For the Love of the Batman

What I like about the Batman is that he doesn't have any superpowers, and neither do his enemies. They've all just been driven mad by their own demons, the Batman included. It's an exaggerated (and beautiful) way to say that events and circumstances go a long way towards building worldviews, and a great reminder that everyone is a human being before they look like the Joker to us. And I think it's an awesome analogy to our two party system in the year of our Lord, 2012 AD.

I hate politics with a greater fury than I hate the Victorian period of literature. As such, this is all I'll say on the matter.

Republicans on the payroll know their voters well, and tend to target peoples' deepest fears/prejudices/issues, and can cast a net to pull in emotionally-charged votes. They're aiming the rhetoric at people who work their lives away for their families, people who either didn't go to college or went with a one-track mind. They're aiming at people who weren't curious/exposed to/didn't give a shit about the roots of human philosophy or science. People who don't think because no one pays them for it. Because they've avoided challenging their long-held notions about the world, those kinds of folks are more likely to have prejudices, irrational fears, and...and, fuck; fuck them for directly appealing to religious people, because devotion to religious law is so often black-and-white, and they know a Christian has to fucking vote for the guy who says "God" more frequently.

I know everyone is responsible for their own morality and information, but the truly religious are a lot more complicated than that. For instance, those Christians who actually are Christ-like...you know, the ones who devote their lives to God and not CNN...they hear Romney say he's against killing babies, and that the incumbent is somehow not against it, and that is a clear-cut choice. No matter what bottomless puddle of shit flows from anyone's mouth after that, the Christian is going to vote for the "not a baby killer" and go back to his/her life of quiet devotion. Good people get good things from the Bible, but goddamn if I don't wish Eve's apple had come from Some. Other. Fucking. Tree. And, well, the political Christians deserve whatever hell they believe in. I hope it's worse than they think.

All the while, Dems over here are cursed with that blasted "greater good" handicap that assumes people would help somebody in need, if given the chance. A la the Batman. Ever notice that the Batman is always up against a bunch of brainwashed and/or rich cronies along with the supervillain? The greater good is something everyone agrees with, but when it comes to saving one's own ass, everyone's just gonna assume Batman's taking care of it. Which he usually is, with the help of technology, engineering, billions of dollars, one old Alfred, and...knowledge. And he is not thanked. They aren't without their flaws, the donkey asses; but shit, I'd vote for Bill Clinton again over these two.

It sucks that he had to remind everybody that we're all growed-up now -- we can stop spitting spitballs at the other side of the room now, but now everybody get out your kinder-mats because it's naptime. Jesus.

The thing that makes it a handicap in this political climate is the charged atmosphere. Republicans are now vying for emotional votes IN LIEU of intelligent and informed decisions, because if they scare their target audience enough, those people will be voting in some sort of survival mode in a world where money is evaporating and they'll have to pay for everyone's birth control -- surely, in that world, being taxed for a more egalitarian society sounds like crazy talk, because it means they'd have to change their entire worldviews to be happy with it. Wars are started and cultures are vaporized over challenged worldviews, and the elephant in the room says it's the only thing that can save us from actually pursuing real knowledge. God for...bade, I guess.

Most lifelong repubs I know are acting like...fucking, Reivers from Firefly or something! They, like the Reivers, have gone to the edge of the universe, and have been driven mad from staring into the abyss for too long. When they read anything good about Obama -- or even just his name -- I could swear it wasn't this bad before. "He's a Muslim! He aborts babies! He gives all my money to black people on welfare because I'm a racist! [b]Shoot 'im![/b]" It's like Obama is the Viet Cong or some shit, where the US soldiers had to strip an entire nation's population of their value as human beings and simply called them all "Charlie," because that's the only way they could live with themselves after killing mothers and children. Obama isn't booby-trapping the rainforests in Viet Nam, but he gets unchecked hatred from the ever-forgetting elephants. Without all that time-consuming fact checking, of course.

I'm not campaigning for Obama or anything, even though he's asked me to dinner a billion times this month, but that kind of behavior from the conservative side says a lot more about today's Repub mindset than it does about Obama's first term. If I didn't know anything Obama did in his four years, I'd see Jesus regretting his crucifixion at the sight of the disgusting horde he died for, and I'd fucking vote for whoever they aren't supporting. It's repulsive. And with a sack like Romney, pushing the country into thinking America is falling apart is really his only fucking shot at it. A man with no provable moral character, no regard for facts, and no plan to help anyone other than himself.

I'd compare the Joker to Romney as an analogy, but I like the Joker too much. At least he admits he's fucking shit up because he doesn't believe in anything, and he'd never run for POTUS in a million years. I respect that in a man.

