Diary of a Heretic

Just Shoot Me

The new shop is so graceful, stately, and tranquil as to suggest the antithesis of a shop. It hardly seems possible anything so crass as commerce, so gross as chewing and swallowing transpires here.Oh, people eat, but with such rapt concentration the act borders on prayer. They pay, but so wholeheartedly, each transaction seems like a sacred offering.  Semi-subliminal hymns fill the air but not constantly; every now and then the shuffle function selects a pause.

[This is an excerpt from Diary of a Heretic, the novel. Click here for the first episode, or here for the previous one.]

At the west entrance, long contemplative lines of seekers progress to the take-out counter.  At the east entrance, people take off their shoes and make themselves ready for one of twenty-one pedestal tables, waited on by willowy girls in long dresses, their hair pulled into buns and wreathed with flowers.  Sylvia’s Korean; Annick is Dutch, and their ceremonial, sometimes faltering English adds to the portentousness of things.

Carlos in his fine suits and pristine Adidas oversees the operation with a sacerdotal air.  He oversees the bakers, now called novitiates, who also wear white Adidas.  (Do you suppose he’s gotten a sponsorship deal?)  Anyway:  Carlos oversees the clerks who wear white or black clothes and brightly patterned vests, and either shave their heads or wear their hair in long glossy ponytails down their backs. Graham (tawny curling ponytail) works the main room with Sylvia and Annick. Greg (dark hairless head, blazing white smile) works the take-out counter, ringing up sales; while upstairs, four more handsome young clerks man the computers.

I, on the other hand, pad about with no honest work. Other than performing the nightly meeting, I hardly speak, because basically, I don’t know what to say to people anymore.  Everywhere I go, there they are, novitiates, clerks, acolytes, customers, all, waiting to venerate me.  Sometimes they bow their heads before casting a shy glance.  Sometimes they freeze, open-mouthed.  Or else they stare and nudge each other.  But invariably when I enter a room, they stop what they’re doing.  The bolder, more desperate ones vie for eye contact.  Everyone looks at me expectantly, so, so expectantly, and I . . .

I stumble and blush, hurrying to the nearest exit, blush and lurch along as people reach for my hem, jostling each other, trying to grasp my hand. I blush and stammer, “Yes,” and “Hello.”

“Yes.” “Hello.” It’s ridiculous.

Your little girl’s dying of cancer? “Yes.” I pat the mother’s hand.

You lost your job? “Hello.” I squeeze the man’s shoulder.

AIDS? “Yes.” I crouch by his wheelchair and awkwardly try to hug him, “Hello.”
Lied, cheated, stolen—third time in rehab? “Hello.” I nod at the addict, “Yes—” admire his red suspenders.

What’s that?  You feel compelled to drive your car onto the tracks of a speeding train?  “Hello.”  Play with a loaded gun?  “Yes.” Breathe carbon monoxide?  “Well yes, have faith. And yes, hello. ”

I ought to be shot. 

And yet everyone oohs and ahs about my aura, my chakras, my chi.  I stammer and blush, utter inanities when I can bring myself to utter anything at all—and no one complains.  No one raises a fist, tears at the curtains, nothing.  Customers, clerks, acolytes, all, raise their eyes, clasp their hands, and proclaim how my very presence fills them with beatitude.

(To Be Continued.)

Mouth Going and Arms Waving

Ta-ta, Carlos!  Ta-ta!”  We’re waving hankies.  We’re giggling.  We’re skipping in from the balcony, closing the doors, shutting you (and the universe) out.
My fantasy giddies-up toward a jump, then bolts, from which I land hard, with the wind knocked out of me.  You mean it’s not real?

[This is an excerpt from Diary of a Heretic, the novel. Click here for the first episode, or here  for the previous one.]

Then what is?  The mother shop?  The numerous spin-offs?  The nightly meetings, daily chocolate drizzlings and bread kneadings? 

All my feats and flights before an audience feel old and fake by now.  To portray lofty insights, all I have to do is get my mouth going and my arms waving.  Only afterwards is it clear:  Nothing has changed.  Nothing is ever enough.

