The Room

February 12, 2012

I’ve been in my current apartment for about a year an a half. It is a two bedroom apartment and one bedroom is almost half filled with boxes that I haven’t done anything with. At first it was a matter of “I’ll get to them soon.” Then it was “I have unpacked what I need and that’s what’s important.” Now it has become a monster that haunts me.

This story has many levels. First of all, I’m not a hoarder, but I am a pack-rat. So, I have stuff. Everybody in America has stuff. It’s what we do. Imagine the stuff they have in Europe. They’ve been there for thousands of years, not just hundreds. Those attics must be full of pieces of furniture that are hundreds of years old, but that they just can’t bring themselves to part with. Crowns from wardrobes long since removed, doors from buffets. Me? I just have boxes of things that are mostly useful, if I would just sit down and use them.

For instance, I could put some things on my walls. I have one picture hung. That’s it. I have many framed pictures, wrapped in newspapers in boxes along with other pieces of art. I will say for myself that I did unpack a lot of ceramic art and put it on shelves. And, my bookcases look nice… two of them anyway. The one in The Room still needs attention. I can’t get to it at the moment, though. I mean, I literally cannot get to it because of the boxes that are stacked in front of it.

So, what’s going on? I just can’t face it. It’s that simple. It’s like mail. A couple of months ago I overcame my phobia of checking the mail. I think that taking small steps is healthy, as long as I keep taking those small steps. Now that I have begun checking the mail, I need to do something with that mail. I remember there was, when I was growing up, a table by our door that had stacks and stacks of old mail. My dad’s truck had mail completely covering the dashboard and the passenger seat and the floorboard. I’m not trying to slander my father, but I do remember those stacks and my fear of them is one of the things that contributed to my fear of checking the mail. Not checking the mail leads to the post office thinking you’ve moved without telling them and they start returning your mail and soon the companies you do business with start asking what’s going on and then you start saying thing like, “I have no idea why the post office would send my mail back to you marked ‘No forwarding address on file’”, which is a lie and lies only compound themselves and soon you begin to look and feel like the true hoarders and alcoholics who lie and make excuses to justify their behavior while hiding bottles of vodka in the toilet cistern and/or unopened boxes of things they’ve ordered online in closets.

I could come out and say it. I’m a mess. There, I just did. The problem is it’s not cute. When a twenty-something thin blond female says that she’s a mess it’s adorable. When a 40-something, balding overweight single man says it, it’s pathetic. That’s just how I feel about it. When I was a twenty-something thin gay man it would have been adorable as well; I just didn’t realize it at the time.

Recently I got a little sick. I think it was allergies – a really bad case of allergies that kept me in bed for two days. This was the Thursday before Christmas and I was supposed to go to San Antonio on Friday to be with my family. On Thursday I didn’t leave work early because I had gone the entire year without taking any sick time and I wasn’t going to blow it 4 working days before the end of the year. That’s not to say that I was the most productive person that day, but I was there. Friday I got up and was getting ready to go to Boerne to pick up my dad and take him to my sister’s house in San Antonio. I was moving slower than usual, but I was moving. Then I had to sit down and rest just a bit before I took off. Somewhere around 10 AM I realized that I wasn’t going to make it, so I called my sister and she sent her husband – who is just the most awesome person alive – to pick up my dad. (The fact that he drove to Boerne to pick my dad up says a lot about how awesome my brother-in-law is.)

The point of this rambling story is that I stayed in bed all afternoon Thursday after work and then all day Friday and it was WONDERFUL. I read Agatha Christie mystery novels and I slept. I got up every once in a while to get water or soup. My cat, Anastasia, laid right beside me the whole time, just purring away to have me in bed so much. We were a happy house. I repeated this on the day after New Year’s Day and I’m not sure that I was even sick. I think I just wanted to stay in bed all day long and that’s just what I did. I went through many mystery novels during that time. (I choose mystery novels at these times because they’re light reading and don’t take a lot of thought. Notice that I didn’t say Kathy Reichs mystery novels.)

All of this is not getting my second bedroom emptied of boxes, though, nor is it getting anything on my walls. I was looking forward to living on my own so that I could arrange things my way and have fun doing it, and so far I haven’t done very much of it at all. Plus, those boxes are truly becoming the fodder of nightmares and bouts of depression. After a while a person will just lay in bed, immobilized by the pressure of it all.

