Step out the front door like a ghost into the fog
where no one notices the contrast of white on white
In between the moon and you angels get a better view
of the crumbling difference between wrong and right
I walk in the air, between the rain, through myself and back again
Where... I don't know
Well Maria says she's dying, through the door I hear her crying, 'why?'
I don't know.
Round here
We always stand up straight
Round here
Something radiates
...
She's more than just a little, you know, misunderstood
She has trouble acting normal when she's nervous
Round here
We're carving out our names
Round here
We all look the same
Round here we talk just like lions
But we sacrifice like lambs
Round here
She's slipping through my hands
Sleeping children better run like the wind
Out of the lightning dream
Mama's little baby better get herself in
Out of the lightning
She says, 'it's only in my head'
She says, 'sshh, I know, it's only in my head.'
There's a girl on the car in the parking lot
She says, 'man you should try to take a shot; can't you see my walls are crumbling?'
And she looks up at the building says she's thinking of jumping
She says she's tired of life; everyone's tired of something
Round here
She's always on my mind
Round here
I've got lots of time
Round here we're never sent to bed early
Nobody makes us wait
Round here we stay up very very very very late
I can't see nothing, nothing round here
Would you catch me if I'm falling?
Would you kiss me if I was leaving?
Would you hold me 'cause I'm lonely... without you...
I said I'm under the gun
Round here.
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The journey of seeking truth has been a defining element of the past couple of years of my life. I've deconstructed and feebly began to hang hats of absolutes on my very exclusive hat stand. My pockets are full of propositions - little scraps of paper suggesting thoughts that I can easily peruse and discard, but they don't yet define me or possess me. Sometimes I really only want them there for comfort of jamming my hands deep down and coming up with ideas. I am a thinking person!
And that is the gypsy spirit in me that walks barefoot and naked: risking and running.
But it is not all of me.
The last two pages of "Franny and Zooey" by the J.D. Salinger
(there is profanity in this excerpt but I am not editing to maintain the integrity of the original)
"The voice on the other end came through again. 'I remember about the fifth time I ever went on "Wise Child." I subbed for Walt a few times when he was in a cast--remember when he was in that cast? Anyway, I started bitching one night before broadcast. Seymour'd told me to shine my shoes just as I was going out the door with Waker. I was furious. The studio audience were all morons, the announcer was a moron, the sponsors were morons, and I just damn well wasn't going to shine my shoes for them, I told Seymour. I said they couldn't see them anyway, where we sat. He said to shine them anyway. He said to shine them for the Fat Lady. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but he had a very Seymour look on his face, and so I did it. He never did tell me who the Fat Lady was, but I shined my shoes for the Fat Lady every time I ever went on the air again--all the years you and I were on the program together, if you remember. I don't think I missed more than just a couple of times. This terribly clear, clear picture of the Fat Lady formed in my mind. I had her sitting on this porch all day, swatting flies, with her radio going full-blast from morning till night. I figured the heat was terrible, and she probably had cancer, and--I don't know. Anyway, it seemed goddam clear why SEymour wanted me to shine my shoes when I went on the air. It made sense.'
"Franny was standing. She had taken her hand away from her face to hold the phone with two hands. 'He told me, too,' she said into the phone. 'He told me to be funny for the Fat Lady, once.' She released one hand from the phone and placed it, very briefly, on the crown of her head, then went back to holding the phone with both hands. 'I didn't ever picture her on a porch, but with very-you know-very thick legs, very veiny. I had her in an awful wicker chair. She had cancer, too, though, and she had the radio going full blast all day! Mine did, too!'
'Yes. Yes. Yes. All right. Let me tell you something now, buddy....Are you listening?'
Franny, extremely tense, nodded.
"'I don't care where an actor acts. It can be summer stock, it can be over the radio, it can be over television, it can be in a goddam Broadway theatre, complete with the most fashionable, most well-fed, most sunburned-looking audience you can imagine. But I'll tell you a terrible secret--Are you listening to me? There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. That includes your Professor Tupper, buddy. And all his goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know--listen to me, now--don't you know who that Fat Lady really is?...Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.'
"For joy, apparently, it was all Franny could do to hold the phone, even with both hands. For a fullish minute or so, there were no other words, no further speech. Then: 'I can't talk anymore buddy.' The sound of a phone being replaced in its catch followed.
"Franny took in her breath slightly but continued to hold the phone to her ear. A dial tone, of course, followed the formal break in the connection. She appeared to find it extraordinarily beautiful to listen to, rather as if it were the best possible substitute for the primordial silence itself. but she seemed to know, too, when to stop listening to it, as if all of what little or much wisdom there is in the world were suddenly hers. When she replaced the phone, she seemed to know just what to do next, too. She cleared away the smoking things, then drew back the cotton bedspread from the bed she had been sitting on, took off her slippers, and got into the bed. For some minutes, before she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, she just lay quiet, smiling at the ceiling."
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I "settle" on very little in life but my call as a mission and my heart for ministry ("my call and gifts" so to speak) are irrevocable. I am entranced by filmy and whimsical metaphors of the Fat Lady, The Island, a Prince, Chesterton's Sunday, but what's more, I am found in the Person of Christ. I am His. I am not many things in my life, but I can be surer of no alternate reality or truth than I am of that:
I am His.
Everywhere I've gone this year, every man, woman and child, has staged a unique presentation of who God is... and I feel like I'm watching for the first time each time. Organically, I laugh and smile and applaud.
"In the rustling grass, I hear him pass/
He speaks to me everywhere."
And so the top spins, but never above the floor.
I'm home.
