brileyrebecca

You can go home again, at least if you’ve never been to that home before.  Sounds like a paradox, but I finally know what John Denver meant when he sang that line.  I’m living proof, living that same dream, so to speak.

I years had been from home—14 to be exact—leaving Kentucky just after 9/11.  I don’t know that it was that particular tragedy that finally extracted me from the mother ship like a ready barnacle or a more personal one that had occurred nearly 10 years earlier, making me ready to take off at the next report of the starting pistol.  I do know that it often does take a cataclysmic moment to unseat us, send us sailing for any other port in the storm. 

My catalyst (notice how close that word is to cataclysm?) was Kyle’s passing, though I wandered, wounded, the same worn paths, lost and lonely for 9 years following because I could not find an escape route.  Head down, I could only see, like Dilliard’s animals, the rut before me, restricting me from sustenance and salvation. Perhaps I felt I should be unhappy, considering.  Perhaps there was no one there to sing the “Happy” song, inviting me away.  Whatever, when I went, I went as far as I could go and stayed as long as I could stay.

You can’t run from your troubles, of course.  I knew that, and I knew I took them with me, as I took myself, but the change of venue really did help assuage my brokenness.  New faces, interesting places to fill the spaces inhabited by ghosts.  To send them sleeping in the shadows of some sorcerer’s spell, at the very least. 

Germany.  Ireland.  Cyprus.  Lithuania.  Hawaii, even Oklahoma.  Not to mention all the places I merely visited, from Turkey to Tanzania, St. Petersburg to Singapore.  Like Crosby, Stills, and Nash, I have been around the world.  Looking… for?  I still don’t know for sure, but, like those hippie friends I knew in college who lived between California and Kentucky on a self-described rubber band, I did know eventually I would be pulled back.  I only hoped I’d be ready for the return, the destination.  Home.

Midway isn’t exactly home.  Only a foreigner—a Yankee—would think there is no difference between this aptly-named little bluegrass village smack dab in the middle of Frankfort and Lexington, 72 miles east of Louisville.  Here I could return to trees and rain, stone fences my great-grandfather built, two-hundred years of history and horses—things I missed all over the world—without returning to the actual scene of the crime.  Here I could give myself permission to be a Kentuckian again, to breathe the life I love without choking on the smoky past settled in the hollers of the old home place just a piece down the road as the crow flies.

It’s like going back to live in the Kentucky of the 1940s, a decade I never knew, not even in infancy.  It’s like eating cake sweetened with Splenda and saving the calories.  It’s like home—but it isn’t home. Close but no cigar.  The aroma minus the tear-inducing sting.

And that’s just how I want it.  So I can come home again.  To this place I’ve never been before, and call it home.

For some reason lately I’ve been thinking about the things I will miss.  Not just the past or people who have gone on, but what could have been, not ever being.  Maybe it’s because I was just reminded of my age (one forgets…) when a former classmate died young and everyone (we’re all the same age, having been classmates, you know) started saying, “She was just…” and we all started putting ourselves in her place.  Facing it.

Not that I haven’t faced mortality before.  Kyle died at 35, after 3 long years of imminent death that hung over us daily like the proverbial black cloud.  But 35 is preposterous.  Even fatalists admit that.  It’s beyond comprehension, so one doesn’t dwell on the possibilities.  In fact, I was more concerned at the time about the long years stretching out ahead of me, alone.  To quote Eliot—and I did–:  “I shall be glad of another death.”

 But that’s not my point tonight.  Neither is the fear of my own inevitable demise; to quote a favorite Southerner, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” about that, either.  I was just thinking of the things I would miss.  As Emily put it:  “That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.”  Bittersweet, that is.  I guess what I am really facing are the realities of what will not come again—or, more accurately, will never come at all.   Time is running but the bright spots on the horizon are receding before us.

 As a self-professed possibilitarian, this is major.

 For example.  I was listening to U2 in the car, singing along on “One” and “Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”—and it suddenly occurred to me that I never was going to become friends with the members of my favorite band.  Hang out with The Edge, talk religion and politics with Bono.  Maybe even sing backup (just messing around, not anything official, of course).   Open and walk through that gate I’ve driven past when visiting Dublin, be invited in to peruse the latest lyrics, cup o’ tea, and all that.  None of that is ever going to happen.  Not that I ever really thought it would—but it might have.  (To be honest, I don’t think I ever even thought about it at all—it was just a feeling of something I would enjoy if the universe ever got around to it.)   Just because anything is possible—up to a certain point.  And then, at that certain point, whenever that is (apparently here and now, for some reason), if it hasn’t happened yet, it’s probably not going to happen.  Ever.  That’s what I’m talking about.