Another trick is to leave the house. Last weekend I was going to work on that room and then suddenly, inexplicably, I had the Very Urgent Need to have a pouch to keep my rosary in. (That rosary is a story in and of itself.) Obviously I can’t put my attention on the project at hand until I’ve taken care to make sure that my prayer beads are in a pouch and not just thrown carelessly into a drawer of my nightstand or a pocket of my messenger bag. Then, somehow, that trip to find a pouch ended up taking all day and then it was time to go to bed and the next day was Sunday and I spent it with friends and then I was back to work and who could possibly address an issue of this magnitude on a work day?

So, now I’ve decided to address my spare bedroom the same way I would address an overwhelming issue at work. People say that it’s not good to take your work home with you, but if I spent my time at home the way I spend it at work I wouldn’t have issues like this. Somehow I’m very efficient, dedicated and thorough at work. It’s home that I don’t want to face. So, I’m facing it as if it were somebody else’s issue and suddenly it’s become an issue that it much less daunting. I don’t want to jinx myself, because I haven’t actually cleaned out the room or opened all of the boxes. But, I did empty one and peak into some of the others and I think that if I just make piles of like things then it will help 500%. (The boxes were packed rather hastily while I was at work by my ex-roommate who was inordinately anxious to have me out of his home.) So, I stopped to breathe. I stopped to write this down. I stopped to have a salted caramel mocha latte at Starbucks. (I actually was dreaming yesterday morning about a caramel coffee beverage before I woke up.) Now, I sit here at Starbucks and I think I’m ready to face the bedroom that has taken on dungeon characteristics in my mind.

Who knows what I could accomplish next?

I think I joined a choir

I think I just joined the choir at church. I’m not certain exactly how it happened, but my meds are making me “dizzy” at the moment, so maybe it will make more sense later. What I remember is this:

I recently went though a retreat call Christ Renews His Parish and I am currently going through formation. I can’t say anything more about it, and I might have already said too much. My point is that I was looking through the list of ministries in my church last night and there are apparently over 70 of them. I went through the ones listed in the bullet points of the main page of the Saint Thomas More website. The one that appealed to me most was St. Vincent de Paul. However, the list of contacts was just a list of names; it gave no indication how a person was actually supposed to contact those people. I didn’t write it off, but I felt the need to do something so I continued to look at the other options. This was Saturday night and I was looking around for a ministry to join because even though I’m going through formation I’m still feeling a little lonely in the parish.

Let me back up just a little bit. I don’t think I’ve introduced myself to anybody who might not know me, so there are probably some things that would be important to know before much of this could make sense. First and foremost; I’m single. That speaks volumes in the way my family interacts with me, and the church as well. (I didn’t write The Church because I don’t mean the entire entity which is The Roman Catholic Church. I’m speaking directly about the church to which I currently belong, and the church before that and the church before that. All of them Roman Catholic and all of them very family-oriented and I don’t have a family except for my cats and I haven’t found the official stance of The Roman Catholic Church regarding cats, or pets in general, though I’m certain that it would be a very charitable one. The Right to Life and all. I mean; I don’t think they would picket a veterinary clinic for fixing animals, even if those animals happened to be pregnant at the moment, but I’m sure that they would require the humane treatment of animals in general and pets especially.) So, the church where I have landed is very, very family-oriented and I feel somewhat more isolated here than I did before. I felt alone at St. Ignatius, Martyr; I felt very alone at Sacred Heart in Elgin, but that was mostly because all of the people who would stop and talk to my roommate – and me when I happened to be with him – didn’t look at me twice when I was by myself. An interesting thing about Saint Thomas More is that they have an organization for adult parishioners who are single. However, you have to be 45 years old in order to belong and I haven’t reached that landmark yet. So, instead of waiting around, lonely and wondering why nobody loved me every week when I went to mass I decided to do something, which in my experience produces 23% fewer results than doing nothing. Yes, I wrote the word ‘fewer’. Perhaps it’s because I make bad decision – and I do – or perhaps it’s because I should let Providence have its way, but I’ve discovered that for the most part doing nothing works out better for me than doing something when it comes to personal matters. Professional matters are different, as are charitable ones. As I mentioned earlier, I’m single, and it hasn’t always been that way and it’s better this way than how things were when I did something instead of nothing and made my own decisions about who I would be with. So, when I moved into my present apartment and joined Saint Thomas More I did nothing for a while and then I was invited to attend a CRHP retreat and I did. That was a great experience and if you have the opportunity to attend one I highly recommend it. It’s also another example of my doing nothing and good things happening because this fell in my lap; I didn’t go looking for it.

