Beautiful People

I've been watching this http://www.logotv.com/shows/beautiful_people/series.jhtml, BBC's Beautiful People.  Final moments of the final episode.  Love.  More thoughts on this final episode later.

The Guilty Question

My bishop called me the day before my birthday in 2009 and made a pressing invitation for me to go to his office for a little visit.  I had just moved back into my parents' house from a couple of prodigal years on my own, I wasn't "actively engaged" in the good cause of The Church, and I was angry at what I felt was the shit life had thrown at me.  I didn't know exactly what it was he wanted to discuss with me, but I suspected the bishop wanted to explore the reasons I chose not to maintain a high level of activity in the ward.

So, I took a deep breath, rolled up my white-shirt-sleeves, buttoned my black slacks and, wearing a fabulous pink tie, I met him one evening at the church meeting house.  He welcomed me into his office, where he had conspicuously placed two chairs in front of his desk, one for him and one for me.  We sat across from each other, and (after the obligatory, everyday salutations) he suggested I offer a prayer.  I hadn't prayed aloud for quite some time, and the words "Dear Heavenly Father..." felt like an old, forgotten language in my mouth, while at the same time, I found a starchy, hard kind of comfort in talking to God again.  We said our amens and then the bishop gave me a tender, pained looked and quietly asked, "What's wrong, Nic?"

I didn't want to be there.  I remember asking myself why I was there in the first place.  Because he called you in and you don't know how to graciously say no to authority figures, I thought. I don't feel like I've done anything which would merit the help of a bishop in repenting.  I don't want to repent.  He thinks I need to change something.  I shouldn't ever have agreed to come here.  NOTHING is wrong.  But he looked so sincerely concerned and -- with the pictures of Jesus were staring me down -- I decided I'd just be as honest with him as I felt I could trust him.

Over a series of visits, we discussed what, for years, I had called my "guilty question": I told him I was gay.  I told him I didn't know how to make that work in The Only True and Living Church on the Face of the Earth Today.  I told him how I had tried to ignore it away, to pray it away, how I had tried to serve it away (as an LDS missionary), how I had tried to date and engage and marry it away.  I told him how it had never gone away.  I told him I was tired of hearing I was fighting a "tendency," a "weakness," that I needed to be fixed.  I don't need to be fixed, I gritted my teeth many times. I silently testified, Homosexuality is not an illness.  There isn't a cure, and we won't find one here.  Jesus loves me as I AM.

He was as empathetic as any married, Melchezidek Priesthood bearing, rural, straight man could be about it.  He cried over my heartaches when I wouldn't.  He offered me hugs and blessings I didn't accept.  I prickled every time he said he just wanted me to talk with him about what I felt.  I didn't believe him when he said he wouldn't judge me.  My emotions were becoming raw when all I wanted to be was callous.  I admit, I looked for reasons to quit meeting with him. 

I found that reason in our last meeting before I left for a midsummer music festival taking place in WI.  We had been making progress in understanding why I had felt the need to ignore all emotions except anger, and he blurted out, "Nic, I think you're beyond feeling.  When was the last time you really felt a prompting of the Spirit?"

I was so shocked I couldn't think or hear or speak.  I didn't know how to answer the man sitting across from me.  I felt attacked.  I hurt.  And then I fumed.

I sat in my hardbacked chair for what was probably only 30 seconds, calling on any god who would give me some fortitude and patience, along with the affirmation that I wasn't spiritually dead or numb.  I found myself looking down at my hands -- they were resting open-faced on my lap, and the words "the kingdom of heaven is now close at hand" came to mind.  And then, I remembered this time when I was a little kid, romping in the lawn at my grandma's house because she asked my cousins and me to go out and snap the heads off the dandelions.  It was such a glee, bending down and ripping the yellow flowers, smearing their heads down our arms and on our cheeks, pretending the jocund streaks were war-painted stripes; but my favorite part of that afternoon was picking up the dead, dry-tufted heads of seed, and blowing the white petals at each other.  I turned and turned in those dandelion seeds, relishing the soft, kissing heaven of them as they landed on my lips and lids and legs and fingertips.  I knew when I recognized the feelings from that vivid memory that I was still capable of feelings immense things, even if (for now) they were only recorded in a memory.