 Don’t get me wrong—I know I have done more in my 57 years than most people do in twice that time.  I’ve been around the world.  I’ve lived in 7 countries.   1,300 friends on Facebook, yadda, yadda, yadda.  Crossed most things already off my bucket list.  If it was something I wanted, I didn’t sit around and wait for it to happen—I went after it, took it by the horns, made it give me the time of day.  To a point.  Not everything is available.  There are still some complicated protocols that will not be broken down, no matter how hard one tries. 

 And then, there are the people.  Persuasive as one is, one cannot always make the horse drink, so to speak.  Herd the cats.  Get the brutish beasts to see justice and reason—and mercy.  Put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

 But that’s no matter.  Really, of greater importance to me right now, at the moment, is the U2 thing.  Or finding myself alive and well in that persistent sepia daydream:  the sprawling arts-and-crafts cottage somewhere in England or on the Irish coast, lounging in an Adirondack in the back garden under a shedding apple blossomed tree, reading for pleasure, wrapped in a cardigan.  Kittens, of course, tumbling at my feet.  Books written and being written, the initial obstacles of agents and editors already overcome.  And, most heavenly bliss:  no papers to grade—ever.

 I realize I haven’t quite given up on it all yet, either.  I pick up on the “probablies” above, unwilling, even now, to relinquish even the most tenuous hold on the most nebulous of dreams.  Still.

 I do not think Godot will come tonight, but I guess I’ll still leave the window open.  Just a crack.  Winter is coming, after all.

Baz Luhrmann must have gotten caught up in Jay Gatsby’s dream, but he should have listened to his narrator, Nick Carraway, when he said “you can’t repeat the past.”  The same goes for trying to re-do an adaptation that was already about as perfect as any literary adaptation could hope to be (1974), but which had also failed, albeit beautifully, to fully match F. Scott Fitzgerald’s poetic genius.

Luhrmann, whose other films I actually do enjoy (I thought his “Romeo + Juliet” was brilliant), may have been channeling Gatsby, but he certainly wasn’t in tune with Fitzgerald when he tried to redraft some of the most elegant prose in American literature.  For all the attention to and worship of the “word”—inserting the author into a questionable frame story, literally throwing letters up on the 3-D screen—he missed the boat entirely when he thought he could get away with such rewrites as describing Gatsby as full of “hope,” for example, instead of, as Fitzgerald penned it, “romantic readiness.”  And this just the 2^nd page!  For one unique as Gatsby—he was “worth the whole damned bunch put together,” remember?—you can’t try to describe him in ordinary terms.  Unless, of course, your audience is the equivalent of a bunch of middle-schoolers who need real literature dumbed down to the lowest common denominator or the latest “Twilight” installment, at the risk of being redundant.  (I guess the 3-D was for them, as well—what other purpose did it serve?)

Those who are gushing over Luhrmann’s latest most likely fit in that category—sorry, if you are one.  We English professors take our classics rather seriously, even if no one else does.  (Case in point:  the copy of The Scarlet Letter I sent to director Roland Joffe after his 1995 debacle because he surely hadn’t read it though he claimed to have translated it to the screen.)

Not that I didn’t like parts of this new rendition of The Great Gatsby.  Topping my list is the top of the cast, none other than Leonardo di Caprio, portrayer of the infamous Mr. G.   I have always been a fan of Mr. diCaprio since his amazing performance in “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” and, again, I loved him in the aforementioned “Romeo + Juliet.”  But I have more than just an affection for Robert Redford (politics aside); to me, his was the quintessential Gatsby with all his understated “romantic readiness.”  There is nothing understated about this new Gatsby, though.  And while I understand Luhrmann’s attempt to recreate the opulence—physically and metaphorically of the Jazz Age—I have always said “less is more,” and I am not changing my tune now.  The monstrosity of the West Egg house and the vulgar parties he lavishes on the screen are more than just a little over the top:  they turn Fitzgerald’s “blue gardens” into a rainbow carnival that would offend even Myrtle Wilson and her sister.

