Moral Obligations

This sounds like a confession story, but it's not.  Confession would mean I thought I failed, and I do not.  You can't always have a happy ending for all the characters in a story.  That I could not arrange this isn't an indication that I failed, but it might indicate that I learned something about life.

One of the first things you learn as a Christian is that good deeds can get you killed.  Sympathy means you regret the bad things that happen to people, but empathy means it hurts you too.  The universe tends toward declination and decay, and the only way to counteract that is with sacrifice.  That's a lesson taught me not only by my father in Mississippi but by the Father of us all.  

My father only had one commandment.  "The Lord has been generous to you; it's your moral obligation to be generous with everyone else; otherwise, you waste the blessings you were given."  An obligation to God is pretty serious business.  It wasn't a platitude--it's how he lived his own life.  Being generous with the world around him was one of the reasons it was so difficult to make time with my father.  The rest of the world required some of his time too.  I understood this, so I never resented it.

When I was younger, I didn't understand this lesson in a practical sense.  Everyone I knew was about the same as me.  They had homes and parents and either went to my school or one similar to it.  But, as I grew older, I began to notice differences in people.  The first was a boy down the street, who was very much like me, except that he had nearly crippling juvenile arthritis.  I enjoyed spending time with him, and it didn't make much sense to me that he should have arthritis and I should not.  I tried to be as generous with him as I could because I was grateful for being healthy, but finding ways to be generous when you're eleven can be a challenge, and none of it was making his body any less painful.  That he hurt was hurting me, and I didn't have any idea how to fix that.

I'm quite sure that applying the commandment to be generous in social situations was part of the order, but I sometimes had trouble knowing how to apply it.   Even though I would eventually learn to socialize, one of the reasons I began to write was because one-on-one communications were intimidating to me, an artifact of my stuttering, I suppose, even long after it became difficult to tell I ever stuttered.  Writing allowed me to communicate freely, even though it would be many years before anyone ever saw these communications.  

By thirteen, I'd gotten fairly good at communicating with other boys, but girls were starting to become part of the world, and they terrified me.  It didn't seem fair to introduce a new element like that.  They taught us to read and write and add fractions, but there were no classes on this new phenomenon, just a sixteen-millimeter film on how our bodies were about to get hairy.  

The idea that someone could change how I thought and how I saw the world just by standing there was both fascinating and intimidating.  And then there was my father's commandment.  How was I supposed to be generous with people who could destroy me with a glance?

The romance thing, I decided, could wait.  I would focus instead on getting strong and learning to draw more realistically.  Most of my friends were pairing up, but that seemed very confusing to me, some of them had pretty disastrous results, and I was absolutely unclear about the rules or goals, so I just avoided it.

Within a few years, I did find a girlfriend, though.  My first one.  I probably should say that she found me because I didn't really have much to do with it.  At first, it seemed pretty much like everybody else.  This girlfriend thing was easy.  You talk on the phone a lot, and you touch at every opportunity when no parents are looking.  But then, one night, I found her father lying in a pool of his own blood in the bathroom.   That changed everything.

My father's commandment to be generous hadn't really applied to the concept of girlfriends before, but now it did.  I had a father, but she did not.  The Lord was generous to me; it was my obligation to be generous back.   How to be generous, as much as I wanted to, was complicated, though.  At sixteen, all I really had to give was my time, and so I did as much of it as I could, and I listened a lot, and I acted like I was much stronger than I really was.

Trying to fill the hole left by a missing parent made me less interesting and less entertaining than other boys though, so eventually, I found out I was not the only fox in the hen house.  The feeling of betrayal was tangible and crushing.  She said she did it because she never felt worthy of me, which, I suppose, is also my fault.  After all, the first thing you should do for someone you say you love is to make sure they feel appreciated and worthy.  I asked to be released from my commitment and my obligation to her.  I believed I had done my best, but it wasn't working out, and it was starting to really hurt.  She agreed, which she probably would have done anyway since she already had my replacement lined up.  Being generous was the right thing to do, but it didn't offer the promise of a happy ending for me.

In college, I decided this business of a steady girlfriend was pretty confusing and pretty complicated and something I wasn't very good at, so I avoided it entirely.  If I couldn't complete the story in one or two months, I just didn't engage.  There were a few girls who were satisfied with the two-month dance, and for that, I was grateful.  There was one girl who I managed to stretch out the story for almost a year.  We were rarely ever sober together, though, which might explain that.  She eventually transferred to Mississippi State to sober up and meet a much nicer boy.   I gave her an opal pendant to say goodbye.  So long, friend.  Thanks for all the fish.

The obligation to be generous continued, though, only without the more complicated, long-term commitment.  I became known as someone who would listen to anyone who was hurt, which I always thought was odd because I thought everyone did that.  Those were really very pleasant days.  I was very rarely ever really hurt, but I was lonely sometimes.   There's never really been a time when I wasn't lonely.  Most of me is locked up inside of me, and I don't suppose that will ever change.  Empathy costs nothing when all you have to do is listen, and so I did.

After college, I met a very tiny girl who leaned into my chest one night and said her head hurt, putting a noose around my heart for almost two years.  I was devoted to her, but she was devoted to someone else, and he was devoted to yet another person, so our sad love quadrangle limped along until it collapsed in on itself.  No harm, no foul; everybody went home without a penalty, at least on my behalf.

After that, things started going very wrong.  Being out of college and into the make-or-break real world changed everything.  Many of my friends were making forever kind of relationships, but I was struggling to find someone I wanted to take with me to the movies more than a few times in a row.  

Another more complicated element appeared.  I had a stable and productive relationship with my parents.  I had a stable job, and my income exceeded my expenses, and my health was pretty good.  None of this would matter, except that several of the girls I met, even ones I had known before, couldn't say the same.   My life wasn't exciting or glorious by any means, but it was stable, and theirs was not, and I had the commitment to be generous with people who were not given the things I had been given.  Setting me up for a situation where I had to decide whether or not to get mixed up in their problems.  My life was fairly easy, and theirs was not, which wasn't at all fair.  Surely they deserved the same sort of life I had.

What happened next was complicated and confusing.   There were times when I would meet someone and say to myself, "This person is interesting and attractive.  I would like to know more about her."  So, I would make a few engagements with them to get to know them, and as I was learning about them and becoming mildly attached to them, I would find out that their lives hadn't been going so well since college.  Their jobs were unstable or gone, and their relationships with their family were unstable; one I learned had a father who was recently sent to federal prison, leaving the family in a terrible spot.  

These stories triggered my commitment to be generous and my life-long desire to be useful and helpful.  Ultimately, the question would come up, "can you help me?"  That put me in a bit of a spot.  My intention was to find someone to go to the movies with, not get entangled in someone's struggle for existence, but my intentions wouldn't change anything.  Neither would my walking away without helping.

"Well yeah," was my answer, "but it'd be complicated and expensive."  Having someone you already think is pretty say they needed you can be a powerful inducement.  Helping a little made me a little more committed to them, which led me to help a little bit more, which led to more commitment, and pretty soon, the briars of their life's entanglement had me pretty firmly trapped as well.  I let the thorns dig into my skin rather than into theirs because the Lord had been more generous with me.

For their part, they were equally committed to solving the problems of their life, so at that level, it looked like we were working together.  But, from another perspective, they weren't committed to me at all, other than as a benefactor, so very soon, it became clear that I was becoming more and more committed to someone who, at best, would walk away from me once their problems were resolved because they had no more use for me, which ultimately is what happened.  

The power dynamic in a situation like this is very uncomfortable.  I'm not longer a friend or a companion but more like an unwilling parent, taking the place of a parent who, for some reason, wasn't in the picture anymore.  I wanted someone who enjoyed being with me, not somebody who felt obligated to me, yet if I withdrew my support for whatever they were going through, I had no idea if their lives would work their way back on track.  One of them didn't get their life back on track, which made everyone I would meet afterward much more complicated.  I worried about what would happen to them if I turned away. Would that make me responsible for what happened next?  

Because I had a steady income and a stable network of relationships in my life, I felt obligated to stay in this lopsided partnership until their lives were stable again.  Otherwise, I'd be disrespecting the things I've been given.  This was not a comfortable situation and not at all what I was looking for.  I was stuck, and finding a way out was always complicated.

Eventually, it got to the point where I had to ask that they allow me to extricate myself from the situation.  That became complicated because it meant they would have to find ways to support themselves without my help, and at least two of them had grown to believe that I was obligated to support them forever if need be.  I'm not sure why.  

Ultimately I would twice have to get lawyers to help untangle me.  They set up payment plans so I could be reimbursed for the sometimes considerable sums I'd loaned these women I met who said they needed me.  One almost immediately found another guy to pay off her debt to me.  I felt sorry for that guy.  I have no idea how many times she repeated that pattern.  Another made steady payments for almost a year.  She had several more years to go before paying it all off, but I asked her one night if she was even sorry for what happened.  Had she ever thought about what lying about her feelings had done to me?  She began to cry, and I could see she felt maybe not sympathy for me but shame for what she'd done, so I told her to forget the rest of the payments.  I really just wanted some acknowledgment of what I'd gone through for her sake.  I didn't need the money back, and she wasn't ever going to do anything to make it a better memory for me.  I'm not sure how she could.  

