It Used to Be

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 31, Verses 6 & 7

"Hard liquor is for sick men at the brink of death, 

and wine for those in deep depression."

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CHIPPED WISDOM:

It used to be, if you asked me why I believed in the death penalty, I could tell you.  And I would tell you.  I wouldn't just tell you about it, I'd write about it, too.  I wrote about it, a lot.  It's recorded.  It is on record.  

Now, it all seems like somebody else's thoughts and words.  And bile.  And animus.  And violence.  I'm in there, somewhere, of course.  I'm in there somewhere, floating around, circling the drain, watching for cues, thumbing my nose at the memory of myself.  Back then-- way back then.  

I don't believe in the death penalty anymore.  I've seen what it does-- I mean, I haven't seen somebody being put to death by the state-- but I've seen how it martyrs people, I've seen how it turns people's brains to yogurt.  If you read Monday's post, or the book I wrote when I was in college, well, you know what I'm talking about.

You know.

It used to be, if you asked me why I like to wear ties and what I call "Tier 1 pants" (trousers that could pass for suit pants, typically necessitating dry-cleaning that I wouldn't be caught dead spending money on) and dress shirts, I could tell you.  I'd prattle on about self-respect and dignity and how my grandfather was a haberdasher and all of that muck.  But, really, I don't know why.  I have a hundred ties.  Maybe two hundred.  There's around a dozen bowties.  And sometimes I look at them and I don't know what they're doing in my room.  Why do I wear ties and not bowling shirts, or flannel shirts?  Now, it's just what I do.  I wear ties to the beach.  

Gee, that's silly.

Used to be I could tell you why I liked sad folk songs-- I could tell you why if you asked me.  I'd talk about how they're moving and they're poignant and about how their stories of sorrow or loss or struggle speak to me, and about how they're more lasting than, I don't know-- than that other stuff.  Now, if you asked me why I cry when I hear Dar Williams's "When I Was a Boy", I'd probably just take a sip of coffee and change the subject; to the weather, or the bomb, or the gumbo.  Let's talk about something else, cuz my mom and I, we'd always talk, and I'd pick flowers everywhere that we'd walk.

But you knew that.

Used to be I knew why I wanted to be a cop.  I'd tell you a story about-- I don't know-- something, anything to explain it.  To make sense of the most irrational desire of my life.  I'd explain it away for you until it almost made sense, until it almost made your brow stop furrowing.  I'd talk until you left me the fuck alone about it.  I'd talk and talk and talk until I almost understood it myself.  I'd tell you that it started in high school, or college, or the months after college, after she'd broken up with me and after the book and after I waved to Charles after getting that stupid piece of paper wearing that oversized trash bag, but, a couple months ago I was looking at pictures that my father took of me back when I was nine or ten.  I'm dressed in dark pants, a dark blue polo shirt and a child's-sized police hat.  I have cheap metal cuffs and I'm doing various police poses-- talking on an imaginary radio, pointing off in the distance while squinting my eyes (probably at the direction a "suspect fled on foot"), even cuffing an imaginary suspect up against my father's white Oldsmobile Ciera.  There's a badge on my chest, with a piece of black mourning tape over its center.  

I don't know.  I really just don't know.

Used to be I could tell you why I don't drink.  Why I've never had a drink.  Why.  People think I'm in recovery, but I'm not even that advanced.  I'm so entrenched in my own bullshit I don't even have the slightest idea what I'd be in recovery from.  Maybe I don't drink because I'm frightened.  Maybe it's because I think alcohol is evil, that people who drink behave like idiots.  Maybe I don't think I need any help behaving like an idiot.  I've got that covered pretty much.  Maybe I don't want to be out of control.  Life's pretty out of control as it is.

Isn't it?

Used to be I could tell you anything-- even if you didn't ask.  Now, I don't know what to tell you.  I could have told you, once, very clearly in writing.  I was always afraid of speaking, because I never knew what was going to come out.  I'm still like that, but now it's metastasized to infect not only my speech but my writing.  I still don't know what I'm talking about.  Or why.  I don't know who I'm addressing, who is out there, why I'm writing or why you're reading.  But I suppose all I can say it that I like that you're here.  Here with me.  "Stay with me," I used to say to my mother so she wouldn't leave my bedside as I lay there, awash in anxiety and fear-- irrational and sane-- and she would stay.  She'd stay with me.  

And I always knew why. 