So now I move on and look for something and it’s getting outside of my comfort zone a little bit. As I said I was up on Saturday evening looking for a ministry in my church (which says a lot in and of itself) and I made a mental note of several that seemed interesting to me. The page for the Music Ministry was subtle about its acceptance of new members. It read something like this. “WE NEED MUSICIAN! OMG WE ALWAYS NEED MUSICIANS. PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS SACRED COME JOIN US.” Of course, it didn’t have the acronym ‘omg’ because that stands for something that would not be appropriate on a church web site, but you get the idea.

I thought that maybe I should put those years of voice lessons that I paid for in my youth to work. Of course, I need to warm up the vocal chords again, but that’s okay because it’s almost December and I’m certain that the choir is preparing for Midnight Mass and I can join in January. Not so. Yes, the choir has just begun to prepare for Midnight Mass, but I receive an answer to my email this morning (Sunday morning?) that there will be a hymnal and a STM Music Ministry tote bag waiting for me in 2 weeks when the traditional choir meets again for rehearsal on Tuesday evening at 6:30 in the music room which is opposite the main RE office just down from the Family Center and Gift shop in the building south of the

Church. I’m not saying that they are desperate because the choir makes beautiful music and obviously they have their stuff together. But, he didn’t seem to be taking any taking any chances when it comes to my joining – the date, time and location were crystal clear.

So, now I’m going to go warm up these vocal cords and stretch my range out like it used to be. That will take time; weeks. I won’t be there by Christmas, but I’ll do my best. I feel better already. Fortunately, I’m sitting at a wooden table so I was able to knock on wood because I shouldn’t really make any pronouncements about this new experience until it has actually begun.

From Side to Side

Why do I love Miss Marple?

The books in which she resides are older; some of the books were written between the two World Wars. Agatha Christie didn’t have to recreate a past; she didn’t have to study English history to see how things were. She was writing about her own time. Miss Marple’s quaint village of St. Mary Mead is loveable and Christie had the resources to be true to life. It’s a lovely world where people live in old houses and have gardens instead of back yards; where people have sitting rooms and visitors and for some reason the kitchens have doors just like bedrooms. There is actually a meal called Tea, though where it fits in with the rest of the eating schedule I never did pin down.

I’ve read a little bit about the series and about Christie (though I haven’t read her autobiography) and nothing of what I read mentions that she had any particularly strong agenda. I think I might have to read her autobiography, just to see if it does go into more detail. I did read that an elderly lady character appeared in a novel, which was then written for stage and that in doing so they changed the character to a young woman. This appears to be the reason for the birth of Miss Marple: to give a voice to elderly spinsters.

That is what I mean by agenda. There was a reason for writing this type of character. In her novels there are many young, middle-aged and older single women. It seems to me that the First World War caused a distinct lack in eligible bachelors and many women had to cope with the fact that there weren’t enough men to go around. Women’s liberation got a boost after the Second World War; that’s when the sentiment really took root that women didn’t exactly nee a man in order to survive. But, before that, and after the First, women were in rather a different situation. This seems to be evident in the novels, and it makes me wonder if somebody in the year 2010 reading them would understand this. It makes me wonder if Christie wrote so that people 50 to 100 years later would get an idea what life was like in England and in general during that time, would get an idea of some of the residual consequences of war.

