Startled by Existence

I wrote this intro for the Bones 2001 edition. It now sounds excessive.  But I'll let it be. 

Take 1 - A short history of my youth that you should read if you are worth beans.

I grew up in a house of privilege. Not the privilege of wealth or status, but the privilege of being different – and liking it.

I am not sure when I knew we were different. Time confirmed it.

Long before my folks ever joined the “born-agains” they shucked the TV. Bought a farm. Ate our pig. Sister Casey and I dallied in the things that flow from books and bikes, a grand tree fort, and towels draped about the neck. I invented Merguck … a cloud of purple mist that hung around telephone poles and heard us. We played Swiss Family Robinson and Robin Hood. Mom bought me a plastic Roman soldier suit -- Grandma a bolo tie. Dad cut mazes for us in the tall grass with a lawn mover, then painted wild psychedelic patterns on our bedroom floors.

One Christmas I was given the gift of naked couple with clear skin, that you could look through and assemble their insides. Mom preached at the city mission. Kids from Harlem shared our beds. Then came sister Joy (now Jordan) all the way from Korea, followed by brother Tien from Vietnam. Beyond that, we lived in a bath of music. Dad played the banjo, guitar and yuke. Mom joined him in desperate beautiful melodies as they belted out “I left my heart in San Francisco.” Born-again Hippies came to our house and sang “Put your hand in the hand of the man who stilled the waters.” Later I would pillage Dad’s recordings for copies of Rodger Miller’s: “Dang me, Dang me, You ought to take a rope and hang me” or my first mind-bending listen to Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring.” I can hear it now -- that leading lone wail of French Horn…chased by dancing maids and biting violins. I hear the crash of orchestra, lurching like a hundred dropped transmissions …But … then I’m getting ahead of myself. (True to suit, my wife says she can only harness my attention if we talk about music, sex, or theology – in that order.)

Take 2 – career move

I grew up in a house of privilege. Not the privilege of wealth or status, or even a family that would stick together.

We did however have an old Dodge van with a trailer hitch. About once a year we would pack the pop up trailer and trace a loop from our then, Tulsa (Oklahoma) home. In time we drew a flower on the map.

I think Dad first let me use his old German Exacta - a 35mm camera, on one of those trips. I was twelve. We crossed a high mountain pass and came upon the Tetons of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I’d never seen anything at once so dreadful and beautiful and TALL. I wanted to run and frame and shout "My GOD—My God, Thank You, Thank You! Can You, can you believe it?" That one taste of glory cemented my career. From that day on I have watched life unfold behind a camera lens.

Though no longer a couple, both mom and dad have given me something of themselves.  Mom, a flair for emotional exuberance and love in the Holy Ghost. Dad, a love for the science and the natural world.

Mom's motto - Be righteous. Dad's -- Try anything once.

Take 3 – Fish-Face Collage

Fo r the last twenty years I've written daily, only to lose it for lack of paper. My wife calls it the dead fish syndrome. She says that I fail to respond. She says that I stare at her like a dead fish. But she doesn’t know that I am responding to her every thought and nuance. I study her face and words. I cast her in a play. I click away. By the time she tells me I am looking like a dead fish I have already had twelve conversations with her, all without speaking a word.

This isn’t new. Some people think of me as quiet. But I’ve never been quiet within myself. Unless I distract part of the inner storm with music or dance or some excursion into art, work or prayer … I am thinking, thinking, thinking. It never stops.

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The work before your eyes is collage – a mess of quotes and poems and auditory whirls (edited and reworked) from a cassette journal that I kept for many years. Consider it the first hard rain, as air-thoughts that have floated about for years collide with paper. Consider it a gift made possible by cut, paste, and spell check.

In 1980 I took my first major photo jaunt. I was twenty years old. Mom sent me out with eighty bucks and a prayer; She may have been concerned but she knew my itch. In fact, she scratched it with a birthday gift of Peter Jenkins’s book “A Walk Across America.” When I donned a backpack a few months later, complete with camping gear, two Nikon cameras, a Walkman recorder, food, and a Bible -- she understood.

The Walkman was a new technology. And I had a super-delooper model. Not only did it create stereo caverns in my head as I crunched through the world - it let me record in stereo. And that’s what I did … record. Everything. From interior diatribes to photo notes to the sonic signatures of frogs and waitresses. I sang, I spewed, I let myself be weird. Beyond that, I journeyed in and out of worlds -- a different church each Sunday – day labor, southern towns -- some dozen cities; I slept in comfy beds and under bridges, ate mission food or what I could afford from selling plasma. The highlight of that trip was my stay with an Old Order Mennonite Community in Altamonte Tennessee. I returned home four months later with tales of the road -- forever altered. That’s a tale for another book or five, but suffice it to say, I took pictures. I spoke notes.

Then there were the hours – after my return, point blank in my room before the mike.

The Mennonites made a strong case. They opened their bibles and challenged my concept of what it means to be a Christian. They affirmed non-resistance, the simple life and head coverings. Then the hard sell: A life separated from our tarnished world of art and play and politics (and lived to the glory of God.) If they were right, I’d have to trade my eye for the calloused hands of a workingman. As is, I spent something of the then next five to ten years peering into the sun, trying to work through their thinking.

To top it off, upon my return home, I started attending a small Presbyterian church. This was not the Presbyterian church of the downtown socialites, but rather the church of total-depravity, ardent grace, and the Puritan divines. So Menno Simmons and John Calvin made war in my soul.

To many of your great relief(s), this book is not about those conflicts. No dallies here with pacifism or predestination. However, what is found here flows naturally from those conflicts. Call it antidote, but there’s nothing for the cause of art like a troubled heart. And there is little better for the cause of Christ than self-ruination.

I have never understood this. Give me peace, and watch me sit. Give me thorns and watch creative-juices fly.

SO …

What’s left, after pruning my journals (some 40 hours worth) of the up-front pain, the photo-notes, doctrine wars, morbid introspection, a failed romance, the screaming frogs, incoherent ramble, point blank fights with sin, the embarrassment, redundant repetition, stupidity, too private worship (and all the stuff for books 2 and 3) -- is the stuff of the lowest common denominator -- pure unadulterated wonder.

THANK GOD FOR THE GIFT OF WONDER!

In as much as this is a work with "religious" dimension, I had planned to give you a map of my spiritual journey then and since. And I will – In between the lines. I want to make this a work that even folks who aren't keen on religion can enjoy. I may try my hand at direct theology later on, but for now, consider this the work of a wounded soul who is astonished by God.