12 August 2012

An Open Letter To Cigarettes

Dear, Dear Cigarettes,

I regret that it has come to this.

You are the bane of many lives, and burn like cancer through generations of writers, bartenders, musicians, and artists. Cigarettes, you will not burn through me. I was a writer before you, and though I'm having some trouble tricking my brain into believing this, I will be a writer without you.

I shall delight in replacing you with glorious air-conditioning in the summer, and in wintry times, a cozy blanket. In the pleasant months of the year, your space will be filled with the scents of blooming flowers and fresh-cut grass. The hundreds of dollars I spend on you per year will be redirected to items such as shiny new pens, Kraft Glue, and coconut oil.

I know it's my own fault that I have to write you this letter, but on the real, Fuck You.

Christie

05 August 2012

What Are We, BR?

I decided to start writing a novel today. Five years from now, it will be regarded as a terrible idea by everyone close to me, but I'm gonna do it anyway, because there are way too many metaphors, microcosms, and paradoxes in this city to let the historians and dying publications have all of them.

I need them all in one place, bound by something tangible, with a thread long enough to tie everyone together. The pieces are floating around in the air, and the humidity is so heavy right now that even smoke from a cigarette can't drift anywhere but down. I might have to pave every square foot of this city with paper to catch all of it, but shit, I'm already halfway there anyway and I have so much free time it's oppressive.

The proposed subject matter kind of ties in with my drive to put in some time in the nonprofit sector here, anyway, so I can theoretically work on this project while I learn how to write grants for people.

In a blog post after my first week at Dig, I wrote, "A week in, and I can already tell that this will be the period of my life when I realize how much, and to what depths, that I hate myself." Maybe that's a cover-all sentiment I can use as a permanent bookmark, to remind myself of those precious few moments I decided to pull the anchor back onto the boat, kick off from the dock, and get something the fuck done.

A day in, and I can already tell that this will be the period of my life when I realize how much, and to what depths, that I hate myself. Here goes round two.

01 August 2012

For All Our Sins


"Recall then that you have received the spiritual seal, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of right judgment and courage, the spirit of knowledge and reverence, the Spirit of holy fear in God's presence. Guard what you have received. God the Father has marked you with his sign; Christ the Lord has confirmed you and has placed his pledge, the Spirit, in your heart."

"Deinde leviter eum in maxilla caedit, dicens: Pax tecum."
"Then he strikes him lightly on the cheek, saying: Peace be with you."




Every Thursday night of my Sophomore year of high school, I carpooled to Catechism with this awful girl named Kristy and her mother, who was a teacher at the church. The only way she could get her spoiled daughter in the car was to suggest the possibility of stopping at the Cracker Barrel for an Icee afterwards. When two hours was over, Kristy's mother was predictably stressed -- from what, I never learned -- and the maroon Buick's ignition was Kristy's cue to flip on her whine switch.

I remember entertaining the thought that she didn't actually want the Icee, because even though she'd get the "bucket" size, she never finished it -- the car's cup holders were stacked full of melted, leaky cups that would have to be tossed to make room for the fresh one. I didn't care for Icees, but I got a small one every week anyway, on Kristy's mom's dime. It was the least I could do to inconvenience those awful people for being who they were.

On the extra-angsty Thursdays, I'd even leave my full Icee in the backseat cup holder, in hopes that Kristy's mom would sleep a minute less at night wondering if her family's bad habits were rubbing off on me.

I was a monster.

Catechism at 15 years of age is generally in preparation for the Catholic Sacrament of Confirmation -- the ritual honoring a young Catholic's passage into adulthood. It's supposed to signify a conscious choice to enter the church, after having been primed for the Sacrament in a Catholic household. The normal bible studies of younger years shift into a Q-&-A-style forum, and the point was for us to ask the tough questions about our faith before we became permanent thorns in Jesus' crown.

I took this opportunity very seriously, as I had skimmed a book on Buddhism at Barnes and Noble that year, making me an expert in Eastern religion. Every Thursday at 6 p.m., I showed up to Catechism armed with a battery of logic ammunition.

For example:
If God loves me unconditionally, why do I have to ask for forgiveness? If someone living in African-level poverty is never told that Jesus Christ died for their sins, where do they go when they die? Why is God such a dick in the Old Testament? If Jesus was a Jew, shouldn't we be Jewish, too? What kind of God would torment his children with the option of not living a Godly life? And, perhaps most importantly, how exactly did Christ's death open up a new portal to heaven? What kind of God would flaunt the death of his only son -- surely, he could have had more sons, had he wanted them -- in front of billions of sinners, claiming that his child's death was more important than the demise of any of their children?

