Yes. $12.50 for a movie ticket in New York City. No!
I’m back to second grade for the rest of the school year at Grace Church School, where I taught for four years. One of the teachers suddenly quit and I received a phone call on the day I was leaving for Paris and asked to return for the remainder of the school year. I accepted. Before this happened, I had a rather unstructured life. I did have my morning routine of prayers, meditation, occasionally working out or doing yoga, and then writing for the remainder of the day, but other than that, the day was mine to create as I pleased. After I accepted the tenure my life has become one of having a definitive schedule. I wake up around six in the morning to get downtown for eight.
Before returning to teaching, one of the luxuries of not working a 9-5 job was having the opportunity to see a movie at 2:10 on a Tuesday afternoon. That’s what F. and I did several months ago. The movie: Revolutionary Road; a stunningly bleak, unsettlingly gorgeous film that no straight married couple should see. Devastating. I mean it. If you’re married, do NOT see this film. If you're straight and single and you have dreams of marriage, don't see it. Along that same vein of advice, it’s also the date movie from the depths of hell that will ruin any possibilities of an amorous post-movie interlude. I wouldn’t doubt if couples have run screaming from theaters across the country. Gay folk can watch it and just shake their heads because we don’t have to deal with issues that raise their pernicious heads in the film.
But I don’t want to write about the movie. I want to write about my indignation at the fact that when I walked into the theater a year ago, I paid eleven dollars and now I’m paying one-fifty more. It’s not that I can’t afford the extra levy on my movie experience. I can. It’s not a problem. I’ve got the extra one-fifty, and I don’t want to sound like a curmudgeon, like an old man saying, “It ain’t like it used to be,” but it truly is the principle of the fact that our economy is in an ignoble slump from which not many economists see a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel and the theaters have just jacked up the prices. Maybe movie reel rentals have gone up for the theaters. I don’t know. Perhaps I’m not well-informed enough to make this judgment, but I do, so lest I digress….
Movies used to be the dissemination and salvation of culture to the masses. Not everyone could afford a Broadway play, a ticket to Carnegie Hall or the Met Opera, but most could pay the ten bucks to screen the newest popcorn extravaganza from Hollywood. No more. That time has ceased to be and I feel insulted and betrayed.
With my out-of-date student ID, which nobody at the box office every checks, I can buy a ticket for a world class performance at Carnegie Hall for $10. Even without the ID, on any performance night I could buy a ticket in the bleachers for $20. And what about the Met Opera? Family Circle tickets can start at $25, rush tickets sometimes come in at $20. Pretty soon it’ll be cheaper to go to Carnegie and the Met than a night out at the movies.
During her childhood in Glassboro, NJ, my mom lived at the movies on weekends during the school year, and then four days a week during the summertime. She remembered paying twenty-five cents for double features, which included cartoons, serials, and newsreels of world events. At that time she remembered seeing black and white footage of the Germans marching on Paris. This was in the late 30s and 1940s, before the advent of television. What a divine time at the cinema. When my mom was still kicking and I visited home, we turned on the television to the American Movie Classics channel, and nine times out of ten, whether it was a B-film from the factory studio system or an A-list picture, she would say, “Oh, I remember that one.”
A long time ago, movies were for the masses. Now, it seems, they’re becoming more elitist. Historically, besides revenue, democracy was endemic to the idea of movies, especially during my mom's era of the Great Depression and WWII when the poor and the rich shared each cinematic experience equitably. There was no assigned seating. The poorest tramp with a dime could walk into a theater and sit in the fifth row next to a Rockefeller and enjoy the same bombastic delight of a Busby Berkley musical as the next fella.
If this inimitably sublime art form, this celluloid manifestation of dreams, becomes elitist, then what’s left?
Suppose you’re a family with three children. That’s two adults, three kids, some popcorn and a few sodas. You’ve just blown sixty bucks on a Saturday afternoon when you could have waited two months for the movie to come out on DVD, made your own popcorn, and bought a 2-liter bottle of Coke for under ten bucks.
If Julia Roberts and Tom Cruise would take $10 million instead of their $20+million paychecks, then maybe the studios wouldn’t up their film rentals to the theaters, which would then bring down the ticket cost. I don’t know for sure. I’m not a cinematic economist, but I do know that theaters make their money on concessions, and if people stop going to the theater, or have to pay more for the experience, then they’re less likely to buy that four-dollar diminutive bag of popcorn and a three-fifty coke that sells for a buck twenty-five on the street.
Yes, I’ll still go to the movies. I do love the experience. The big screen always evinces a bubbly childhood excitement inside of me. I simply want to feel like I’m not being taken advantage of. Until then, like a seemingly cantankerous old fool, I say, “May the box office suffer, may Hollywood stars take a paycut for the good of the many who pay to watch their schlock, and may the kind people of this country sit at home and wait for the DVD special edition of the latest movie fare.”
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Dear Richard,
You’re the son of my grandmother’s sister, Aunt Lily. You’re my cousin and yet I hardly know anything about you except through intimations I heard as an adolescent: “Richard’s the black sheep. He lives with his friend.” I remember you at family weddings and funerals, always sitting with your mother, walking through the buffet line with her, not knowing that your friend was at home because “what would people think?”
Now I understand that he wasn’t just your friend. You lived with your lover, your partner of twenty-five years, and when he died last year, the event was a mere blip in our family circle, unnoticed, disregarded. Did anyone from our family go to your partner’s funeral? Was your mom there, your brother and sister-in-law, your nieces and nephews? Did you receive any sympathy cards from us? No. Your love wasn’t a real love because it was the “love that dare not speak its name”. The loving and caring devotion you shared with him as he slowly died from complications due to a gay bashing in Philadelphia a few years prior is misunderstood and unsubstantiated.
I don’t say this as an act of judgment. All I can do is write about what I see on the surface and make suppositions through observation and reflection about the roots that grow down deep, clinging to dirt for dear life. These people are who they are, but that’s no excuse for un-Christian behavior. The irony is that they think they’re doing the right thing as Christians by not acknowledging you and your life.
