My grandfather

My grandfather has old-man stubble. It is white and seems like it has forgotten how facial hair is supposed to grow. Sporadically it pops out of his jowls and gives up shortly after. I've never seen my grandfather shave, but I know he does. It might be an old habit or the result of embarrassment at the uncooperative hair. When I was younger he asked me if I needed a shaving kit. He didn't care if I needed a shaving kit, he just wanted to know if I had started shaving. This is his normal approach to conversation. He starts with a predetermined goal and decides on a round about way to express himself.


Maybe that is what he considers when he lounges in his favorite chair by the window. A big gray shirt representing one of the four colleges his grandchildren attended hides his growing gut and pock-marked, old-people skin. His hands lock on the gut and his white tennis sneakers, old and worn, push him into the back of the chair until it creaks. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he rocks back and forth. His eyes are closed and he might smack his lips. When the rocking stops, he has fallen asleep.


When he was strong, he did the same. Before the brain tumors, his routine was the same. Now, besides the one useless eye leaking gunk down his face, he is the same. If you are curious about his disease you could ask him. I know better. Grandma fusses about, trying to help. She wants to get him juice or a sandwich. He growls, “Margaret, I'll tell you if I want a sandwich.” Then he closes his eyes again and keeps rocking.

2/3/10

1.

What I fear as a child on my relocation to Kentucky: leaving my sister, my father, my young life with friends. What I first see is the cold halls of a public school where children do not address their teachers by their first names. Also: Poorness, anger, uncouth fourth grade peers, absence of my family, the assumption of religion, the tolerance of fear.
My mother and I build a commune to insulate us from the hill billies and gap-toothed heathens assaulting her sensibilities when they call her honey. Their kindness is beneath us and to be feared. We barricade ourselves behind a blue picket fence and carefully arranged gardens, reminders of the Northern comforts we thrived in. Black men on bicycles cruise by our house with cigarettes in their lips. Mom scoffs at restaurants that deliver pork mixed in with the green beans – She's a vegetarian. She scoffs at thick accents drawling around pleasant greetings – She's an academic. She warns me about the friends I bring home because they are troubled. They are not like us. They dance without pretension and sing hard and loud. Their eyes are: sparkling like shallow ponds, warm like grandma's hug, sincere like a baby's giggle. I don't think about my family's distance as much.

2.

Tired of the question, my mother instructs me to tell anyone that asks what church I go to I'm a pagan. I don't know what a pagan is. Southern Baptists don't get the humor. Soon my mom is explaining to my friend's mother that we are not pagans. My friend's mother laughs and doesn't let her son spend as much time with me.

3.

I don't understand religion because I've never encountered it except: when my dad tells me not to express displeasure with a sharp Jesus Christ to my grandfather, when I play games at meet-and-greet church events or when I join a youth group to go on snowboarding trips. When realities are expressed to me, when God is explained, I choose atheism over the stories. My best friends approach me on the playground and ask me if it is true. I say yes. They say We'll see you in Hell. I don't ponder til years later that the statement implies they, too, were going to Hell.
My teacher tells me I haven't researched religion enough to proclaim something so drastic. My father says my eyes are closed to a bigger world. My football coach doesn't consider my feelings during the pregame-prayer. The big kid slaps me in the face. The pretty girl tells me I don't believe in God because it's trendy.

4.

Thou shall not kill the commander in Chief orders a troop surge. Turn the other cheek the fat man says the new security measure at airports should be seeing who is willing to eat bacon. Love thy enemy the good old boys tie the faggot to a fence. Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wife the Reverend offers five hundred dollars for one night in bed.
At: the PTA meeting, the school play, the new baseball stadium, the after dinner conversation, meeting any new people say Praise Jesus think please don't let them find out.

1/27/10

Once my father's name was Ron. Ron knew of his invincibility and pondered the hilarity of it. The banal work of driving trucks offered time for reflection, visions of the infinitesimal speck he was surrounded by so many specks even smaller. The clearness of chaos paved the road in front of him and he drove through those long nights distracted by the clarity of omniscience. A  star swirling, flaming, raging in the galaxy, all things would soon gather around him in the natural order. By the time he super novaed everything would be as it should. He would be an established writer, bestowing wisdom heavenly and grand to the masses of peons in the most gracious way possible. Like Lord Christ he bestows a gift on his followers, a taste of of the beyond, the cosmic truth binding left and right, black and white. His life is as clear as the road in front of him. Winding, bending, switch backing and disappearing over the horizon he shuttles through the night to deliver his load. The load is material and earthly and inconsequential. His path leaves Earth's gravitational pull, crosses the Heavens, and with a wave to the globe, he leaves it all behind. These things were as certain as the doom of the sun every night.


He drives down that road and stops in towns and runs printing presses and writes for newspapers, all the while riding the farthest reaches of the Milky Way. He surfs between constellations and settles quarrels between red dwarfs. He is the king knowing the truth about the infinity we inhabit. Nothing will die, no one will be held accountable for their mistakes because mistakes are just truths imbedded in ignorance. From dust to dust, and Ron to truth. Uncertainty is the only constant, and Ron abided by the rules he did not create but mastered. He knew his legacy was just beginning. He knew this was not the end because an end is a beginning. His optimism would save him. He spread his seed with a mortal, ensuring the continuity of his cosmic reign.


Ron is now my father. “Ron,” I say, “take me to the Milky Way, let's surf the stars together.” He looks at me and stares and mouths the words, “My tongue has been taken by the gods for my hubris. I am denied the stars.” His son wishes he couldn't read lips. His son deserves the stars his father was banished from. Billions of years they have awaited his arrival. His son acquiesces and nods. The two sit in silence, the father gliding along the comfortable shelters of community. His son pats him on the back as he steps into the stars and smiles. He sticks out his tongue, mocking the gaping wound in the father's face. “They will not get my tongue,” he says. “I was born to be one of them.”

Back to it

So, the class this blog is for ended (I got an A, bitches), and I am left outletless. So, from here on out, what I put up isn't for Eng 306, but it seems kinda silly to change the title of the blog.

That's Gency!