I also knew I had every right to be angry.  And I was exceptionally upset.  I may have dammed certain of my emotions for my own defensive purposes, but I was still a feeling person.  Goddammit, I thought, I'm a musician!  I create beauty!  How dare you tell me I'm beyond feeling, even in a religious context?  You deny my ability to feel and create, and you deny me, bishop!  And I will not have it!  He read a scripture, drawing a comparison between the pure and humble and obedient character of Nephi and the proud, obstinate and doubting portrayals we have of Laman and Lemuel. He then begged the question, "Which do you want to be, Nic?"  I didn't offer him any answers.  I was too angry, and I knew I would say ultimately divisive things.  He said a prayer, and I left, sharing little more than a cold goodbye.

I drove up the gravel road to my parents' house, but didn't pull into the driveway.  I kept driving up the hill until I reached the gate my dad and I had spray-painted with the words, "No Trespassing."  I turned my car off, stepped outside, climbed over the gate and walked westward.  I have always gone to the mountains when I've been profoundly furied or sad or grateful or happy.  My mountains seem to have the only places large enough to root soul, and I needed a place to plant down before I lost myself on the wind of my anger.

"Where the fuck are you, God?" I yelled.  "What do I do?  How do I live and find happiness?"  I didn't hear any instant answers, but as I kept walking and ranting, the clouds darkened like a bruise across the face of the summer sky and I could feel myself becoming a sort of sieve.  I reflected on how I had decided to come out the previous year; on why I had told my family and a few friends, but had elected to keep "those in the know" a small group; on silent lies I had created in an attempted relationship with a certain young woman who would have been my wife.  Grief filtered out of those thoughts and other memories, and I keened and I moaned and I cried.

And as hackneyed as this image is, rain honestly began falling.  Walk back to your car, a thought directed.  Feel the rain falling.  Go home.  Clean up.  And then the big moment, I am in you and you are in me.   I hadn't heard those words since I had been in Sunday School, but they rang with such power.  I quit crying.  I walked back to my car, and I felt how the rain fell, landed on my head and followed the course of its falling down my face.  I walked in the door to my parents' house, and I felt the first breath of "I'm Home" I'd felt in way too long.   I knew I had been created by Love, and that, should I look after it, I'd always be in Love.

I called Corey, my best bud, later that night and we had a long talk about the events of the day.  "I'm not going to visit with him again," I affirmed.  Corey agreed, "No.  No one should ever have to 'visit' like that.  You don't need to be broken down."

Emily Dickinson wrote,

"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door."

I haven't been in the bishop's office since that day, but I have been on the search for times when "the Spirit" moves me, opening "every door," I guess to prove to myself that I am not, nor will I ever be, beyond feeling.  And I experience feelings:  they land like soft dandelion tufts in the places where my soul is hungry and aching.  I let them come.  I gather them in.  They break their heavens upon me, filling my open hands and guiding my healing heart.  The Spirit always speaks to those who want to listen.

Out With It

There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.  ~Anaïs Nin

Renovation

From a Facebook message written to an old friend, May 31, 2011.  


You wrote about striving to rewrite your life. I think that's what we're all doing every day, trying to learn better so we can know and do better. It's an amazing undertaking, isn't it? And isn't it wonderful that we can do it?!? I thank whatever God there is for the opportunity to renew what is good in ourselves everyday and to rebuild whatever has been broken.

Sometimes, I think of my life as a stained-glass window. I spent years trying to build it according to the picture that Someone Else had in mind. It was a beautiful window, but it wasn't mine. Some things happened, and my window broke. For a while there, I didn't have the energy to do anything but sit and bemoan all the broken glass around me. It took some time, but I began to see all those broken pieces as the tools and pieces I needed to build a new window--organized from the old materials, but built in an even more beautifully authentic way. I hope that's what I'm doing, building a new window, full of light and color and shape, that can be finally revealed as mine.

Part of Your World

I was watching one of my very favorite Disney films, The Little Mermaid, with my niece and her mom last week.  She was watching and playing with her beads.  I was watching and singing along with the songs (yes, at the very top of my lungs).  At one point, when Prince Eric was on-screen, she turned to me and said, "Uncle Nic, I just love him.  I'm just gonna marry him, ok.  That would be very nice."

"That's, true, Sister Sue.  That would be very nice."

I looked at my sister-in-law, and we both laughed when I said, "Yep.  She is definitely my niece."

