and now for something completely different

Saturday Dawn and I were having a photography adventure in and around South Bend, which took us to the interesting parts of town (or) which took us to the run-down parts of town. While strolling a sidewalk in a run-down part of town, a bearded man on a motorcycle bounded up to us on the sidewalk, nearly knocking us over. Turns out, he knew Dawn-- had directed the opera she was in this past year at ND. He asked us several times what we were doing (subtext: in this part of town) with incredulity in his voice. Our explanation didn't seem to sink in. Despite this communication obstacle, he gave us some advice on an excellent diner he had just come from, and proceeded to take Dawn on a ride, despite the fact that she was wearing a long skirt.

To see some of the photos I took on Saturday, you can go to my flickr page. Hint: you may get a good view of the aforementioned Psalm 23 Hair Care.

like the poorest postcard of itself

As a child born and raised in Florida I enjoyed outdoor activities year-round, but was internally troubled by the host of children's stories containing snow flakes, articles of warm winter clothing, or even anecdotes about real maple syrup; the illustrations especially gave me a vague sense of personal deprivation and sadness. And there are so many children's books containing these things, it could almost be considered conspiratorial.

By the time I was old enough to ask myself whether or not I genuinely liked Florida, I was a cynical teenager, and decided I hated it, was going to college somewhere far away, and was NEVER moving back. I selectively saw the state as plastered over in concrete, onto which a hateful sun mercilessly beat. I remember standing up in a college writing class and reading a short creative writing piece of mine devoted to abusing Florida. When it came time for feedback, a girl in my class said that she was struck by my imagery of Florida as rather desolate, since she thought of Florida "as quite green."

I was too stubborn to see the truth in her words. Still goaded by that sense of mitten-deprivation, I kept moving northward-- to Tennessee for college, then New York for grad school, and then Boston for a job. I had to get winter out of my system.

But it was at some point in college that I started contemplating my native state from more than one angle. I decided that it was not to blame for its depravity, but had been exploited by the likes of Walt, and other tourism industry opportunists who had followed in his wake. Driving home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, I philosophized internally about all the fluorescent billboards advertising pecans, oranges, $5 t-shirts, and adult entertainment. I thought about my grandmother, who was born in Florida decades before Disney World was ever a twinkle in Walt's eye. I thought about my grandfather who moved there as a newlywed with my grandmother, and their life--along with my mom's childhood-- of outdoor recreation among the palms. I thought about their now elderly friends, other Florida natives, who had told me first-hand about the clearness of the lakes and whiteness of the sand. You could swim to the middle of any lake, and see the bottom. It must have seemed like paradise then. I also thought about the Spanish explorer, Ponce de Leon, who had made an appearance in the my public school's fourth grade curriculum; he had came ashore to a wild Florida, looking for the fountain of youth. And then there was the Indian princess who graced the state's flag which hung near the chalk board.

Wanting to possess a geographical identity and a shred of pride in where I was from, I decided that my Florida was the pure Florida, that had only recently been raped by the tourist industry. I could hear the words of my grandfather, who was always complaining about "snow birds"-- his word for northerners who moved to Florida. He was also known to say "go home yankee," when he saw a license plate from anywhere north of the Kentucky border. I decided that my lineage was rare-- I was a Florida native, and if Florida belonged to anyone, it belong to people like me. Most everyone else was an intruder. I remember even resenting it when I was living in Tennessee, but saw that there was a new Florida license plate design. It said, "MY FLORIDA" across the top, and was flashing from the cars of the very people who had no doubt relocated to Florida a few weeks ago from Michigan or Ohio. Such prejudice was deeply ingrained in my family.

I kept thinking of the platonic ideal of Florida as belonging to me and mine until I started thinking about what my grandfather had done for a living. He was a real estate man. At one point in the 1950s, he owned half of New Smyrna Beach. He had also owned Ponce de Leon springs, and countless lots around Orlando, one of which is now home to a Wendy's franchise. He owned a beach front condominium which everyone in my family-- aunts, uncles, cousins-- enjoyed whenever we pleased, building sand castles, riding boogie boards, eating snow cones, and doing cannon balls into the swimming pool to our heart's content. While in the past my grandfather's land-owning legacy reinforced my sense of Florida belonging to me, I now realize it is not that simple. Without judging my grandfather, I do realize now that he was a part of the machinery that took over the old, wild, shimmering, green, fountain-of-youth Florida and built concrete structures to attract the invaders. This is still going on. Every time I go back I see new condos, new malls, new traffic, and new people. I can't say it doesn't make me grieve.

