School Daze (Art)

       Most children love grammar school, just can't wait to get there, as if that's some kids idea of real fun.   A forum for success and educational excellence.  A place to shine, to be seen, to be attended to, to be stroked, to be uplifted and inspired; an institution of inquiry, wonder, development, and thought.  A breeding ground for great success in life.   Not really, and certainly not for me.  I hated grammar school with a passion exceeding all others; I hated high school even more, if that were somehow possible, but that for another day.  I went to a Catholic grammar school, St Vincent Ferrer, in the upscale and wealthy area of River Forest, Illinois.  It encompassed Elmwood Park and the north side of River Forest.  The student composition was mostly immigrant stock who had made it, those who aspired to, and realized the American Dream.  Post WWII baby boomers.  Second and third generation, predominately Italian, some Irish, some Poles, and a few mutts.  An area saturated with the strict and staunch Catholic upbringing of that era (1960's).   Spare the rod and spoil the child.   I had no idea that there were any other religions in the world.   But I do remember going to a Lutheran Church, on some outreach program, I'm sure to see if we could convert them back to the "real religion".   As I sat in their church, I felt an overwhelming sadness for the heathens because they weren't going to go to heaven.  The poor bastards didn't even know it, sad isn't it?   Bred and inbred, genetically altered to accept the irrational ideas and attitudes of the Catholic Church, we marched lock step to its primary institution of training and indoctrination.  All dressed the same in the military fashion of white shirt, dark blue tie and dark slacks.  Soldiers of Christ we were called and we were armed with the necessary guilt required to perform our tasks with the utmost expediency.  Like good soldiers we were never to question the decisions and behaviors of our superiors.  Into the valley rode the 600.   Unconscious soldiers of Christ, that's better for all concerned, don't you think?   Because if you really thought about it, Catholic philosophy is rejectable on its face.  Not only ludicrously irrational, but manipulative and controlling through the purposeful use of guilt and shame.  If heaven does exist, you can be damn sure, that the Catholics will be excluded from it, for all the shit they have pulled off.
Selling heaven, purchasing plenary indulgences and annulments, the cemetery and crematory business, what a scam, and tax exempt to boot.  Selling the pie in the sky fantasy of eternal bliss and redemption, for cash.  The hard currency of the wicked and profane.  There really is a sucker born every minute.  Those fuckers had it all figured out.  But who thinks that clearly when you're young, especially when your damnation hangs in the balance; the threat of perdition looms constantly.  Guilt, force fed and digested, becoming part of the marrow.  I was compelled to always try to do better, just to get back to even.
      I mean you come into this wondrous and beautiful world, completely innocent and open to all of its bounty, awed by life itself,  and the Catholics zealously contrive and instill the belief of "Original Sin" in you.  What a crock of shit that is.  You are marred, imperfect, impure, failed and inherently a sinner, disfigured and cursed beyond any mortal repair,  just by being born; or at least until your baptism;  whew!  I was hoping that wasn't the end of the story.   Thank God I made it that far or I would have ended up in the nether lands, lost forever, vanquished to a place called Limbo, where no souls ever return from.   Doesn't sound like a place you would even want to visit much less live forever.  I thought God was loving, that place sounds pretty cruel and vacant to me.  Maybe God has a different idea of what love is and my failed and limited self could not comprehend such a generous and magnanimous place such as Limbo.  I'm sure that's it.   Limbo is different than Purgatory.  Purgatory is where you writhe in a semi hot fire until all that sin is burnt away, the greater the asshole you were, the longer you will spend there; but you have to be careful about being completely corrupt, that's what Hell is for.  So you need to ride a fine line, you can be evil, but not too evil.   It's a balancing act that only God knows what side of the line you are on at any given time; but life is risky.  Step right up sucker and take a chance on the wheel of endless rapture; only a dollar.   Anyway, what's an eternity or two matter in the grand scheme of things?    Kind of like spending a long time in triple A ball in the Sahara Desert before making the majors.  Wow, I thought I was ok until I heard all that.  I guess I am fucked up beyond human intervention.  I'll try to remember that the next time I'm going to commit a mortal sin.  You know that masturbation is a mortal sin.  I'm in some real trouble now.