Behind the forced smiles and a few vague pleasantries, you are the ignominious one, but now I join that familial club with you. Our families never really ask too much about our lives, do they?. They’re scared of the truth, afraid of what they might hear. You’re not alone anymore. Even though nobody in the extended family talks about it, I know questions arise in hushed circles: “Why isn’t Timmie married? Why doesn’t he have a girlfriend? I guess he’s just a confirmed bachelor.”
A particular concern of my parents when I told them I was gay was they didn’t want anyone in the family to know for fear of embarrassment. But in the recesses of our family’s minds, or perhaps on the precipices of their thoughts, is the pernicious belief that I am one of ‘those’ and it’s always best not to talk about those things. Just ignore it and it’ll go away. But we don’t go away. We’re there as an ever present reminder of an alternative life that shouldn’t be seen as alternative, but rather just as it is: a precious life.
Here we live in a family filled with God-fearing Christians and yet nobody ever offered sincere regrets about your loss last year. It was untimely that your partner died just as my mom began her downward spiral from life towards death. That stole the fire from all the funerals last year. My mom was loved by hundreds of people, whereas I didn’t even know you had a partner until you told me your ‘friend’ had died. I had to put the puzzle pieces together and then my heart broke.
I remember that moment. I wanted to cry with you and tell you how sorry I was. My mom’s memorial service was over and people had shuffled out of the church to go to the gravesite for the burial. Family members remained, including Aunt Lily and you. You came up to my sisters and me and showed us a picture of your partner who had died two weeks prior. It was one of those picture cards that’s handed out at funerals in remembrance of the departed. Your partner was handsome, with a manicured moustache, a kind face that wore a demure smile. I forget which sister you gave the card to, but I remember as I walked out of the church seeing the it lying unwanted in a pew. I wish I had made an attempt to talk with you afterwards, but I was consumed by my own sorrow, and by the time I thought about it, you’d left.
I’m so very sorry for your partner’s death. I never sent you a sympathy card for your loss, never called you, and I’m sorry for that. I apologize. After my mom’s death I truly forgot, and that was wrong. He was the love of your life and it’s odious that our family decided to ignore this. It’s ignoble. I’m a bit angry right now, feeling a bit pugnacious. Their deeply-seeded beliefs put us queers on the fringe of acceptance and therefore the death of your partner gets swept under the rug; unspoken; forgotten.
But Richard, I have to take a balanced view, to look at life from both sides, and in that light you and I are also to blame for the reality of our relationships with our family. Why didn’t you just come out and say, “My partner died,” instead of just your friend? Why didn’t you bring him to birthday parties, to funerals, to weddings? It’s not that you had to shout from the mountaintop, “Here’s my boyfriend!” That didn’t need to be said. It could just be what it was without commentary. I’m guilty of this, too. It’s something I deal with a lot.
I can’t just put our families in the corner and say, “You’ve been bad and you stay there until you’re ready to apologize,” like an impious child that’s been scolded. I’m not the kind of person who delivers ultimatums (accept me or else!), especially to those who over the years have loved me and supported me, but now wrack themselves with how to live with a gay brother. It’s their religion and conditioned belief systems that prevent them right now from taking a step towards total acceptance. I have to come from a place of love and light and not sever all ties like some people do until their families accept them…or not. It’s not easy for them. It’s not easy for me, but I work at it day by day, and slowly, over the last few years, I’ve been distancing myself emotionally, living the life I truly want, and I think progress has been made.
By living a surreptitious life, by hinting about your ‘friend’ over the years, by coalescing your identity with your family’s shame and not asserting yourself, the pain you may feel now has partly been created by you. By going along with them and creating this cycle together, not wanting to embarrass them, you’re now alone with your sorrow, but even if you had been forthright, perhaps they would have shunned you and you’d still be left alone. Who knows? This isn’t about placing blame, it’s merely about trying to understand human relationships and how to live life fully and honestly in the moment and not running headfirst without consciousness towards our deaths with regrets.
It’s always better to be honest, even if we do hurt others sometimes. That’s inevitable. Life is filled with change and suffering, and the more we learn how to accept these moments as part of our paths, the better we can survive and transform ourselves and hopefully others through our honest relationships.
If Christ returned on the day of your partner’s funeral, he would have been there with you. Jesus got angry. He threw the moneychangers out of the synagogue. If he came back today he’d probably gather up all the Christians who create hatred in his name and chastise them with a mighty spiritual backhand.
If our family stepped back from themselves, listened to their hearts that are supposed to be imbued with the love of Christ, if they stopped listening to pulpit theology that comes from a place of divisiveness, of bias, of true fear of the “other” (anything that is not like themselves or fails to fall sequaciously into their belief system); if they indefatigably sought universal truths of love on their own without having someone else interpret it for them, I think they would have been there with Christ and you at the funeral. I wish I had known. I would have been there, too.
Every act of hatred and intolerance comes from the fear of death. It’s a theory I’ve been positing to myself for the past year, and when I think about why people act so shamefully, I truly believe it comes down to the fact that most, if not all, live in total dread of death, even though they’re supposed to find comfort through their religious beliefs. People want to be right so much that they’ll devastate you to prove a point.
One of my sisters (the most accepting one of me) told me she talked with you at one of the family functions where I wasn’t present. She told you I was gay. Your response: “I know.”
You knew, as did my other cousin on my mother’s side. I hadn’t seen her in fourteen years, but on my last trip to Santa Fe I had lunch with her and ended up spending the entire afternoon, well into the evening, reminiscing and drinking wine with her. It was a beautiful day and we’ve reconnected and don’t intend to let that connection break again. We talk on the phone every few weeks. She’s become a welcomed solace to my familial frustrations.
At a diner in the downtown Santa Fe plaza, over an enchilada and beer, I told her I was gay. She laughed and said, “I’ve known since you were ten years old!” So here you are, my gay cousin, and here is my other cousin who accepts me for who I am and wants to have a relationship with me. She’s the blood family I’ve been seeking for so long, and now we can be a part of each other’s lives.