Perhaps, I thought, that kind of God is one who has never known the pain of being mortal.

I thought I was brilliant. I'd hurl these gems at my poor, unsuspecting, devout volunteer teacher once a week, spending them frugally just to keep her on her faithful toes. I wanted her to question herself, sure. But more than that, I wanted her to fear me. I was a monster on top of a mountain of questions that Catholicism could not answer; and every Thursday at 8 p.m., I would descend from my existential mountain and enter a maroon Buick that ran on Kristy's melted Icee buckets and the fumes of bad parenting.

The rides home weren't that bad, because I had won. It never occurred to me that my path of destruction through the Confirmation process, with little to no belief in the Catholic dogma, meant that I was participating in doublespeak. I didn't believe that Confirmation meant my soul would forever be Catholic, anyway -- it was a game to me, and the ritual meant more to my mother than it ever would to me.

The next year of classes were purposely more intimate, and the teachers were carefully selected for that final phase of preparation. We met once a week, in the instructor's home, for three intense hours. Our eleventh-grade class was intentionally split into thirds, to fit about eight people in the host's living room. My host was a celibate, 42-year-old lesbian named Terry, who made a mean batch of twice-baked potatoes.

"I just haven't met the right man," she said. "I'm waiting until God leads me to him."

We ate dinner with her every week, and she was always happy to take requests for the next week's meal. But before we even sat down, we were required to grab one of the eight rosaries hanging on the coat rack by the door. Every week, we prayed the entire rosary. All five Mysteries, no shortcuts. That's around 50 Hail Marys, five Glory Be repetitions, and I forget how many Nicene Creeds.

The ritual took up one of the three hours we sat in her living room every week. Most of us knew those prayers by heart already from our lifetimes of Catholicism, but if any of us had a lapse in memory, that tedious weekly practice would forever seal the cracks.

"We'll answer all of your questions, but God comes first," she said.

Going past the recitation of memorized childhood prayers, Terry made it a point to meticulously pick apart the syntax of every prayer during our time with her. Hilariously, I fancied myself a writer even at that stupid age, and was more than eager to soak up the dogmatic rhetoric like an oversaturated moldy sponge with a bad attitude.

"So in this prayer to Mary, I'm asking her to pray for us sinners, from now until the hour of our death," I stated during the Hail Mary analysis. "Why do I have to ask 50 times per rosary?"

"The rosary is a meditation," Terry answered. "Your gift to her is thinking about every word, no matter how many times you say it."

I left her home every week sullen. She was different than the other Catechism teachers they'd thrown my way -- she wasn't easily broken, and she had more patience than Buddha. Despite her obvious homosexuality, there was this calm about her, as if she had come to understand that her faith in God was more important than the gender of any human being she might fall in love with. In short, she made my mission look like Satan's work, to me, without ever knowing the torment I had previously fed upon. For someone who didn't believe in the divine, it was nothing short of miraculous.

"What do we, as Catholics, believe?" she asked.
"...in Catholicism?" I jabbed.
"What is Catholicism, then?" she countered.
"A room full of Catholics."
"What is a Catholic?"
"A person who chooses to apologize to God once a week for the way he created us, while thanking him for doing so."
Terry looked at me with patient, burning eyes. "Do you understand the sacrament you've chosen to receive in a few months, Christie?" she asked.

I paused.

The ever-invasive Catholic dogma has survived thousands of generations by inserting itself into wedding vows, and my parents had promised God to raise their children Catholic back in 1981. On paper, that translates to "until Confirmed inside the Catholic Church," which is why my mother told us that church would become optional after we went through with it.

In that frame, I understood the Sacrament of Confirmation as my one-way ticket out of the religion without upsetting my saint of a mother. It was the best gift I could ever give  her: It would earn me my religious freedom without breaking her rules, while also allowing her to feel she had satisfied her promise to God. I knew that nothing else I would ever do in my life would leave her with that kind of peace of mind.

Yet, I would never let the endless amount of love I had for my mother rob me of the unique pleasure I got out of taunting the volunteer soldiers for God.

"I understand," I said. "I understand that my mother had to promise my soul to God when she married the love of her life. I understand that her soul needs to be protected, because she let God glue it back together after it broke in ways mine never will. I understand that her faith in God made her an amazing mother, and she made my soul unbreakable and inextricable from me. God cannot have my soul, but technically, that's his fault."
Her eyes burned patient holes through the silence of my classmates.

"...And, really, I can't think of a better way to thank the both of them."

After that, we were all assigned our "spiritual sponsors" -- anonymous confirmed Catholics who would send us periodic words of encouragement, small religious gifts, and decorative bibles until the day we made our Confirmation. The mystery sponsors would reveal their identities in the church pews, and would walk us to the altar to seal the deal.

