MAPCO: SAY WHAT YOU MEAN TO SAY

I ran out of gas yesterday on my way back to school around 2:15 P.M. on Clovercroft Road, a secondary road known for its coyote and bobcat sightings and for its assorted roadkill of heron, king snakes, and cats. My school sits off this road, and today I was just out of reach of it. My hunter green suburban started chugging as I was going downhill, and I was forced to pull over onto the grassy shoulder next to a fence behind which two goats with long, floppy ears chewed grass while staring me down.

One day when we are old and gray (or bald), David Raymond and I will sit smoking pipes, recounting our scholastic journey together at Stone Table in terms of which years and on which roads he had to pick me up or bring me a container of gas. I don't take pride in running out of gas, but admittedly I also don't mind running on empty for long stretches, allegorical of my life. David kindly picked me up without commentary and dropped me off at my house to pick up my Volvo to take a trip to the gas station.

I typically don't like being accosted anywhere at anytime: that goes for the person on the street corner trying to give me a Gospel tract because he thinks I look like I need conversion, or the cell phone salesmen in the local store or mall trying to get me to switch my cell service or the homeless who beg from me and then preach or curse in return for my attention, positive or negative (respectively). 

The first and last time I was jumped was by a stranger in Brugge, Belgium. Some functional pothead tried to take my car, angry that it was a Mercedes. That my car trumped his tiny compact, and that I, the driver, was American was enough to set him off. He tried to get in through the back seat, hit me in the side of the face twice, knocking my glasses off, and told me in German to leave Brugge now or not at all (Du gehts jetzt, oder du gehts nicht). All of this in front of the police, mind you. Anyways, suffice it to say, I do not like being accosted by people.

However, yesterday at the gas station I was actually intrigued when a skinhead came up to me with a two-gallon gas container, nervously asking me for some gas. I had just finished filling up my own one-gallon gas container and was about to put the pump up. Looking around, I quickly realized he had bypassed a couple of professional looking people who were eying us out of the corner of their eyes. And he had bee-lined to me. 

"Hey, dude, I really need some ******* help. I'm absolutely broke and I need to get home." I looked at him as I screwed on the lid to my gas container.  He continued talking, moving his head back and forth.

"Dude, I'm not trying to get your money. I just really really need some help now. Today has been the worst ******* day. Seriously. If you could just give me some gas I could get home."

"Where do you live?" I asked, but not to interrogate him. I figured he would feel better about the exchange if I showed some sort of interest in who he was or what his situation was.

"Dude, I live on Trinity. And sometimes in Columbia. Actually, I'm homeless right now. I really live in Nashville but I'm from California." He confusedly admitted, eager to tell me all of the truths no matter how contradictory they sounded. I looked at the tattoos on his head, blue arrows in rows, starting from the base of his neck and converging at the tip of his stubbly hairline above the eyebrows.

"That sucks. How old are you?"

"I just turned thirty."

"Ah, how do you feel about turning thirty?"

"Not too good. I just broke up with my girlfriend I was with for two years. It's not good." He paused, casting around for more credibility. "I work at the Bunganut Pig." He showed me the logo on his shirt. Ah, but I know and love the Bunganut Pig, a hole-in-the-wall pub on a street in my town that serves some amazing casserole. I'm Facebook friends with Bunganut.

"Dude," I said "You guys make some good food! When do you work?" He gave me his hours to the minute. Seven days a week he was working.

"I'm going to come see you at lunch on Wednesday then," I said as I took his gas can. 

He stared at me in disbelief. As I filled it up, he was babbling "Dude, this is the best thing that has happened to me today.... **** man. Dude, this is the best ******* thing that has happened to me!" I screwed on his lid and handed him back the container. He lunged at me and gave me the biggest hug I have ever cared to receive from a stranger. He kept shaking his head and fist bumped me with knuckles tatted in faded, Avatar blue with some slur on it. 