I'm Gonna Leave With You

in the summer that you came there was 

something eating everyone

in the sunshine fun was low

we couldn't greet you

with a simple hello

and the watchers of the flood

were busy in their chambers

making sure there was new blood

to sustain their dying veins

but i believed you

no need for further questioning

i'm gonna leave with you

you can teach me all you know

which way will we go now

in our trip to higher windows

i really don't know now

i really don't know

These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things

1. Cold snaps; the kind that really do feel like a "snap;" they remind me of snapping light sticks on night hikes during Girl Scout camping trips. When the weather changes here, it shocks people into saying more interesting sentences. I say far more interesting things when the temperature has just dropped 20 degrees, and people I bump into are more likely to start interesting conversations. As a result, I start thinking about all the wonderful, interesting people in my life that I haven't had recent one-on-ones with, and that makes me realize how many wonderful, interesting people I have yet to meet. The nugget I always end up with is a delightful crescendo of appreciation for the world, and humanity at large; optimistic to a degree capable of drowning out the negative parts -- all the "what is the world coming to?" that has carbonized in the heat of summer.

2. Conversations in which I end up accidentally teaching myself something; the ones where, in the heat of advice-giving, I hear something come out of my mouth that I've never thought before that moment, and something clicks in my head and I realize I've just given myself an explanation that I didn't know I needed. Tonight, I answered a question about myself that I'd never thought to ask before. Josh disputed my comment that I like the history of music more than I like the music itself (which I had also just realized). But because he challenged my statement, I was challenged to explain what made it true -- why am I so interested in the making of music when I rarely remember to turn on the radio in my car?
After a few half-sentences, I said, "Because I'm interested in human history, and our history is hidden in music...it sings our own history back to us."

3. Waiting tables. So I might have gotten lucky with the place I work. The service industry is so famously disgruntled, and behind the safety of kitchen doors, those who haven't been on both sides of them are always blamed as the enemy. After seven years on both sides, I don't see it that way anymore.
Sometimes, I think the reason servers get so angry is because the American gratuity system doesn't allow us to consistently earn what we think our time is worth -- in fact, there are times when there's absolutely nothing we can do to earn a decent tip from a cheap table -- and the server rage only festers when we begin to let ourselves think that a tip is a measure of our worth. I've been treated like a child, a heathen, a leper, a slave, an idiot, and a female object in my years as a server, and I went through a period when my self-esteem would plummet when an unassuming friend would say something like, "How hard could your job possibly be?" It was hard to face the futility of explaining how hard my job could possibly be to someone who has not only never done it, but had no real desire to understand. Until a person has been on the standing side of the table, they'll likely never grasp the experience of a job that essentially requires you to walk up to a group of hungry strangers and ask them to judge you on any criteria they desire, decide what "your job" entails, and then pay you at a rate of their choosing, anywhere from eight to 20 times a day.  "Your job is just to bring people their food and refill their drinks, right?"
Even though it sucks sometimes, when a table engages me in a more thought-provoking conversation than many people get from their closest friends, I feel like I have the best job in the world. And instead of the normal grumbling about a mediocre tip as I clear their table an hour after closing time, I'm reminded that real human connections can't be bought, and that the conversation I've just had with a few strangers should never, ever be judged in dollars.
I'm not sure when it changed, but a low number on the tip line doesn't do anything to me anymore -- at least not psychologically. I might leave a five-hour shift with three bucks, but watching a normally civil human being as he justifies (or doesn't think anything of) his sub-human treatment of a stranger in public is the real gold I leave with -- he has taught me something about humanity that he won't ever understand, because he'll never be brave enough to put an apron on and look it in the eye.
For instance, tonight I waited on a guy who told me he thinks people who don't like the Beatles are uncultured idiots, due to the factual superiority (record sales) of the Beatles discography. I told him that if he's using record sales as a measure of how great a band is, he'll probably never be proven wrong, but only because nobody buys records anymore.
He said, "Yeah, so I'm right, right?"
I saw the exchange, and the ensuing lame tip, as ever more proof that monetary exchanges can't possibly reflect the worth of a human being -- not creative talent, musicianship, nor work ethic; not argumentative prowess nor character -- which is something a lot of people say, but waiting tables has shown me that very few people truly believe it, and even fewer realize the extent to which they've bought into the opposite. Some customers get such a thrill from knowing they control their server's income, I wonder what hell their private lives are.
Perspective is humanity's true currency, and though the service industry isn't the only way to earn it, I'd have a lot less of it if I'd gotten some other job when I was 19.

Blue Moon

The hurricane has gone, left us with new dead wood to sand down into nostalgia nightstands that will later hold our room-temp coffee over rehashed stories. When the wind is at its strongest, so are we; and when the debris is settled against our bedroom windowpanes, begging for amnesty, we lie here in our bed next to each other, commas in a world otherwise pauseless.

I have loved you all my life.

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

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.

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."