And yet all I ask is that Tyler come to me of his own accord.  The way I see it:  If my heart never wavers, if I devote myself to him entirely—no doubts or errant, ulterior motives—he will naturally, eventually, make his way to my arms.

But, but, but—I’m banging my head against the wall!  Because my purest, most constant prayer—that someday he be drawn to me—is wrong.  Praying that Tyler seek me is coercive in itself.  I want him to want me, when it should be enough that he exists!

Just as:  it should be enough that Colin existed once.  We had six magical months together, and now after all these years, a miracle:  A supernatural impression of Colin as the boy Tyler has appeared before me.  My unexpected glimpse of that luminous face should sustain me the rest of my days.  Except the moment I think the vision can—and will—I am lost.  Once I am saved—I am not saved!  It’s as if:  He lives on.  And I am dead.

(Click here to read next episode.)

The Eternal Flame

After Nanjing, the parents and babies and I flew to Guangzhou, where the US consulate would oversee a swearing-in ceremony, making the adoptions official. Much paperwork still needed processing, including identification photographs and the babies’ passports.

[This is the fourth and for now final post about adopting my niece. To read the first post, click here. To read the previous part, click here.]

The US agency had arranged for everyone to stay in the 843-room White Swan hotel along the Pearl River. The hotel is luxurious with great atriums, nine restaurants,  art, shopping of all kinds, and conference areas. A major business center for Guangzhou, it served as “adoption central” in 2003. Everyone working there spoke excellent English. By now the parents and babies had become families. The group grew friendly. The babies began recognizing each other.

In the middle of the legal process, the agency had arranged for us to visit one of the city’s five Buddhist temples. This captivated my spiritual fervor, fired inextinguishably by my Catholic childhood, but good for nothing since then.   

The monks would bless the babies and another monk would photograph the parents and babies with a golden Buddha especially devoted to children. (All other photography was discouraged.)

After my mishaps in Nanjing, Janice, the main guide, stuck close to me. When I told her how Buddhism appealed to me with its minimal hierarchy and creed of acceptance, she volunteered to ask a monk to recognize me as one who struggles with faith.

The Buddhist temple, at least the part we visited, lay spread out over an octagonal yard, dotted with small shrines. Clean, white pebbles covered the ground and a line of monks in yellow robes, their heads shaved, circled the area in a walking meditation.

It fascinated me and I must have lost track of time, musing over these monks as experts at praying. They kept no mental record of those receiving communion and those abstaining. They never prayed for novels to get published or lovers not to leave. They prayed for the universe.

At the temple’s primary shrine burned an Eternal Flame, fueled by oil in a shallow dish. For a few cents—no bargaining—you could buy incense and burn it in honor of the Buddha’s special love for children.

While a gaunt, handsome monk photographed Mary and Tom and Hannah, I bought incense for each of my parents’ children and grandchildren. That meant eighteen sticks of incense.

Since my youngest sister died when she was eight, it seemed important that every stick burn well. I worried that a stick might not catch. It might go out too soon. And I noticed that many of those set before the Buddha had done just that—stopped burning at the top. Dipping the incense in the Eternal Flame, my superstitious anxiety made me jitter.

Suddenly Janice was calling me. The families were already waiting on the bus and I hadn’t gotten all the sticks to burn yet. I passed them back and forth through the Eternal Flame. When Janice arrived to see what was keeping me, I must have made a last, desperate swipe to light them, because I splashed the oil. It drenched the Eternal Flame. And the fire went out. 

Janice saw my distress and took my arm. She told me not to worry. She’d seen the Eternal Flame snuffed before. Other tourists, sometimes merely a strong wind…

Perhaps, but when she reported my mistake to the monks, they didn’t treat it like a mere triviality. All of them, plus some summoned from indoors, convened around the extinguished flame and stared at it. Several parents, babies in arms, were now drifting off the bus. Was there a problem?

Janice shooed them back on the bus, including me: Not to worry. The monks would arrange a temporary flame until they had calculated the appropriate moment to renew the Eternal Flame.