That said, di Caprio’s Gatsby may be a little over the top himself at times, but there is a hard desperation in his obsession to bounce high enough to impress the Golden Girl that I think Fitzgerald would appreciate, even if he might prefer (with me) the subtlety Redford brings to everything he does.  I love the maturity evident now in di Caprio that doesn’t need to be achieved by makeup (as in his aging J. Edgar, which was also nicely done) and the little extra je ne sais quoi he infuses in the mysterious “Gatsby—what Gatsby?” which does not go unrecognized even by me.  In short, I believe him.  And that’s all we really ask of actors, even when they have the audacity to take on our favorite literary characters.

Tobey Maguire does his usual decent job as Nick, though I am still in love with the young Sam Waterston (call me), and Carey Mulligan looks the part, even if she can’t deliver a “voice full of money” like Mia Farrow can.  No matter.  Her director doesn’t seem to require it, as he inexplicably cut that most famous and important line from his script.  To say I hated Joel Edgerton isn’t necessarily to be expected:  I know we’re supposed to hate Tom, but, again, I don’t like my villains and heroes so black and white.  Ironically, for one who wants to “beat down the colored races,” Edgerton’s Tom Buchannan is about as black as an old western’s gunslinger’s hat, lacking all the refinement any East Egger would effortlessly display.  Not to harp on the ‘74 classic, but Bruce Dern did it with his softened voice and insincere smile.  Like I said, I believe Dern, not Edgerton.

Sure, most of the famous symbols are still there:  the green light, the white dresses, East Egg/West Egg, Dr. T. J. Eckleburg, the Valley of Ashes, but more than being hit over the head (or in the face, thanks to our 3-D glasses) with the objects, we want the words.  The original words.  And not just now and then, but all the time.  If Luhrmann could do it with Shakespeare (and he did, admirably so), he could surely do it here.  Why he doesn’t is beyond me, and that’s what keeps his “Gatsby” at arms’ length.  Does he think he can make us say we never loved Fitzgerald, and the novel, like the past, will be swept away as though it never happened?

 I’m sorry, Mr. Luhrmann, we may say we love you, too, but even then it wouldn’t be true.  Like poor boys who never marry rich girls, you’re nouveau riche, and we English professors, at least, are still “Old Money.”

–Rebecca L. Briley

St. Paddy’s Day an’ all that.   When every one is Irish, at least for one night.  Me?  I’m Irish every night. 

Tonight I watched the film “Hunger” (2008),  depicting the 1981 hunger strike of the Irish rebels held in Long Kesh Prison in Northern Ireland during the height of “The Troubles” between the IRA and the British government.  It is not for the weak-stomached (my roommate had to leave the room), as director Steve McQueen does not allow his audience to turn away from the blinding light of Truth he shines relentlessly in our eyes.  Holding our fingers down on the firey braille of history, McQueen’s unflinching lens forces us to bear every hate-driven blow, gag on the stench of every feces-covered cell, until the fire that smoldered in every prisoner’s belly is ignited in our own.  Indeed, sickened as I was to witness what they had endured, I was compelled to not blink a single “no-washed” scene.  It seemed the least I could do.

I knew how the film was going to end:  Bobby Sands’ death after 66 days of hunger strike.   Twenty-seven-year-old Sands had determined the only way to penetrate the pity-proof armor of the Iron Lady herself–PM Margaret Thatcher–and her resolute refusal to grant Irish prisoners political status was to launch the deadly mission from which there would likely be no return.  Hunger strikes had been initiated before—Sands had even volunteered for one—but they had failed, as the participants had capitulated before their terms were met.  Sands was committed to seeing this one through to the end, hoping his death alone would induce English negotiation.  Nine others had to die following his death on May 5, 1981, before the British government caved to every stipulation.  (Technically, Thatcher never publically acknowledged the political standing requested of the prisoners, but she did give in and grant all other demands, including their wearing their own clothes instead of prison uniforms, an outward indication of their political and not criminal identification.)