     There are a number of strategies that any one can employ when approaching an institution of control such as Catholic school.  You can become a wall flower.  Don't make any waves; don't be noticed; recede into the background.  Don't distinguish yourself in any way; become part of the furniture;  and, for God's sake, don't fuck up.  Endure countless indignities and abuse in silent scorn, and grow into an adult filled with resentments and bitterness, and a burning desire to make someone pay.  These are the future small minded bureaucrats and high school teachers.  The opposite tack is to become a star.  Rules followed to the letter of the law.  Homework completed perfectly and never late; straight A's with maddening frequency;  surrogate when the teacher has to leave momentarily.  Always so fucking helpful and personally obnoxious.  A controlling and neurotic pain in the ass.  The OCD crowd; the MD's and JD's of the future.   Another path was to become an ass kisser and brown noser of sublime quality, the real phony manipulators and con men of life.  The lazy ones with personality but no real desire to do anything but completely bullshit their way through life;  petty, gossipy, and useless. "yes sister,"   "no sister,"  "can I wipe your ass sister?"   "I would never do that sister, but I know who did it."  The real pussy's in the class; backstabbing tattletale fuck heads.   Always deflecting heat off themselves on to others while simultaneously taking credit for anything good, even when they had nothing to do with it;  destined to be the car salesman and politicians of the bunch.    Lastly you can rebel against all the bullshit they feed you and make being your teacher feel as though she would rather have oral surgery than to deal with you.   You're so afraid of hell, let's see if I can give you a little taste of it while you're still alive;  never go along, never get along; continually conspiring with the like minded to obstruct and inhibit the peaceful;  resistance and defiance are its credo.   Whole heartedly committed to becoming a true thorn in the soft side of Catholicism; the alcoholics and artists.  That which I proudly aspired to, and succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.   Fuck em.  Most never deserved any real respect anyway.
      I'm sure there were other types, but those predominated the overall makeup of my 8th grade class; future petty bureaucrats, self inflated doctors, boring lawyers, corrupt politicians, phony salesman and alcoholics, and probably a few hookers thrown in for good measure, just to round out the curve.  Pretty normal composition of the average white middle class neighborhood of the 1960's. 
   I was taught almost exclusively by nuns, except for one non-nun, Miss Leen.  I still run into her every now and then in the neighborhood,  a very good lady.  Now, to the classroom.   We had a homeroom where we spent most of our time and where we started and ended each day.  The bell would ring, those fucking bells, like rats to a stimulus, we would file to one of the other 3 classrooms teaching a different subject.   My home room was headed by a former member of the SS named Sister Genora, who escaped Nazi Germany by masquerading as a Catholic Nun.  Her job as a nun was so similar to her job as a SS Commandant,  why bother to head for Venezuela.    What a fucking bitch she was; mean spirited, raging, disdaining, rule bound, perfectionistic, extremely heavy handed, and tyrannical.  Small minded dictator.  You knew you were in for some real shit when you heard those rosary beads banging against her leg while she sprinted towards you with a singular intent, armed with one of those long wooden pointers.   Not a tough disciplinarian, but a bitter, abusive and resentful women.   A cunt of the highest order.  I put it off to sexual frustration or latent unresolved lesbianism, take your pick.  Whatever it was, this women was evil, and she disliked boys with a particularly poisonous venom.  I'm sure it was because we had a penis and she didn't.     Because of her unusually brutal personality, and inherent desire and pleasure in abusing children, she had all the bad actors and troubled boys, and a few of the "good girls" in her home room.  She took great enjoyment in breaking such boys and turning them into the neutered mush we see all the time.    But as committed as she was to breaking us, we were as committed to fighting her every step of the way.  We were destined to win,  given there were more of us, and we had youth on our side; and remember, she would only have us for one year.    Sometimes the victories were short lived and symbolic, but they were victories all the same, and the taste was oh, so sweet.  I still feel warmth when I think of all the problems and anxiety I caused her, I can only hope I shortened her ugly and misguided life.   I hated her, but her actions made that a forgone conclusion; she hated me, a great compliment; we were a match made in hell.  Let the games begin.