With all that said, Richard, please know that I’m here. I know. I empathize.
Love,
Timmie
xox
Now I understand that he wasn’t just your friend. You lived with your lover, your partner of twenty-five years, and when he died last year, the event was a mere blip in our family circle, unnoticed, disregarded. Did anyone from our family go to your partner’s funeral? Was your mom there, your brother and sister-in-law, your nieces and nephews? Did you receive any sympathy cards from us? No. Your love wasn’t a real love because it was the “love that dare not speak its name”. The loving and caring devotion you shared with him as he slowly died from complications due to a gay bashing in Philadelphia a few years prior is misunderstood and unsubstantiated.
I don’t say this as an act of judgment. All I can do is write about what I see on the surface and make suppositions through observation and reflection about the roots that grow down deep, clinging to dirt for dear life. These people are who they are, but that’s no excuse for un-Christian behavior. The irony is that they think they’re doing the right thing as Christians by not acknowledging you and your life.
Behind the forced smiles and a few vague pleasantries, you are the ignominious one, but now I join that familial club with you. Our families never really ask too much about our lives, do they?. They’re scared of the truth, afraid of what they might hear. You’re not alone anymore. Even though nobody in the extended family talks about it, I know questions arise in hushed circles: “Why isn’t Timmie married? Why doesn’t he have a girlfriend? I guess he’s just a confirmed bachelor.”
A particular concern of my parents when I told them I was gay was they didn’t want anyone in the family to know for fear of embarrassment. But in the recesses of our family’s minds, or perhaps on the precipices of their thoughts, is the pernicious belief that I am one of ‘those’ and it’s always best not to talk about those things. Just ignore it and it’ll go away. But we don’t go away. We’re there as an ever present reminder of an alternative life that shouldn’t be seen as alternative, but rather just as it is: a precious life.
Here we live in a family filled with God-fearing Christians and yet nobody ever offered sincere regrets about your loss last year. It was untimely that your partner died just as my mom began her downward spiral from life towards death. That stole the fire from all the funerals last year. My mom was loved by hundreds of people, whereas I didn’t even know you had a partner until you told me your ‘friend’ had died. I had to put the puzzle pieces together and then my heart broke.
I remember that moment. I wanted to cry with you and tell you how sorry I was. My mom’s memorial service was over and people had shuffled out of the church to go to the gravesite for the burial. Family members remained, including Aunt Lily and you. You came up to my sisters and me and showed us a picture of your partner who had died two weeks prior. It was one of those picture cards that’s handed out at funerals in remembrance of the departed. Your partner was handsome, with a manicured moustache, a kind face that wore a demure smile. I forget which sister you gave the card to, but I remember as I walked out of the church seeing the it lying unwanted in a pew. I wish I had made an attempt to talk with you afterwards, but I was consumed by my own sorrow, and by the time I thought about it, you’d left.
I’m so very sorry for your partner’s death. I never sent you a sympathy card for your loss, never called you, and I’m sorry for that. I apologize. After my mom’s death I truly forgot, and that was wrong. He was the love of your life and it’s odious that our family decided to ignore this. It’s ignoble. I’m a bit angry right now, feeling a bit pugnacious. Their deeply-seeded beliefs put us queers on the fringe of acceptance and therefore the death of your partner gets swept under the rug; unspoken; forgotten.
But Richard, I have to take a balanced view, to look at life from both sides, and in that light you and I are also to blame for the reality of our relationships with our family. Why didn’t you just come out and say, “My partner died,” instead of just your friend? Why didn’t you bring him to birthday parties, to funerals, to weddings? It’s not that you had to shout from the mountaintop, “Here’s my boyfriend!” That didn’t need to be said. It could just be what it was without commentary. I’m guilty of this, too. It’s something I deal with a lot.
I can’t just put our families in the corner and say, “You’ve been bad and you stay there until you’re ready to apologize,” like an impious child that’s been scolded. I’m not the kind of person who delivers ultimatums (accept me or else!), especially to those who over the years have loved me and supported me, but now wrack themselves with how to live with a gay brother. It’s their religion and conditioned belief systems that prevent them right now from taking a step towards total acceptance. I have to come from a place of love and light and not sever all ties like some people do until their families accept them…or not. It’s not easy for them. It’s not easy for me, but I work at it day by day, and slowly, over the last few years, I’ve been distancing myself emotionally, living the life I truly want, and I think progress has been made.
By living a surreptitious life, by hinting about your ‘friend’ over the years, by coalescing your identity with your family’s shame and not asserting yourself, the pain you may feel now has partly been created by you. By going along with them and creating this cycle together, not wanting to embarrass them, you’re now alone with your sorrow, but even if you had been forthright, perhaps they would have shunned you and you’d still be left alone. Who knows? This isn’t about placing blame, it’s merely about trying to understand human relationships and how to live life fully and honestly in the moment and not running headfirst without consciousness towards our deaths with regrets.
It’s always better to be honest, even if we do hurt others sometimes. That’s inevitable. Life is filled with change and suffering, and the more we learn how to accept these moments as part of our paths, the better we can survive and transform ourselves and hopefully others through our honest relationships.
If Christ returned on the day of your partner’s funeral, he would have been there with you. Jesus got angry. He threw the moneychangers out of the synagogue. If he came back today he’d probably gather up all the Christians who create hatred in his name and chastise them with a mighty spiritual backhand.
If our family stepped back from themselves, listened to their hearts that are supposed to be imbued with the love of Christ, if they stopped listening to pulpit theology that comes from a place of divisiveness, of bias, of true fear of the “other” (anything that is not like themselves or fails to fall sequaciously into their belief system); if they indefatigably sought universal truths of love on their own without having someone else interpret it for them, I think they would have been there with Christ and you at the funeral. I wish I had known. I would have been there, too.