I remember watching the news in Kentucky that spring of 1981.  I was 25—just two years younger than Bobby Sands—a young bride and fledging high school teacher.  This countdown to death on the nightly news was the first time I had really paid attention to what was going on in Northern Ireland, and I had as many questions as I had loyalties.   Anglo-Irish myself (father English-mother Irish ancestry), I found myself torn between the rousing Republicanism of the Irish rebels and an established allegiance to all things British—tea and crumpets, God Save the Queen, an’ all that—as any Anglophile English teacher would be.   I knew a little Irish history—my great-great-great had come over during the Potato Famine of the 1840s, for example—but that was about it.  I knew much more British history—we studied it, not Ireland’s—in school, and I guess I felt I shared a common sense of decency with that which seemed to emanate from the most civilized country in the world.  Or so I thought.

I remember thinking at the time, “She will not let him die.”  She, Mrs. Thatcher.  Terrorist or not, that boy will not be allowed to starve himself to death.  Surely she will intervene.  If not as the powerful Prime Minister of the former Empire, then as a mother—a Christian mother, denominations be damned.  Civility would prevail.  This was England after all. 

She did, though—let him die, that is.  She did not—intervene.  The world tilted on its axis a bit, and I felt it spin around me. 

Ten years later, while on a Fulbright to England in 1991, I would find myself in the middle of a riot.  Walking back from the Birmingham Theatre to our car, a group of protesters rushed out of the dark night, pushed a flyer in my hand:  “Free the Birmingham 6,” it read.  Who?

By the faint light of the car dash on the way home, I combed the leaflet, learning the “6” were six innocent Irishmen,  incarcerated since 1975 on trumped up charges they were responsible for bombing two Birmingham pubs in which 21 people were killed and countless others injured.  These six, guilty of nothing but their Irishness, had taken the fall because, in the wake of such tragedy, all England had demanded justice and the British courts could no longer be embarrassed by the lack of arrests.  And though the real culprit—a true IRA terrorist—admitted to the crime soon after their indictment, that evidence was suppressed, lest more rotten egg run down the cracked face of British justice.  Until 1991.  Not long after I returned to Kentucky when my Fulbright assignment was finished, the “6” were released, their sentences quashed.  A couple of years later, Irish director Jim Sheridan exposed their ordeal in his film, “In the Name of the Father” (1993), starring the inimitable Daniel Day-Lewis.  You can bet I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen.

I filled the following years investigating all things Irish; the more I learned, the more my loyalties shifted.  Just discovering how the English let the Irish starve during the Famine years would have been enough—but there were other atrocities:  Sands, the “6,” and many more.  And they weren’t all Irish:  Princess Diana’s trial by fire may have scorched the last shreds of any British allegiance; her death certainly put the last nail in that coffin.

Another trip across the pond—this time to Ireland, of course—and I insisted on standing on Northern Irish soil.  I roamed Belfast’s Falls Road, taking rolls of pictures of the infamous protest murals emblazoned with the once-smiling face of a young Bobby Sands.  I drove by Long Kesh Prison, slowly, the details of its terrible secrets as of yet unknown to me.  Turning south, I climbed the hills of the Republic, tracing the steps of possible ancestors as they had laid the stones of the so-called “famine fences,” ending abruptly nowhere but where they had fallen, dead. 

There’s more.  So much more.  But it’s the eve of March 17.  Time to turn one’s Irish eyes to smilin’ or something.  I’m afraid I am a bit immune to leprechauns and pots of gold, green beer and “Danny Boy” —but–Happy St. Patrick’s Day.  Erin Go Bragh.  An’ all that.

*This blog is dedicated to my cousin Pat Flowers who died today; he was one of the most Irish Americans I’ve ever known.  RIP, Pat.  We’ll miss you.

Of the current conditions rampant in American society, which is worse?  Naiveté?  Narcissism?  Hypocrisy?  Revenge and retaliation?  Megalomania?  Obviously, I have listed these maladies in decreasing favor. 

Ignorance—which is at the heart of naiveté—can be excused (once) and corrected, though those who continue to ignore ready instruction are no better than the evil they support.  I do not use the word evil lightly:  I deeply believe evil is being supported widely throughout America as I write. 

My frustration lies in knowing many support it out of their lack of awareness—and yet they make no effort to educate themselves, though compelling evidence is obvious before them.  Is it pride—which is at the heart of narcissism—that restricts them from admitting their mistakes?  Or is it really a hypocrisy that allows them to say one thing—what they believe, what they stand for—and to do another, i.e., to support the aforementioned malevolence and immorality.   

