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.

Books I Have Loved

I just got in contact, via Facebook, with an old friend from San Antonio and she reminded me of something about myself. I emailed her, “Sarah? Who introduced me to David Foster Wallace?” And she emailed me back, “Earnie? Who does everything fast?” People laugh at me because I talk fast, even though I was raised in the Panhandle of Texas where people talk with a very slow drawl. I tend to do a lot of things fast, or try to, anyway. Working in retail for years and years either led to that or greatly encouraged it. I have – by force and by choice – slowed down a bit. But, my natural state is fast.

However, I never learned to read fast. I have tried. I have skimmed pages and then not noticed one thing that was on them. I have tried to pick up the pace, but my mind wanders and I might as well not be pretending to read. I tend to subvocalize and if I try to stop I, again, might as well be riding a bicycle.

That being said, I do love to read. I love to read on a rainy day; I love to read on a sunny day. I love the thought of going to the bookstore (I don’t do libraries much because I’m not good at taking books back,) and I love to find new authors. And there are so many out there. It’s almost embarrassing the number of authors that line the shelves of the bookstores. Not all of them would I read, but I should never be at a loss for something good to curl up with. When I was younger I would read a good book, like the books from The Dark Is Rising series, and I would have to wait a while after I finished that book to begin another one. I would have to savor the one I just finished for a while. If I tried to dive right into the next book I would find that I couldn’t get into it because I was still enjoying the other one. Looking back that is another example of reading slowly, but I don’t regret it.

Every once in a while in my adult life a special book comes along. I love it when I’m at work and I’m thinking about going home and reading, because the book is so good. And, I won’t say that I read incredibly high-brow literature. As a matter of fact, I didn’t read many of the required readings while I was in school because our school didn’t really require much reading. (From what I understand their curriculum is better now.) So now I’m going back and reading a lot of the books that I probably should have read long, long ago. With mixed reactions.

Not too long ago I was in a very unfortunate financial situation. I had bought a house that I couldn’t afford. Then, I promptly lost my job. So, I wasn’t going out much. I figured that I could afford to spend less than $10 on a book because it could amuse me for a few days, whereas going to a bar or going out to eat could be $20 per night or more. I began reading a couple of mystery series’. I had a new job, earning much less than I had been earning before, and I was working either a second job or as much overtime as I could to make ends meet. On my days/time off I would read in my living room. There was a T.V. there, and I learned to watch it, but I did much better with books. One mystery would usually last me a weekend.

I decided to read Stoker’s Dracula. I picked up a nice edition that happened to have a forward by Elizabeth Kostova, who happened to have written a book called The Historian, which was also about the original vampire. I thoroughly enjoyed Dracula – and it lasted for more than a weekend. This was one of those books that I probably should have read long ago, but I loved it then. It is delicious, unnerving, fascinating and I was surprised to learn that Stoker had never actually been to Central or Eastern Europe. (If that fact is incorrect I apologize, but I don’t realistically have the means to verify it.) Plus, I learned a lot about the origin of all of the other vampire stories that have bloomed since. (Like, that a vampire has to be invited into a home before he can enter it. I saw that in the 2nd episode of True Blood, but that’s another topic for another time.)

I discovered, one day, Kostova’s book, The Historian, in the bargain book section of Barnes & Noble, which meant that I could get the hard-cover for less than the paperback would cost.

I don’t know when I have enjoyed a book so much. The old monasteries and dark crypts, the sociology – both contemporary and early 20th-century – of Eastern Europe, the love stories, the phrase that is now immediately recognizable (I won’t give it away, but read the book and you’ll know what I’m talking about)… I truly looked forward every day to going home to read this book. And, it’s a large volume; it took me lots of days to read it. I was actually sad when I finished it. I licked my fingers and relished it for days if not weeks after I was done. I’ve read a few reviews about it and some were not flattering, but who cares? They might be correct in everything they say, but I still enjoyed it tremendously, and it helped get me through a particularly depressing time. I’ve been longing for another story that could move me so much.

Several years later I found it. A few weeks ago I read, for the first time – and this is embarrassing to admit – To Kill a Mockingbird. I won’t bother to write much about the book itself – I won’t pretend to review it – because what’s left that hasn’t already been written? I can’t believe my high school didn’t require it, though I don’t know that I would have appreciated it back then. It has the magical quality that I have been longing for in a book. I avoided it for years because of the trial, because I knew how the trial turns out in the story and it’s very difficult for me to read about or watch a show about the racism that was so prevalent then. But, the book is so beautiful; the way Scout narrates it is just unbelievably… beautiful. One evening – during the time that I was reading it – my roommate had guests. Part of my job as a roommate is to entertain his guests while he does more important things. However, at one point I slipped away for a few minutes and read a few pages while they sat in the living room unattended. I’ve never left a guest alone like that before and I probably won’t ever again; it’s just not right, even if they’re not my guests. But, that’s how much I wanted to read this book. Even though it reminds me of how wretched we are as human beings, it also reminds me of how beautiful life can be.