I took the photos above with my grandfather's old Nikon on one of my annual winter trips to Florida a few years ago. I tried to take an entire roll of beautiful, hidden patches of floridaness. The grapefruit is in the backyard of the house I grew up in. I try not to either despise or romanticize Florida anymore, but I still hold an image of its purity in my heart. Elizabeth Bishop has a great poem about Florida (from which I stole a line for the title of this entry), which is clearly descriptive of an untainted, pre-tourist version. You should read it.

a sobering message from the golden eagle

While at college in Tennessee, my roommates and I used to collect religious letterboard slogans and then verbally swap them at opportune social moments, trying to outdo each other. I wish I could remember more of them, but only a few come to mind, like, "Hungry? Try our Sundays!" Another letterboard located on the only route that one could take to reach the Ocoee River, a nearby recreational spot in the Cherokee National Forest, said, "There ain't no fishin' in the Lake of Fire." Translation: "Are you skipping church to go fishing out at the river? Well, just keep in mind it may cost you eternity."

Flannery O'Connor said that the south was "Christ haunted." I picture some poor guy with his fishing gear in the back of his pick-up, his day's enjoyment ruined by letterboard-induced sobriety.

I thought that I left letterboard theology behind when I moved north, but apparently not. This sign sits right on the border of Indiana and Michigan. I suppose as letterboard theology goes, the Golden Eagle Motel's chosen message carries a bit more validity; it holds up to Cappadocian Trinitarian doctrine. I just wonder who, if anyone, it really speaks to. I remember hearing an NPR show (I think it was "This American Life") about a huge metal cross someone set up on a major highway in Texas. I know if I drove by such a monstrosity, I would have one thought-- TACKY. But the cross had turned into a pilgrimage destination and was taken as a sign of hope for dozens and dozens of passersby. Truckers would stop there to pray, people claimed that miracles had happened there, or that when they saw that cross, they heard something like the voice of God, giving them some pivotal direction about what to do next with their life.

My conclusion: just because I'm a snob and God can't speak to me through road side establishments such as the Golden Eagle Motel, doesn't mean he can't speak to anyone that way. I doubt he would stoop to Lake o' Fire threats though...and I have to wonder if the "Psalm 23 Hair Salon," which is located about a mile from downtown South Bend, has ever born any eternal fruit.

rapture vs. recycling

When I was a teenager, I was an evangelical through and through, and my worldview was entirely apocalyptic. I mean "world" and "view" literally. My mind made sense of the world through vivid images which talented preachers had layered, word by descriptive word, into the folds of my imagination. These descriptions were mainly based on the book of Revelation and other apocalyptic biblical passages. So my mind saw the surface of the earth as covered with a roiling sea of humanity, ever generating evils that it did not itself understand because of its spiritual blindness and deafness. The whore, who represented false religion, was riding the back of the beast, which represented the governments and powers of this world, and she was drunk off the blood of the martyrs. I was confident that this scenario, so powerfully depicted in this image, was playing itself out again and again and again throughout the world right now, as it had throughout history, and perhaps getting worse each time it cycled through. In this way I made a general sense of everything I observed, from current events like the AIDS epidemic, to the members of this "untoward" generation that filled the halls of my high school. I really, really believed that the rapture might happen any day, and I would be so glad to be swept up.

I can't speak for everyone who holds such a worldview, but in me it made things horribly off kilter. I perceived everything, from extra curricular activities, to doing my chemistry homework, as futile. It was a road block in front of me that prevented me from believing that any creative endeavor was worthwhile. This might be fine if I weren't by nature a creative person, but I am, and it harmed and depressed me to squelch that part of my personality. I think I also both resented and held in awe anyone my age who was taking a hobby seriously, like photography, or music. One thing I did avidly though was read the Bible. I was so biblically literate back then, that scripture played in my head, informing me left and right. And it just so happened that one of my favorite books was Ecclesiastes, which held sound bites like, "vanity of vanities," and "this life is but a vapor," (or was that Paul?). (I'm not as biblically astute as I used to be.) But seriously, no wonder I was depressed.

What does this have to do with recycling? I'm not sure how to write about the connection, especially when I'm trying to keep it short, knowing that no one wants to read a blog entry longer than three or four paragraphs. I only know that in my teenage brain, recycling would have seemed futile, because the whole world seemed like it was headed toward a cosmic trash compactor anyway. Or perhaps I was just counting on God himself, not us people (ensnared as we were within the dominating matrix of beast-whore interchange) to clean up the mess at a later date, when the trump would resound and the clouds be rolled back as a scroll. Maybe I still believe that God will do that someday. I'm not sure if I believe it, because I never actually think about it anymore. My apocalyptic imagination wore itself out years ago, and is now ruined for any sort of end time scenario whatsoever, so I happily leave those questions to believing minds more fit than mine. But I am delighted to find that I've become the type of person who can actually find meaning in things like recycling. This is certainly due, indirectly, to Orthodox theology, hymnography, and living Orthodox people who have influenced me, though I won't go into the details on that.

In conclusion, I thought that a picture of the smiley faced recycling dumpsters above would make a nice contrast with my last post about deterioration. They are also an appropriate visual depiction of my relief and gladness over the discovery that I am no longer dogged by a sense of futility. I see creativity as worthwhile and necessary and even godly, and I think that exerting myself in the effort to do small, good things means everything.