I have heard it said we can be so opened minded our brains fall out—or, as Shakespeare’s Marc Antony put it:  “oh, Justice, thou art fled to brutish beasts and men have lost their reason.”   We carelessly trample Truth in pursuit of what we mistake for liberty and justice for all. 

Those who are motivated by revenge—and we know who they are—are no more immune to hypocrisy than those against whom their retaliation is directed.  How quick we are to condemn when we are the victims; how silent we are if and when the tables turn and we become the perpetrators.  How conveniently we forget the principals upon which our protests were founded. 

Megalomania is a word reserved for a self-selected few.  In modern history, probably only one name rises to the top of this chart:  Hitler—though on less-publicized scales, every country, ever era has had most likely someone on this “Most Wanted” list.  Perhaps, in our naiveté—our narcissism—we dismiss probable current candidates as implausible, as we don’t want to look foolish.  Such recognition reeks of conspiracy theories to which only the gullible or narrow-minded could possibly subscribe.  Yet it is this opportune repulsion toward such low-brow traits that ensnares the most eager in the very attributes they flee, allowing the driven to plow on to their demonic destination with little resistance.

I can’t pretend to understand what motivates these power-ravenous monsters, as whatever it is, it isn’t anything that attracts or seduces me.  Don’t misunderstand:  I have my own flaws and fragilities, but to control others is not one of them on any level.    I do, however, oppose any whose purpose is to control me—and I resent those who will not stand in the gap with me to resist such subjugation. 

One would think their own narcissism would be enough to provoke them into self-protection, but I guess they are simply too self-absorbed to realize anything is happening around them that isn’t of immediate and instant self-satisfaction.  Thus, is the monkey captured with his fist in the jar, the frog boiled in what he assumed was soothing bathwater. 

Lord, deliver me.

Last night I scratched my ankle till it bled.  Long and sharp as my fingernails were, I couldn’t seem to reach the itch.  Funny thing, I have had this itch ever since my sojourn in Cyprus—over 5 years ago.  If you’d been with us in Cyprus, you would have known how plagued we newcomers were by the sand fleas or flies or whatever they were (no one seemed to know).  Indoors, outdoors, sunlight or shadow—no where was uninhabited by the unseen but certainly felt sting of the swarming pests.   Not long after arrival at the Girne American University in North Cyprus, every one of us professors new to the island were pocked as if with measles with the angry red evidence of our victim-ness.  We tried sprays, we tried creams, we tried electric shock (seriously, in small, hand-held applicators)—nothing protected us.  Soon our conversations were filled with complaints and comparisons of scars and scabs.   At one point in the middle of yet another discussion degenerating into our moaning about this debilitating dilemma, one of us commented, “You’d think PhDs would have deeper conversations!”—and we all admitted we’d prefer to talk about literature or art, but our skin condition was too immediately compelling. 

Apparently the microbes lie dormant for a while in tiny but traceable Braille-like bumps beneath the skin, only to awaken who knows when or why to the bouts of frantic itching described above.  Whenever they do raise their ugly heads, in between scratching, I think about Cyprus—and other things I have allowed to burrow under my skin. 

Fortunately those other things are few.  I have learned to let go of a lot of previous hurts and resentments, if not so much from the knowledge it does more harm than good to hang onto them than from the consequence of diminished memory.  I might like to nurse an old insult or worry a worn scar—if I could remember it, but since I often can’t, I might as well chalk it up as a blessing instead of a blight.

There are a few, though.  Not that I dwell on the past obsessively, but every now and then a less-than-sweet reminiscence taps me on the shoulder, and I turn and gaze at its unsightly form.  Injustice is the more frequent visitor and anything mixed with remorse or shame.  I am more inclined to recall unpleasantness I have caused than that which has been heaped upon me which is not my fault.  I’m not Catholic, but I’d put good ol’ church of Christ guilt up against it any day.  It was only when I really took to heart what Jesus meant when he said for us to forgive as we would like to be forgiven ourselves that I finally learned to forgive myself as well as my “brother.” 

So, I’ll try not to let anything under my skin, if I can help it; and if I can’t help it, I’ll try not to scratch it if possible. 

I don’t think this is what Cole Porter meant when he wrote, “I’ve got you under my skin.”  At least I hope not.  That’s a whole ‘nother kind of itch for which there are few remedies. 