"I'll see you on Wednesday." I told him. 

"******* thanks, man! I'll see you then!"

As I drove away, a part of me was asking myself why I gave him gas and not others who have asked before. I cast around a few reasons. Well, he lived on Trinity Lane which was clearly a reference to the Holy Trinity. That would have been a good reason, haha.

I then thought about the Bunganut Pig, a prestigious little pub in downtown Franklin, known for its cozy atmosphere and delicious lunches. He had a Bunganut t-shirt on. Surely, that was some proof.

Then I thought about how thoroughly he answered my questions. 

But it was none of these.

You know what it was? It was that his lower lip trembled when he told me that he had a rotten day. It was that quiver that he tried to control, the quiver that slipped beyond his ability to maintain composure. It was the quiver that gave him away, that told me he was telling the truth, and more importantly, that he needed my help. He could have told me he was a born-again skinhead and I would have told him I had no money. But he let the quiver slip, whether or not he meant to do so.

How many broke business men have walked into million dollar meetings in fancy conference rooms dressed up in dark, pinstriped suits, crisply starched shirts, bright power ties, slicked back hair, and spit-shined shoes? As the businessmen are working over their audience, the shakers and movers in the audience are feeling the overwhelming sense that they are not needed, that they are small fish, that they are of no consequence to the speaker.

Look at that guy. Look at his suit. Look at his tie. Look at his confidence! We can't offer him anything he would take. We would offer $250,000 for his services, but he is asking for much more and looks like he wouldn't take less. No, we can't let him know just how disorganized we are. It would be embarrassing.

And those idiots lose the deal because they portended a confidence not their own, a generically enthusiastic business presentation they plagiarized, and an overall disposition that echoed hollow throughout the entire spiel only to take their broke selves back to their dark apartments to eat Ramen in their secondhand Lazy Boys in front of a small television with no more than $100 in the bank left to their names. All because they let pretension get in the way. They let performance sterilize genuine sentiment.

Make that bottom lip quiver. Wet those pants. Give honesty for once and you might find your deepest needs addressed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYg3iB5VvmI

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UNMAN: THE EXCEPTIONAL HERO OF EXCEPTION

I had a student jump off a roof once. 

After investigating what sort of benefit he thought he might gain by throwing himself off a height of several, uncomfortable feet, it seems that he wasn't thinking about benefits or consequences at all. I found that to be more disconcerting than had he told me he thought Jesus would catch him. 

While we have to be careful not to ridicule people who have reaped the consequences of their own stupidity (after all, there is now no dissuading them from suffering), I did learn that his impetuous action sprang from that subconscious Gollum-crevice of the mind where we humans believe that we are an exception. That young man was so exceptional that benefits or consequences need not figure into his actions at all, now or forever. 

After all his idiocy is genius, his body odor heavenly, and his turds little piles of gold.

Much of the "exceptional" behavior to which I am professionally privy is essentially nothing more than classic, high-risk behavior. As it is with each human, that absurdity which we each hold onto so dearly makes total sense to us but only sounds absurd when we try to explain it to another. 

"Drugs? No, those are plants. Cannibis indica to be exact. Why do I have them in my room? I'm a green thumb. Oh, those ones wrapped up in paper? Those are dead. I was going to throw them away."

"Stealing? No, you don't understand. I was just going to use the money and put it back before you found out. Why? Because I thought you might get mad."

Routinely staying up all night to study for an exam that routinely takes you all day to take is high-risk behavior. If you don't routinely get rest, you won't routinely get recharged, because you are routinely depleting your abilities. Even military personnel in special training get a reprieve at the end of Hell week. Even the government takes a holiday every once in a while.

Oh, but not the Unman. 

The only reprieve Unman gets is...

-when he is laid up in bed deathly ill because he can't move

-or when he is incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital to which he has been referred for odd behavior

-or when he disappears altogether for a time, unable to cope with the normal stresses of life. 