      Fast forward to close of the school year,  mid May.  The weather was warming, my loins were priming, the sirens call of summer was wafting through the air, and I was overcome by its voice, it was all I could hear.  This spring was different, I was 13, exploding, curious, and excited, and girls had suddenly become very important to me.   Why, I had no idea, but I pursued that notion with a single minded focus.   The natural romantic in me, swelled and burst forward that year, accompanied by the constant inflammation of overpowering sexual stirrings that consumed and confused me beyond reason.   I was enchanted and dazed by girls, totally hypnotized.   They were so different; smaller, petite, delicate;  softer, so much softer, and so pretty.  They did so many unusual, odd, and funny things.  Enigmatic, incomprehensible, ethereal, emotional,  enticing, bewitching, and  terrifying.  They were creatures born of a different world,  I was consumed in poetic fascination, and obsessed by the feelings rising within me.  I had discovered the mythic goddess that spring, and acquiesced completely to her captivating power; I was lost and found all in the same moment; and it all felt so strangely right to me.   So curious about touching them, and what that would feel like.  When I did, it was electric, emotionally shocking, a disturbance at the visceral soul, complete psychic upheaval, an earthquake;  rearranged and reordered, everything within me awakened instantaneously.  I saw beauty in all things.  I remember the first time I kissed a girl,  my nerve endings seemed to ignite and vibrate with a spiritual and creative energy.  The sexual self emerged, burst open uncontrollably; strong, vigorous, excited, virile, immortal.   I was literally on fire, body and soul set ablaze.   My whole being was involved.  I joined the cosmos and felt all its wonder, potency and supremacy;  suspended in awe, fully conscious and aware, feeling the extraordinary power of being alive and completely consumed in that one moment, riding atop the crest of penultimate human experience.  As I walked in Heaven,  I heard the music of eternity, sung by the angels, just for me.  I felt the unmistakable and undeniable presence of God.  I was sanctified.   It all was so innocently tender and sweetly profound, and incomprehensibly beautiful.   I had been scorched by the celestial flame of sacred sexual communion, and was forever changed.  I was in love; I was love.   Just to be close to girls was sexually arousing to me.  I loved what I saw and what I felt.  Their bodies were so inherently and intrinsically beautiful; shapely, curvy, longer haired, pampered, flawless, round and perfect, with an unmistakable and irresistible scent.  Once I smelled that unique combination of soap,  sweat, perfume, and estrogen mixed in the perfect recipe, each spice intensifying and adding flavor to the other, I was overwhelmed from then on, and still am.   In those days I fell in love, quickly, deeply and always hopelessly, and I was crushed when that attraction went unrequited.  I could go from excitement and expectation to broken demoralization, covering the full range of emotion almost simultaneously.  I had embarked on a journey through a maze of enigma, mystery, and discovery, the only road map being the instinctual longings of my innocent nature, of which I followed with blind intuitive surrender.  For I knew, it knew, what it was doing.   Feeling for the very first time the ancestral, universal, and primary bond of divine humanness between boy and girl.   That's the real stuff of life right there;  unconstrained nature, hormonal lunacy, pain, curiosity, spiritual ignition, insecurity, hope, loving without guile, risking without thought, brushing the angels, broken, hopeful, uncontrollable excitement, creative awakening, raging desire, awe, dejection, laughing with the gods, fantasy, anguish, expectation, and illusion; a perfect totality.   WOW, that was quite a time; it doesn't get any better than that.   I am so grateful to have experienced that warm and beautiful sweetness, the tender madness of being 13 and coming of age.  It feels like it was yesterday.  Thank you God.