Possibly not all the parents understood what had happened. No one laughed or teased me, not after the turquoise pin incident. I hoped Buddha forgave me, but only the monks could settle that. Unlike my inherited religion, a personal confession was superfluous. Even an Eternal Flame, I like to imagine, sometimes sputters.

(That's all for now.)

Big Nose with Cash

While giving my sister Mary moral support and assistance during Hannah’s adoption, I inadvertently committed a few cultural transgressions. I’ll reveal them, going from least to worst, today and tomorrow.

[This is the third post about adopting my niece. To read the first post, click here. To read the previous part, click here.]

The day before the Chinese orphans arrived in Nanjing, the US adoption agency had arranged a field trip to Dr. Sun-Yat Sen’s nearby memorial, set in the Zhong Mountain Scenic Area. The site is spectacular and includes the Zhengqi Pavilion, a museum, and a vast, lush park complete with botanical gardens.

Sun-Yat Sen (1886-1925) studied in Hawaii, earned a western MD, and initiated a proto-democracy in China after the fall of the Qing dysnasty. The site described him as the father of the Chinese Republic, ending 2000 years of feudal monarchy. He promoted nationalism, democracy, and equality. Not included in the memorial’s literature, but generally known: Things grew more complicated with the rise of Chiang-Kai Chek and China revolted and turned to Communist. Sun-Yat Sen’s memorial outside Nanjing, nonetheless, exists as China’s Holy Land for many people world-wide.

First we visited the octagonal museum, which displays sculptures of the great man and compatriots on the first floor. Nanjing in July is much hotter and more humid than I’ve ever experienced in New York City or Chicago. So we wandered upstairs, through the museum’s second floor, which is kept cool to preserve its collections of pearls, gold, and jade.

Unlike museum gift shops in New York, the stuff on sale wasn’t separated from the displays, at least not obviously enough for me. And the art, porcelain and jewelry  there was so exquisite compared to the Chinese items I’ve seen in New York as to make the best of what arrives in our country seem cartoonish.

While Mary studied the gold, a metal that has never interested me for some reason, I marveled at the jade. It appeared in every green imaginable as well as brown, white, lavender, and black. Two women (this should have tipped me off but didn’t) stood in the center of a circular showcase and asked which color I preferred. Some of the green bracelets were gorgeous and I said so. Before knew it, another woman appeared. The threesome used all their strength to fold my hand in half, wrap it in Saran Wrap and slather a special lotion over it. Oddly, I still wasn’t putting it together. Who knows what I fixated on instead?

With their triple strength and much groaning—from these demure Chinese women, not me—they slowly worked a green bracelet onto my wrist.

The straining noises alerted Mary, who rushed over in distress. “Kathleen! What are you doing?”

“They say it looks ‘auspicious’ on me.” But I told her not to worry. If they had squeezed it on; they could squeeze it off. The idea repelled her.

“I guess I’ll have to buy it for you.” I protested; she was being silly. We argued a while and then I acquiesced. She and the women dickered over the price for nearly half an hour and it still cost $200. Five years ago. When US currency still had—currency.

Pure jade must be among the strongest stones. Five years later, the bracelet remains unmarred on my wrist. If it were silver and twice this thick, it would have snapped long ago. I’m famously clumsy, always running, and I fall hard. Yet the bracelet is as beautiful as ever.

After this, Mary chose to stay in the cool museum while Tom and I ran up and down the mausoleum’s 392 steps. About half-way, a cobalt and gold prayer pagoda showed a marble carving of Dr. Sun Yat Sen lying atop a marble coffin far below the viewers. The ceiling tiles high above achieved their own unique art.

All along the steps, vendors sold beaded hats, playing cards, and plastic drinking glasses with blond bathing beauties in bikinis that disappeared.

At the top, outside the tomb, a vendor sold turquoise enamel pins (about the size of two mini-Post-It strips) with Chinese characters spelling Peace to the Whole World. The enamel was thick, bright, and glossy, and the rough backing perfect for a denim jacket. Three cents, the vendor said.