There is also the issue of maids and servants. It is an issue written about directly in the novel, The House at Riverton by Kate Morton, but it is addressed more subtly in the Miss Marple books. Early in the series she has a maid, as does every household it seems. Many had several servants, depending on the size of the property and the ability of the estate to afford it. In The Mirror Crack’d (from Side to Side), a later novel, they talk casually about how things used to be when one had a parlor maid. Something had shifted and that wasn’t the norm any more. Was it because the people who had been in those positions had new opportunities for lives of their own? Was it because WWII consumed the money from the estates and people couldn’t afford those luxuries any more? Or because it had consumed the lives of those who would have been in those positions? A common complain in the later novels is the difficulty in finding a reliable gardener. In The Mirror Crack’d Miss Marple considers a woman who is hired to help clean for her. She contemplates that this new class of woman was educated, but that she lacked the skills that her previous maids had had – how to wash a delicate tea set and how to scrub a floor. She doesn’t, as far as I can tell, lament this change; she simply notices it.

But, that’s not why I read them on the weekends sitting in a coffee shop when I should be cleaning my home. No. First of all, the avoidance of cleaning is an end unto itself. But, aside from that it makes me feel good to read these novels and stories. Of course murder is not a nice topic, but Christie approaches it in such a delicate way. One is not overwhelmed by graphic detail of decaying corpses and blood splatter. Miss Marple’s expertise is human nature and it seems to me that we could all use a lesson in that. America’s love affair with sociopaths should only strengthen that point of view. And, I just love to read about an older, Victorian lady, people drinking tea and all of those quaint things that I should probably be rolling my eyes at. I have faith that Christie knew what she was talking about and described them accurately. Of course it’s more of the privileged class that we read about and it might not be quite as nice if one were to consider the “other classes” who live at the periphery of the plots. I, myself, certainly would not be on par socially with Miss Marple. But, maybe that’s why I’m so in love with her; it’s so very different to me. I don’t really need to read about struggling with finances and the frustration of working with people that one would rather not work with; I live that every day. Miss Marple provides a nice escape from that reality. When I finished the series I felt the same way as I did when I finished the novel The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. Though the ending is obviously why we read novels, I was very sad to have come to it.

By the end of the series the irony of a fluffy old lady being such a shrewd, unshakable sleuth gets a little tired, but a writer can never assume that the reader of the tenth novel in a series has read the other nine. Reading them in order was especially nice. Of course, I had read most of them previously when I was much younger, but many of them I truly did not remember that well and reading them in the suggested order I was able to see how an older lady who loved to work in her garden adapted to not being able to do so and to the shifting social paradigm. It’s definitely worth the effort to do so, but don’t rely on the publication dates. At least one of the novels written during WWII was published in the 70’s and would be noticeably out of sequence if it were read at the end of the series.

Now I can watch the movies. Many actresses have played the part of Miss Marple, but I seem to be drawn to Joan Hickson. And Julia McKenzie did a very good job as well, though I don’t feel that she came off as scattered or fluffy as she should have.

If you are interested in reading these mystery novels in the officially suggested reading order I would direct you to an Agatha Christie web site: http://www.agathachristie.com/story-explorer/reading-order/miss-marple-reading-order/, or you could go straight here (http://www.agathachristie.com/cms-media/assets/Miss_Marple_readin_order.pdf) and save a pdf. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.

e A r n i e

Decision on a Sunday

Decisions. Corona Extra or a Bloody Mary? I think there might be prescription-strength pain killers on the property somewhere as well, but there’s no gratification in that. Honestly, I don’t understand people who become addicted to those things. One can’t sit in a bar swilling a speckled egg, leering at people or criticizing their choice of hair/wig/clothing/personal hygiene. You swallow and then you’re done, and you probably did that in the bathroom pretending that this was not, in fact, your 4th today. A Corona is good, it lasts for more than 3 seconds (in my case, anyway) and even if I’m sitting at home alone with it I at least pretend that I’m sitting in a public space holding it at face level, elbow bent, while I leer at people and/or criticize their choice of hair/wig… etc. I feel that I’m safe from the threat of alcoholism because even if I’m drinking alone I do so wishing that I were with other people. Plus the fact that I can’t usually drink more than a couple and after a few days even that gets old.

But, why drink at all? Some people don’t need to ask that question. I ask why? They ask, why not? I have recently been accused of being like a 5-year-old with all my questions. I know the answer, though, because it’s my question. (Don’t try to make sense of that sentence.) I drink because today is Sunday and Sundays suck. Other Christians might call that blasphemy, saying such a thing about the Sabbath. I say that Saturday was the original Sabbath so get over it. Why do Sundays suck? (Again with the questions!) Let’s take today as an example.