      My mind ran amok with day dreams and fantasies, like a prison short timer, all I could think about was freedom.   All I wanted to do was get the fuck out of there and on to my summer where I could sneak a cigarette or two and look at beautiful air brushed women in America's true periodical of decadence, Playboy.  Those were the days.  It all seemed so simple and real to me.  Kids now have no idea of how exciting and enthralling life can be just sneaking a peak at a tame, idealized, and fanciful magazine while puffing on a Camel.   Today, unless they have I Pods, I Pads, game consoles, etc, they can't be happy.  I feel sorry for the average 13 year old now.  They miss so much simple pleasure by seeking a constant deluge of excitation and volume which inevitably deadens their real senses, requiring more and more to stimulate them.  Electronic cyber junkies.  Tuned in, hooked up, wired to the Internet; instant gratification and entertainment is constant, driving, and never ending.  Without that persistent consumption, they are instantly bored, as if in a vacuum, or filled with a disjointed anxiety searching for any new web drug to get off on.  They are addicted to stimulation and their obsessive need to be fed by the outside world.  They have acquiesced their internal voice and all self direction to the dictates of the media.  The messages require no thought whatsoever to decipher, they don't want them thinking, people who think are dangerous.  Sound, image, sound, image attacking their innocent psyches with a relentless onslaught.  They display the classic symptoms of PTSD.   Wired into Facebook and Twitter, falsifying an intimacy and closeness they don't have with one another.  Obsessively putting inane and simple minded posts on their walls.   Creating a hallow sense of celebrity and fame by being online and seeing their name on a web page where others can see it as well.   Elevating their fragile egos, while temporarily soothing their deep seated insecurities.  Odd, this society now.  The idea of creating fun, or simply doing nothing doesn't occur to them.   Too bad for them, a lot of creativity and living comes from doing nothing.
     So, on this beautiful spring day, Sister Genora assembled all the trouble makers together in order to berate and shame us one last time.  She knew the end game was near, we were about 3 weeks from graduation, she had to act quickly if she was to get that last final lick of abuse in before we would be lost to high school forever.  There was 6 of us boys, they were all my friends;  not one girl was brought up.  I think the group she called forward were a special mix of unbearable angst for her.  We were professionals at making her life miserable and she felt incompetent as a disciplinarian because she couldn't break this crew.  We were just too good at fucking things up and not caring one wit about it.  We were untouchable and uncontrollable;  she couldn't reach us; she couldn't hurts us or work us to her desire; all her methods of coercion and repression were ineffectual against us.  We conquered her that year, and she knew it.  She was a broken women, acting from unconscious rage over her defeat.  She called all of us to the front of the class and exclaimed, "there they are, the ones who have ruined your school year, look at them, look at them."   Upon that cue, we all looked at one another and immediately burst into a laughter.  It was hilarious and we couldn't stop.  We were belly laughing, it came from the depths, right out of our feet, my whole body was involved.   It was so fucking funny.  I still laugh when I think about it.   She became flustered, confused and enraged, on fire at such insolence and disrespect.  Her intention of shaming us had not worked out to her expectation, it all backfired.   She started to beat on us one at a time, all that did was create more insane laughter; it just got funnier and funnier the more she hit us, and it wouldn't subside.  She had had enough.  She dragged me and Teddy Anderson down to the Principles office, an obvious sign that we had beaten her, she needed reinforcements.  That must have been extremely embarrassing to her embittered ego; she couldn't handle us, and now others knew that fact publicly; the word was out, she had lost control of her class; oh, the shame of it.    That says it all, right there.  Why just Teddy and I, and not the others, I'm not sure.  I think she perceived us as the ring leaders of this insurrection and the most troublesome of the 6 boys throughout the entire year.   I'm sure that was it, we were a special breed.  I think she picked the right 2 guys.  We were devilish when it came to fucking with her.  We both hated her with a consummate passion, and we let it be known in a thousand different sneaky ways.  We were good, Teddy and I.    In the parlance of Catholicism, the Principle's office is the pinnacle of fucking up.  We had made it, flush with pride.  We truly were at the top of our games.  Ah sweet troubled youth.
     Now we were in some real shit because Sister Leone, the Principle, was no one to fool with.  She was a nun in the classic sense.  A proud, strong, and beautiful women with great love and compassion, and a true commitment as an educator and clergy member.  She was smart ,quick, and tough but fair minded.  She had a pointed and powerful gaze, that could make your hair stand up, but could soften to a gentle sweetness when she wanted.  A real lady with a real heart.   She carried herself with a particular bearing and class, portending a highly distinct lineage.   She was certainly the best that Catholicism offered, and what all others should have aspired to become.  We were lucky to have her.  She was a wonderful person and a women of solid values and virtues.  She was good friends with my mom and dad.  They would take her and my other favorite gal, my 2nd grade teacher, Sister Seraphina out to dinner and and sneak them drinks, under the table, throughout the meal.  Real people; good souls.   I loved them both very much, and they loved me, and I knew it.   For I was that boy, destructively curious, explosive and expansive, with the beautiful devil within him; not a bad boy, but an insanely mischievous one who found trouble wherever he went.   They could relate to that, I was their kind of boy.  Oh, I forgot to mention, both of these fantastic women were Irish, kindred of the clan.  They intuitively understood and accepted who I was. 