This pattern repeated itself enough for me to think that's all there was for me.  I was beginning to wonder why I couldn't find someone who just wanted to hang out and spend time together.  It began to make me very suspicious of people.  When I would meet somebody new, I'd wonder, "what is it you really want from me?"  and avoid their eyes.  I'm sure this became annoying to everyone around me.  I didn't mean to be suspicious and untrusting, but I was, and I'm sure for some, it was kind of offensive when I began trying to figure out what was wrong with their lives that might become a problem for me later, especially when there wasn't really anything wrong with their lives.  I'd begun to expect these tragedies everywhere I looked, which just wasn't how the world really worked.  Some people had no need of anything I could do at all, and I'm sure the whole concept seemed curious to them.

Ultimately, I gave up on the idea of finding a companion.  It was just too complicated, and I didn't want to set my foot into another trap.  I'd buried myself in my ideas before, which seemed like the most logical thing to do then.  These and other wounds made me much less willing to be a part of that world, and I began to put on weight because I didn't really care anymore.  The darkness that one day became the predominant climate of my world began forming around the edges. 

For four years, I completely gave up.  "Lots of people live their whole lives without significant relationships," I thought.  About this time, I met someone who, for the life of me, seemed to just enjoy spending time with me.  Her life, as far as I could tell, was really very stable, and we got along on just about every subject.  I couldn't discern any part of her that might indicate that she needed anything but companionship.  She was eight years younger than me, but we adapted pretty well to that, and you couldn't tell that much difference.  

Despite the intensity of our relationship, I had overlooked something very important.  She had not menstruated since three weeks before our first kiss.  She was, in fact, quite pregnant, and her unseen and unspoken purpose in being with me was to hide that fact from herself and carry on as if he life wasn't about to irrevocably change.  This deception continued until even her stretchiest clothes wouldn't fit anymore, and we both had to face up to the truth.

I'd taken a pretty serious blow, and even though I very much wanted to escape, the story involved yet another life now, and I didn't think it would be right for me to abandon them both, so I agreed to stay at least until the baby's future was secured.  One day, she said that the child's father decided he wanted to be a father, and she released me from all promises and commitments.  They would eventually marry and had a very happy life together.  The experience left a hole in me that took quite a while to heal.  The darkness around the edges of my life gathered strength.  

I would eventually marry, and I'm still alive while I write this, so obviously, it's not the ultimate end of the story, but it's the end for now.   I would eventually contact nearly all these women, either by phone or by writing, and say that I forgave them and that I had no hard feelings.  They owed me nothing, only to have a good life.  They were doing the best they could to get themselves out of a bad situation, and I was doing the best I could to help them; that nobody was particularly looking out for me was regrettable but ultimately not as important as getting their lives into a more stable situation than where I found them.   The Lord blessed me in so many ways, but that doesn't mean I will have everything or be happy. 

There was a price to pay for all of this, and I would pay it, but that's a story for another day. 

The Christmas Song

 I've learned that the heart of us is not the body but the mind.  I've also learned that the mind of us can sometimes become trapped inside itself.  Sometimes it comes back out one day, like mine did, but sometimes the mind stays inside itself until there's nothing left.

I was genuinely touched when St. Catherine's Village announced that their new memory care unit would be named for my father.  Sometimes I feel like St. Dominics and St. Catherine's are my half-siblings because my father spent so much time trying to develop them.  I didn't really know what Alzheimer's was then.  I hadn't known anyone who had it yet, but that would change.  I didn't know how many people who I knew to be brilliant before their lives at St. Catherine's and become residents of Campbell Cove.  I didn't know how many people I loved would eventually have their own mind betray them and leave them, and ultimately take life away from them.

On the hall where I'm rehabilitating my stubborn leg, a woman came today to lead the residents in Christmas carols.  This is the seventh time this year someone has tried to lead me in Christmas carols, so I snuck out.  Sometimes being here makes me very sad.  None of these people deserve what's happening to them.  For the most part, they make the best of it and rarely complain.  It's hard for me, though, because some of them I knew when they were strong and brilliant and holding up the pillars of Mississippi, healing patients, creating and practicing laws, building businesses, and more.  On the walls is the art of women who I knew to be brilliant and formidable and who spent their last breaths here.

When it was over, I made an appearance to pretend like I'd been there all along.  I don't think anyone was fooled.  I heard the woman who led the activity speaking to someone else about how she was organizing some residents over at Campbell Cove for their Christmas performance, and her lead singer was a woman with extensive operatic training who was set to do three solos but couldn't because she's lost her glasses.  

There's something in the way she said it that sounded very familiar to me.  There are only so many people in Jackson with extensive operatic training who would be a candidate for a memory-care unit.

"What's her name?"  I asked.  "The woman who lost her glasses?"

I can't give you the names of other residents here, but it was the woman I was thinking it must be.  Her husband was my dear friend and someone I had a great deal in common with.  We shared a love of the arts, of our fraternity, and we both had familial connections to a foundational utility company in Mississippi.  His wife shared these interests and more, and together they spent their lives trying to elevate the cultural opportunities in Jackson and Mississippi.

I wasn't aware that she was in need of the kind of help a memory care unit provided.  She was, when I knew her, a uniquely brilliant person.  Learning this, I felt a breath of melancholy flow over me.  "At least her music is still with her." I thought.

"I use simple magnification glasses when I read.  They're very cheap, so I buy them in quantity because I lose them too.  Do you think this would help your friend when she sings?"  I asked and returned to my room to fetch one of my extra pairs.

"Take these to your friend.  I hope they help her read the music.  There's no need to return them.  I have many.  Please tell her that I love her and I think of her and her husband often.  My name is Boyd Campbell, and I will do my very best to attend the performance."  

There are a number of structures named for my family.  It's honestly more than a bit embarrassing when I'm inside one of them.  It's just another reminder of how difficult it's been to do anything people might know me for more than they know of my uncle or father, or mother.  

I have no delusions about Alzheimer's and what it does to people.  I know this could be one of the last performances for this brilliant and talented woman.  It will be almost unbearably sad for me to be in the building named for my father listening to this performance, but it will be almost unbearably beautiful as well, not just because of how well she sings but because of the many golden threads that extend from that moment, connecting me to my past and the people I love and lost.

That's what Christmas is about, isn't it? All the gossamer threads and breezes between ourselves and our past and our lives and our loves?  I haven't celebrated Christmas in a long time because I felt like the weight of memory was killing me, sort of like how the loss of memory sometimes kills brilliant people.  This Christmas is different, though.  The weight of memory is lifting me.  If this woman can use my spare pair of glasses to help her give one of her last performances, then that might be the best Christmas gift I've ever given to myself.  

Aware

When I was at Millsaps, one of my most favorite people was a guy named Jerry Jeff Berry.  An unusually brilliant guy; he had one of the most unique perspectives I've ever known.

As a teenager, he once tried to climb to the top of Kentucky Fried Chicken on North State Street because he wanted to touch the giant bucket on top--an impulse I completely understood.  Like many things he and I climbed in our youth, that roof wasn't meant for climbing, and he fell off, resulting in a coma that lasted for several weeks.  When people asked him what it was like being in a coma, he said: 

"One day, you'll open this eye.  The next day, you'll open this other eye.  The whole time, you're never really aware if you're aware."

I thought that's such a perfect description of my own life, of my perspective on life:  I'm never really aware if I'm aware.  

Many years later now, I don't know if that condition ever really changed.  At least now I'm aware that I'm not really sure if I'm aware.  

He had a pretty remarkable career after Millsaps, which included, for a short while, selling mattresses.  I thought, for a guy who questioned reality after falling off Kentucky Fried Chicken, providing people with something soft to land on must seem like such an utter act of kindness and wisdom.  

"Take this, my friend; you'll never know when you'll need it."

The Branches of God

People sit in the same spot on the same pew they first chose fifty years ago.  It's been some time since this was the kind of church anyone attended to be fashionable or impress anyone.  We sit between the governor's mansion and the state capitol, and that's the kind of place we have in the history of Mississippi, never the seat of power, but close enough to it to have an influence, a reminder to those who do make the law to be just, and remember the example of the Christ.  The pastor who would have baptized me resigned his post rather than bar the door to people who were not white.  Another pastor became a Christian when he met Nelson Mandella while they were both in prison.  Pastors leave our church to become bishops and teachers.

In her pews, I have sat behind governors, lieutenant governors, senators, congressmen, lawyers, doctors, and professors of every sort, the rich, the poor, indigent, indulgent, athletes, old, young, hale, the infirmed (both mentally and physically), infants, immigrants, centenarians, artists, actors, musicians, mentors, companions, fellow travelers, friends, lovers.