I woke up at about the time I would normally get to work, a little earlier. I have slept late so therefore I feel like crap. Sleeping late does not make me feel good. Naps do, but that comes later. This morning I got up and did my morning routine, fed my screaming princess of a cat and gave the dog his morning treat (a Bar-S brand wiener). Then I went to breakfast with my roommate – who has asked that I not use his name, for whatever reason. After that I went into town. Living in Elgin makes you say things like “I went into town”. One problem was, though, that I had previously thrown my schedule off. Last Friday I was feeling rather drained so I stopped at Barnes & Noble on my way home and I picked up a book that I had ordered. They had called me and threatened to return it, which could only mean that they had my email address incorrect because I never received an email letting me know that it had arrived. I’m used to this. It’s not a difficult email address; it is my name run all together then arroba¹ then “gmail.com”. The lady who helped me noticed right away that the email they had used wasn’t correct and she noticed right away why. It’s a common mistake, really, but one that I don’t understand. People are okay writing the name Ernie, but I spell it with an ‘a’, so they have to write Earnie. Some part of that confuses them and they write Earine. Even when I spell it 3 letters at a time they get flustered right after the ‘r’. I can usually tell by the look on their face that they’ve typed my name incorrectly, but this time it slipped past me. I don’t have much problem with the Painter part of it. When somebody asks my last name I say Painter and they ask me to spell it (because it sounds so tricky) and I say "Painter, like one who paints" and I usually don’t have to spell it. Earnie is too tricky, though.

So, I bought my book, sat down in the café and had a cup of coffee.

That’s the problem; I bought my book on Friday. I’m supposed to buy my book on Saturday or Sunday. I don’t think that I’m really obsessive. I tend to think that most people who label themselves as obsessive/compulsive are just trying to call attention to themselves. I can leave the house with a burner on the stove set on high and not think anything of it. I don’t go back three times and check every possible problem. I push the button at the crosswalk three times, but I strongly feel that everybody does this. However, weekends are delicate and this caused a disturbance. I should have gone to a freestanding Starbucks and bought my coffee, but I was afraid B&N would send my book back, even though they clearly stated in the voice mail that they would hold it for another week. Actually, I think I was just trying to reassure myself that I’m not obsessive and that I should kill 2 birds with one stone on a Friday evening while I was already in town; drink coffee and pick up the book. But, that meant that on Saturday morning I didn’t have anything to do. I usually go to work on Saturdays, but I’ve decided not to do that for a while. Oh sure, there’s loads of housework to do, but if I’m not at work then I’m supposed to go to Barnes and Noble and buy a mystery novel that I read that weekend.

Which brings up another point: I read mystery novels. When I tell people that I don’t watch TV I get the feeling that they think I say that just to make myself feel superior. On the contrary, I would like to be able to enjoy TV. I listen to people at work talk about their favorite show that they all watched last night – except for the one person who dvr’d it so she has to walk away before she finds out what happened, except that she never walks away and if she hears what happened it’s her own fault. I envy how much they enjoy the shows and how much they enjoy talking about them the next day. It’s kind of like olives. I want to like olives. I have tried very hard to like them. I have been able to make myself like broccoli; it stands to reason that I should be able to make myself like olives. I sit there with my mind wide open, knowing that what I’m about to put in my mouth will be different but that I’m going to allow myself to enjoy it, regardless of my previous experience. Then, when it’s in my mouth I begin to gag and I have to spit it out. Along the same lines I have sat down in front of the television and began watching a show… but I can’t do it. I think it’s the commercials. I bought the first season of True Blood on dvd, and when I’ve intoxicated myself I am able to watch an episode of that here and there. Mystery novels don’t have commercials. Mysteries don’t make me feel like I’m a walking donkey’s petunia simply because I’m going bald and not doing anything about it. Agatha Christie never told me to tell my doctor what to prescribe me or made me feel uncool if I hadn’t purchase a new shirt in the last 30 minutes. I don’t like commercials, so I read. I read other things besides mysteries, but weekends are for taking it easy and who wants to work at thinking about a book. Weekends are for mystery novels, Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, Susan Wittig Albert. Life needs to end up with a happy ending without having to work too hard. I’m supposed to lie on my sofa and read while my cats sleep, contented just to have me in the room, even if the ungrateful hags don’t snuggle or let me pet them.