      To be continued:
                                                         Yours in kinship,
                                                                           Mike C.

Spirituality of Loss (AA)

  I have always believed in God, even through the most horrendous experiences I had.  I,  like most others, have said the despairing fox hole prayers in the middle of some incomprehensible insanity that I caused and sought Gods relief to escape from.   So when I walked into my first AA meeting and saw the word "God" in the 3rd step, I thought, ok, that shouldn't be a problem for me.  WOW, was I wrong about that statement.  I had no real idea of what the steps were asking me to do when it came to a belief in God.  I'll just say a prayer, ask for help to stay sober, and go about my business, doing whatever I want.  Because I said a prayer, I've got God on board, everything is as it should be.  The notion that God may want something from me never crossed my mind.  Ah, the arrogance and myopothy of youth.  I didn't realize that sound sobriety required much more in the spiritual than I comprehended.   I had to find a loving God, or design my own conception.  I had to develop a relationship with this God, which required a humility that was nonexistent in my personality.   I had to let this God direct and inform my actions, thoughts, and behaviors; to instill in my heart what He wanted me to do, not what I wanted;  and I had to trust this God, not only with my will, but with my very life.  That's a big task to accomplish; and it is through a process of positive loss and spiritual insight that comes from such loss, that it is acquired.
     It is important to understand the concept of insight through loss.  Humility comes from the same root word as humiliation, and human as well.   They are all closely related.  My humiliation can bring humility and an acceptance of my humanity.  The losses I incurred were of every different kind.  Some financial, some romantic, all based on a want, desire and will that didn't work out for me.  Plain and simple, I didn't get what I wanted, and I had to look at why.   All that loss had one thing in common,  it was designed to show me a fundamental spiritual truth.  They all contained powerful lessons about what I needed to change in my life in order to live more closely to the serenity they talk about.  I really didn't pay much attention to whether I had serenity or not, I  really didn't care.  I was consumed with material and professional success, and trying to make the outside look as good as I possible.   That's why I'm sober, right?  To go and get.   Interestingly, even when I attained that success, I either rejected it or sabotaged it.  When I lost money, position, romantic relationships, and friendships I was being harshly and profoundly informed  about one thing primarily, that I was living without a workable relationship with God; without acceptance or surrender.   That I was driven by an over inflated ego, willfulness, unrealistic desire, self important sense of entitlement, and lack of spiritual connection or true trust in God.  So because God played a secondary function in my life, all things always went badly for me.  There's a statement in AA, that whatever you place in front of your sobriety, you will lose.  I believe whatever you place in front of God, you will also lose.   Again, even if I got what I wanted, it held no real worth or value for me.  The spiritual satisfaction of living life with God as the primary was lost on me as I pushed to continue to create and  adhere to my desires.
      Historically, my reaction to loss was anger, rage and feeling victimized.  I had no idea of life on life's terms; that shit was for you, not me; I'm special.  Life was not to touch me in the way it touched you.  Yet if something happened to you, I would tell you, well that's life; but that didn't apply to me.  Self pity was a rampant emotion for me in those days.  After each loss, I would go into an initial rage and then depression.  I would come out it, shake it off, and arm myself  with a new set of desires and intentions,  reload my will, put my head down and charge onward, again without spiritual assistance or consciousness.    I really was'nt getting it.  Not necessarily hard headed or inherently willful, but deeply afraid.  Though I would pray my way out of emotional extremes, I had not yet made the connection that it was my spiritual attitude where the problems lie.  That God had to reside with me constantly, that I had to bring Him into the very center of my life.   Like being caught on a roller coaster that you can't get off of.  Rarely did I have an emotional even keel.