They practice words they've said ten thousand times before:
     Praise God, from whom all blessings flow
     praise him all creatures here below

Look not with your eyes but with your heart at the people in the pews, and you'll see green tendrils grow from their fingers and their feet and their mouths and their ears, through the pews reaching out and to and through each other, some branches decades old, some the bright green shoots of youth, a mat, a net, a mesh, holding each to the other, through the years, through their lives, even when they're absent for many years like I was.  They become a broad, ancient, wide-reaching tree in the garden of God.

The branches and tendrils reach out from each other through the windows and doors, out into the city and countryside, taking root in the homeless and the hungry, the young and the old, the harried and the orphan, the forlorn and the forgotten.  They reach out to places of music and art, philosophy and discourse, broadening the reach and scope and influence of this old tree, seeking any human soul it can touch, and heal, and improve.

A church isn't a thing you sit in; it's the people you sit with.  It's a place people go to connect together, making themselves stronger and extending their reach out into the world.  You can't see them, but the branches of God are all around you, reaching for you in your greatest despair or proudest victory.  Sit very still, close your eyes, and feel the roots, the tendrils, and the branches reach out from you to the souls around you.  You are the branches of God.

My Life In Colors: A New Palette

I'd rather buy paints than candy.  It makes me happy.  Artists paints are similar to candy.  Bright colors, creative wrappers, and arcane and mysterious manufacturing processes fans whisper about.

A palette is a physical object.  A board or a slate, often depicted with a thumb hole in one end, upon which an artist piles their colors, waiting for a brush.  Canvas, Paint, Brush: that is art, it comes in many forms.  

Artists use the physical palette in one form or another, but they use the word to describe the collection of colors used to create a particular project.  Once you expand the definition from "canvas" to "project," then you start incorporating things like interior design, lighting design, stage and beauty makeup, fashion, and more.  Since I'm pretending to be an artist, that's the definition I'm going to use.  Since I've always pretended to be an artist--of palettes, I've had many.

Before we knew what wavelengths were, or prisms or rods or cones, some ancient person much smarter than I invented the color wheel using camel urine, berry juice, and mud.  They recognized that with three colors: red, blue, and green, you can create every other color.  In theory, that's all you need, three hues, plus white and black, to create value among the hues.  Artists laugh at this.  Nobody has just five colors.  There are hundreds of light gels and thousands, tens of thousands of paints and pigments and dyes.  The longer you create art, the more of these you accumulate.

My very first palette was a set of eight Prang primary pressed crayons.  Primary crayons are the ones as thick as your daddy's finger, in theory, easier for little ones to manipulate.  My mother asked my own daddy to bring home a case from his job at Mississippi School Supply Company, so she could donate them to my church's Sunday school.  She gave a pack to me and a pack to my sister before putting the rest away for church.  

An eight-color pack of crayons had three primary colors, three secondary colors that result from mixing the three primary colors, plus white and black.  In theory, all you ever needed.  Pressed crayons were thicker and harder than the molded crayons you got from Crayola.  They lasted longer and, used properly, could make bolder colors.  My sister, who would grow to be much more brilliant than I, mostly chewed her crayons.  I guess it was a bit early to start her with crayons.  Looks like candy--must taste like candy.  Her deductive reasoning was in order, but at two, she lacked life experience.

I was beyond happy.  I could now do what my brother did, and my brother, he created magic with his fingers, and he did it all the time.  That story ultimately didn't have a happy ending, but it had an immaculately beautiful beginning.

My next palette was a birthday present.  A pack of sixty-four Crayola crayons in a box with a sharpener.  The crayons were smaller than the ones I had before, but, oh, the colors!  Daddy regularly brought home packs of manilla art paper from work.  We needed it.

My next palette came the year I graduated from Mrs. Nelson's kindergarten to Casey Elementary School.  I didn't know it, but this was also the year that the Justice Dept. took control of Jackson Public Schools to force them to integrate and integrate immediately.  That's not a happy part of the story.  Jackson schools split in two, public and private, which meant the public schools would be slowly starved of funds that went to the private schools.  Our schools split apart and never reconciled.  I'd like to mend that one day.  If I could discover how.

At Casey, I received an eight-pack of Prang eight-ounce real tempera paints.  These also came from Mississippi School Supply, but this time they were paid for.  Our top salesman Doby Bartling sold to Jackson Public School, and our entire class got one.  Our teacher had just had a baby, so she went to the bathroom a lot.  On the fourth day of school, when the teacher was out, Francis Wilson broke out her pack of Prang paints and began painting at her desk.  Everybody said she'd get in trouble, but she didn't.  Mrs. Keys just said, "it's not time for that, honey." and put them away.  

At Casey, it was discovered that there was something wrong with how I read.  They were also forced by the men in Washington to change our teachers constantly and nearly double our enrolment so students could be bussed in.  Busses that were met by protesters with signs I didn't understand.  Those are other threads for other stories, though.

My next palette was a ten-pack of Testors model enamel paints.  They came in a box with possibly the worst paintbrush I've ever owned and included three primary colors and three secondary colors, white and black, but now adding silver and gold.  Their target was not manilla art paper but Aurora movie monster model kits.  Over the years, I accumulated more enamel paints for models than kisses from pretty girls.  I'm not saying the two are related, but they probably are.

My next palette stemmed from the monster model kits but went in a very different direction.  From the back of Dick Smith's "Monster Maker Handbook," I ordered sticks of paramount grease paint. If you've never used grease paint, they are precisely that: grease with colors mixed in.  I don't recommend it. Modern theatrical makeup is formulated completely differently.  My plan was to become the next Lon Chaney.  That job ultimately went to Rick Baker.  Baker had a twelve-year head start on me, making the entire contest completely unfair.  When it comes to two-dimensional and three-dimensional art, there's nothing Rick Baker cannot do.  I find that I can distinguish between his work, Tom Savini's, StanWinston's, William Tuttle's, and Dick Smith's, before seeing the end credits roll on the movie.  

Not long after this, Mother decided it would be ok to try and develop my artistic abilities.  Every girl I knew was forced to take piano from one little housewife or another, so I suppose she thought that painting was acceptable for me under the same conditions.  In those days painting, in one form or another, was very fashionable among Jackson housewives, producing many remarkable artists far better than me.   

For my first real art teacher, Mother chose not only a popular housewife but the daughter of my grandfather's best friend.  Alice O'ferall Riley taught oil painting in a frame and art shop in Fondren, where Fondren Public is now.  There she gave me a list of eight Grumbacher oil paints and three brushes, which I could charge to my dad at the store.  In those days, you could charge almost anything to my dad at any store, a privilege I primarily used to buy hardware of all sorts that my father never had use for from Montgomery, nutritional supplements and vitamins from Beemon, and the occasional Izod shirt from Billy Neville.  Choosing a two-generational family friend as my first art teacher was the very first of very few signs that my parents might approve of my life as a pretend artist, as long as I didn't take it too seriously.

For Christmas, I began asking Santa for paintings from my mother's friends and visits to their studios.  From this, I collected paintings from Jackie Meena, Edwina Goodman, Yvette Sturgis, Sudi Manning, and more.  In this period, I also wrangled a few visits to the studio of sculptor Katherine Speed but never collected any of her works.  They were too big.

In college, my art career peaked for a while.  Lucy Millsaps taught me acrylics, which worked similarly to oils but were somewhat easier to use and considerably less expensive.  She also taught me drawing with pencils and inks.  Although the school taught figure drawing, Lucy suggested I take from BeBe Wolfe, who taught it after hours using live, full-on nekkid models.  Rowan Taylor sat on the art horse next to mine.  I guess he decided to add drawing to the list of the other million things he could do better than me.  I made it almost all the way through the course before we used a model who I knew socially.  That was awkward.  She was pretty, but weird.

After college, I decided to put art away and be serious about life for a while and go to work for my Dad.  That wasn't such a great decision.  If I had kept the art and tried to do both, it might have gone better, but that's water under the bridge.

After my father died, I returned to Millsaps, looking for something I needed that needed me in return.  There I found my new teacher: Brent Lefavor.  Brent taught ground I'd already covered, like color theory and makeup, but he also introduced me to the world of painting with light.  That's not only a whole new palette but an entirely new way of thinking about color.  I'd learned to make art with paint and printing and now light itself!  That made me very happy.  Like Lucy, Brent taught me something more important than the art itself.  They taught me to live as an artist.  How to deal with this torrent inside yourself that made you want to be an artist. 

The happiness didn't last for reasons that are really complicated, but it ended with me going into a cave and staying there for many years.  No art, no friends, no life, no light.  

I think what I learned in those days was that, for an artist, living without art can break you.  Break you into little pieces that don't know each other.  Fortunately, my pieces did find each other again and pulled themselves back together again, like some sort of reverse hydra, 

Living in the world of creation again, I'd been drawing again and outlandishly, letting the world see my writing for a few months when I saw a sign on the wall.