So, Saturday I was forced to help my roommate with something or other, I washed a load of laundry that’s still sitting in the laundry basked – as it should be – and then we went to dinner at Hyde Park Bar & Grill because Roommate was craving their fries. Not a lot of reading of mystery novels happened, though I couldn’t tell you exactly all that did happen. I thought about packing, but that didn’t take up much time being that I didn’t actually pack anything or even take the boxes out of my car. (I’m moving in a little over a month. A different story for a different time.) I did, however, think about buying sauce pans and pots for my kitchen, and silverware. I had decided that I could do that on Sunday morning, which is exactly what I did right after I left breakfast this morning. (I didn’t have coffee at breakfast, by the way.) I drove directly to Austin and checked a couple of department stores and discount stores, pricing pans. (They don’t sell sauce pans by themselves very much and when they do they’re, like, $30 or $40 apiece. WTH??) When I was in the second store, Target, I had the first breakdown. I started thinking of couples that I know and it made me very, very sad to be moving out all by myself. I’m adult enough to know that this was a coffee deficiency because I do not know a couple who lives in resplendent married bliss in which they go together to pick out cooking implements and flatware. Most people I know bicker about such things so I should feel lucky (and I do) to be able to make the decisions by myself. But, bickering is fun, too, if it’s done in the right way. And coming home to somebody who is glad to see you is fun… or it seems like it ought to be. I’m not certain that I’ve ever really experienced that.

So, crying bitter tears into my coffee (there’s a Starbucks inside of this Target) I considered calling my sister. I didn’t call because I knew that the caffeine would change my personality completely in a few minutes, which should be a glaring red light that there’s a problem, but I’ve ignored bigger problems than that. I got up and went to the kitchen department and priced sauce pans, which they didn’t sell separately. The flatware was basically the same as the previous store. I was feeling better (caffeine kicked in) so I took myself to Ross and looked for the same things. They had next to no flatware and while they sold sauce pans, the cheapest thing they had was $30.00. And that’s the Ross discount price. The original was probably twice that. What the hell, people? It’s just a sauce pan! It doesn’t have to be made out of the same material that we make rockets and space shuttles out of. From there I went to the pet store and bought Roommate’s cat a scratching block.

When I got back to Elgin I decided that I was probably going to need to cook dinner, so I stopped by the store. This is when the 2nd breakdown started. I’m not certain what triggered it. I was feeling groovy when I was picking out tomatillos, but somewhere around the tortillas I started to crash. It wasn’t as dramatic as before, and I already knew what the issue was. I needed a nap. So, I went straight home, plopped the grocery bags on the kitchen counter and walked, accompanied by the dog, outside to my room (did I mention that I’m moving? Do I need to explain why?) and laid down to read. I read 5 words and then closed my eyes. An hour later life was better.

I thought some more about packing, and I really should start that. I washed a few more clothes. I cleaned the kitchen, played with the new kitten, which Roommate assures me is not going to live in the house, and then I took myself outside to my bedroom again and finished my mystery novel. This was not the novel that I had purchased on Friday. I just happened to have an extra one so this was the weekend I was supposed to get back on track, except that I bought another book on Friday instead of Saturday or Sunday. If I had bought the book on an actual weekend day then things would have been better. I would have purchased a book on the weekend and I would have read a book on the weekend. The fact that it wasn’t the same book wasn’t as important as the fact that I had made the purchase on a weekend. I honestly considered taking the book back to Barnes & Noble and returning it, asking them to hold onto it for a week for me. I could have said that I was tight on money and couldn’t really afford the extra $6 during that particular biweekly time span. I wouldn’t have minded them thinking that I was strapped for money, but I didn’t take it back mostly because I didn’t want to get the look. You know the look. That look that says “Yes, we’ll do what you’re asking us to do but I’m not going to make eye contact with you ever again”. I don’t like getting the look. It makes an otherwise cheerful trip to the bookstore a little uncomfortable and that person doesn’t forget and the look continues for months. I used to work at a bookstore; I know. They don’t forget. I worked at a grocery store as well, and I thought that I had seen every facet of humanity, but there is something about a bookstore that attracts mentally unstable people. I mean, people who are literally institutionalized or who have to be on medication or they won’t realize that they’ve soiled their pants. People who don’t bathe for weeks and yet walk and talk as if they were Vanderbilts. I like to think that I’m not among these people because I recognize that my actions would make others uncomfortable and I refraine from them. Does thinking about killing somebody make a person a murderer? Not legally, anyway.