The Unman fancies that he has batteries that never end. He is always starting something, but never formally ending it. So he has to be made to stop, to quit, to end. He imagines himself to be indispensable until someone points out his redundance. 

-Each Unman fully expects everyone but himself to exhibit human weakness like, um, hunger, thirst, and exhaustion. 

-Each fully expects other people to exhibit cultural deficiencies like, say, an interest in contemporaneous culture. 

-Each actually believes himself to have been built for another era, an older era, a superior era. 

Each is always trying to "go back" further than anyone else in order to establish a kind of authenticity so far removed from the current culture that he actually fools himself into believing that his mind-trick substantially works. 

I have known many people of this sort who ridicule those who take the precaution to consider seriously the merits of contemporary trends and movements. I myself have been a a contributing member of that group. 

We had our little discussion groups back in the day where we pontificated works from men of a different century (with whom we could not empathize) who discussed topics belonging to a foreign culture (of which we were largely unfamiliar) and who cited any current affair as inferior to the old-timers of antiquity. Functionally we were cultural critics and pessimists who were empowered by critic-speak. 

We were Bieber-haters.

But the Unman has an Achilles heel all the same. That sort of decay manifests itself in a thousand different ways. 

I knew a man who was religiously zealous about a certain political group to the point of triggering a caustic nausea in everyone who was unfortunate enough to hear him out. He knew what was wrong with the government. He was privy to tasty conspiracies. He knew who was and who was not a Communist. 

Then he went through an excruciating crisis, and  voilá, he had suddenly embraced a new vocabulary, a brand new set of religious and political beliefs, and was dismantling his own previous position as if he had done it all of his life. Worst of all was that he displayed no awareness of his hubris. 

-Such a person has opened up on life's desktop several alternate realities and just as many personalized Avatars. 

-She jumps in and out of her worlds with the ease of a trapeze artist, seemingly unable to commit to the one reality under her very nose which is the boring one. 

So boring that it scares her into a chronic dreamscape.

So the kid hollering on the ground with the broken ankle doesn't really know why he is hollering. Sure he's protesting, but I am not certain against what. Is he angry with himself for being foolish? 

No.

He seems to be irritated with the form of the building, with the form of the ground, with the form of himself, and with the combination of all three. Sure, it's supposed to happen to the dumbass on Youtube who he gets a kick out of seeing fall on his face over and over again. But it's not supposed to happen to him. 

He is Unman.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYg3iB5VvmI

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THE SOULS OF GINGER FOLK

Whether or not it was trendy, it was definitely popular. 

That is, citing "Africa" as reference for anything outlandish or incredible. If you wanted attention or needed a conversation piece, all you need do was employ the deviant part of your imagination and sat "It happened in Africa."

My college friend, Hans Kuzanga, and I used to take note whenever these kinds of attributions were made. I, hailing from Germany and he, native to Zambia, were constantly interrogated by people who thought themselves to be intelligent and progressive with questions like "What do you guys eat?" 

Being from Germany, I could say "dandelion roots and nettles," and they might believe me because, I don't know, dandelions and nettles sound on the reasonable side of absurd things for Germans to eat.

However, I couldn't say "Hyena crap and spider webs." That would be pushing it. 

But Hans could say it, and they would believe him. He was, after all, from Africa, and Africa is far enough away geographically (and imaginatively) that any conceivable thing that wouldn't happen in the Western Hemisphere could happen in Africa.

While on one hand it was funny, it was insulting on the other. One evening, tired of answering the most trivial questions ("What kinds of houses did you live in?"), Hans convinced our dinner table of college girls that if in Africa you do not balance your fork on the end of your butter knife at the end of a meal, then you insult your host. Hans and I left the table with the young ladies practicing this curious "African etiquette", their brows furrowed and each muttering condolences to themselves.