Every act of hatred and intolerance comes from the fear of death. It’s a theory I’ve been positing to myself for the past year, and when I think about why people act so shamefully, I truly believe it comes down to the fact that most, if not all, live in total dread of death, even though they’re supposed to find comfort through their religious beliefs. People want to be right so much that they’ll devastate you to prove a point.
One of my sisters (the most accepting one of me) told me she talked with you at one of the family functions where I wasn’t present. She told you I was gay. Your response: “I know.”
You knew, as did my other cousin on my mother’s side. I hadn’t seen her in fourteen years, but on my last trip to Santa Fe I had lunch with her and ended up spending the entire afternoon, well into the evening, reminiscing and drinking wine with her. It was a beautiful day and we’ve reconnected and don’t intend to let that connection break again. We talk on the phone every few weeks. She’s become a welcomed solace to my familial frustrations.
At a diner in the downtown Santa Fe plaza, over an enchilada and beer, I told her I was gay. She laughed and said, “I’ve known since you were ten years old!” So here you are, my gay cousin, and here is my other cousin who accepts me for who I am and wants to have a relationship with me. She’s the blood family I’ve been seeking for so long, and now we can be a part of each other’s lives.
With all that said, Richard, please know that I’m here. I know. I empathize.
Love,
Timmie
xox
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Resurrection
At dinner last week, F. and I talked about death and how nobody really knows for sure what happens when we die. There’s no proof of an afterlife. There’s no proof of there not being one. God? That’s another debate. God created in man’s image is a truth, but the God outside of our own egoistic trappings is one that humanity has tried to understand for ages through art, science, philosophy and theology. We can prognosticate and hypothesize; we can extol different faiths that tell us of heaven and hell, of reincarnation, or that when we die we’re simply snuffed out like a candle and our consciousness dies with us. Who knows? It’s merely nescience that defies illumination. Only ones that have died before us know the truth and it’s in my dreams of my dead mother that I’ve been offered a glimpse of rebirth and resurrection of the spirit. These are dreams, though, but at least it’s something.
I’m scared of dying. I’m scared of not-being. I can say that energy is neither created nor destroyed; it’s a scientific fact. Nobody can create energy from nothing, well, maybe one – the Source, but that’s for another essay. If I’m made of energy, then my body’s lifeforce will transform and continue to exist in the universe because from the Big Bang, when the Universe decided to exist, we all come from that Source. We are stardust.
Ever since coming out of the proverbial closet, I’ve tried to be honest with myself. That was the last great lie I lived and I was finished with lies after that transformation of my consciousness. So if I’m to remain honest and true, then I must say that I fear death. I think by saying that I’m scared, by admitting that I don’t know what’s going to happen, I can live more freely; I can live fully. I feel a release right now as I write this and meditate on that fear. I’ve never truly expressed this. I’ve felt it lately, for some reason, and maybe the reason I’ve felt it is because I’m treading the waters of some cathartic moment when I can yell and scream, “I’m scared and it’s okay!”
Because it is okay to be scared and not fall into the sequacious ranks of those who pretend they’re not. I’m scared of the dark sometimes, too, and death to me is a dark mystery, but one that can be embraced with light, love, and joy. We want so much to say that we have faith and that this doesn’t make us scared anymore, but I think we have to admit our fear, feel it, be depressed, lethargic, consumed with it, and then find that release when we realize that it’s healthy to be scared of dying. Through this self-actualization we can actually come to the point when we can return or rediscover a new faith that we believe in. By facing a fear, the emotion of it can diminish and hopefully, eventually, dissipate to a point that it doesn’t consume us.
I believe that everything we consider bad in the world, every emotion that we express to disparage others, every moment that we don’t live in compassion comes from our fear of death. There’s a great scene in “Moonstruck” – one of my favorite New York movies – in which Rose, played by Olympia Dukakis, sits down with Johnny (Danny Aiello) in her living room. Her husband’s been cheating on her and the scene plays out like this:
Rose: [frustrated] But why would a man need more than one woman?
Johnny: I don't know. Maybe because he fears death.
[Rose looks up, eyes wide, suspicions confirmed]
Rose: That's it! That's the reason!
And that is it. That’s it in a nutshell. Everything we do that hurts ourselves and others, whether singularly or on a global level, comes from our fear of the unknown that awaits us all. When the Nazis massacred gypsies, homosexual men, Polish Catholics, the disabled, Jews, and political and religious opponents, I believe they did it because subconsciously they were afraid of their own deaths, and by killing others they hoped to attain a sense of supremacy that they could overcome their own inevitable demises. The Turkish genocide of Armenians, the dropping of the Hiroshima bomb, the Crusades against Muslims, were all acts committed by an egoic need to trump death and prove that only the victors had a handle on truth. But it never works that way, and when someone tells me they know the truth to the many spiritual questions I have, I run away as quickly as I can because I know there won’t be any room for discourse.
For me, my current faith is that there is a Source of my Being, a universal creative intelligence that we are a part of through our collective conscious, and this Source connects every particle in the universe with each other, big or small, visible or invisible. I am a vital expression and incarnation of the moment when the Universe came into being and spread, and grew. It keeps growing, too. After billions of years of growth, expansion, and evolution, here I am, sitting at my desk in a house on top of Marble Hill with the birds twittering outside and the tulips wanting so badly to bud that I can feel their excitement for the moment when they’ll burst out in color and form.
Now that I’ve admitted my deathly fear of death, I return to the core of my being, the foundation from where I can start again to build my faith. My fear of death and the annihilation of consciousness is sublimated by my belief in my Source, in God if you want. I’m going to rebuild now because I don’t want to live with a nihilistic view of the universe, one of chaos and an ending to my story. It’s not that I want to dupe myself with a fantasy of an afterlife, but rather that I find comfort in questioning my existence in relation to my Source, and quite frankly, I’d rather live with doubt and questioning than deciding that there’s no point to question anymore. I’m a seeker with a hope for the continuation of my consciousness and spirit. If I’m wrong, then I won’t know it when I die. If I’m right I will. If I’m neither right or wrong, then sobeit. I can start to live with that now.