Well, now you know my secret. There are other books that I haven’t read that I should. I finally read Great Expectations and perhaps I’m just missing something, but I didn’t think it was magical. I’m glad I did so that I can understand references to it, and I’m not saying it isn’t a great book. I’ll accept it if I’m accused of having shallow, unrefined taste. Maybe another Dickens novel will read better for me, or maybe in 10 years I will have developed as a reader. (I doubt it.) I like to read Agatha Christie for fun because it doesn’t require a lot of thought. Dorothy Sayers is good, and relaxing as well. Now I’m looking for that next magical book experience. But, I’ll wait a while for it. I’m still savoring Harper Lee’s. :-)

e A r n i e

Opening Paragraphs

Because I don't already spend enough time in front of a computer I have decided to give blogging a shot. I used to do this before - in a venue I named Braulio, after my great-grandfather. In general I was writing more back then, and I want to begin doing that again. This is a way to move myself along toward that goal. When I read what I wrote in my journal a few months ago - or even a couple of years ago - I can tell that it is a shriveled-up shell of what my writing was 5 to 10 years ago. Back then I was painting, drawing and doing other creative things as well. Today I am in a much better place financially for having focused on work, but I think that there has to be a balance. Right now I feel like I'm very much inclining toward the boring side. This is one way to scootch myself back over toward the creative end of the spectrum. I don't plan to go over the edge, quit my job and begin painting murals and/or throwing pottery, trying to eek out a living that way. A nice balance will do.

Why bemol Ardiente? Many, many years ago a friend casually gave me a CD that he didn't much care for. If I remember correctly he had been living and working in Columbia (he's Puerto Rican originally) and somebody gave him a CD by a group called Son Miserables. He didn't much care for it and he thought I might get more out of it. I listened to it a couple of times and didn't really think much of it. You've probably had an experience similar to this; you have a CD (tape or LP) that you don't really think much of for the first couple of years - or even a song that you don't really notice on a CD that you otherwise like. Then one day something clicks and the song/CD/tape/LP suddenly becomes one of the most beautiful things you've ever heard. That's how it was with this CD. Several years had passed and suddenly this music came to life for me and I couldn't stop listening to it.

One song in particular struck me, Madagascar. The first couple of lines were very cryptic for me, though. Spanish isn't my first language and one of the tools I used to learn it was music, listening to songs. This was before the internet was a common part of our lives, though. Even if I'd had access to the internet, there probably wasn't the plethora of sites willing to give me the all of lyrics that I wanted to know at the click of a button. That's how it used to be for us music lovers, and I feel that in many ways we've lost a lot of the romance due to the instant access to lyrics and downloadable songs. We used to wait to hear the song on the radio and listen so closely for all the words. If we had the tape, we'd play the song over and over, trying to remember the lines or trying to understand that one part that escaped us. We'd ask our friends and we'd all sit together listening to the song, rewinding it and calling out what we thought they singer had said. Now, I can look up the words almost any time I want to and it's almost like a precocious climax. Often I simply forget to even look the lyrics up; that's how disinterested I've become with all of this instant and total gratification.

But, I digress. The poetic words beginning the song Madagascar were a puzzle for me. Although I understood the words, I couldn't understand their meaning. "En vez de un bemol ardiente, piensas que el futuro te depara nadar sola bajo el mar." I asked my friend, the one who had given me the CD to begin with. (He has a Master's degree in literature, after all.) He suggested that the bemol ardiente was a poetic way of expressing a rough spot in a life. Bemol is a flat, as in music – like an E Flat. A slump, a slight decline. The song seems to suggest that she is viewing a small downturn in her life as if the future had dumped her alone in the middle of the ocean. Well, it was certainly a slump in my life and I thought that I had never heard anything so beautiful. Not to be cliché, but it was nice to pretend that he was singing those words to me. It was comforting.

So this is my way of taking that bemol Ardiente, those hard times, the unending loneliness and feelings of futility, the friends and laughter that were there, the longing and searching, the cold, dark dread I felt as I realized that the bridge was collapsing underneath me and I was about to fall to an unimaginable low... this will be part of an attempt to take those things and use them for something new. That's the idea. I don't plan to write the dark paragraphs that I did back then. They were effective, but that's where I was then, not now. I just want to find a way to take that, with other parts of my life and use them to make something good.

Thank you for reading. Do come back and visit me again.

Yours truly,

e A r n i e