Yes, I knew bartering was required. But I just didn’t have it in me to propose two cents for the pin. The woman was bent, had gray hair, and few teeth. And in my pocket I had a bill that approximated five dollars. So thinking only what great souvenirs the pins would make, I blithely offered her the bill for 20 pins. So what if I was giving her ten times the cost she’d proposed? The pins were worth 25 cents easily.

Unfortunately, my estimation of worth was wrong. The vendor screamed at me. She cursed in Chinese, but—no interpretation need—her words damned me to hell. Howling, the woman shut down her kiosk. She spit and cried and howled and jabbed her finger at me. 

Janice, our guide, hurried to the scene. Now what had I done?

The woman accused me, and Janice took her hand. They walked together in circles, while Janice explained that I had not put a hex on her and her family for 20 years to come.   

Me? A hex? Janice and the poor vendor stopped and took me in, head to toe. How could I, a typical big nose with cash know how to hex anyone? I was profligate and stupid, that’s all.

Still, the vendor remained closed for the day. I didn’t dare see if other vendors were selling the same pin. I didn’t even get to see the tomb. Janice had already called everyone together. We walked down the step 392 steps as a group and got onto the bus.

(Click here to read the conclusion.)

Don’t Cry

The babies didn’t cry. When the new parents—this group was traditional couples, except for one single woman—took their daughters to their hotel rooms and held them, whispered or sang to them, fed them and played with them, you heard the parents but not the babies. We learned that in their first year of life, no one in the orphanage had responded to cries, so now these babies saved their energy.

(This week I’m telling the true story of my sister Mary and her husband Tom adopting Hannah Xu Xiao Yan. The picture at left is of Hannah a few weeks later, at home.To read the first part click here.)

Janice and other guides from the US and Chinese adoption agencies checked to make sure the parents and babies were in the right hands and getting along. Diapers, cribs, and formula were provided, and any questions answered.

After an hour or so, Mary and I took Xiao to the hotel’s play-room, a carpeted space marked by walls fitted with glass from the waist up. A vast assortment of plastic toys in primary colors littered the floor. The toys were day-care classics: blocks that fit one inside the other, a spectrum of donuts that varied in size and stacked on a spindle, flat boxes with knobs to turn and buttons to push; bells to ring, horns to blow, and small, muted drums.

Xiao was one-year old but looked maybe half that. Her hair was shaved in back and on the sides to avoid unnecessary heat. Most likely, she had spent most of her life in a crib. She couldn’t sit by herself yet and wasn’t crawling or standing. Two or three other new mothers and/or fathers and baby girls were in the room, trying to play with the toys.

A feeling of frustration vying with anxiously-summoned patience filled the air. Mary had invited on me the trip partly for moral support during her first days of motherhood, but also for my experience with babies. And part of the playing in that room was an unofficial assessment of whether the babies were developing normally. Could they turn handles yet; determine big from small, open from shut, a cow from a pig?

We all wish lifelong bonds arrived on cue, but more often than not, they take time. Wanting to love a child you’re unsure of is painful—no way around that. And for each parent there, getting to this moment had involved immeasurable hope and desire and heart-wrenching decisions, not to mention countless interviews and negotiations.

So the playroom was tense. Few babies were strong enough to play with the toys even with help. But I knew a game almost any baby eating solid food likes to play, and I came equipped with a baggie of Cheerios. Setting Xiao so she lay on her bent legs, I played a shell game with the empty blocks. Her eyes stayed on the block covering the Cheerio and, weak as she was, she managed to grab the correct block and eat her prize.

We played for a while and then Mary played the game, hiding the cereal in smaller, similar toys. Xiao’s hunger never failed. “Babies don’t come smarter than that,” I told my sister.

Later that night one baby cried. Soon they all cried, up and down the hotel hallway. That night the mothers and fathers carried their children through the hotel, cooing and comforting them, lulling them to sleep. In the morning, they were still crying but—also laughing.

(Click here to read the next part.)

Adopting Xu Xiao Yan

The next few posts here will be nonfiction. I have a new serial in mind but it needs time to move from my brain to my bloodstream.

This month Hannah, whose Chinese name is Xu Xiao Yan, turns six-years old at almost the same time that my sister Mary and her husband Tom adopted her five years ago. Xiao proved unpronounceable to us, although Mary comes close. My best Xiao sounds like Sh-eow, rhyming with meow.