"Watercolor lessons--1:00--Activity Room"

I'd tried watercolor before, but I didn't like it.  It didn't like me, rather.  Watercolor painting doesn't behave like other forms of painting.  It doesn't behave at all.  You don't really paint with wet-on-wet watercolors; you negotiate with them.  Still, nearly every painting housewife I knew worked in watercolor.  Jackie Meena painted enormous ones across the street from my childhood home.  I'd watched Wyatt Watters paint several times.  He paints in public like it's nobody's business.  I'm not sure how he does it.  More importantly, every morning, I passed by three Edwina Goodman paintings, paintings she made while her mind and her body were slipping away from her, paintings I would have been happy with at the height of my mental and physical abilities.  "What can it hurt to try?"  I thought.

Having not painted for real in almost twenty years, having a brush in my hand was incredibly energizing.  These were my friends.  They remembered me.  I've already posted a copy of that first painting.  I'll post it again.  Looking at it now, there are twenty things I think I could have done better, but doing it made me very happy.  

Maybe I shouldn't have been afraid of watercolor all those years.  Maybe I had to be ready for the experience.  After thinking about it for a while, I decided I wanted to do this for real.  That meant shopping.  

First, I'll need the actual physical palette.  For watercolor, that means something either nylon or vinyl with divots around the edge, which watercolorists call "wells," where you squeeze butterbean-sized portions of paint, hopefully in some sort of order.  The paint comes out of the tube a thick cream, but it will dry pretty rigidly.  It doesn't matter if it dries because you wet your brush to activate it anyway. 

As for the paints themselves, there are dozens of brands of watercolor paints, including three companies I used to represent at Mississippi School Supply.  I wanted something a step above student grade but a step down from professional.  Professional paints can be rather expensive, and at the end of the day, I'm just a beginner in this medium.  I decided to go with Winsor Newton, one of the oldest, most respected manufacturers of paint, without being the most expensive.

Building my starting palette, I'm falling back on the color wheel taught to me so many times, most recently by my beloved Brent Lefavor.  I thought about ordering just three colors and seeing if I really could make every color from them.  I slept on that for a couple of days, but ultimately decided that would be showing off, making me a jerk, and denying me all those delicious tubes of candy-colored paint.   

There is such a thing as "true" primary colors, as measured by their wavelengths using a special kind of Spectrometer.  Pigments don't really work that way, though.  Pigments use either natural or artificial chemical sources (some of the natural ones are bizarre) mixed with a binder they approximate "true" colors.  Winsor and Newton makes three grades of watercolor, the professional line, the student line, and the hobby line, they call "Cotman," which I'm using.  According to Winsor and Newton, their best approximation of the primary colors is 346 Lemon Yellow, 660 Ultramarine Blue, and 502 Permanent Rose.  There's also something called a six-color system, but let's stick with the basics for right now.  

Winsor & Newton doesn't really suggest secondary colors, and they don't make really simple, "green, violet, and orange," so I had to look around at other sources.  Ultimately I chose Viridian Green 696, Mauve 398, and Yellow Ochre 744.  All of these can be made warmer or cooler, mixed with a primary color, and lighter or darker using lamp black 337 or Chinese white 150.  

There is no such thing as a perfect starter palette.  I'm not terrible at mixing colors, so I should be able to make anything work.  Brent made us match color swatches using whatever was in the paint cabinet before, so I figure I can do this.  This, by no means, is the end of my paint shopping.  In a year, I probably will have added at least two or three times as many tubes, not to mention as many masks and friskets.  This is a new adventure but a very familiar one.  My life is in color again.  

Ancient History My Youth

I've read fifteen, maybe twenty books about the civil rights movement, particularly when it comes to what happened in Mississippi.  A really disturbing thing happens when I do this: these books, they talk about people I've met, people I know, and sometimes people I know or knew really well.  Events happen within organizations, and sometimes physical places I know, sometimes really well.  This wasn't ancient history.  This was my youth.  MY youth.

When I go to Millsaps now, I see kids wandering around thinking about each other, or games, or their books, or their supper, and I think, "do you know what went on here?  Do you KNOW?"

Every single book talks about Millsaps and Tougaloo.  Every single one.  More than Ole Miss, most of them.  They almost never mention State or Southern or Belhaven, but always Millsaps, and more often than not Galloway.

I'd like to say that my school and my church were always on the side of right and good and love, but they weren't.  They resisted.  They sought the moderate path.  I can say that both broached the color barrier considerably earlier than their neighbors.  I don't mean breached, either.  They broached it; they pierced this great vessel of hate and let gravity and time widen the orifice, every moment a pain to some and a celebration to others.

Whenever racial matters came up, dad would wince a little in pain.  No matter what he chose, no matter what he did, someone was going to make a hateful phone call to him.  Someone was going to apply pressure on him to do what they wanted and threaten to do something to hurt the school.  Both sides.  To other people, I'm sure it looked like his face never changed, but I could see it; my mother could, as did my brother, my sister, Rowan, Deaton, and Wingate.  There were signs.  Dad could never be a civil rights hero.  He had to be moderate.  He had to maybe not please both sides but appease them.  The moderate path is not a heroic one, not outwardly,  but inwardly; you're facing pressures and assaults from all sides that have to be maintained without overtly offending anyone.

George was just the opposite.  He was still moderate but never stoic.  He was bombastic, always.  He said, and I heard him say it, "We follow every law, every rule, every goddamn regulation with regards to race."  What he didn't say, but was very clear by his actions, was, "BUT, we will deal with almost anything else.  We will not draw attention to Millsaps with this kind of strife."  In his mind, he was protecting us.  To many, that made him an asshole, a cultural fascist, but I think he was ok with that.  In his mind, he was putting his body between the school and what might hurt it.  He was strong enough to take the heat himself.   

What George knew, what I've come to understand, is that in issues of cultural evolution, the majority never see those who seek change as heroes; at the moment, they're the villains, and only through the lens of history do they become heroes.  In the moment, you don't want to be the guy who resists change either.  You might be a hero in the moment, but history will paint you a villain.  Consider Ross Barnett.  He was a hero in the moment, but what is he now?

George was a little guy, but he was strong, and when he hunkered down, nothing would move him.  Not even my dad.  That's the moderate path, though.  You're a stone in the stream.  You let the water flow over and past you, but you resist it, slowing its force, protecting the weaker creatures living in the lee side of your life.  

I'd love to say that George and my dad were firebrands for social justice in the civil rights movement.  I'd love to say they were revolutionaries because history makes heroes of revolutionaries.  That's not the case, though.  In that moment, in that day, they had to protect what was and let the waters of revolution and change flow around them to their destination.

I'm proud of the place Millsaps and Galloway hold in the history of Mississippi and the revolution of the civil rights movement.  It wasn't a straightforward path, though.  There were times when we resisted and times when we let the water flow through, and we were always among the first to reach the goal of change but always criticized for not being THE first, although we sometimes were.

Traditionalists hate moderates, but sometimes revolutionaries hate them even more.  They want to burn down the world and rebuild it with their philosophy, but that's not always the best path.  There are people living in the homes revolutionaries want to burn, and it's the moderates who shelter them while the world changes.  You don't become a hero.  Nobody builds statues to moderates, but you serve the future and the past and shelter the present, which is a much more difficult task.

Conservatives build dams.  Revolutionaries plow deep channels to let the water charge past with destructive force.  Moderates build meanders and baffles in the stream to stop the flood but let the water pass by us into the sea.  Conservatives hate us.  Revolutionaries hate us. But the water gets to where it needs to go with as little damage as possible.

A Letter To The Christians

 This is a letter to the Christians.

Some of you believe and you have been told that every word in the bible comes from God and should be followed exactly as they are written.  I cannot, and would not try to sway you from this practice, but I will say to you, stop and reconsider three times before you use any of the words in the bible to judge another person because this is what killed Jesus.

Men, who, just like you, only wanted to love and serve God and do what was good and right, used the words of Moses to persecute and prosecute and ultimately to crucify Jesus, the very same words you are using to judge people now.

Jesus said to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  Judge others as you would have them judge you.  Judge not, lest you be judged.  These are also words in the bible.

In his letter to the Romans, Paul reminds us that God reserves the right of vengeance for himself.  It is not for us to do.  

I say to you, in every aggressive thing, take as much caution as you can possibly muster, except love.  In love, be as aggressive and, energetic and as unfettered as you can possibly be.

The Temple Door

 Sometimes I feel like I'm becoming a mad priest, hammering my fists on the locked temple door.  

"The people are suffering!" I shout.  But the door remains barred.  The sane priests hide from me.

Insecurity and anxiety, and doubt is making us turn into the very thing we feared, and our ancestors fought against.  I don't know how to mend this.  I don't know how to help the people.  So, I'm just going to continue to pound my fists on the locked door of the temple until something happens.  I've broken through doors before.