I think that resources like National Geographic, falling into the hands of the wrong person whose breadth of global culture is Ranger Rick or CCM magazine, might largely be responsible for the proliferation of idiocy and the reinforcement of biases that hold no credibility whatsoever. One hallmark of cultured people is their intuition and anticipation of the complex spectrum of legitimate, cultural options within the human genome portfolio. And they can ascertain the merits of each. 

Living in Germany from the 70's to the 90's, Americans snickered at the Southern German's seeming disinterest in daily showering and perfuming. Would that make the German inferior? Of course, it wouldn't. Which would you rather be: occasionally showered and as healthy as a horse or a scrub-cleaned, daily deoderized, fat slob who shoves fat and high fructose corn syrup down the gullet and headed towards a certain mortality date at 48 years of age? Now you see the German merit from a German view.

While in Germany during the summer of 1994, I was unnerved to hear that the civil unrest in Rwanda had gotten so seriously out of hand that America was looking to intervene. No less than a year before, America got involved in Somalia, and the result was Black Hawk Down.

As I understood it, Belgian colonials long ago had divided the Rwandan people into two groups (Moderns love the artificial "either-or" dichotomy). The one group was Tutsi while the other group was Hutu.  

Simplified, the Tutsi and Hutu were largely distinguished according to physical traits. The Tutsis (being taller, thinner, and having longer noses) were assumed to be close relatives of the Caucasoid people and, therefore, superior. The Hutus (being shorter, stockier, with flatter noses) were considered inferior to their Tutsi brothers. 

The Belgian distinction, however, did not take into account that individual families had members with both the Tutsi and Hutu descriptions. It made no difference when the Rwandan conflict began. These families were divided "down the middle."

Having said all that, I think the category of Ginger to be a similar travesty. While I've been aware of the term "Ginger" for the last year or so, I originally considered it to be a term of endearment and found their plight to be almost humorous. Considering, however, that the origin of Ginger discrimination seems to have originated in the UK (It only benignly reared its head in America via South Park), I'm reconsidering my concern. 

The Irish and Scottish (allegedly the "Ginger" genetic strains and entry points into Great Britain proper) have had a turbulent history with England. From the early days of Hadrian's Wall (originally built to keep the Scots out of England) and the early days of the Irish & British conflicts, these tensions have been fresh in the memories of all three people-groups. While living in England, I recall one evening watching via BBC the Northern Irish attack two RAF soldiers off duty in Ireland. And I don't know how many times the IRA set off bombs on British interests (it seemed that Woolsworth in London around Christmastime was a constant target in the mid-80's).

All I'm saying is that the Ginger situation on the tiny island-kingdom of England has volatile roots with a spurious history. I mean... look at this:

Here's a rather "informative" chart:

And this is just plain treacherous:

Surely there must be more categories than this in America:

In America Redheads (Americans call them Redheads) are as mysterious and as special as they are rare.

I'm certain Americans could never successfully discriminate against Gingers or any descriptively-elusive group. A good many of our population are Scotch-Irish, proud vertebrae in our national backbone. In America Scotch-Irish temper is to be feared and avoided at all costs. Gingers (and the so-called Ginger gene) are among us. 

They are us. 

Intricately woven into our national DNA, peppering our households and communities with their mystique and beauty.

While American masses wonder what kinds of foods and drinks people on other continents consume or how they use the restroom or what clothes they wear or how often they shower, Americans don't wonder such things about Gingers. 

We are less philosophical and more practical than that. We want to know answers to questions like "If I kissed a Ginger, would I grow red hair?" 

Benign. Deep. American.

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DOWN WITH THE TYRANT! 15 SYMPTOMS OF SPIRITUAL ABUSE

I came across a paper yesterday I had filed away for a decade. The paper, entitled RESIDUAL EFFECTS OF SPIRITUAL ABUSE, was paper-clipped to another document with the ominous heading WARNING SIGNS OF SPIRITUAL ABUSE. With yet another Harry Potter and Voldemort feud on my Blue Ray as background noise (We Graysons had a three-day Harry Potter movie marathon this past week), I read through the first paper, intermittently smiling and feeling pangs of remorse. 