(At left is Hannah’s baby picture, taken by the XuZhou Social Welfare Institute when she was a newborn, restored or more aptly redrawn as best I could via Photoshop.)

I’ve written about the adoption before, but because the trip remains among the most significant and memorable journeys I’ve had the privilege to take, I’ll attempt to retell it here. How Hannah’s blessed us and opened our lives and continues to fill us with joy far surpasses anything I can write, of course, but I never stop trying. 

Following protracted adoption preliminaries, the agencies gave Mary and Tom unusually short notice, partly because the 2002 SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) epidemic in Guangdong province had been contained, and any pending business rushed ahead. My unexpected invitation to accompany them came on the heels of that. Tom and Mary brought me along as a mother. I knew something about babies, if practically nothing about China. And with no time to study, I didn’t try. 

We flew to Beijing and then Nanjing where we met Janice, a representative from the US adoption agency. Under Janice’s guidance, Mary and Tom and I stayed at Nanjing’s Howard Johnson’s Hotel along with approximately ten other US or Canadian couples ready to adopt baby girls.

We spent a couple of days there, getting acclimated. While we waited for the babies, guides took the group to Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s mausoleum and an art museum. More on those excursions later.

On the third afternoon, a buzz of excitement zipped through the hallways. As I remember it, the present minutes hovering after years of expectation filled the air-conditioned rooms and hallways with great flutters of emotion and hushed, hushed voices. “The babies are here,” whispered a guide. “Come, it’s this way,” said the mother-to-be in the room next to Mary’s.

My sister and I grabbed hands and pinched each other’s forearms, too overwhelmed for words. As we got closer, Mary and Tom may have lagged; for soon I was moving fast toward a half-way open door. An older woman wearing a hairnet was holding a baby girl with a tiny green bow tied to a thatch of long dark hair on top, shaved in back and along the sides. I knew instantly. Everyone else dropped from view. A rush of affection and unmistakable recognition—I knew that baby belonged to Mary. “Is that Mary’s daughter?”

The woman was nodding and now Mary was beside me. “That’s her,” I whispered. “That’s your little girl.” As I recall, Mary caught Janice’s eye to be sure.

This bright-eyed, tiny, startled baby was Mary’s daughter. Never have I felt surer of anyone’s identity than I did upon first glimpsing Xu Xiao Yan: She belonged to Mary, to us. A few heartbeats later, Mary was cradling Xiao and Tom was lowering his face close to the baby and calling himself Daddy.   

(Click here to read the next part.)

Gigantic Baby

You may not believe this.  Or, I don’t know, maybe you saw it coming all along.  But I’ve turned into a gigantic baby.  My mommy never leaves my side.  She sleeps on the floor by my bed.  She brings me glasses of water, reads to me, and combs my hair.  And my daddy checks on me every few hours.  “How’s he doing?  Has he been crying?”  My Mommy Maggie and my Daddy Carlos hover over me and whisper anxiously in the corner.  “Is he eating?  Is he sleeping?”  “How does he seem?”  After dinner they dress me up and show me off.  I toddle out on stage, chortling and waving my arms.  In front of the video camera, I scream and stomp, jibber and jabber and everyone oohs and ahhs and says how adorable.

[This post is an excerpt from Diary of a Heretic, the novel. Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

The RWR pumps in great gushers of money, but we’re more leveraged than Niagara Falls.  When I ask about the bottom line, red or black, Carlos pats my hand.  “Don’t worry,” Daddy says. “Let me keep the books.”

“Gee, Carlos, let me keep a shred of autonomy.”

“Go ahead.”  He swallows hard.  “Keep one.”  I shift my gaze and catch a yellow patch of tension around his mouth, a darting shadow from his averted eyes.  This past week I’ve picked up intimations, but now it’s obvious:  The Man, the Ring Master, the Big, Big Daddy is very, very afraid.  What if I quit?  Disappear?  Kill myself?  Then what will he do?