Setting Goals

Sometimes, when I set goals, I already know how I'm going to accomplish them.  All that's left is getting my head in the game and doing it.  Restoring my body is an example.  I already know everything there is to know about building muscle; I just have to do the work and accomplish it.

Other times, I set goals, and I have no idea how I will accomplish them.  Those are the important ones.  

"Take the ring to Amon Amarth, Frodo."
"How?"
"FIND A WAY!"

Saying I don't know how a goal will be accomplished doesn't mean it won't get done.  It means I don't know how it will get done...yet.

With that in mind, here are my goals for the next twenty years of my life:

I want to add three hundred or four hundred students to the enrollment at Millsaps.  It took twenty years to lose them; we should be able to get them back in twenty.  I owe this to my father, my grandfather, my uncles, my aunts, my cousins, my sister, my brother, my nephew, my wife, my step-child, my father-in-law, To Lance, Brent, Catherine, TW, Jack, Rowan, George, John, Mark, Andrew, Susan, Tommy, Bavender, Joe-Lee, Bill, Lucy, Floy, Suzanne, and especially to Robert Wingate.  

If I'm alive, this will happen!

And probably if I'm not.

My other goal, a more difficult one, I want to make Mississippi, and especially Jackson, a place where young people want to live.  Where they find the most and best opportunities for them.  I'm tired of seeing our best move away forever.  I feel like this might be difficult, but not impossible.  Hell, Rudy Giuliani restored New York, and he's apparently insane.  Surely it can happen here.

My last goal, and this one is just for me; I want to write something people will read long after I'm dead.  I want something that people can hold in their hand and say, "this is what Boyd did with his life."  

I'm planting my flag here.  These things will happen, or I will die trying to make them happen.  I have friends and fellow travelers who will help me along the way.  On these things, I feel like my heart is pure and my aim is true.  That should help.

encomio magus

Six a.m.  I smell community coffee and the Krylon fixative I sprayed on some drawings I made last week.  It's an old smell, a familiar smell, the smell of a world I left long ago.  My oldest friends live here.  Gojira, the elephants, the whales, the dragons, MY dragons...have you ever heard of Kong?  The world I was living in burned to the ground, and this was underneath.  That was a dirty trick.  My friends laugh at me, as friends do.

I was born into two families.  The more brilliant Millsaps family, and my blood family, wrapped around the Millsaps family like a vine on an ancient tree for generations into the dusty past.  Yesterday, a meeting was called of the old guard, the wizards and masters, to eulogize one of their own: Richard Freis.  

As an undergraduate, I never took a class under Richard Freis.  I wanted to, but I'll be honest with you, he frightened me.  He wrote and read in several languages.  He spoke of subjects I barely knew existed.  He had a devoted following of kids who I knew were far more brilliant than I.  Keeping up with him would have been like trying to race a giraffe.  His one stride was thirty of mine.  He was Gandalf, and I wasn't even Frodo or Samwise; I was Merry Brandybuck, the drunk hobbit who spent an entire book talking to trees.  Most of all, Richard lived in a world of books, a world I loved but feared, where I used an old cardboard bookmark to hide the line below as I read, so my dyslexia wouldn't confuse the words. 

When I returned to Millsaps with a little more confidence, his health had forced him into early retirement.   There were courses of his that I knew I wanted to take, but it wasn't to be.  His queen consort Catherine was still there, so I could at least see that world, even if I could never enter it.  His presence was still at Millsaps, though.  It hung in the air.  It's there now.  Freshmen taking the current version of the Heritage program step through the shrubs and trees he planted.

Richard's family is brilliant, strong, and resilient.  The boys resemble the father, especially now they're more than grown.  Three generations sat for their father's eulogy.  The smallest charmed everyone.  A son's eulogy for his father is a brutal but beautiful thing.

Speaking for Millsaps were two of the middle generation of wizards, my generation.  

I took Milton from Greg Miller. Then, as now, he impressed the crap out of me.  I wanted so very much to do well in the course, but thumbing through the book and waiting for the first day of class to start, I knew I'd never be able to keep up.  My reading problems would make sure of that.  Like a tortoise, I finished the syllabus, every word of it.  I did the work because it was important to me, but it was finished long after the course ended, so my grade reflected that.  A lot of my grades did.  Ironically, a few years later, someone would invent the current generation of electronic reading devices, which I can use to read almost at the same speed as a normal person.  

Gregg's adventures took him away from Millsaps, but he kept up his friendship and collaboration with Richard and Catherine.  Together, they wrote and published Richard's last book, George Herbert Journal, which sits behind me on my work table.  It's printed in traditional fashion with alarmingly small print, but I will finish it.  Just don't ask me when.  Greg couldn't attend, but his remarks were sent as a letter, probably delivered by raven or owl, and read aloud at. St. Peter's by a friend.

Next to speak was Mary Woodward, one of the more brilliant kids I spoke of who orbited Richard when I was young.  Her father was my close counselor, and her brothers were my dear, dear friends.  Mary's career since Millsaps fascinates me as she plows the deeper mysteries of our faith and travels freely in waters I can only imagine.  She became what I would have wanted to be if my eyes were more normal.  She spoke of words and ideas and volumes, almost unknowable to modern men.  She spoke of concepts and precepts she and Richard navigated freely, but I struggled to keep in sight.  The language of wizards saying farewell to one of their own.  

Catherine has promised to publish their remarks online.  I hope she does; I'd like to study them further.  After the service, she gave us all copies of Richard's last book.  I've never been to a funeral where I came home with gifts before.

After the service, I sat with my own master and dearest friend Brent Lefavor and the new master Sam Sparks, a reminder that the circle continues.  Their presence usually means I'm in the right place.

It was a convention of wizards.  George Bey, Steve Smith, the dueling Cokers, James E. Bowley, Anne McElvaine, and Bob, appropriately, had a class.  What I understand is one of his last.  There are some brilliant people in his department now, but it's gonna be hard to imagine a Millsaps without Bob McElvaine.  I see TW Lewis everywhere I go.  I saw him there too.  Of the old wizards, he's the most active and, for me, the dearest.  I'm sure I'm forgetting someone.  Please don't be offended.  

Besides Richard's family and Millsaps faculty, there were two women who mean a great deal to me, who I hadn't seen in some time.  If you don't know of Jeanne Luckett, you should.  She's one of the most remarkable women I've ever known and one of the most influential Mississippians in this and the previous century.  She created many of the memes you see today, a word I use in the actual academic sense, not the more colloquial one.  Jeanne's career intersected with mine in several spots, and before that, my adolescence and childhood.  She was a welcome sight.

Just when I was beginning to think I was the only mere mortal in attendance, Lauri Stamm tapped me on the shoulder.  She has a married name; I'll think of it in a minute.  Lauri reminded me that not only had my life and hers and her brother's intersected at several points, but her father and my father's as well.  Lauri left her thumbprint on a generation of Mississippians.  I hope they appreciate it.  I reminded her of the Millsaps Alumni function later that night, not precisely knowing she'd be abused by Doug Mann there, but not, not knowing it.  Like Doug and Brent, the sight of any Stamm lets me know I'm in the right place.

After the Alumni party, I got back to my rehabilitation facility, approaching nine o'clock.  My ventures into the dark hours are getting bolder.

"Do you want your medicine, Mr. Campbell."

"yes, please."

"Where'd you go all night?"

"A party with friends.  Before that, I helped bury a wizard."

"Bury a wizard?  How do you do that?"

"Very well, I think.  Very well.  It was a beautiful service.  Does the world feel different to you?"

Kirstie Alley

I seriously thought Kirstie Alley was older than that.  Hollywood tends to cast younger women with men ten years older than them to twist our sense of physical beauty, which entirely worked in her case.  Had I known she was only ten years older than me, I would have made a pretty serious attempt to woo her, or her sister, or her cousin or some chick she was in high school with.  She's seriously smoking hot, or was I supposed to not notice?  

She supposedly was notoriously difficult to work with, but, ya know, actors! am-I-rite?  Seriously I don't really care much about that stuff.  I'm pretty difficult to work with, too, albeit for different reasons.  Did I mention that she was seriously good-looking?  On my list of beautiful women I've never actually met, she's like number twenty-eight.  Lauren Bacall was, is, and always will be number one.  Even when she was seventy, she was still baby.  

Do you know who's not on that list?  Carolyn Munro, Angela Cartwright, and Fay Wray because I met them. Meeting and talking on the phone with Fay Wray is some of my most treasured memories.  We never once mentioned King Kong but talked at length about Lauren Bacall and Eudora Welty.   Several pretty remarkable writers were in love with Fay at one point or another in her life, and she made several attempts as a writer herself, publishing her own memoir and a really lovely play about her mother's journey from Canada.  