According to the paper, I have been in a cult for 39 years. 

If, say, my physical, beating heart were the cult leader. 

I mean, I can't do anything without him and actually have little choice in the matter where his interests are concerned. Because emotionally hampered individuals rely completely upon signature personalities for their well-being (and those signature personalities are only too happy to fill that space)...

...I felt that the absurd analogy of one's heart being a cult leader would underscore the critical relationship between an individual and the idol to which all critical aspects of the individual's life implicitly bends.

Below I've recorded fifteen symptoms of what it means to be a cult member of (totally reliant upon) your physical heart:

1. DIFFICULTY FORMING NEW FRIENDSHIPS OR INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS. Yes, were you to leave your physical heart behind to form a new friendship or relationship with another, say, heart, then that would be stupid and you would die.

2. A LOSS OF IDENTITY. Yes, were you to leave your physical heart to "be someone" other than the boring person you are, you would die.

3. DIFFICULTY MAKING SIMPLE DECISIONS AND CHOICES. Yes, were you to leave your physical heart, it would be hard to make simple decisions and choices because you would be dead.

4. PERSISTENT DEPRESSION. "Persistent depression" is one creative way to say that you would be dead.

5. FEELINGS OF ISOLATION, LONELINESS, GUILT AND CYNICISM. Would these feelings precede or follow the abandonment of your physical heart? Good question. I vote both. You would be isolated and lonely without a heart, guilty (if you did it on purpose), and cynical had you no heart and were still reading this.

6. A RETURN TO THE EMOTIONAL UNCERTAINTY OF ADOLESCENCE. Yes, giving up your physical heart is not only adolescent but infantile (though it sometimes sounds romantic).

7.SHORT-TERM MEMORY LOSS. It follows that the death of your physical brain would follow the death of your physical heart.

8. DESPAIR--FEELING THAT THERE IS NOTHING LEFT TO BELIEVE IN. Clearly. There is no "believing" after you are dead.

9.RECURRENT FEELINGS OF ANGER AND RAGE TOWARDS THE ABUSIVE HEART. Ever felt self-hatred but never actually harmed yourself? That is the control-freakish nature of your physical heart that has scripted you to forever consider the consequences of living without him.

10. NIGHTMARES OR UNPLEASANT DREAMS. What can be more unpleasant than dying? Really? (And don't say "Not having really lived", because your physical heart doesn't believe that any more than you do).

11. INABILITY TO STOP MENTAL OR OTHER RITUALISTIC PRACTICES TAUGHT BY THE ABUSIVE HEART. Like breathing.

12. FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES CREATED BY OBLIGATIONS TO THE ABUSIVE HEART. Like having to provide for yourself.

13.SHAME ABOUT HAVING BEEN DUPED. Duped into being "you."

14. UNCERTAINTY AND ANXIETY IN SOCIAL SETTINGS. Who would you be without your heart? (Damn him!).

15. TENDENCY TO SEEK OUT YET ANOTHER ABUSIVE GROUP. Like getting high or watching Reality TV as an alternative to being reminded that you are you.

Absurd, of course. Cult leaders (no matter who they are) are equally ridiculous. For each tries to pass himself off as an indispensable (aka, intrinsic) system (like your lungs or your brain) all the while trying to be indispensable while calling themselves indispensable, hahaha. 

Cut them off and you might risk limping for a little while without those pseudo-vital organs. 

But it's worse if you "give them time." 

You never know... their batteries might last like the Energizer Bunny. They might never get the hint. And you just might find yourself wrinkled and toothless before you ever have a chance to breathe another breath of fresh air again.

Do you even remember the last time that you breathed fresh air?

Down with the tyrant!

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