Proverbs 14, Verse 10
"Only the person involved can know his own bitterness or joy - no one else can really share it."
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CHIPPED WISDOM:
There's that part in To Kill a Mockingbird where Scout is snuggling up to Atticus, her Macomb sun-dappled face scrunched up in her sincere efforts to understand her world and herself and he tells her that you can never really understand a man until you get into his skin and walk around in it. To me, that we can't do that, is the biggest human tragedy. We are doomed to misinterpret, misunderstand, to, well, miss. We miss each other. It happens all the time. We try to connect, make a meaningful moment or a friendship or alliance, try to make a point or see something from someone else's point of view-- and what happens? We fumble. We offend. We say the wrong thing. For years, after going to my mother and father's house for dinner, on the ride home, I would have to work arduously to assuage my wife's fears that she had said "the wrong thing".
It was exhausting. And I'm sure that saying that is the wrong thing. Oh well.
If I had to tell you where I thought great art comes from (okay, okay-- I'll tell you already!) I think it's from that curse bestowed on us human beings to never be able to fully understand another of our species, that the desire to connect and the earnest nature with which we make that effort to extend our hand and heart and brain is what makes us beautiful and foolish and worthy of glory and pity all at the same time.
Friends, I suspected when I started writing this post that I would not be able fully to communicate my joy to you, that I would be misunderstood or misinterpreted or, well, missed. That you'd miss me. And that's a risk you take, of course, when you write. You gather a bunch of words up and you corral them like sheep in a pen and you send them out there and whatever happens happens. And I know that I can't stand over your shoulder while you read and take furtive glances at your face as you read my words, and make subtle comments from the sidelines like a middle school soccer coach, to guide your experience. This part, with the clickety-clackety, is up to me. The rest is up to you. And, if we miss each other, well, there's always Monday's post.
Joy comes in many forms, and stems from experience. I cannot describe what joy feels like or looks like. I don't know if it commonly has a smell. Today, though, mine did. My joy had a smell. And a taste.
There's an old saying (I think it's a Proverb, actually) about a dog returning to its own vomit and so on and so forth and how that's probably a bad idea because vomit's gross and all. Well, I'm a dog who frequently returns to his own vomit. I repeat mistakes again and again and again, just to really make sure, you know. You want to be thorough in this life, just in case there isn't another, where you come back as a light switch or Peter Ustinov. I run away when I'm presented with an opportunity to better my lot in life, because I'm scared of failure and success, I cut people out of my life for what might seem like tiny infractions of unwritten codes. I stumble, and fall and, when the time comes to step over again, it seems like the lights are out and down I go again.
Ashes, ashes.
So, too, do I repeat my mistake many mornings at a tiny shop with a pink and orange logo. When I don't feel like making coffee at home, I'll go to Dunkin' Donuts. I find the coffee inferior, still, I swill. If I'm ravenous, I'll get a bacon egg and cheese sandwich on an onion bagel.
"Morning, Doctor!" the predictably Indian franchisee gleefully shouts from behind the counter as I amble in.
Big nose. Jew. Glasses. Collar shirt, tucked in. I.D. badge from a hospital. Showing up at 5am.
He scanned me one day and decided. He decided I was a doctor. I never bothered to correct him. I don't blame him for profiling. You have to do that when you work at Dunkin' Donuts. Who's going to order the dozen. Who's going to pull a 9mm? Who likes iced coffee and who likes it hot?
I get it. It's okay. I scan him, too, and decided at once that he was Indian.
So, Morning Doctor gets a large decaf with cream and sugar and, sometimes, a bacon egg and cheese on an onion bagel. I don't know if you get breakfast sandwiches from Dunkin' Donuts, but, if you do, you know that they are inferior to virtually every other early morning chain-store breakfast sandwich option anywhere. The bagels are thick and ooey, utterly flavorless-- it almost doesn't matter what savory choice you make, they all taste plain. The foam faux-egg patty is an embarrssment and the bacon is wobbly and miserable, probably made of salted tomato slices.
And it's like that every time. Still, I don't learn. I'm not into learning. It's for the weak.
Eating a Dunkin' Dounts breakfast sandwich is an utterly joyless experience. It's the couple from "American Gothic" doing it. It's drag racing in a CR-V. It's bobbing for prunes. But you slog through it and the reward is feeling like you have a old men's dress shoe inside your stomach which, I guess, beats hunger. But not by much.
This morning, though, I opened the sandwich wrapper while steering with my knees (don't drive near me) and, even in the dark of the early, early morning, I could see something was very different. The faux-egg was still phony, but it looked like it was making a more honest effort. The bacon was-- crisp? And the bagel was thinner and had more bite, more integrity. At a red light, (I swear), I stared at this thing quizically.
I don't know you, I thought. You are not the vomit to which I am accustomed to returning.
I took a bite.
Yeah. It was Beethoven blaring and Neruda whispering and Picasso and I have a dream and to be or not to be and psychadelic colors and sweet breasts and big rock candy mountains and my pupils dilated and blood surged to places unknown and I wish I was getting compensated for this endorsement but I'm not and that's how it goes as far as that goes because I'm too dumb to know how to monetize and it's okay because I had a nice breakfast.
And I could look at that last passage and say, yeah, that adequately communicated the joy I experienced this morning in my car with my breakfast sandwich, but I know it didn't. I know I failed. And that's okay, because it means that I'm human, and I love being human, because it means that I never, ever have to worry about getting it right.
'Night, Doctor.
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