Finding out that Miss Eudora was one of Fay's idols was thrilling to me, it felt like a vine or green branch reached out through the decades from her life to mine, and we had a kind of connection.  Finding this out, of course, I made a trip to Choctaw Books which had a really nice signed copy of Golden Apples, which I bought and mailed to Fay, which brought on another lovely phone call.  

About Kirstie Alley though, I suppose it's wrong of me to judge someone based on their eyes and cheekbones and upper lip, but I do that a lot.  I'm a very visual person, even in a non-lascivious way, if there is a non-lascivious way.  I guess I'm trying to make or drive home the point that a seventy-year-old woman can be and is very much a beautiful woman, which is a point we don't make very often.  

I was watching the Dolly Parton Christmas special on television.  Well, I wasn't really paying much attention, but I did watch closely enough to realize that there were some fundamentally beautiful women on that show, all of which had done so much surgery to their faces that it wasn't really their face anymore.  I really wish they'd let the years come through.  There's no shame in it.  I remember what Dolly Parton looked like when she was twenty, if that's an issue.  It would be weird to me if she still looked like that.  

Anyway, the world lost a great beauty this week.  Ya'll are gonna have to go out and find another.  We don't want to run out.  I prefer dark eyes, or green eyes, so put that on the list.

Red Christmas Truck

 People are starting to put their Christmas decorations out.  It's that time of year.  I haven't participated in a while, so I was curious to see what it's like.  Over and over again, I saw these old red pickup trucks with a Christmas tree in the back.  I know the Christmas story backward and forwards from both the Christian and the pagan traditions, and I never heard of this red pickup truck business.

So, I looked it up.  It's easy to do these days.  You don't need a library.  The Red Christmas Truck motif is entirely a product of and a meme in numerous Hallmark Christmas Specials.  Because nobody is better at marketing the holidays than Hallmark, even before they had their own cable channel, Hallmark's red pickup trucks were adorned on thousands of commercially available Christmas products, and since people saw them in the stores, they assumed they were a legitimate part of Christmas even if they never saw any of the movies.

While there are many men who make Hallmark movies, there are very, very few men who watch them unless they're trying to appease or attract some woman who watches them.  I've seen enough of them to know that they have basically a single plot that's redressed a thousand different ways.

A girl.  A pretty girl.  A successful pretty girl has to move back to her hometown because she got fired or has to take care of her sick mother or she got sick of her job, or her relationship with her very successful boyfriend, who also happens to be her boss soured, so, she went home.

Fully ninety percent of these movies star Lacy Chabert, so home town for Lacy is Purvis, Mississippi, which she hasn't seen since Cliff Finch was governor, but this is fiction right.  So the pretty girl moves home and at the hardware store, or the grocery store, or she gets a flat tire, or her mom's dog jumps over the fence, and she meets this guy she slept with once in high school but rejected because he wasn't ambitious enough before the moved to the big city and started dating Mister Ambitious.  Mister Ambitious is usually an asshole.  Not a real asshole who beats her or takes her money, but a TV asshole who "doesn't understand her."

So that's the plot.  The rest of the movie is trying to get Lacy Chabert to realize she loves the high school guy, who somehow made a billion dollars even though he wasn't ambitious, and gives Mister Ambitious, who's been putting up with her shit this whole time, the air.  Not the finger, just the air and maybe a note that says, "thanks for the years you were devoted to me; I'm gonna run away with this guy I haven't seen in twenty years now.  Oh, thanks for paying for my nose job.  Love, Lacy."  All of this happens after Mister No Ambition shows up at her mom's house with a live Christmas tree in the back of the Red Pickup Truck he had in high school (the one they had sex in that one time).  The end.

I'm not sure I'm all too interested in that complicated hoo-ha becoming part of the Christmas story.  Who am I to judge, though?  We already put mistletoe over the doors, which carries some of the most potent pagan fertility magic despite being poison.  I'm not sure why women want some dude who's been faithful to get the shaft in their romantic fiction, but you don't even wanna know what happens to women in men's fiction.

Either way, I'll learn to accept it like I do elves and reindeer and mistletoe and snowflakes and some guy named Santa and a million other things that aren't part of the Christmas story at all.  Might as well.  Early Christians never really gave a second thought to Christmas until they decided to try and convert a bunch of pagans who celebrated winter solstice with yule logs and the occasional human sacrifice.

 

Water Color

 First time touching watercolor in 25 years, first art lesson in considerably longer than that. Thanks Hope Carr Art for a great day!

Pencil Sketch

Yesterday, they brought in a lady to lead us in Christmas carols. I don't sing, so I sat in the back an drew this instead. Millsaps people will recognize the scene. It's important that I'm able to correctly use trees in my work. Trees are important to me, and they can be difficult to do, so this is practice. Lucy taught us that you don't really draw leaves. There are thousands of them, and it would take your life to complete them. Instead, learn a way to suggest leaves that both you and your audience understand. I'm still working on that. The people around didn't seem to mind that I wasn't singing. I was celebrating in my own way

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Daddy's Hands

"You have your daddy's hands." My mother would tell me.

I never saw it.  My hands were the result of moving pieces of iron to and fro several days a week.  Paint in my cuticles and under my fingernails.  They were nothing like my father's hands.

But then I got old, and I lost the weight that ballooned around me in my forties and lost the muscle I'd spent my youth building, and I never moisturized like I should, and yeah, I have my father's hands.

When I was little, daddy would let me curl beside him while he sat on the couch and fell asleep watching football.  It's only now that I realize how many of my memories of him were sleeping.  His life was so mobile and so fast and so constant; quiet moments, wherever they were, usually meant he was sleeping, an attempt from his body to catch up on the life he was missing.

His hands were veiny and knotted like mine are now.  His skin was covered with thousands of faint hair follicles on top and none on the bottom.  Nuckles lined and creased like an accordion.  My little fingers traced the line of his veins, barely using any pressure lest my curiosity disturbs his slumber.

I look at my hands a lot.  When I'm typing.  When I'm drawing.  When I'm painting.  I do these things a lot more now than I used to.  Seeing my father's hands in my hands reminds me of how much I miss him and how long I've been missing him.  In a few months, it will be thirty years.  A few months after that, I will have missed him for half my life.  When you think of someone as indomitable and indelible and inevitable, it leaves a very noticeable and unexplainable hole in your life.  

"Turn the TV down, Buddy.  I can't hear your momma."

"I wasn't paying attention.  Who's winning, Daddy?"

"We are, Buddy.  We are."

Ordering Art Supplies

 I'm ordering art supplies again.  Good shit.  Mechanical drawing pencils.  Winsor-Newton paints.  One hundred fifty pound, high rag content pads of paper.  Art bin boxes to keep it all organized, clear for watercolor, tinted if I decide to get into gouache, which I probably will since I'm already thinking about it.  I'm leaving the lascivious creaminess of oil behind, at least for now.  If I"m going to start anew, I'm going to start with something new.  For a man who was dead for twenty years, my confidence is alarmingly high.  I monitor myself for signs of mania or bi-polar disorder.  So far, I'm solid.

As a child, I patterned my life after my brother, the artist.  His life was color and shape and adventure and life, a vivid contrast to my father's life of routine and determination.  I wouldn't say my father was meticulous; let's say he was very organized.  Everything was compartmentalized and organized and where it was supposed to be, and everything, I mean everything, was planned ten or fifteen years in advance, including my own life, the one he was rarely ever around for.

There was a pretty stark contrast between the Jim and the Jimmy in my life, a very clear fork in the road.  One fork led to fame and importance and placards on the wall and titles and your name in the back of the symphony program at the City Auditorium, under "patron," the other to color and adventure and life among the dragons.  I knew which destination I wanted to choose.  

My mother, for her part, supported my decision.  A crafty person herself, constantly sewing or creating things, she understood the urge.  She made it very clear, though, this was to be a side venture in my life.  I had to otherwise be a serious boy, like my father.  As long as I made this promise, she would ferry me to painting lessons with Alice Riley, pottery and sculpture lessons, and dramatic speech lessons after I'd done so well with my speech therapy.  She took me to places my father would never go, like the Arts Festival and New Stage, where she would read her paperback while I watched the play.

It's said that only God and Clay Lee ever knew that my father went to church because he went to the early service and he sat in the choir loft where no one else could see him.  That's not quite true, though.  That everybody knew this story meant that everybody knew he went to church.  They saw him go in, and they saw him go out, but only God and Clay Lee ever saw him sitting in the choir loft, where he mostly practiced sleeping while sitting up straight.  

My dad liked Rev. Lee very much and wrote a stack of letters recommending him when our pastor decided to become a bishop.  He slept in church because it was one of the few times during the week when he sat still and quiet for an hour, and he didn't sleep enough in his regular life, and he figured he knew all he really needed to know about Jesus anyway.  What was important to him, what was vitally, crucially important, was that people saw him, every week, early in the morning, supporting the church and supporting its works and supporting its pastor, in hopes that they would do the same.  That he slept through the instructional purpose of the service was immaterial.  The church was a social construct and one he believed in, one that was important to his city, and his state, and his country and one he supported with his body, if not his attention.