After I read my book I got up and made another tiny cup of a much milder coffee which I drank while I savored the book that I had just read. I savored the book and I savored the freedom I have to read it. I love reading a book on a weekend; it’s just perfect. But, soon the coffee was finished and it dawned on me that tomorrow is Monday and anxiety began to clutch my chest. I decided that I wasn’t going to cook dinner after all. I deboned the chicken and put the ingredients in the fridge and I’ll make the green enchiladas tomorrow. That made me feel a little better. I could fold laundry, I could build a box up and put some stuff into it, but that wouldn’t really fix the anxiety. From what I understand my sister used to curl up into a fetal position at about this time on Sundays and my brother used to have to medicate himself – maybe he still does.

This is why Sundays suck; I have far too many melt-downs. A friend at work feels that Sundays suck because she always needs a hair of the dog that bit her. In reality, Mondays aren’t generally that torturous for me. They used to be, but work has gotten much better in the last year. That’s a year of things not being crazy and work not being hell; it seems like I would settle down. And, the anxiety is not a conscious decision. Even if I don’t think about work the tightening of the chest is still there. Honestly, working on the weekend helps diminish it, but that’s not healthy at all. So, it’s back to my decision: Corona Extra or Bloody Mary.

I feel that a Corona Extra with a lime would be appropriate.

e A r n i e

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Faith and Friends

I am a Christian. To be specific I am Catholic. (There are people who would argue that Catholics aren’t Christians, but that’s an argument for another time… and another person as far as I’m concerned.) I don’t go to mass as often as I should, and I understand that I’m only cheating myself. I have friends at this church in Elgin, but I’m not as fond of it as I was of St. Ignatius, though even there I felt like I was alone quite a bit of the time. That’s what being single at the age of 40 does for a person. I could go with my roommate; he almost never misses. I do miss attending with people closer to my age, people I can relate to. But, I have never seen him arrive on time or sit anywhere but the very back row.

I have a friend who is Muslim. We were born the same year, and though we were born halfway around the world from each other we did notice some similarities. We were the same age and single; we were both rather lonely. We both seemed to be a little outcast, each in a different way.

I’m certain that he is more faithful to his religion than I am. We delivered pizzas together and I know that he kept a prayer rug in his car so that he could pull off the road at sundown and pray. I can’t vouch for his consistency, but he told me that he did it pretty much every day. Muslims are supposed to pray 5 times a day and I’m pretty sure that he kept that schedule. I look at him for inspiration of how to be a better Christian.

At the pizza place many of the kitchen staff talked about him, and not in a good way. Some of them were from Mexico and I spoke Spanish, so I got along with them. He is from Bangladesh, so it seems like he should have a lot in common with them as well – being an immigrant, not being a native speaker of English – but they didn’t seem to see that. They would accuse him of stealing breadsticks and pizzas. They would say he didn’t do his part of the work. This small group would find anything bad to say about him, though the only thing that really separated him from them was language. (He actually spoke English better than any of them.) I understand that there was a different religion as well, and I’m certain that his being Muslim made them uncomfortable. (The year was 2002, which didn’t help matters.) Except that I spoke Spanish, I don’t see any reason why I should have gotten along with them better than he. I’m gay; he’s straight. I’m American; they were all immigrants...

I won’t write his name because he might not want me to do so. I suppose I could call him Mohammed. I’m relatively certain that he has that in his name; he told me that every Muslim man does… though the spellings vary. I don’t want to offend anybody’s sensibility, though, so I’ll refrain from using that name.

At the restaurant he didn’t stand around talking as much as the others did. He talked some, to me at least. It seems to me that there used to be more camaraderie between him and others who, like him, had worked there for a while; I would periodically see photos and hear conversations that made me think they used to hang out together more.