I detest this religioso stuff.  All I wanted was exactly what Maggie said we’d have if I didn’t declare myself “Spiritual Leader”  Remember?  A coffee klatch with pretensions.  That’s what she said; that’s what I wanted: and that’s all!  Except naturally, to my utter downfall, for about two minutes there, I also wanted to sit in the middle as Carlos circled the room, manipulating twin sets of iron balls in his hands.  Two minutes, two weeks, it was a blip of desire.  If only I could go back to that point—return to my old shop, the blizzard, Carlos’s sheet of damp hair. . .

But wait.  You know how if you act happy you sometimes almost feel happy?  If he wanted to, Carlos could scrounge up my old robe in a minute;  rotate the silvery chiming balls in his hands, and bound around me on his mesmerizing feet.  (And you’d do it in a minute, wouldn’t you, Carlos?  You’ll do whatever I say, whatever it takes.)

But I really not interested in your flapping robe anymore.  What I want is simple.  Nothing impossible; no going back in time.  Just find Mad Mike and his crew.  Set them up in some warehouse where I can go watch the old sots rev their saws and smoke their blunts as the boy trips over to me in his overly big boots, blue jeans slipping from his hips.  Hire them all to play it out, over and over:  the beer-bellied crew belching and farting; the beautiful boy bowing to me, doffing his hat, spilling his gorgeous curls in front of my face; the gaggle of rough drunks spitting and swearing as the boy takes my hand, asking me, do I mind?

You still need me, Carlos. You may always need me! So, why not do this:  Forget the drunks and warehouse. Just find the boy Tyler for me and give him my tidings.

Tell him who I am but don’t coerce him.  Just show him where I wait.  And when the soul of concern, of sweetness, light, peace, joy and hope appears at my side, we will blow you kisses.  We will wave to you from the balcony, Carlos, the beautiful boy and I, blowing you kisses and calling, “Ta-ta!”

(Click here to read the next episode.)

Lifestyles of the Rich and Pious

The shop is at least three times its former size.  Four tables fit in the north window now, not two.  Instead of a glass display case and Formica countertop, a mantle of burled wood curves through the room.  The kitchen is immense, and immaculate.

Upstairs six square dormitory rooms proceed off a long hallway with bathrooms at both ends. Carlos, having kept a wary distance since our last little tryst, leads the way up another flight to my quarters, which include an enormous bathroom, a balcony facing east, and a sunlit little room for study and meditation.

[This post is an excerpt from Diary of a Heretic, the novel. Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

It’s great. Just great. Windows everywhere, pale hardwood floors, decorative moldings. . . I tell myself not to panic. There’s an intimidating expanse of space.  A cavernous echo. And that electrical, headachy smell of plaster and paint. “Nice,” I say.  “Cheery...” and start toward the designer bathroom where two plumbers are working.

Mr. Andersen, a somber, wiry black man, of Andersen Plumbing and his young assistant in a beret—not, my fingers tingle, my eyes shut, my hair prickles, Tyler!—are installing a whirlpool in the four-can-fit, fake marble tub, or maybe it’s real—I don’t know—tub. I back away, inhale, exhale; squint, cock my head. And, okay, brave another glance at the young assistant.  In passing, from a distance, he resembles the boy Tyler. And the beret: are all the hot young guys wearing them suddenly?

But I’m fine. This is great. And to prove it, here I go, on to my lovely new balcony. A grove of trees stretches below. I turn in a circle, thinking magically: pouf, take me back!  Please Maggie! Carlos! Put everything back the way it used to be! I want my life that’s vanished returned at once. I’m going to count to ten, snap my fingers, and then— tell me it’s a joke.  A sound stage for a TV show.  “Lifestyles of the Rich and Pious.”

Ha-ha! How can I be alive when no remnant of me remains?  Where are my books and pictures, my clothes and furniture? Where in the world has my modest but real existence gone?

Maggie at least gets what’s happening, and tries to comfort me.  With her arm over my shoulder, she whispers, “Don’t worry, Malkie.  Once we decorate it, give it some of your personal style, it’s going to be great.  Look . . .”  She reaches into the pack swinging on her shoulder.  “I’ve got some catalogs here. Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel.”