Filippo Brunelleschi, the harbinger of the Renaissance who built the Duomo in Florence, Italy, is an inspiration for me. He was a creative problem solver who constantly built upon his life experiences as goldsmith, sculptor, and draftsman. He was an incessant questioner who acquired knowledge from others while taking his own vision to ever-higher levels. This idea of self-discovery and building upon experience and knowledge is why I’m going to seminary this fall. I feel driven to go beyond myself and to continue my learning so that I can embrace this great mystery of death with knowledge through experience, through questioning rather than just accepting. When I stop learning, I stop living.
The death of Christ, whether you believe it was a real event or allegory, is a reminder to me of the triumph over death that we all can adopt when our time comes to make the great leap from this present consciousness. Easter is a holiday that reminds me of spring, the new flowers blooming, the possibilities of the approaching summer, and the time of rebirth and resurrection. Perhaps Christ conquered death so that we could understand his insight: that it’s an illusion of reality, and that there is much more beyond what we can see with our eyes.
The tulip bulb in my backyard sits quietly all summer, fall, and winter in the ground, waiting for the right soil temperature, the moment in Spring when the sun shines longer during the day and its petals can open to receive the light. Christ’s death and resurrection, like that of the tulip, tells me that life comes and goes likes the tides and it’s my time now, here on earth, to accept my life and push myself forward. I don’t know what’s coming tomorrow. I know what happened yesterday. But all I have is now.
Death is the greatest mystery, even greater than the question of creation, space, and time that geniuses like Einstein grappled with every day. I have lots of questions that truly don’t have any answers on this plane, but I’m okay with that. When I cry out in joy, fear, or anguish, there’s something inside of me that says: “Death is not the end of your questions.” I have much to learn and I’m given many opportunities to continue my learning. I don’t have many answers, but I’ve got a lot of questions, and somehow, in the midst of my daily life, my striving and yearning, my questioning and learning, I believe I’ll become truer to the image of my Source that’s within us all.
Madeleine L’Engle writes: “Whatever death involves, it will be different, a venture into the unknown, and we are all afraid of the dark. At least I am – a fear made bearable by faith and joy.”
Happy Easter. Happy Resurrection.
I’m scared of dying. I’m scared of not-being. I can say that energy is neither created nor destroyed; it’s a scientific fact. Nobody can create energy from nothing, well, maybe one – the Source, but that’s for another essay. If I’m made of energy, then my body’s lifeforce will transform and continue to exist in the universe because from the Big Bang, when the Universe decided to exist, we all come from that Source. We are stardust.
Ever since coming out of the proverbial closet, I’ve tried to be honest with myself. That was the last great lie I lived and I was finished with lies after that transformation of my consciousness. So if I’m to remain honest and true, then I must say that I fear death. I think by saying that I’m scared, by admitting that I don’t know what’s going to happen, I can live more freely; I can live fully. I feel a release right now as I write this and meditate on that fear. I’ve never truly expressed this. I’ve felt it lately, for some reason, and maybe the reason I’ve felt it is because I’m treading the waters of some cathartic moment when I can yell and scream, “I’m scared and it’s okay!”
Because it is okay to be scared and not fall into the sequacious ranks of those who pretend they’re not. I’m scared of the dark sometimes, too, and death to me is a dark mystery, but one that can be embraced with light, love, and joy. We want so much to say that we have faith and that this doesn’t make us scared anymore, but I think we have to admit our fear, feel it, be depressed, lethargic, consumed with it, and then find that release when we realize that it’s healthy to be scared of dying. Through this self-actualization we can actually come to the point when we can return or rediscover a new faith that we believe in. By facing a fear, the emotion of it can diminish and hopefully, eventually, dissipate to a point that it doesn’t consume us.
I believe that everything we consider bad in the world, every emotion that we express to disparage others, every moment that we don’t live in compassion comes from our fear of death. There’s a great scene in “Moonstruck” – one of my favorite New York movies – in which Rose, played by Olympia Dukakis, sits down with Johnny (Danny Aiello) in her living room. Her husband’s been cheating on her and the scene plays out like this:
Rose: [frustrated] But why would a man need more than one woman?
Johnny: I don't know. Maybe because he fears death.
[Rose looks up, eyes wide, suspicions confirmed]
Rose: That's it! That's the reason!
And that is it. That’s it in a nutshell. Everything we do that hurts ourselves and others, whether singularly or on a global level, comes from our fear of the unknown that awaits us all. When the Nazis massacred gypsies, homosexual men, Polish Catholics, the disabled, Jews, and political and religious opponents, I believe they did it because subconsciously they were afraid of their own deaths, and by killing others they hoped to attain a sense of supremacy that they could overcome their own inevitable demises. The Turkish genocide of Armenians, the dropping of the Hiroshima bomb, the Crusades against Muslims, were all acts committed by an egoic need to trump death and prove that only the victors had a handle on truth. But it never works that way, and when someone tells me they know the truth to the many spiritual questions I have, I run away as quickly as I can because I know there won’t be any room for discourse.
For me, my current faith is that there is a Source of my Being, a universal creative intelligence that we are a part of through our collective conscious, and this Source connects every particle in the universe with each other, big or small, visible or invisible. I am a vital expression and incarnation of the moment when the Universe came into being and spread, and grew. It keeps growing, too. After billions of years of growth, expansion, and evolution, here I am, sitting at my desk in a house on top of Marble Hill with the birds twittering outside and the tulips wanting so badly to bud that I can feel their excitement for the moment when they’ll burst out in color and form.
Now that I’ve admitted my deathly fear of death, I return to the core of my being, the foundation from where I can start again to build my faith. My fear of death and the annihilation of consciousness is sublimated by my belief in my Source, in God if you want. I’m going to rebuild now because I don’t want to live with a nihilistic view of the universe, one of chaos and an ending to my story. It’s not that I want to dupe myself with a fantasy of an afterlife, but rather that I find comfort in questioning my existence in relation to my Source, and quite frankly, I’d rather live with doubt and questioning than deciding that there’s no point to question anymore. I’m a seeker with a hope for the continuation of my consciousness and spirit. If I’m wrong, then I won’t know it when I die. If I’m right I will. If I’m neither right or wrong, then sobeit. I can start to live with that now.