Perhaps even more gratifying than hearing someone say “I love you,” this Valentine’s Day is to hear him or her say your name.  Of course, both together is the ideal, but of the two, I would prefer the personal.  Let me stipulate.  Nothing is more disappointing, perhaps, than realizing that a so-called friend cannot recall your name.   Of course, we all have a momentary lapse of memory when we can’t recall our own names (or it that just me?), but to learn that you have not made enough of an impression on someone for him or her to bother to learn your name is disheartening.  I use that term deliberately:  the heart is out of it; or in more contemporary terms, they’re just not that into you.

What’s in a name?  More than Juliet realized it would seem.  We can conjure up childhood fairy tales of mysterious creatures like Rumpelstiltskin whose magic was diminished when his name was discovered or, more recently, thrill to the power of Michael Keaton’s announcement, “I’m Batman!”  More seriously, some names are so sacred and omnipotent, their subordinates are careful not to even vocalize them completely, as in the Jewish YHWH or G-d.  When we admonish children not to call one another names, we acknowledge the potency of such language:  “sticks and stones” are passé in a world cognizant of the damage words—names—can do.  It’s when the verbiage takes on the personal, the individual identity, that it becomes dangerous.

But I’m not interested in talking about bullying or political correctness in labeling or any of those other timely topics—that’s another blog, another day.  I want to dwell on the merits of speaking the name or names of those we claim to love, honor, and appreciate.  I recall the scene in the delightful Italian film Il Postino when the title character is asked to pontificate on his homeland’s renowned beauty; all he can articulate is “Beatrice”—the name of the woman with whom he is infatuated.  When someone is your everything, he or she becomes your complete vocabulary.  Or should.

Lately I have been bothered by the lack of interest it would seem in so many so-called Christians willing to speak out about their faith; namely, to identify the one in whom they “live and move and have their being” (Acts 17:28).  Afraid of being labeled fanatic or being persecuted on some level for their “archaic” beliefs, many would prefer to remain silent, justifying their reticence in a Victorian-aged whisper, “It’s too personal to speak about openly.”  More likely they are reluctant to be ridiculed, lest their intellectual quotient appear retarded (in the proper sense of the word).  As if just saying “Jesus” will land them in the bogs of the Bible Belt among Neanderthals with embarrassing redneck accents.  Maybe they haven’t read I Cor. 3:19 lately.

Last week my Poetry class was studying one of my favorite writers, Gerard Manley Hopkins, the 19^th century Jesuit monk-turned-poet. He ponders, in his poignant poem, “A Lantern Out of Doors,” who among all humanity truly notices anyone else.   His recognition of the one—perhaps the only one—who cares is emphatically and unapologetically stated:   Christ.  “Christ minds,” he writes.  “Christ’s interest, what to avow or amend There, éyes them, heart wánts, care haúnts, foot fóllows kínd, Their ránsom, théir rescue, ánd first, fást, last friénd.”  Having just read the entire poem aloud, I asked the class to name the one Hopkins identifies, but even staring at the clearly printed text, not one of the twenty or so students could bring him or herself to say the word out loud.  And this in a private Christian institution where to speak the name of the Savior should be part of the short-listed lexicon!  I’m afraid I launched into a tirade.

It reminded me of a time when I was in college—another private Christian institution, for what it’s worth—and our choir was on tour; on this particular occasion, we were at a nursing home.  Well-rehearsed in our classical repertoire, we were proud to perform each vocally impressive piece.  But in the midst of such production, I noticed one little old man sitting in a wheelchair at the end of the first row.  Plucking the sleeve of the nurse’s aide sitting next to him, he plaintively pleaded, “I want them to sing ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus.’ Why won’t they sing ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus’?”  Finally, between numbers, I got the attention of our choir director and quietly requested, “Why don’t we sing ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus’?”  Agreeable, if not impressed by the musicality of the piece, she willingly led us in the old hymn.  As I watched the old man light up and sing out with gusto, tears ran down my face.  Why can’t we sing—speak, whisper, write—about what a friend we have in Jesus?  If we really do.

Mark 8:38 puts it plainly:  If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes with the holy angels in his Father’s glory.”

Jesus.  Jesus Christ.  I’m just saying.

Conversation Overheard

All I want is to be left alone, she said.

I knew the feeling, so I listened, silent.

I don’t want anyone telling me what to do.  Ever.  If I want their opinion, I will ask for it.  Not before.

