I like to think this is why I'm an RA, but maybe I'm just foolin'. I do think that's why Mom and Dad allowed Charlie to come eat Christmas dinner with us today. Charlie's 3 or 4 years their senior, but I would place his IQ in the 75-85 range. Not stunningly disabled: he makes great puns. All the time. Mom and Dad are seeing less and less of my Air Force brother and of me, but considered a community that excludes folks like Charlie to be a community not worth having. Even when it comes to family.
Besides, Charlie didn't have anybody else. Merry Christmas, indeed.
Roughly five weeks ago, Covenant student Bob Nickles was swallowed by an enormous fish. Last sighted, he was swimming way, way out past the safe rope. He was waving and shouting something about finding Helen and everything was all right and not to worry. Eyewitness Hope Davis commented on the event: "It was all so sudden. He was waving and I was just like, 'why does he always swim out that far?' and then this big whale was just there and, like, Bob was gone. I'm not a fan of the whole Jonah thing, but as these things go, man, it was awesome."
Despite initial pessimism as to the survival of Bob, coastal patrol officials are now hopeful. "The situation certainly bears further scrutiny," Assistant Deputy Wavemaster Evan Donovan said in a press release earlier this week. "We have reason to believe that Bob may still be alive out there, in the bowels of one suspect we'll call 'Helen.' If so, all that remains for us to know anything definite is to track down this rogue whale and ultrasound the hell out of her." A.D.W. Donovan went on to caution all water sports enthusiasts to avoid the waves this weekend, until the crisis has been resolved by the authorities.
A public statement by the victim's family is scheduled for tomorrow morning. And as always, when news breaks, your local news team will be there to help pick up the pieces. For now, this is Grant Jeffries wishing you a safe and happy holiday from everyone here at WOOK, channel 9. Good night.
she never walked as kindly as she did
the day they drew her number,
led her away,
and chopped up her soul.
it's not as if the chopping were unexpected
because she had always known
that souls were meant to be whacked
and bruised
and lacerated
and, well, chopped
like so much grade A pork.
it's just that when her name
came over the laudspeaker
(thundering steam-roller fate
driving over a chipmunk)
she could no longer pretend
that she was any more than a rodent
in somebody else's way
and had to be content
to recognize the inevitable squish.
but she was kind about it.