Filippo Brunelleschi, the harbinger of the Renaissance who built the Duomo in Florence, Italy, is an inspiration for me. He was a creative problem solver who constantly built upon his life experiences as goldsmith, sculptor, and draftsman. He was an incessant questioner who acquired knowledge from others while taking his own vision to ever-higher levels. This idea of self-discovery and building upon experience and knowledge is why I’m going to seminary this fall. I feel driven to go beyond myself and to continue my learning so that I can embrace this great mystery of death with knowledge through experience, through questioning rather than just accepting. When I stop learning, I stop living.
The death of Christ, whether you believe it was a real event or allegory, is a reminder to me of the triumph over death that we all can adopt when our time comes to make the great leap from this present consciousness. Easter is a holiday that reminds me of spring, the new flowers blooming, the possibilities of the approaching summer, and the time of rebirth and resurrection. Perhaps Christ conquered death so that we could understand his insight: that it’s an illusion of reality, and that there is much more beyond what we can see with our eyes.
The tulip bulb in my backyard sits quietly all summer, fall, and winter in the ground, waiting for the right soil temperature, the moment in Spring when the sun shines longer during the day and its petals can open to receive the light. Christ’s death and resurrection, like that of the tulip, tells me that life comes and goes likes the tides and it’s my time now, here on earth, to accept my life and push myself forward. I don’t know what’s coming tomorrow. I know what happened yesterday. But all I have is now.
Death is the greatest mystery, even greater than the question of creation, space, and time that geniuses like Einstein grappled with every day. I have lots of questions that truly don’t have any answers on this plane, but I’m okay with that. When I cry out in joy, fear, or anguish, there’s something inside of me that says: “Death is not the end of your questions.” I have much to learn and I’m given many opportunities to continue my learning. I don’t have many answers, but I’ve got a lot of questions, and somehow, in the midst of my daily life, my striving and yearning, my questioning and learning, I believe I’ll become truer to the image of my Source that’s within us all.
Madeleine L’Engle writes: “Whatever death involves, it will be different, a venture into the unknown, and we are all afraid of the dark. At least I am – a fear made bearable by faith and joy.”
Happy Easter. Happy Resurrection.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Martine
(Rather than write about everything I did in Paris, I wanted to focus on a very special French woman whom I met. Her name is Martine, and these are my thoughts about her as they relate to a film and an inveterate art critic.)
Upon our return to New York from Paris I made my way through the pile of mail on the dining room table that had amassed over ten days. The amount of paper was unfathomable. How many trees have been destroyed to get me to make donations to the ACLU? In the mix of letters and bills was a red envelope that cried out: “Netflix!” I’d forgotten what was on our online queue and when I opened it I was happy to see that the DVD inside was “The Triplets of Belleville”.
I’d first seen the film upon its initial release in 2003. Without any dialogue, only with music and sound effects, the movie is incredibly expressionistic and atmospheric, something that the current Pixar milieu isn’t always able to create for me. The story taps into the sublime humanity that we sometimes overlook in the throngs around us.
In the film, the loose plot sets up the relationship between a grandmother and her orphaned grandson. The young boy is sad, listless, and shows no interest in anything until the grandmother discovers his passion for bikes and buys him a tricycle. The torpid boy finds his raison d'être and grows up to be a cyclist (not a very good one), and the twist is when he’s kidnapped by chain-smoking gangsters during the Tour de France and taken to the mythical city of Belleville. The fearless and myopic grandmother undertakes a perilous journey across the ocean and through a foreign city of fat people consumed by consumerism to find her grandson. For me, the plot of the film is irrelevant. It’s filled with sublime interludes and moments of what it means to love and to share the human experience with others. It evinces the undying and unconditional love that a person can have for another in the face of all obstacles.
Along the way, scenes unfold that develop and underscore the deep love and sacrifice that this woman makes for her beloved grandson. Every expression and impeccably wrought emotion in the film is a matter of nuance. You’re not beaten over the head with all this. The emotions are not schmaltzy or derivative, but genuine and evolutionary in the characters and relationships. The real purpose of the film is to present love and humanity as a saving grace. Everything is understated and absolutely perfect in this gem.
I write all that to bring you to a woman who epitomizes the perfect love of the grandmother, and that woman is a French lady I met underneath the portal of Notre Dame, and her name is Martine.
Martine is the Sister Wendy of France. If you’re not familiar with Sister Wendy, then you should be. She’s a nun from England who lives in a caravan in daily prayer, meditation, and silence. She also happens to be a world-famous art historian and critic who came out of her caravan to host an acclaimed documentary series on the BBC. I remember watching her as a teenager, being fascinated with her ironic points of view, sharing her love for art, wearing her habit and coke-bottled glasses in black frames, speaking with a delightful little lisp through teeth that would make a beaver shudder. Sister Wendy takes on any piece of art and looks at it with fresh, sparkling eyes. To hear a nun talk about the firm buttocks and chiseled chest of a Michelangelo sculpture is quite a hoot, but also very endearing.
Martine is a secular Sister Wendy. A former communist and educator, she is now retired. Her passion is Paris. She knows it inside and out, upside-down, and you can walk up any street, point to a church or museum and ask, “What’s that?” and she’ll offer a dissertation. In her 60s, she was the perfect tour guide for two days, and also a dear friend of F.’s, whom he met at the American Church of Paris ten years ago. They’ve traveled together in France, she’s stayed with him at his apartment when he lived there, and they’ve engendered a warm and endearing friendship over the years.