Finding Center

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 15, Verse 28

"A good man thinks before he speaks;

the evil man pours out his evil words without a thought."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

The year was 1988, or '89 maybe.  I don't know.  Maybe it was '91.  It's hard to keep track when you get to be older, and you judge the passing of the years by what body-style Chevy Caprices the local police department was using (they'd just mustered in the first of the "upside-down bathtub" cruisers in 1991.  I remember seeing one parked on the street during my fifth grade graduation.  That's how I know I was in fifth grade, and that's how I know that I think I might have Asperger's, and a law enforcement fetish.

Anyway, my sister and I were fighting outside, as we often did.  I didn't mind making a spectacle of myself in those days the way I abhor public displays now.  I'm one of those rare actors who absolutely hates being the center of attention.  I have to be told, repeatedly, to stand center stage by the exhausted director.  For most performers, finding center comes naturally.

Right, so, back to the front yard of my parent's house.  I'm however old I am, and she's three years older, and we're fighting over Christ knows what.  Who got to sit in the front seat, who got to have a pony for Yom Ha'Guiliani-- whatever it was.  Kids get so worked up over dumb shit, have you ever noticed that?  One minute you're sitting there, eating your rice and beans and the next minute some kid is having an absolute shit over the fact that he didn't get his face painted by Nylon the Clown at the local Jiffy-Lube.  Kids.  You know I love 'em!  

And speaking of kids, I was a kid once.  There I was, on the front lawn like a jerk, yelling at my big sister.  Boy, did we have some hair in those days, let me tell you.  Hair to spare we did!  Boy, howdy, did we.  I looked like Moe from the 3 Stooges.  Yessiree, I rocked that Beatles-ass shit for near on thirteen years.  It was only at the old Bar Mitzvah did I think to part the shit-strands, and I guess nobody in my family dared suggest anything of the sort to me for fear I'd have a fucking aneurysm or something.  Kids.  You know they're always having fucking aneurysms or something!

So, back in time we go-- into the old DeLorean back to my parent's front lawn and I'm just going ape, like a tapir.  It's funny-- it's pronounced "tape-ier" but I don't know-- looks like there should be an extra letter in there.  What the hell do I know, though?  Not much about much, and I think that's probably pretty obvious to you.  Must be what keeps you coming back to this trough, you disgusting little pig, you!  You squealie little dealie!  Reading this makes you feel better about yourself!  I GET IT NOW!  SO I'M THE FAT GIRL YOU GO TO THE MALL WITH AND YOU DON'T MIND THAT I EAT RANCH DRESSING OUT OF THE BOTTLE WITH MY FIST BECAUSE NEXT TO ME YOU LOOK HOT!  

Meh. I'm okay with that.  An audience is an audience.

Now, my sister and I, we could really go at it.  I'm sure you've got stories about how you used to push your little brother's face into the gravel driveway until he had to have little pebbles and bits of glass surgically removed from his gum-line and that you once doused your cousin in propane and cause a five alarmer and got sentenced to juvie until you were 21 and then had your criminal record expunged so that you could get a job at that local middle school and have nobody be the wiser, and I think that's great.  Good for you, Stan!  We've all got stories.  Did you know that EVERYBODY'S GOT AT LEAST ONE NOVEL IN THEM?  Well, everybody's also got Gram-positive coccus-shaped bacterium in their mouth, too, but I wouldn't go around bragging about that to Terry Gross now would you, FISH-FUCKER?!!!

So we're doing the old tit-for-tat thing there outside, and it's nice weather, see, and people are milling around, walking their dog or their streptococcus and everything is going fine.  Except these two kids are fighting.  And it doesn't take much to disrupt suburbia.  No.  It doesn't.  Did you know that I once called the cops on the guy who came to read our water meter?  They jumped on his ass, too.  Classic.

And the thing to remember about fighting is that, when you're all sweated up and getting into it, you're not really thinking about what you're saying.  Especially when you're seven.  Or eleven.  Or however the fuck old I was.  Come to think of it; you're never really thinking no matter how old you are, because people just don't think, do they?  No, we're not very good at that.  We're all kind of basically idiots when it comes to being smart, I do believe.  And that's okay, because there's one thing we human beings are really good at; and that's annoying the piss out of each other, and it's not so easy to do that if we're hemming and hawing over every little grammatical positioning of each little phrase we may come to utter, or not, because we're too goddamned busy thinking about it.  And, when push comes to shove, there's nothing in the world like telling your sister at the top of your lungs in the middle of a quite spring warmth of a gentle southeast Pennsylvania neighborhood to go dip her vagina in duck sauce.