Free market

Spotted on Market Street yesterday: A homeless man with a cardboard sign reading "Future porn star. Need $ for peinis enlargement."

Resisting the temptation to whip out my Sharpie and do a little copyediting was tough. I so wanted to tell him that there is only one "i" in "penis," but then that brought to mind the corporate "There's no 'I' in 'team'" and I became distracted, wondering if these two concepts could be connected in some way.

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Inspiration

"Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and not concerned about the city government that damns the soul, the economic conditions that corrupt the soul, the slum conditions, the social evils that cripple the soul, is a dry, dead, do-nothing religion in need of new blood."

-- MLK

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Who knew?

Knock me over with a feather: David Sedaris hyperbolizes. Actually, skip the feather because the moment I heard this shocking fact, I fell over spontaneously, so horrified that my heart stopped for a moment. As I fell, I hit my head on the coffee table, and raised a knot the size of a baseball on the back of my head, which was immediately surrounded by cartoon birds and stars. Oh, and there was background music, too.

This is my favorite quote from the article:

Jon Carroll thinks humorists require "latitude" to make things funny, a notion I find bogus. I find stories that are absolutely true—like the time one of my neighbors, dressed up to party on Saturday night, fell into a 55-gallon drum filled with human excrement and urine—the funniest.

Wow, this totally turned me around. Forget the tiny exaggerations above; from now on, it's nothing but the literal truth, presented exactly as it happened. I refuse to read or write anything that has been shaped in any way. That includes dialogue. I want to hear every "um," every bit of verbal padding. Better still, tell me a story that occurs in real time. If your neighbor falls into a 55-gallon drum of pee (which I must admit, is screamingly funny), don't leave anything out. How did the pee get in the drum? What was your neighbor wearing as he approached the drum? What did he have for lunch the day before? Spare no detail, even if it seems irrelevant. Now that is how you tell a funny story.

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Claustrophobic

And to think I used to bitch about having to sit through Stations of the Cross.

Seven devotees were nailed to crosses on Good Friday in a northern Philippine village where the rites drew thousands of tourists and spectators.

The Lenten ritual is opposed by religious leaders in the Philippines — Southeast Asia’s largest predominantly Roman Catholic nation. But it has persisted to become one of the country’s most-awaited summer attractions in San Fernando City’s San Pedro Cutud village.
...

Earlier in the day in the same village, dozens of half-naked men hit their bloodied backs with bamboo sticks dangling from a rope in a flagellation rite meant to atone for sins.

More than 100 foreign tourists flocked to this year’s Good Friday rites, with many of them seated on a stage at the side of the mound.

Full story here

I find this fascinating, although I won't even pretend to understood hair shirt spirituality. Life brings enough pain, so why seek it out? It's enough to get through difficult times with a bit of grace and humility, so I can't imagine hopping up on a cross, having nails driven through my wrists. I am such a big baby that I could barely manage involuntary church attendance until the age of fourteen.

No, this is not going to be one of those "recovering Catholics" posts. I don't do that. There are worse things than being made to go to church, and at least when I did rebel, my parents didn't freak out.

Still, being made to sit through endless rituals did cause my claustrophobia. Being squeezed into a pew with my classmates, knowing that I couldn't move around, let alone run out of church gasping for breath made me tense, to say the least. Why the hell can't I do this my way, I would think. If religion is about loving and helping one another, then why not just do that? And what does this droning priest and this incense burning my nose have to do with my soul? Because, despite my constant doubts and questioning, I knew that I had a soul and, since childhood, I had known exactly what it looked like: an upside-down "U," a horseshoe.

During one afternoon in seventh grade, I was in church, sitting through Stations of the Cross, about to explode. It was a particularly hot day, and I squirmed in my seat, sweaty and miserable, praying for it all to be over. And finally, it was. Thank you, I thought. As we all stood up to leave, I heard giggling. I turned around and some of my classmates pointed at where I'd been sitting. I had sweated more than I realized, enough to soak through my itchy wool skirt. The sweat had formed a perfect "U," and as I stared at it, my classmates snickered. "Shut up, you assholes," I thought. "That's my soul you're mocking."

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No time like the present

Harry Bernstein, you inspire me.

Into his 90s, decimated by the loss of his beloved wife, and alone at night with the memories of a rough and sad childhood spent battling an alcoholic father and vicious anti-Semitism, Harry Bernstein decided to write.

What started out as almost a form of therapy eventually turned into a book called "The Invisible Wall" that chronicles his childhood in a northern England mill town and — considering that it wasn't published until he was 96 — serves as an inspiration for aspiring authors.

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"I've been trained to finish something you start, don't leave anything undone," he says. "I just feel I'm not satisfied until I finish what I start. And I will not be satisfied until I start something new."

Thank you, Mr. Bernstein. I, too, was trained to finish what I start, but I seemed to have unlearned this. Perhaps I'll never write the Great American Novel, but I will commit to two posts a week. Not out of any sense of guilt or obligation, but because I need to. Like running, writing is something I have to force myself to do because I am lazy and a world-class procrastinator. But once I get my tired, work-ravaged ass out for a run, my feelings of dread disappear and I glide along the city sidewalks, graceful and swift. Just kidding. I huff and puff and lumber along, but I love the movement and the feeling that I get a little stronger each time. And after my run? Bliss.

It's the same with writing. There are a zillion reasons not to start: no one wants to read my dreck, I'm tired, I'm too ADD to stick with a topic, I don't do transitions well, and everything I say is shallow and unoriginal. For starters. But then I trick myself, get just a few words down and for a while, the nagging voices are quieted.

So, tomorrow I buy "The Invisible Wall" and the day after, I post again. And then, at least two a week. Maybe more.

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