The Reluctant Artiste and Creative Non-Fiction: A Sort of Contract With the Reader

There are all kinds of liars. There is only one kind of deceiver.

There's a story I've always loved about two sisters, one favoured by her mother,  though she was lazy, mean-mouthed and shiftless, and the other hated for being pretty much the opposite and making everybody look bad. That's a story in itself, but the focus here is on when the second girl gets sent on some kind of very hard dirty errand and meets up with an old woman or man or rabbit, I don't know, something weak and seemingly without any capacity to reward kindness with anything but a craggy or buck-toothed grin--depending on which guess is right back there--anyway the girl is asked to do something twice as hard and nasty for this unfortunate and she does it, just cause, if she were in the same spot she'd like someone to do the same for her; not that anyone ever has, in her memory, but such is the reputation of empathy, it is looked for where it has never even stopped by for tea. 

The task completed, the girl is rewarded for her kindness. Every time she speaks, a flower or a jewel tumbles from her mouth--just one--and I like to think she was also given the ability to repress this talent at will--as love-making, attending sports matches and other things would be, I think,  unpleasant if the talent couldn't just go into idle a bit. Anyway, it's a great gift and stupe that she is, she goes home and tells her mom about her fabulous luck.

Mom is torn between greater hatred of the girl and intense pleasure at all the things she's going to be able to buy with the take from one dinnertime conversation alone. She orders her favoured child off to wherever the first went--it was a well, I now recall, water had to be hauled over a great and rocky distance--of course the chosen one doesn't even know the way there-- she's never had to haul water, couldn't be cheerfully helpful to anyone, least of all an unfortunate, if her life depended on it. When asked for same, she instead angrily demands her gift. The old whatever-it-is gleefully lays a whammy on her--and toads and snakes start falling from her mouth--especially, I like to think,  during love-making and sports matches.

As I recall, Blossom and Gem Girl gets married to some fellah who is taken with her gifts. This part worries me a bit. Where was he when she was hauling buckets of water over stony miles for the two bitches? So I'm going to tell you that she leaves on her own, and meets someone during a sports match who loves her before anything gorgeous tumbles out. 

Things tumble out of me. They're not jewels and roses very often. But  I can tell you that rubies do have a very slight cherry Lifesaver aftertaste. That if a flower has to find it's way across a ticklish palate, better a nasturtium than a sunflower--though there is a greater sense of achievement with the latter. 

But mostly it is the most ordinary things I cough up--buttons, hairpins, screws for wall-mounting something I gave away in the late eighties. Dog hair.  Little boys' socks. Toads. And snakes. But I tell you this--when it is a toad or a snake, I never make anyone hold out their hands in anticipation of a gem or a blossom. I never let it out at all. I feel the hysterical push and flutter. Warm silk-leather pushing between my bulging lips. Panicked piss on my tongue. Feel the bile's burn as I swallow it wriggling down. 

Because I'm a liar. Several kinds of liars. But not the other. 

January 25th

January 25th.

 I almost forgot it again today. For the first few years I got sick every January 25th, or just a little insane. I lost my temper easily and occasionally frightened people who had a reason to trust me. But now I seem to just block it out. I know that the number means something. I have a sense when I look at it that it's weightier then the other numbers on the calendar. But honestly don't remember why.

And then the messages start coming from other people. Nice messages. Lovely ones. Thinking of your brother. Hope you're okay. I know this is a hard time for you. And I remember what Jan 25th means . This is the day that my brother died, and everything changed.

Now everybody who has lost somebody says that. They say that everything changed the day so and so died . And you hear the convention of the phrase. The ubiquity. And it slides past your ear, like the ghost of meaning. But when I say everything changed, I am being specific. I'm the only one who sees my version of the universe. And in my universe my brother is alive. That is as much a part of my reality as gravity or air. On this day the universe flexed. Shook off my control.  I lost my brother. And the capacity to ever completely trust air or gravity. 

The first time I forgot I was horrified. I thought it meant that I had become calloused. I thought my admittedly extreme self-centeredness was giving me the gift of selective amnesia . But now I think if I was calloused , I probably would remember the date.  I would put some kind of sticker on the calendar to mark it. Some not happy emoticon. I would make it into event. Cook his favorite foods. Tell stories, lift a jar, sing a song, celebrate the life. But no calluses have formed. Part of me  is still right there, experiencing for the first time the entire world changing. Face down where I had fallen, on the carpeted stair, as I tried to go up and tell the children what the phone call from their grandmother had been about. I see the carpet. I see how badly it needs vacuuming . I realize that my face is against purple dirty nap, and wonder why. And then I remember. And stay down.

I think I forget because it is still so raw. Because I still have almost nothing to say except No. Not. Didn't. Couldn't. And.... I miss you Steve. I miss you everyday. I think I can't remember January 25th, because every day is January 25th.

TRA: Off to St. Peter's College (Muenster) to teach Creative Non-fiction

One of the ways I avoid writing is teaching it. Or possibly I avoid teaching by writing. Hard to say.

Nice problem to have though--since to be honest I love doing both. 

For those who wonder what Creative Non-fiction really is, here's a helpful video:

The Reluctant Artiste: Christmas Heebie Jeebies (Schadenfreude reverie)

I read somewhere that the reason you sweat, clench and throw up in your mouth a little when you see someone’s FANTASTIC NEWS on Facebook is that you are living your life in Real Time and experiencing theirs as a Sizzle Reel. 