He invited me to watch prayer one Friday evening. It was beautiful. Everybody cleaned themselves ceremonially; a man stood in front and called the believers to prayer. They all prayed together, kneeling on their rugs, lifting their heads as they said their prayers. One person at the front led them. It didn’t seem to me to be like in our churches where a priest leads; my impression was that the person in front was more on the same level as the others.

He told me that right after 911 the police seemed to have started to try to harass them subtly. He said that suddenly everybody arrived at their cars after prayer with parking tickets on their cars. The mosque was downtown, but prayer was at sunset which is never before 5pm so there should not have been a meter person working.

Certain people tell me every time they get a chance that Christians and Muslims can’t live in the same world together, that one or the other will have to die. They say that it is written in the Quran that Muslims have to convince everybody to convert to Islam and kill the ones who refuse. From what I have read this is a vast over-simplification of what is in the Quran and a dangerous thing. One could say the same for our holiest of books, the Bible. The Old Testament is full of stories of killing non-Hebrew populations. But, our Bible and the Quran both agree that to hurt an innocent person is wrong. Jesus said that what we do to the least of people we do directly to him, be it good or bad. (Matthew 25) The Quran reads something similar; that if we kill an innocent person it is as if we kill all of mankind and vice versa; if we keep a person alive then we are keeping all of mankind alive. (Quran 5:32)

I actually witnessed my friend take pizza and breadsticks. I certainly wouldn’t call it stealing, though. He took an old pizza that hadn’t been picked up and put it halfway through the oven’s conveyor belt to heat it back up. We all got hungry and needed food throughout the evenings, but he was giving the pizza to a homeless man who offered to help by taking out the trash. The man would have eventually dug the same pizza out of the dumpster later on anyway, all my friend did was heat it up for him. The restaurant had no business trying to sell it again, considering how long it had sat there. Another time I saw him grab some breadsticks that had been sitting around for a few hours. Again, they weren’t usable; they were going to be thrown away. But, that didn’t keep people from murmuring about him stealing. I didn’t have to watch him to know that he was feeding a bird with a broken wing behind the restaurant. I tried a few times to let them know what he was doing, but they were intent on disliking him.

In a way I am a little ashamed for mentioning first that he is Muslim. To me he was first a friend. I haven’t seen him in a while and I very much regret that. I regret that I didn’t spend more time getting to know him. Not everybody in the restaurant disliked him, and I apologize for making it seem that way. The few who talked are the ones who stay in my memory; the friendships that he must have had – that I didn’t see – didn’t have a chance to make it there. In the time we did spend together he told me about his family and he seemed to think that his brother had a very successful career. I enjoyed talking with him about Islam, the Quran, about history and current events. There is a lot to be said for somebody coming to a foreign country and learning a new language, especially when the first language wasn’t Latin or German based. There couldn’t have been any similarities to build on. But, here he was, reading books faster than I’ll ever be able to do. I miss our talks.

We took a trip to Enchanted Rock one time. We got to the top of the 2nd largest rock at sunset. He had his prayer rug with him and he said his prayer at sunset while I looked on. There are few things in my life that have been that touching. At the time I was only just studying Catholicism. I had been baptized around age 19 (I might have been baptized much younger, but I couldn’t remember the church or much else about it, so we’ll stick with 19.) I was searching for spiritual help in a desperately lonely time. He was practicing his faith in what seemed to be a rather lonely time for him. But, here he was, praying faithfully. In times of loneliness I tend to crawl into bed and not come out, avoiding the things that could actually help me. He practiced not only his prayer regularly, but charity as well. The depth of his faith amazed me, and inspired me. It continues to inspire me.

Life has a way of separating people if one is not careful. I got a different job and moved to Elgin. I suppose he still works at the pizza place, though I wouldn’t know. I just let us fall out of touch. My brother stays in touch with friends of his who have moved to different states years ago; there’s really no excuse for my behavior. It’s rather selfish. I still think about him, especially when I’m in church or studying anything religious. I wouldn’t have been any better of a Muslim than I am a Christian I don’t think. But, when they talk about taking a collection for the St. Vincent de Paul society I think of him feeding the homeless. I have two cats, mostly because he convinced me that I needed a cat in my life. Hopefully my prayer will be answered one day and I’ll get back in touch with him. That’s probably selfishness on my part again, but there you are.