What would she like to do, I wondered.  What would she do if no one told her?

If it were up to me, she said, as if she heard me, I would spend my time reading whatever I wanted.

I could relate…

And then I would spend the rest of my time writing, anything I liked.  And I would decide who read it and who didn’t.  It would be my choice.

And I would sleep whenever I pleased.  Or not.  And no one would judge me for time spent in or out of bed.  It is not their business.

No, it was no one else’s business…

And I would go wherever I pleased and stay as long as I liked.  Schedules wouldn’t dictate—or costs.

Ah!  A fantasy…

And only those I wanted to see would appear and no one else.  Not even on Facebook.  And I would never answer my phone.  She was becoming adamant.

No one would pass laws or lay down rules I didn’t like.  They would not apply to me.  I would not be accountable.  And passionate.

She was just warming up—clothes, food, ideologies–so I let her rant.  And thought about what she’d said.  After a moment:

“But, isn’t this how you live already?” I had the temerity to ask.

Who asked you, she said.  And gave me that look.  It’s none of your business.

It wasn’t.  She was right.  I was still letting someone else tell me what to do.

I love the smell of eucalyptus in the morning.  And in the evening, too.  I love it all the time, which is why I had to buy some and place it in different rooms so I could have the benefit of it no matter where I was in my house.  I breathe deep its clean but peppery perfume.  Eucalyptus always reminds me of two things, well, three things, really.  One, my visit to the San Diego Zoo where I saw the baby pandas several years ago.  Apparently pandas chew on eucalyptus.  Or is that koalas?  Now I can’t remember.  I remember I saw pandas, not koalas in San Diego, but now that I ponder it, I think they were eating bamboo.  Maybe it’s just koalas who like to chew on eucalyptus.  I don’t recall if I have ever seen koalas up close and personal.  Oh, well.  I guess I could Google it, but I’d rather move on to the second thing it reminds me of:  those huge trees along the rocky road to Ron and Mark’s house for choir practice when I was living on the Big Island.  I had never seen such colorful bark and wouldn’t have believed it was true if I hadn’t seen it in person.  Rainbows.  That’s what it looked like, and since rainbows are plentiful in Hawaii (in more ways than one), I guess it was appropriate.  In fact, I think they were called Rainbow Eucalyptus trees—or at least they should have been.  

The third thing, which is actually the first in my memory, is when I was a bridesmaid for my college roommate, and her brother made the most beautiful and aromatic floral arrangements for each of her bridesmaids to carry in these sweet little baskets.  The eucalyptus filled in between the mauve silk tiger lilies, and the matching mauve ribbon cascaded from the twisted wicker handle.  Mauve was big back then.  I kept my flower basket for years, letting it scent my house, until it came irreparably apart from too many relocations.  This is the first time I think I’ve had eucalyptus back in my house since then, and its aroma is as sweet and spicy as ever.  It’s the first time I’ve thought about my roomie’s brother, too, in a long, long time.  The last I heard he had made the floral arrangements for Truman Capote’s big shindig in New York where Tennessee Williams, a frequent guest, admired the flowers and the brother so much he invited him—with or without flowers—to go to Europe with him.  I remember how jealous I was!  Tennessee Williams!  I was the big American drama major!  The brother was just a, a flower designer!   I should get to go to Europe with the famous playwright!  I wanted to go!  “No, you don’t,” I remember my father admonishing me—rather uncharacteristically, I might add.  “Not with that old reprobate,” he said.  Reprobate?  What was that?  Apparently it was a term he might have used to describe the brother, too, if he had known—if any of us had known back then.  I wasn’t aware of any of that at the time—and not until long after all of them were dead—young, old, brothers and reprobates alike.  AIDS, no respecter of persons, so it would seem.  That might explain why my roommate’s brother had never been interested in dating any of her friends, though we had mooned about over his dreamy good looks, hinting at the possibilities whenever he came around.

Now I think of Blanche DeBois in Streetcar Named Desire:  “He was a boy, just a boy, when I was a very young girl.  … There was something different about the boy, a nervousness, a softness and tenderness which wasn’t like a man’s, although he wasn’t the least bit effeminate looking — still — that thing was there … “ 

That thing.  It’s mixed up in the scent of eucalyptus.   I breathe it in as I pass from room to room.  Memory and desire.