Or maybe you don’t do that. Maybe it’s only me. Maybe I have issues. 

Okay. I have issues. 

However. I don’t care how well balanced you are, you are still gonna run for the Gravol when the Family Christmas Letters/Sizzle Reels start to arrive. 

The quintessential one that made the rounds on social media this holiday season was called Christmas Jammies, in which a tall (Dad), gorgeous (everyone), thin (but well-endowed—Christmas jammies are great for clinging to endowments), white (but you know the kids take hip hop classes), affluent (look at their great huge house! Look at their new car!) broadcaster/actor couple with adorable children make a playful music video family sizzle reel, all in support of the couple’s brand new exciting start up—making playful sizzle reels for other people and their achievements. In a dazzling display of consumer-based meta, it is an ad for a family that is an ad for the family’s ad-making. I assume the making-of documentary is forth-coming.

I shudder to think what copy cat videos by less tall gorgeous white thin adorable families were being rushed into production as it began to make the FB/Twitter rounds (Christmas jammies are great for clinging to things other than endowments…words like “crack”, “toe” and “pup tent” spring to mind). Still it was out there. And my acid reflux was riding high.  

Cause I’m jealous right? Must be that, right? If I was dancing on camera in stretchy red and green jammies, I’d looked like cherry-lime jello having a grand mal seizure. Seizure Reels just don’t have the same cachet as Sizzle Reels. Except perhaps in very very specialized fetish communities, and frankly I don’t want them looking at my Christmas Jammies.

 My life isn’t new hybrids and adorable moppets breakin’ it down. It’s interesting, and rich, and occasionally unbearably sad, and often hilarious, and full of stuff that does not so much sizzle as plop. And as I am not going to share the plopping with the social universe (‘cause even if I were willing, who would want to read that? Except for the aforementioned fetishists?), as a habitual truth-teller, and regular wanderer on the downright gloomy side of the street, I can’t share the good stuff, can I? Not and continue to feel morally superior to the Christmas Jammie-sons, who I imagine completing their adorable recording and then promptly stripping off their Spanx, flopping down,  lighting crack pipes and firing up some nice porn.  I think of their (completely undocumented, fired only by my raging jealousy) hypocrisy, and turn rosy with the warmth that comes from my sense of moral snooty-ness. If I made my own holiday sizzle reel, I’d have to give that up. And my imagined higher ground is all I have to cling to some days. 

So all I can do is sit here, sizzle-less, and try to think of what to say in my inevitably written after the fact Christmas letter. 

It was a year. Things happened. Since everyone in the family is basically a decent if flawed human being, everyone tried their best, even and possibly especially when making mistakes. Things changed, ‘cause that’s what they do, and we made the best of it. There was a day where everyone was okay and safe and happy all at once, and we had a cake, ‘cause we know better than to take that for granted. There was a day when things were very bad indeed, and we didn’t freak out, because they’d been like that before and we’d gotten through it, so we knew we could again. We had a cake for that too. 

There were days. Which completely and utterly beats the alternative. 

Peace, joy and light in the new year from Eric, Jessie, Sam, Finn, KJB the Reluctant Artiste, and the dreadful dogs. 

The Reluctant Artiste: Death Comes for Breakfast

Sometimes a reluctant writer doesn’t have a choice:

I had breakfast with Death the other day.

I have a 13 year old Aspie kid who is deep into the whole talking in role thing, so when he pitched his voice deep, and did his best to look moribund, and announced that he was the Grim Reaper, I just rolled with it.

He told me about the job—he took over for his dad 20 years back, who took over from his and so on—and the social challenges. Dating is a huge problem. He’s allowed to go out with angels, but they are snooty, and not up for much—but humans are forbidden since the incident. Seems he woke up one day expecting to see his live in girlfriend beside him, and  found a corpse. Tough way to discover his problem with Sleep Reaping.

At this point we were interrupted by his mother:

“Skully! Skully! Come in for breakfast!”

“Ma! Will ya leave me alone? I’m a grown man fer Crissakes. I'll eat when I’m ready!”

 I tried to chime in here, seeing Skully’s mom as my natural entrée into the improv.  But at my first “Skully! Don’t you talk to your mother like that…” he shut me down.

“No. She doesn’t sound like that."

Death and I went into the living room, where Ma couldn’t bother us. He looked at me quietly for a moment.

“I saw your  Dad a few weeks ago…. Is it okay if I talk about this?”

I nodded. Three weeks. To be exact.

“I think he was glad to see me.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.” I said.

“He’s a great guy. He’s on our hockey team.”

I managed another nod.

“Now your brother,  he wasn’t nearly so easy to reap.”

“Well no. He was so…” I wasn’t quite able to get the “young” out intact.

“I have this thing I do with the tough ones. I pull down my hood, show them my fleshless skull, all horrible, crawling with maggots. Scare them to a better place….You know what he did when he saw me like that? He laughed. Can you believe that?”

“Yes. I can.”

“”We’re great friends now. He wanted you to know something.”

“Okay.”

“We’ve solved the problem of atheist heaven. “

“That’s a problem?”

“People like you who don’t believe in heaven or hell. You were a problem. But now we have an atheist heaven. Carl Sagan set it up.”

“He’d be the guy for that.”

“Yah. You get to become part of the cosmos. Like the stars and stuff. Become part of everything.”

“I will be star stuff?”

“Yah. You will be star stuff,” Death looked at me, “Just not for a long time.”

And then, Death went to school.  I sat awhile after, rocking, stars running down my face.