So why is Martine a combination of Sister Wendy and the grandmother from “The Triplets of Belleville”? Besides holding an unparalleled knowledge of the art, architecture, and history of the city of Paris, she’s also a faithful mother who has raised a mentally handicapped daughter named Valerie. She’s done this on her own because her husband left her when she refused to put Valerie in a home. If that wasn’t enough, two years ago she was diagnosed with cancer, but is doing well with her treatments. At the time of our visit, she shared with us that she had an upcoming operation to remove a tumor. In spite of all this, she is an indomitable force of pure love and “joie de vivre”. She's candidly honest and fascinating. I’ve never met any person like her and when I watched “The Triplets of Belleville” with F., I turned to him and said, “She’s Martine.”
As I wrote before, I first met her outside the cathedral of Notre Dame. She took us inside and we listened to a brief rehearsal of a children’s choir from the states. She then guided us outside. The guards at the church know her well, so when we passed through a barricade to stand directly underneath the towering portal, nobody batted an eye. For the next twenty minutes, Martine offered an illuminating history of the church and vivaciously explained all the statues and reliefs on the portal.
Afterwards, we sat for an hour in the Luxembourg Gardens before heading off across the street to the Dalloyau, a landmark pâtisserie founded in 1802. On the second floor is a formal tea room replete with steaming pots of tea and a table whose expanse is dotted with gorgeous desserts, from fruit tarts to the famouse "Opera" layer cake. We each picked out our confection, sat, sipped, and chatted. For Martine, it was a place visited only on special occasions. When it came time for the check, she insisted on paying.
A few days later she met us, with thirty-four year old Valerie, outside the Musée Rodin. Valerie was a doll. She seemed to understand Martine and us because when we flattered her or asked her questions, she offered a slight smile. Valerie’s feet tend are extremely pigeon-toed, so we had to walk more slowly than usual. Martine was there with her every step of the way, holding her arm, pointing things out to her, talking with her as if she was one of us, which she was. Behind her eyes, there is a consciousness, and I wondered: is there a person inside that wants express herself desperately, but is trapped in a body that won’t allow her to do so?
One thing you should know about Valerie: she hasn’t spoken one word in her life. When I questioned Martine on this, she replied, “Not even ‘mama’.” The sounds that emanate from Valerie’s mouth are more like grunts and mumbles. Imagine being a mother, giving birth to Valerie, and taking care of her as you would a baby for the rest of your life. Imagine refusing to put your daughter in a home for the handicapped, but knowing that you have cancer and you might die from it, wondering what would happen to your precious girl when you were gone. You would never know if these thoughts were on Martine’s mind because, as I said before – and I can’t stress this enough – she has the joy of life and love in her heart and being that transcends anything that some might deem an obstacle.
After the museum, Martine offered to drive us to Montmatre, the section of Paris that rests on top of a hill, above the windmill of the Moulin Rouge where the film "Amelie" was shot. On the way, Martine took the scenic route and gave us an encapsulated education of every building and monument we drove past in rapid succession.
At the highest point in Montmartre, outside the basillica called Sacré Coeur, we stood and looked out across the breadth of the expansive city at twilight, the magic hour when the sun has passed over the Eiffel Tower and the sky glows orange and magenta. Feeling a slight chill in the air, we went to a restaurant and enjoyed a dinner of wine, chicken with a mushroom cream sauce, and for dessert, an apple tart. “She loves to eat at restaurant,” Martine said of her daughter. Valerie ate every bite, we asked for our bill, and then walked the intrepid duo back to their car, saying our adieus until the next time we saw them in Paris.
Our days in the city were packed full of divine experiences, good food and wine, and a Paris vibe that evoked the feeling of stopped time, as if everyone there appreciated being completely in the moment. It’s a city that allows that. Paris is being where you are with the people with whom you want to be without the thought of getting to where you’re going next. It’s more about the Now. Paris is a city that moves in repose.
And within that repose is a woman named Martine, an invincible spirit that rides the crest of an electric city with Valerie in tow, grunting and pulling herself back to the safety of the sidewalk with Martine determined to get her to the other side of the street. Martine, in the midst of ushering a beautifully stubborn daughter alongside her epitomized the possibility of humanity in us all, the opportunity that the phoenix has every day to rise from the ashes.
I don’t think many people have the opportunity to have such a rich and illuminating experience of art and humanity in two days the way I did. I treasure those moments, as I cherish Martine and Valerie, as I adore the grandmother and grandson in the “Triplets of Belleville”, as I find more and more in life that the precious moments of light and love are the ones that I need to hold dear to my heart and never forget.
Upon our return to New York from Paris I made my way through the pile of mail on the dining room table that had amassed over ten days. The amount of paper was unfathomable. How many trees have been destroyed to get me to make donations to the ACLU? In the mix of letters and bills was a red envelope that cried out: “Netflix!” I’d forgotten what was on our online queue and when I opened it I was happy to see that the DVD inside was “The Triplets of Belleville”.
I’d first seen the film upon its initial release in 2003. Without any dialogue, only with music and sound effects, the movie is incredibly expressionistic and atmospheric, something that the current Pixar milieu isn’t always able to create for me. The story taps into the sublime humanity that we sometimes overlook in the throngs around us.
In the film, the loose plot sets up the relationship between a grandmother and her orphaned grandson. The young boy is sad, listless, and shows no interest in anything until the grandmother discovers his passion for bikes and buys him a tricycle. The torpid boy finds his raison d'être and grows up to be a cyclist (not a very good one), and the twist is when he’s kidnapped by chain-smoking gangsters during the Tour de France and taken to the mythical city of Belleville. The fearless and myopic grandmother undertakes a perilous journey across the ocean and through a foreign city of fat people consumed by consumerism to find her grandson. For me, the plot of the film is irrelevant. It’s filled with sublime interludes and moments of what it means to love and to share the human experience with others. It evinces the undying and unconditional love that a person can have for another in the face of all obstacles.
Along the way, scenes unfold that develop and underscore the deep love and sacrifice that this woman makes for her beloved grandson. Every expression and impeccably wrought emotion in the film is a matter of nuance. You’re not beaten over the head with all this. The emotions are not schmaltzy or derivative, but genuine and evolutionary in the characters and relationships. The real purpose of the film is to present love and humanity as a saving grace. Everything is understated and absolutely perfect in this gem.