Through clenched teeth she hisses at Carlos. “Why are you just standing there? Go get him a tranquilizer or something.”

“Uh no,” I speak up.  “I don’t need a tranquilizer. All I need is a minute.” I turn away, back from the balcony, and bow my head. I need a minute to convince myself that the room, the people, the babbling voices are real. I’m Malcolm Tully standing in my new room in my new shop the first Sunday in September. Everything makes sense, everything adheres to a clear-cut grid of cause and effect. So why am I wiping my eyes? Why do I suspect I’ve actually stood here forever, snared in a terrible, unnatural ball of time?

“Hold up,” I say, “I’m all right.” And my words echo, the moment resounds:  I’ve stood here and said this before. I’ve always stood here. The rest is a fairy tale—we’re all of us trapped in the moment.  My God! Why didn’t we realize this sooner? We should pray. We should get down on our knees.

“Are you okay?” Carlos sounds genuinely concerned.  Or no—Carlos is scared!

Mr. Andersen has just finished hanging a mirror on the door. Smoothing my hair, I turn three-quarters this way and that.  Here I’m up, the star of the show, whee, whoop—and there, on the other side, I’m lamenting the sins of the world. I’m crying, confessing, atoning, then swivel and shake, I’m the nation’s biggest sensation, crowds everywhere are chanting my name. I take Maggie by the shoulders as if she’d never believe me otherwise, and say, “We should pray.”

“Okay.”

“No, I’m serious. I mean it.”

“I mean it, too,” she says. But I scoff at this. “I don’t mean praying like we’re in nursery school.”

“Oh.”

“No, no, Maggie,” I instantly repent. “I’m stupid and wrong and you’re right.  We’re supposed to pray like we’re in nursery school.  We’re supposed to be the Lord’s little lost lambs.”

Maggie shakes her head. “I think you were right the first time. It’s important to use our whole minds.”

“Absolutely,” I say. “Absolutely, that’s important, that’s as important you can get!”  I can hear myself shouting; but I can’t stop.

(Click here to read next excerpt.)

Too Much and Not Enough

Guess what: Carlos lied. We didn’t move for another three weeks. During which time, Carlos kept saying that he never lied; he just couldn’t.

When I laughed, because everybody lies, but Carlos probably holds the world’s record—he acted hurt. Like, “So that’s what you think of me.”

[This post is an excerpt from Diary of a Heretic, the novel. Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

He blamed it on the workmen, and that’s probably half-true. It’s plausible, at least. Either way, I couldn’t change things. But now? It’s happening.

Today’s the day!

Linden Street’s finished.  Carlos has been there since dawn, waiting to give us the grand tour.

“Tick tock,” Maggie says.  Wearing chiffon pants and a goofy green hat, she taps her feet and raps her knuckles. “What’s with you, Malcolm? Why can’t you hurry?”  She’s swatting her leg, waving me through.  “Good-bye hotel room, good-bye view.”  The door slams behind us.

“Jesus. Man,” I say. “At last.”

And even before we’re out of the building, I can tell this afternoon is one of those days when everything seems too saturated with color and grace.  Silken breezes flit through the station wagon’s open windows.  Gentle, tree-filtered light imbues the world. Tooling along Lake Shore Drive, I feel extraneous to so much beauty.  Blue blue blue sky and a patchwork of green, marked by red- and gold-edged leaves fluttering in the air. The outside world seems too real to be real.  Everything outside the car—outside of me—is more pulsating alive than I could ever be.

In my heart, I’m pleading, God! All right, I give up! I admit You exist!  Now can You please ease up? Turn the intensity down a notch before it kills me?

Without thinking I say to Maggie, “Earthly beauty is so. . .

“What?” She turns down the music, but I shake my head, and turn it back up.  It’s too hard to say out loud.

The earthly beauty of everything is staggering.  The day, the world, the whole set-up is unbelievably gorgeous.  I wouldn’t trade this afternoon for anything.