      See I believe that God is the most easily assessable entity in my life, like oxygen; it's everywhere.   All I have to do is stop and ask.  Nothing more, it is really not that difficult to understand.  It is difficult to do though.  But to get to that place, all those things had to be removed and seen for the reality that they were.  Materials hold no real value, they are just things.  Nice to have, but essentially unnecessary.   They have no ability to make me happy, worse yet, when they are attained and the happiness sought through them is unrealized, then a great emptiness follows, as it should.    Like security, it doesn't exist either.  There is none, and the striving for it makes one more insecure.  Living in the moment, how hard is that?  I found it extraordinarily difficult to live in the moment.  Did you ever think why it is so hard?  Because in the moment, there is only you, God and truth; the truth that through the now is attempting to impart an important belief to me, and I need to listen to it.  Truth when seen, always requires action on that awareness.  Sometimes very difficult and confrontational action is needed.  One main reason why truth is avoided,  because the action required is going to cause a lot of change, adjustment, discomfort, and loss of something I want.  Usually a loss of some cherished mythology that I am living.  Truth strips away the trivial and exposes our denial in stark terms.  Reality is not easy to accept, but denial is impossible to continue to live in.
        How do you find this God? Where is He?  What does he want?  Why me?   I have had a spiritual bent to my personality throughout my life.  But before I sobered up, I thought that life was meaningless, directionless, and an unbelievable painful experience to endure.  A short and agonizing fluke of nature.   If there was a God, well He didn't seem to be around too much.   But when the gift of sobriety was freely given to me, well all those bets were off.  God did exist and He had graced me with this unbelievable gift.  He did care and possibly even loved me.  I had to realign my thinking.  The funny thing about God,  He isn't lost, I am.  There is no place to go to find Him,  He is here residing in my heart;  all I need to do is allow His presence into my consciousness.  It is that simple.  So simple only a child can understand it, and children do.
      God, trust, workability, and allowance all sort happen together.  As I began to get one of them, the others sort of tagged along, a package deal.   The more conscious contact, the deeper the realizations, the better and more acceptable life became, and the better and more secure I felt.  Character defects, are very hard to embrace and handle one at a time.  It is much easier to center myself in God and the influence and power of those defects greatly diminish, naturally.  I took beating after beating psychologically and emotionally over the years because surrender was so difficult for me to do.  Eventually though, I got sick and tired of hurting myself and not getting those wonderful attributes that they talk about in AA.  Surrender got easier to do when I started to realize that God wasn't going to hurt me or deceive me.  The 12 Steps are not some sentence that has been thrust upon me.  The Steps are designed to help me life a fuller, happier, and more productive life.   That's when trust began to happen.  Allowing God was one thing, trusting Him was a completely different thing.  That took some real time.  Pony tail Bob says it took the first 10 years to believe in God, the next 10 years to allow that belief to begin to inform his life, and the next 10 years to trust God.  That's about the schedule I was on.  Just the way it was. 
       What is it about God that is so frightening?  I don't know if it is so much fear as it is the ego belief that  I am god; who needs a God when I already am god.   That's a persistent problem that I had for years.  I have hard time with authority and I had an extremely toxic relationship with my father.  Both of those got in the way finding a loving authority that I could believe in and surrender to.   The real enemy of my spiritual happiness is my ego.  The henchmen it dispatches into my intellect are will, desire, and want.  There seems to be an endless supply of all those.  But if I pay attention to my needs, they are much simpler and fewer in number.  At this moment, what do I really need that I don't have?   I have my daily bread, a place to live, a vehicle to transport, albeit an old vehicle; enough money to get through the month; ok that's covered.  What do I have in the way of spirituality, which is the priority need.   I have a workable, functional and trusting relationship with God; and I know in my heart that I am loved by whatever this entity is.  I have AA, and I still go to a shitload of meetings.  I have loving and caring friends, of which I am also loving and caring towards.  I have a good mind and now an artistic ability to express my deepest emotions.  I have the respect and friendship of my 2 brothers; and I am learning about loving and forgiving myself and others; and learning about living closer to the moment.   Did I miss anything?  And I would ask you, what else is there?   What else matters?    There is a God, and it's not me. I'm glad I finally figured that one out.
                                                  Yours in kinship,
                                                                            Mike C.