I write all that to bring you to a woman who epitomizes the perfect love of the grandmother, and that woman is a French lady I met underneath the portal of Notre Dame, and her name is Martine.
Martine is the Sister Wendy of France. If you’re not familiar with Sister Wendy, then you should be. She’s a nun from England who lives in a caravan in daily prayer, meditation, and silence. She also happens to be a world-famous art historian and critic who came out of her caravan to host an acclaimed documentary series on the BBC. I remember watching her as a teenager, being fascinated with her ironic points of view, sharing her love for art, wearing her habit and coke-bottled glasses in black frames, speaking with a delightful little lisp through teeth that would make a beaver shudder. Sister Wendy takes on any piece of art and looks at it with fresh, sparkling eyes. To hear a nun talk about the firm buttocks and chiseled chest of a Michelangelo sculpture is quite a hoot, but also very endearing.
Martine is a secular Sister Wendy. A former communist and educator, she is now retired. Her passion is Paris. She knows it inside and out, upside-down, and you can walk up any street, point to a church or museum and ask, “What’s that?” and she’ll offer a dissertation. In her 60s, she was the perfect tour guide for two days, and also a dear friend of F.’s, whom he met at the American Church of Paris ten years ago. They’ve traveled together in France, she’s stayed with him at his apartment when he lived there, and they’ve engendered a warm and endearing friendship over the years.
So why is Martine a combination of Sister Wendy and the grandmother from “The Triplets of Belleville”? Besides holding an unparalleled knowledge of the art, architecture, and history of the city of Paris, she’s also a faithful mother who has raised a mentally handicapped daughter named Valerie. She’s done this on her own because her husband left her when she refused to put Valerie in a home. If that wasn’t enough, two years ago she was diagnosed with cancer, but is doing well with her treatments. At the time of our visit, she shared with us that she had an upcoming operation to remove a tumor. In spite of all this, she is an indomitable force of pure love and “joie de vivre”. She's candidly honest and fascinating. I’ve never met any person like her and when I watched “The Triplets of Belleville” with F., I turned to him and said, “She’s Martine.”
As I wrote before, I first met her outside the cathedral of Notre Dame. She took us inside and we listened to a brief rehearsal of a children’s choir from the states. She then guided us outside. The guards at the church know her well, so when we passed through a barricade to stand directly underneath the towering portal, nobody batted an eye. For the next twenty minutes, Martine offered an illuminating history of the church and vivaciously explained all the statues and reliefs on the portal.
Afterwards, we sat for an hour in the Luxembourg Gardens before heading off across the street to the Dalloyau, a landmark pâtisserie founded in 1802. On the second floor is a formal tea room replete with steaming pots of tea and a table whose expanse is dotted with gorgeous desserts, from fruit tarts to the famouse "Opera" layer cake. We each picked out our confection, sat, sipped, and chatted. For Martine, it was a place visited only on special occasions. When it came time for the check, she insisted on paying.
A few days later she met us, with thirty-four year old Valerie, outside the Musée Rodin. Valerie was a doll. She seemed to understand Martine and us because when we flattered her or asked her questions, she offered a slight smile. Valerie’s feet tend are extremely pigeon-toed, so we had to walk more slowly than usual. Martine was there with her every step of the way, holding her arm, pointing things out to her, talking with her as if she was one of us, which she was. Behind her eyes, there is a consciousness, and I wondered: is there a person inside that wants express herself desperately, but is trapped in a body that won’t allow her to do so?
One thing you should know about Valerie: she hasn’t spoken one word in her life. When I questioned Martine on this, she replied, “Not even ‘mama’.” The sounds that emanate from Valerie’s mouth are more like grunts and mumbles. Imagine being a mother, giving birth to Valerie, and taking care of her as you would a baby for the rest of your life. Imagine refusing to put your daughter in a home for the handicapped, but knowing that you have cancer and you might die from it, wondering what would happen to your precious girl when you were gone. You would never know if these thoughts were on Martine’s mind because, as I said before – and I can’t stress this enough – she has the joy of life and love in her heart and being that transcends anything that some might deem an obstacle.
After the museum, Martine offered to drive us to Montmatre, the section of Paris that rests on top of a hill, above the windmill of the Moulin Rouge where the film "Amelie" was shot. On the way, Martine took the scenic route and gave us an encapsulated education of every building and monument we drove past in rapid succession.
At the highest point in Montmartre, outside the basillica called Sacré Coeur, we stood and looked out across the breadth of the expansive city at twilight, the magic hour when the sun has passed over the Eiffel Tower and the sky glows orange and magenta. Feeling a slight chill in the air, we went to a restaurant and enjoyed a dinner of wine, chicken with a mushroom cream sauce, and for dessert, an apple tart. “She loves to eat at restaurant,” Martine said of her daughter. Valerie ate every bite, we asked for our bill, and then walked the intrepid duo back to their car, saying our adieus until the next time we saw them in Paris.
Our days in the city were packed full of divine experiences, good food and wine, and a Paris vibe that evoked the feeling of stopped time, as if everyone there appreciated being completely in the moment. It’s a city that allows that. Paris is being where you are with the people with whom you want to be without the thought of getting to where you’re going next. It’s more about the Now. Paris is a city that moves in repose.
And within that repose is a woman named Martine, an invincible spirit that rides the crest of an electric city with Valerie in tow, grunting and pulling herself back to the safety of the sidewalk with Martine determined to get her to the other side of the street. Martine, in the midst of ushering a beautifully stubborn daughter alongside her epitomized the possibility of humanity in us all, the opportunity that the phoenix has every day to rise from the ashes.
I don’t think many people have the opportunity to have such a rich and illuminating experience of art and humanity in two days the way I did. I treasure those moments, as I cherish Martine and Valerie, as I adore the grandmother and grandson in the “Triplets of Belleville”, as I find more and more in life that the precious moments of light and love are the ones that I need to hold dear to my heart and never forget.
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