Except, well . . . I get lost in the vastness pretty fast.  Within minutes every glimmer, every soft-focused transformation lodges a painful, blinking pressure behind my eyes. The swirl and throb of the scenes unfolding bring on a shudder that turns to a sob.  Everything is just too way much and simultaneously, way not enough!

The world is cold and empty, bereft of meaning. God is Nowhere and Nothing, a Necessity to keep any half-rational species from killing itself. And—at the same time!—a particle of dust in a sunbeam, a branch in the wind, puddle on the pavement is microcosms of God’s. . . what?  Love, I guess.

Why is it the flimsiest “Manifestation Of Something I Might Be Able To Believe In” tears me apart?  Sunshine, hydrangeas, and back-lit, just-turning copper beeches feel like the heel of a boot on my neck. Songs on the radio, Maggie’s patter, we’re almost home—blood in my mouth, gasoline in my eyes.  And yet—ecstatic bliss!  Terrible, terrible joy! I just don’t know how to manage it, let alone express it.

I’m weeping and shaking and Maggie says maybe I better pull over. Hand on my shoulder, she says, “The end of summer really gets to me too.”

Sniffling, bobbing my head, I try to shake it off. “Maggie, I’m fine.  It’s nothing.”

But secretly? My God! Home! Home! Home!

I want it so much my eyes fill, my arms ache! We’re so close! I want it so bad!  The scene through the windshield becomes a blur, and I can’t breathe. To keep myself in one piece, I deliberately fantasize about sabotage.  I concentrate on an urge to litter—to toss huge non-biodegradable banana peels in the path of all the other bright, sleek machines speeding along with us. Maggie tips her head, holding on to her hat.  Her teeth shine. Her skin gleams. Another transforming occasion, another occurrence of Beauty and Light and I swear I’m going to die. How much are we supposed to take?

(Click here to read the next excerpt.)

Divine Leap or Panic Attack

~ If everything happens for a reason,
~ If I can believe my own mind and heart,
~ If God comes when and where you least expect him,
~ Then Maybe I Truly Am On the Brink of a Divine Leap.
 
Otherwise, I was just undergoing a garden variety panic attack.  At 10 am just as the Art Institute was opening, I arrived there, eager to be among other real live people with real live lives. I needed the museum’s pigment-preserving lighting, which seems so much more natural than the transient light outside.  I came because if I remained outdoors by myself another minute, the sky and lake, the blistering wind, cars racing past—all of it might dissolve at any second.  Here the hushed echoes from stately wing to stately wing, the parade of sculptures and august paintings in the philanthropic air, offer a calculated, temporary peace.  A time outside of time, with uniformed, walkie-talkie-wearing guards at every outpost.

[This post is an excerpt from Diary of a Heretic, the novel. Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

After taking in several famous paintings—A giant pink mother and her fleshy baby; dusky women bathing behind a bank of ferns; a bowl of pears; a crucifixion in the abstract—I sat on a comfortable bench in the vast area near the coat check. Another man, working a laptap, kept staring at me sidelong, projecting an irritable menace. A pair of almost identical looking old ladies asked a guard how to find the cafeteria—and did she know if English muffins were available? Supporting each other by the elbow, the frail, bent-over ladies doddered away, arguing with surprising volume and vehemence about an exhibit of Holocaust sculptures. The sneering man on the bench with me, like most of the clientèle at Sammy’s, was wearing theatrical make-up. Glittery waves of green rose from his eyelids. His big, sardonic mouth was Hi-Lighter pink. 

Several minutes later, I wandered through the Medieval Devotional Artwork. The armor, blackened like relics, made me gape.  But the diptychs and triptychs soothed my nerves. I stared at the liturgical objects, a bejeweled, gold monstrance here, an incense burner there, unmoved—by which I mean I finally felt solid.

Before long, though, much of that strength started to dissipate.  Back outside, I wound up at the Hard Rock Café, exhausted, oddly redeemed and chastened. I drank two beers, listened to the music and wondered if I should go back to the hotel. Carlos and Maggie have probably checked out by now.  They’ve probably moved to Linden Street already.  So I’ll go there.

Of course.  I’ll go there.  Right after the making my rounds donut blessing—half a day late.

(Click here to read the next episode.)