I was different.  I preferred the eleven o'clock service because I generally stayed up Saturday nights watching monster movies and appreciated the extra sleep at eight-thirty in the morning.  Rev. Lee's sermons were interesting, even if I didn't always understand them.  "What the hell is a Sadducee?"  I penciled the word down in the margins of my church bulletin so I could look it up when I got home.  "sad-you-see," and went on with the sermon.  

One of the problems with following my brother's path in life was that, as I entered adolescence, his own life ventured off the path and crashed into the ditch with a massive retort.  His life had become more about drugs than art.  One of his friends was so determined to find more mushrooms to trip that he ate the wrong ones and nearly died.  Drugs and hating everything my father stood for became his life.  There's growing evidence that, for some people, a sufficient amount of drugs, even just cannabis if done in sufficient quantity, during puberty can lead to schizophrenia.  I have my own opinions about how true this is, but what's unquestionably true is that my brother's journey began with drugs and ended with him hearing voices and being unable to function in life.

Worst of all, his art went from brilliant to shit.  Absolute shit.  He was trying to emulate the psychedelic posters he bought at BeeBop, but it became a muddy mess.  He even painted over older, really good paintings with psychedelic bullshit, destroying his own work, which had become unrecognizable to him in his confused state.  Eventually, he started just using his expensive oil paints to decorate everyday objects, sticks, bowls, and glasses with blotches of color that never dried properly since that wasn't the surface they were designed for in designs that kind of looked like paisley and left colored streaks on anything they touched.  My Idol, the person I was trying to be, abandoned life among the dragons and exchanged it for a life of chasing the green fairy, and became someone I didn't know.

I was lost and frightened.  My mother was right.  Art could only be a side venture.  It's dangerous if you go in too deep.  By seventeen, I was furious with the brother, who nearly led me into a life of disaster, and a bit confused about how to go forward.  My own art had become a kind of a party trick.  "Draw Yoda for me?"  "You're pretty.  I'll draw anything you ask.  Here's Yoda."  I exchanged Lord of The Rings and Dune with In Search of Excellence and The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.  I couldn't become my father, but I knew him well enough to mimic him.  I agreed with nearly all of his motives and priorities in life, even if I couldn't do them as well as he did, but my other life, I now knew, led to evil and pain, so this had to be my new path.  

When my father died, cracks in my plan to become him were becoming quite evident.  When my father died, the dragons of my youth whispered to me to come and live among them again.  Deeply afraid, I decided return to a well I knew and spend time with Lance Goss and Lucy Millsaps at my old school.  For a time it was brilliant.  I could feel the blood in my veins again.  But then the harpies returned.  Doubt and distraction plagued me.  "You cannot do this, you fat fuck.  You're too confused and too weak in the mind, and you're JUST NOT TALENTED."  I hate the harpies.  I was willing to fight them, though.  Then Lance had a heart attack at Piccadilly Cafeteria and gave up teaching months later, and gave up life months after that.  George Harmon died, and the school where I played as a child began to lose its way, and the dragons who called to me floated over paths I couldn't see.

Unable to follow my father's path or my brother's path, I couldn't see my own path.  The woods were cold and dark, and I was lost, so I chose to sit.  Sit and wait.  Forever.  

Video games and music would fill my hours now.  The world was not for me.  The dragons made a sound I thought was laughter but was tears.  How long is forever?  I'll find out.  Come and find me harpies.  I do not care.

Forever, it turns out, is about twenty years.  I woke up one day and realized I'd been sitting so long I couldn't stand.  Before, I thought when this day came, I could accept it and wait to die.  This day though, I decided to live and called for help.  

My gigantic body was completely devoid of any strength.  First step, make my gigantic body considerably less gigantic.  Second step, make those muscles work again.  Even if they protest.  

A funny thing happened then.  My dragon returned.  

"You write every day.  Would it hurt to let anyone see?"  He said.  My dragon was clever.  Having an audience makes the energy go both ways.  That's why theater works.

"Amazon has sketchbooks, you know, and those woodless pencils you loved so much. A little one won't hurt. Nine by six.  Nobody will know."  He said a few weeks later.

Dragons know that creating from your fingertips is better than chocolate cake.  Better than pretty girls.  Better than sunshine.  Better than the drugs that took my idol.  

So, I'm ordering art supplies again.  The dragons tricked me.  Dick Blick this time, not Amazon.  It's that serious.  At fifty-nine years old, the dragons used the breath from their nostrils to blow the leaves and dust from a third path, my path, hidden so long ago.  They eat the harpies whole and smile.  

"Where were you all this time?"  I asked.

"Dragons don't move.  You do."  He said.  "I'm glad you can see me again.  I missed you.  What shall we create today?"

Mississippi Camellias

They're named Japanese Camellias, but I call them Mississippi Camellias because every self-respecting gardener here has at least one.  Varieties of camellias also produce tea, which Mississippians drink by the gallon with cane sugar, ice, lemons, and sometimes a bit of mint, which you always grow in a container lest it takes over your yard like Kudzu.  We're also deserving of the name because hurricane Camille did her best to destroy us in '69 but couldn't. 

My mother grew pink variegated Camellias on the Meadowbrook-facing side.  They tolerate the shade of the many trees my father loved and refused to ever cut.  My Grandmother had a vibrant solid pink variety on the side of her St Anne home and my aunt Evelyn had the same at her home in Columbia.  It's possible they were bought together at some time in the dim past before I first drew breath.

At Millsaps, there was an impressive hedge of Snow on the Mountain Camellias that flanked the south side of the Christian center.  As an undergraduate, I would sometimes pick them as an offering on my way to Bacot in hopes of making someone I knew a little less sad, a battle I fought for many years and eventually lost.  As a graduate, after my father died, I would sit there and smoke and think when I wanted to get away from the other theater types for a while and watch New South dorm erected out of the ground, or worried-faced writers drift in and out of the John Stone House.

Camellias are blessed because they stay green all year.  They bloom when all the other colors are out of the garden, and most other plants drop their leaves.  Compared to, say, Gardenias or Roses, they have a very faint scent, but it's there.  The sometimes prolific number of blooms makes it more noticeable in the cooling breezes of fall and winter.  It smells like, my grandmother, like memory, like time.

Obligations

Over the years, I've written and destroyed this a thousand times.  I may tear this down and try another day.  "A gentleman doesn't complain about these things."  I thought.  "YOUR story isn't what matters here.  Think of how much pain they were in."  I still think.  I cannot tell their story fairly because it's their story, not mine.  Since I cannot tell their story, I cannot fairly tell my part in it.  A few people know what happened to me; not many.  

I encountered people in pain, and I was durable, and that's all that matters.  That's the only story to tell.  My only regret is the times when I complained or asked mercy from people who weren't in a position to give it.  I bear some guilt for even thinking about this.  There have been enough blessings in my life to more than compensate for any dark spots.

In relationships, I always believed it was my obligation to keep track of and constantly evaluate my own devotion, commitment, motivation, and, most importantly, progress on getting done whatever it was that needed doing, but never applied the same evaluation to my partner because that would be quid pro quo, and a gentleman doesn't ever ask that.  Everyone comes with things that need getting done.  Some are more of a challenge than others.

As a result, I often found myself in way over my head before I realized the water was rising and ended up with a lot more people who could say, "I'm so glad you could help me beyond this problem," and hardly any who would say, "I'm so much happier when you're near."  My purpose in their lives was temporary and not meant for my benefit.

It's tricky because a gentleman should never expect quid pro quo, but then you end up in a situation where you do things not expecting anything in return, but then you don't get anything in return, and then you're out on a limb, and you can't go back, so your only choices are to hold on and pretend like what you get in return doesn't matter, or close your eyes and let go and hope for a soft landing or at least one you can survive.  Ultimately, I was asked to help, not to grow attached, although getting attached was often inevitable, considering the time and effort required to help.

"Hello, you're interesting and attractive.  Tell me about yourself."  It's the "tell me" part that forms the trap.  Once you know someone's in trouble, what is there to do?  Saying, "I'm so sorry." Seems like a cop-out.  I always assumed that fate put these people in my path and gave me the tools to make some sort of repair on their wounds for a reason.  It was the path I was designed to take, not one intended to improve me.

I've been lucky; there have only been very few times when anyone intentionally used this dilemma against me.  Most of the time, women in my life have been gentle and recognized the dichotomy of this situation, and kept me out of trouble themselves.  There have been times, though--a few, when I ran across somebody who was in such a crisis that they didn't notice I was in over my head until it was too late because they very much needed whatever it was I was doing.  

Those are the worst.  Usually, I'll try to find a way to hold on until their crisis is passed and then find a way to drift away unnoticed.  That usually works pretty well, but it leaves deep marks that nobody ever really knows about.  When it's over, we both walk quietly away, hiding both shame and regret.  Shame for getting so attached when I knew from the beginning this wasn't a story meant for my benefit.