We were told that once we reached the altar, the Bishop would ask us questions about our assigned patron Saints, and that we had better know our chosen Saint's life story. If we answered the Bishop correctly, we would earn the right to take the name of that Saint in the eyes of God and the Catholic Church.

My patron Saint was Saint Maria Goretti, an Italian girl who died from multiple stab wounds incurred when she refused to submit to her attempted rapist in 1902. She was 12 years old.

"Christie, could you start us off with the first line of the Nicene Creed?"
We were analyzing the nuances of the Catholic prayer of all prayers -- the one that states, in terms clear as day, every conviction held by a truly faithful Catholic. I obliged.

"We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty."

My voice rang tinny against the silence of the motherless home, all eight pairs of indifferent eyes on me. I had said this prayer hundreds, maybe thousands of times in my life, and it had only ever meant one thing to me: The halfway point of the hour-long Sunday Mass.

"Maker of Heaven and Earth, of all that is, seen and unseen."

Maker of all that is, seen and unseen. The prayer exited my lips like it never had before, but nobody in the room seemed to pick up on it. My voice sounded tangible, like a thing I could reach out and hold onto.

"...God from God, Light from Light," I continued. "True God from true God; begotten, not made. One in Being with the Father."

I closed my eyes and I was in a classroom from 10 years ago, rubbing my palms together in front of my first grade religion class at Saint Isidore Catholic School, shaking with anxiety before I recited the Nicene Creed in its entirety.
We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, I squeaked out, my tinny voice nervously bouncing off the white cinderblock walls. The last time I'd said the Creed alone was in first grade, when I was forced to prove to the class that I'd memorized it.

"Through him, all things were made, for us men and for our salvation, he came down from Heaven," I recited. "By the power of the Holy Spirit, He was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man."

There was a moment of simultaneous shock and dread as the words turned into a familiar story I didn't believe. Words that I had repeated at least once a week for most of my life, in indifferent solidarity with the Sunday congregation. Until I found myself sitting in that lesbian's home, preparing to walk willingly into adulthood as a confirmed Catholic -- in all my years of silent protest, tactical logic, and intellectual hubris, I had failed to see that it had never been a choice at all.

"The first line is all we need right now, Christie," Terry said.
"For our sake, He was crucified under Pontius Pilate," I went on. "He suffered, died, and was buried. On the third day, He rose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures. He ascended into Heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father."

"You can stop there, we're going to go through it line by line," she insisted.

But I couldn't stop. I didn't know how to stop.

"He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom will have no end."


I was handed a one-size-fits-all, blood-red robe and confirmed on a Thursday evening. Terry was my sponsor -- she stood next to me in the pew, smiling kind of like she always had.

"Who is your patron Saint, Christie Matherne?" the Bishop asked.
"Saint Maria Goretti," I replied.

"Oh, Saint Maria," he said wistfully. "She was such a young, devout martyr for Christ. And how did she die in her faith?"
"A man tried to rape her when she was 12, and she chose to die rather than to let him have her innocence."

"Yes, as you will take her name in the eye of God, may you always look to her for strength in the face of evil." He opened his book of Rites.

I thought about Saint Maria Goretti, canonized after dying at 12 years old, innocence intact. I thought of my mother, her devotion, and the guilt she must have felt -- the guilt she must still feel at the mercy of a dogma that canonized a 12-year-old for having the guts my mother couldn't find at that age. 

I thought of Kristy, and her mom and all the Icees I had passive-aggressively left to melt in her Buick; all my subtle mental terrorism campaigns against people whom I'd deemed unfit for my respect. I thought of how hard it must be to raise a child -- how terrifying the world must look to a new mother when she sees her child's innocence and cannot remember her own -- and how, perhaps, Kristy will remember a soggy cupful of hers.

I wondered how many kids Terry had stood next to in these pews, how many believers and nonbelievers she has guided to the altar, wearing one-size-fits-all robes in blood-red. I wondered what she must think of her students as she watches them line up to be inducted every year -- her contribution to the faith, her legacy; her penance, her apology, and her gratitude to God, for the way he created her to be alone, in his will, for the rest of her devout life. 

"You have received the spiritual seal, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of right judgment and courage, the spirit of knowledge and reverence, the Spirit of holy fear in God's presence. Guard what you have received. God the Father has marked you with his sign; Christ the Lord has confirmed you and has placed his pledge, the Spirit, in your heart. Deinde leviter eum in maxilla caedit, dicens: Peace be with you."

It was the least I could do.

"And also, with you."