Who wouldn't want to part of his world?

"¿Cómo se dice?" and the Secret to Gay Sex, Part II

"Soh, Neeee-c, how be yoh moshunrife?" Miranda asked with a sly little grin.

I had no idea what she was asking me.  "Um, come again, my dear?"

"How be yoh moshunrife?"

"Um, my what?"

"Yoh mo-shun-rife!" she exclaimed.  "You know, rike yoh ruvrife?"

It clicked.  "Oh! My love--my emotional life?"

"Yeah, yore moshunrife!"

I reminded my dear young friend that, as pianists, she should know how much extra time there is for a love life, and thus, I had not many minutes to spare for a moshunrife.

Then, with a shy giggle laced with more cuteness than an Anime heroine, Miranda whispered, "Oh, Neeeeee-c!  I habbuh see-creh foh yoo.  Yoo move ow Utah, gae sex!"

I laughed.  Oh, how I laughed.  "You mean to tell me the secret to my losing my V-card is moving out of the state?!?"

"Oh, yes, yes.  Yoo move ow Utah, no prahb-rem foh yoo."  Miranda explained, "At my dohm, we habbuh no cuh-tain on ween-doh.  Across my room is an-uddah dohm room of berry sexy man.  He walk rown aur time no shirt on.  Sum time, he walk rown naek-ed"  Then Miranda blushed and covered her mouth with her hand.  "And sum time, he habbuh-nuddah naek-ed man in room."

"I go to crass wit naek-ed man.  Sum time, he walk into crass berry rate and profess-ah, he grumpy and he say 'Why yoo rate foh crass?" and he say, "I don't hab time puh pants on!'  So, see Neee-c?  Yoo move ow Utah, gae sex!"

Can't wait to move out of state.  ;)

"¿Cómo se dice?" and the Secret to Gay Sex, Part I

As I've described before on my other blog (flowerspickthemselves.blogspot.com), I spend at least five days a week, if not more, with a small and delightful group of Asian people.  They are each wonderfully gifted, driven musicians, and I am so pleased to call them my friends.  One of my dear little friends is a girl from China named Miranda.  She spent her first year of college taking an intensive collection of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) courses.  She writes beautifully, but her conversational language skills suffer from a very thick Chinese accent.  While her practice of the English language has sometimes been a stumbling block to her communication skills, she is the first to tease about the language "barrier" which has elicited some very funny moments in our friendship.

A fairly recent episode follows.  Just a few details to remember, dear Reader:  1) Miranda is currently attending graduate school in Ohio as a master's piano student with Italian wonder-pianist, Antonio Pompa-Baldi.  2) Miranda loves Mozart (so her compliment really meant very much to me).  3) Miranda was visiting Utah (her self-proclaimed adopted home) on break from school when this happened.

I was practicing a Mozart sonata (K. 333, for anyone who might be interested) for an upcoming performance when the practice room door opened.

"Neeeeeeeeeee-c!  Yoo prae Moh-tsah vihdy soh-gooh!  He can be yo hooss-banh!" Miranda wailed in her cheery way.  "Bach? He be my fee-oh-say, but you ken meh-dee Moh-tsah.  He be soh-gooh foh yoo."

"Oh, Miranda!" I replied,  "I don't know if I want to marry Mozart, but I'll keep playing him.  How are you?!  How is graduate school?"

"Eez soh-gooh!  Eez so hard.  Too much pieces to prae aur time."

"I'm so glad to hear that it's good.  I imagine it's difficult, but worth it.  How are you studies with Pompa-Baldi going?"

"He eez soh gooh.  Make mos bee-yoo-ti-fur pianissimos.  His Engrish berry bad, though.  Too much Itarian accent."

"So, between your Chinese accent and his Italian accent, how do you communicate in lessons?"

Miranda giggled, "Wear, he rissen to me prae, and he smire oh he frahn and he prae foh me, den I prae again."

"Wow," I said. "I guess if that works..."

"Eez soh gooh."

Miranda and I caught up a little bit.  She giggled and blushed a bit when I commented on her fabulous clothes and her uber-trendy haircut.  I asked her about her boyfriend (who stayed in UT) and if she'd seen him yet.  And, as we were discussing boys, she asked a question I couldn't quite decipher on the first--or even second or third--hearing.