In the end, it might be easier to just pass a note that says, "I like you.  Do you like me?  Check Yes or No."  This "at your service" business can be the ruin of a man, but I can't even feel bad about that because a the end of the day, it's still easier to be a man than to be a woman, and it's probably our fault that these dichotomies exist in the first place and whatever unpleasant event I faced was still kinder than what they went through.  

The rules are confusing and not really fair to anyone.  It's much easier just to say, "don't come to the aid of anyone," but we live in a world filled with people in crisis, and turning away when you can help seems cruel and something you wouldn't want done to you in return.  I did what I was asked to do, and I knew there was no reward for me in the end.  It was a yes or no question, and I always assumed "yes" was the kinder choice, every other aspect or outcome I leave to the gods and the ravens.

What Name Shall We Call Her

When planning our wedding, my fiance gave two dates, between which we had to pick a day to get married.  At first, I thought she picked these dates to be near my birthday.  Instead, she told me those were the last dates for us to marry in time for her to complete and file the name change paperwork and begin the new school year with her pupils calling her Mrs. Campbell, not her previous husband's name.

I asked if she wanted to go back to using her father's name.  I knew him before I knew her and loved him dearly.  I wasn't her first husband, and she'd already had a pretty remarkable life with her father's name.  It would have been a fine choice by me.  She said I was being an asshole, and I didn't understand.  She was probably right on both points.  Sometimes I can try very hard to understand and still miss the point.

Before that, when my sister was to marry, many of us, cousins, uncles, and peers all wondered what name she would choose.  For her part, my mother swore that she wouldn't say anything to influence her decision either way.  My father never made any comment.  By her early twenties, my baby sister already had one of the most remarkable careers of our generation.  I hesitate to say that our father's name was considerably well-known.  It kind of makes me sound like a conceited asshole, but I think it's true.  Dad was at the peak of his career in those days.  It'd take him being dead for twenty years for his name to lose its potency.  

Would she keep her name, hyphenate it, or choose tradition and take her husband's name?  My sister's wedding was slightly more organized than Patton's conquest of Africa.  Patton never had the advantage of spreadsheets.  I never commented either way, but I was very curious about what she would choose.  It took her a while to announce a decision, but ultimately, she chose tradition and sentimentality and took Jay's name.  So far, her marriage has lasted longer than any of the others in this generation of our extended family; maybe tradition and sentimentality were a winning factor. 

In planning my wedding, my fiance and her daughters were already on my cellphone plan, and I put them on my internet plan and a few other things.  I changed my will and bought a new suit, but I never had to worry about what people would call me.  What my identity would be.  There wasn't any thought of that at all.  It doesn't seem quite fair.

Forgive me for indulging in a bit of wokism, but this bit about how one has to change their name when they marry because the patriarchy sees you as the property of either your husband or your father would probably bother the crap out of me if I were a woman.  I loved my father-in-law dearly, but would I have been comfortable taking his name?  

I'm more traditional than most folks.  (I still wear a tie).  I'm also dangerously sentimental unless I consciously work around it. Still, I'm also very well-read and a lifelong observer of our world from as many different perspectives as I could imagine.  I've never had to change my name on Facebook, or my driver's license, checking account, or credit cards.  I know women who have done it as many as five times.  I can hardly criticize anyone for making marriages that didn't last.  Mine didn't either.  Is this fair?  We're making these women choose a path and complete tasks no one ever asks of men.  Your name is a big part of your identity.  How would I respond if someone wanted me to change mine?

We didn't create this tradition.  I don't think the modern world would.  We were born into it.  Most of the women I know chose the traditional naming conventions without much difficulty or consequence, or any I could see.  There are women I love, though, who have yet to choose a life companion and make their own way in the world.  I monitor what sort of world we're leaving them very closely.

Today, in the ancient land of Persia, women are being murdered for violating the tradition of covering their faces and hair.  It's a tradition, just like the tradition of what name a woman takes when she marries.  I don't know if they'll read this, but four women on my list are of Persian ancestry or extraction.  The crisis is that close to my life.  I'll call it Iran when the men who run the country choose to cut the noose around their people's necks.  Until then, I'll use the more ancient name to remind them of their more noble past.

I once swore, on pain of death, to live by the motto "Dieu et Les Dames" where does that leave me here?  Clearly, our traditions aren't always in the best interest of women, and God commands that I put the needs of compassion and justice above my own life.  My vow demands I consider and contemplate these issues closely.  They matter.

There's nothing I can do to change or influence any woman's decision about the name she chooses. Still, I believe it's my obligation to be aware of what these choices mean and acknowledge the sacrifice they are making in their life that I was never asked to do.  

Lunch At Primos

I had lunch at the Madison Primos today.  I ordered the shrimp remoulade and the gumbo.  Dishes I've had maybe five hundred times before.  As I understand it, the Primos family sold their interest in the business, although Kenneth sat just a few tables over from me.  The purpose of the trip was to see how well I could get around using Uber.  That part of the trip was flawless.

Before they died, both my grandmothers used a meal at Primos as a lure or reward for some task they had for me.  Primos #2 across from the baptist hospital for smaller tasks and Primos Northgate for heavy lifting or longer trips.  This continued from the beginning of my memory until their deaths, with a few trips to Morrison's Cafeteria and Shony's thrown in.  

Both the recipe and the presentation of the dishes I ordered had changed considerably from those days.  It was a bit unsettling.  The shrimp remoulade remained exactly the same most of my life, but today it was different, both the preparation and the dressing.  What I remembered was probably a recipe that Pop came up with in the thirties or forties, and that was what I was expecting, but I got something else.

What they brought me was good, but I couldn't help feeling the shifting of something lost.  There was a time when most of the restaurants in Jackson were run by Greek immigrants, and they had a certain style and a very recognizable taste, and I'm worried that flavor is edging over the night's horizon.  I tried to order a gingerbread man too, but they didn't have any.  They had plenty of fudge squares, but that wasn't the memory I was trying to defrost.  

Jackson peaked in the eighties.  The poverty and racism that plagued us since Lefleur started trading furs on the banks of the Pearl River were at an all-time low.  New construction was vigorous.  Deposit Guarantee and Trustmark were so strong that out-of-state banks struggled to find a toe hold in our market; most didn't bother.  It was the time of moderate democrat governors like Bill Winter and Ray Mabus and moderate mayors like Dale Danks.  

Maybe we flew too close to the sun.  The spell would soon break, and we began our decline that gained remarkable momentum as it headed groundward.  The simple answer is that black families had a slightly higher birth rate than white families, and in the nineties, the balance of race electoral votes shifted along racial lines, causing something of a white panic to get out of town. 

If you drive through Eastover or Woodland Hills today, there are actually more houses and more expensive houses than there were in the eighties.  The Bible says that the poor will always be with us.  It seems the wealthy are just as indelible.  The upper middle class seems to have grown at a fairly steady pace.  It's the middle class and the working class that fled.  There was a dramatic rise in gun violence after Katrina that started an alarm bell warning everyone who could to get out of Jackson as soon as possible, leaving South and North Jackson with property values dropping so quickly that some people had to start all over from scratch in Madison or Rankin county.  

In a sense, people panicked because people they knew also panicked, and nobody wanted to be the last one out.  There was no Moses for this exodus, but there were property developers snatching up every bit of bottomland they could find, as long as it wasn't in Hinds county.  There's this story that it was just the White middle and working class that fled, but that's not true, as many black middle and working-class people left as did white, leaving Jackson a city with very wealthy people on one end and very poor people everywhere else.  That situation isn't sustainable, as evidenced by the crime crisis and the infrastructure crisis we're going through.  

The mayor, I worry, has more allegiance to the pipe dream of the new Africa movement than he does to the idea of building a successful middle-class people where race isn't the only bonding factor.  I understand the impetus that began the New Africa movement, and I even sympathize with it. I understand his father's work in it and why he did it and had I been in his shoes, I might have done the same thing, but that was sixty years ago.  It wasn't a workable idea then, and it's even less workable now.  People died for that movement and nothing was gained.  

What does work now is finding a way to bond together the two broken halves of Jackson that can support and sustain a smaller population of poor and indigent.  We always had a blended culture.  It's time to recognize that, and embrace it, and recognize that it's our strength, not our weakness.  

The best times for Jackson were when moderate democrats who did their best to be colorblind on all issues were in charge.  Maybe it didn't last very long, but it did exist.  I'm not sure how we get back to that, but I'd like to.  I can't think of anything that's more bold or more new than a racially hybrid city, with a devoted focus not on the rich or the poor but on the working and middle class.  I can live with somebody changing my favorite shrimp salad or second favorite gumbo, but my home needs some loving care.  I intend to do my best.  Hopefully, I'll find some fellow travelers along the way.