Morning Open Thread is a daily, copyrighted post from a host of editors and guest writers. We support our community, invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful, respectful dialogue in an open forum.
I’ve come to think of this post as one where you come for the music and stay for the conversation—so feel free to drop a note. The diarist gets to sleep in if he/she so desires and can show up long after the post is published. So you know, it's a feature, not a bug.
Join us, please.
Mornin’ y’all
Coupla weeks back, P Carey put up a diary that inspired the below. Hope you enjoy it…
It must have been close to twenty years ago now, when I was with my first wife, that I was made to truly understand the meaning of paranoia. She had talked me in to a road trip to visit her cousin, who was married with a family of her own in Northern California. No other real details were asked — no other details were given. I’m always up for a road trip, and as this was to be the first with her and her daughter, whom I loved deeply, I was all-in on the venture.
We drove for a few hours, just listening to music (her daughter, who was around 2 years old at the time, rocking out in the back seat — much to our amusement) until we arrived at her cousin’s house. Strange… It was a McMansion in the middle of a residential neighborhood that looked like it didn’t, or couldn’t, necessarily support a McMansion. You know the type of place — the street recently repaved and new concrete laid for the sidewalks in front of nicer (though slightly run-down) 1980’s family homes with smaller front yards and acres in the back. California middle-class.
We parked on the street, gathered Sunday (my wife’s daughter — always loved that name) and made our happy little way up to the front door of the house. My wife picked this opportunity (the perfect one in her mind, I’m sure), to let me in on a little secret: her cousin had married a fundamentalist Christian and had gone all in on the philosophy. I froze, thumb still on the doorbell, looked down and felt a cold wave of dread swim across my body.
For those of you who don’t know me, I’m an old ex-punk/goth/beatnik covered in tattoos. Down both arms and legs (but none on the neck, thank you. I like to be able to “hide” them if necessary), and filled with religious iconography. I have sort of an obsession with crucifixes — a 1588 Grünewald on my left inner forearm (pictured) prominent along with a Current 93 crucifix of Noddy, a British/PBS favorite, on my right inner forearm. My left arm contains another Current 93 crucifix, one of their main logos (pictured below) and my right arm a Salvador Dali rendition of Christ (pictured).
On my legs, on both calves are cartoon renditions of crucifixes, one of Jack Skellington from “Nightmare Before Christmas” and one of Mr. Burns from “The Simpsons” (crucified on a nuclear hazard logo).
My back piece is an all-out HR Giger tribute:
At this moment, you might be able to understand why exactly I froze. This kind of information, the fact that I was now entering a fundamentalist Christian household wearing a tee shirt that exposed most of my arms (luckily, none of my back) and shorts, would probably have been good to know before I left the house that morning in order that I might have dressed somewhat more appropriately. I’m not really in the business of offending people in their own homes. Out in public, well, you’re on your own.
I turned to my wife and expressed my impending horror, and was told simply “Oh don’t worry about it. She’s cool.” I paused for one drawn-out second, wondering if I should just stay in the car during her visit. My tattoos are my business, I thought, and besides, I could smoke with impunity out here. Yes, this whole “stay in the car” idea was looking better and better and I could….
The door opened.
Moments of stress for me are a near Hollywood-like stoppage of time. Everything seems in super-slow motion — I can feel the air around me, static and unmoving, pressing against the hair on my arms and legs. Every spoken word seems to drag on across eternity. It gives me the opportunity to observe everything around me, good or bad, friend or foe, real or imaginary. It’s truly a curse.
She was blonde and not unattractive. Wearing a ruffly white blouse and slacks, mid-30’s, typical California housewife. She did have a smile though, one of those expressions that takes you slightly off-guard as it seems genuine but you can’t be quite sure. Hers lit up the foyer where we now stood, she and my wife embracing, and the inevitable introduction. I stuck my hand out (at least I perceived as much), and it was warmly grasped by both of hers. Words were spoken of welcome, how happy she was to meet me, etc. I replied (or must have) in the same manner and then pushed Sunday in front to meet her relative. As usual, Sunday glowed with her personality, stealing the uncomfortable niceties of first conversations away, taking them out later to play with at her convenience. The little girl had talent.
We were led into the living room and were beckoned to have a seat, or rather I was beckoned to have a seat as my wife and Sunday were shepherded off to meet some other bed-ridden relative. Or so I was told. I sat on the sofa, swearing quietly to myself that I was probably the first and the only to do so, and took in my surroundings.
This family clearly enjoyed two things: clocks and Jesus. I looked around the walls festooned with objects that I soon identified as timepieces, perhaps 30 to 40 of them, all in working order and all meticulously displaying the correct time. Not a speck of dust to be seen on any of them — not on the replica cuckoo clock made from real imitation Black Forest oak, clumsily but ornately carved in the shape of an antlered buck with a rabbit inexplicably resting on its back — not on the stately half-grandfather clock with its large, gaudy pendulum, that screamed “I AM NOT FROM BIG LOTS BUT SECRETLY I AM” into the cluttered room — not on the rounded into forced elegance mantle clock with its grotesquely faux antique hands taking up the clearly intended place of honor, perfectly centered over the fireplace that had never been used.
All were neat. All were in their proper place.
And all were ticking.
Ticking…
My eyes ran over the lot of them slowly. About every third space on the walls, that is to say the spaces that were not occupied by timepieces, hung a picture of Jesus. He was white. He had long hair and blue upon blue eyes. He was peaceful and all knowing. “Surely”, I thought to myself, “He must have an opinion of being placed amongst such items...” He said nothing, only stared at me.
Tick… tock…
There were many pictures of him, all action sequences of some sort that you would find in a bible study class for children. Jesus surrounded by lambs. Jesus cupping a child’s upturned face. Jesus being the best Westernized white Jesus he could be.
And still the clocks ticking…
I looked to the second wall, which I instantly assumed was more of the same, until I saw some subtle differences. The timing of the clocks was just a tiny bit off, throwing an audible ticktickticktocktick across the room. Their quality had discernibly diminished as well — gone was the faux oak, replaced by older, somewhat dented and abused plastic of schoolroom clocks (the ones you stared at endlessly and could have sworn they moved backwards the closer they got to 3:00 pm). These clocks had truly seen the passage and ravages of time. Their sound combined with their marginally finer counterparts on the other wall to present a cacophony of time passing.
Ticktickticktockticktocktockticktocktockticktickticktock….
The pictures of Jesus had taken something of an ominous turn as well. Amid all the angry, disjointed ticking now appeared portraits of Jesus standing bloody in front of Caiaphas, Jesus being scourged by Roman soldiers, Jesus offered to the masses by Pilate, all the stations of the cross. I looked at each one with increasing breath. My Grünewald began to itch intolerably.
Clock. Jesus. Clock. Jesus.
Tick tock.
I don’t know how long I sat there, my eyes darting back and forth, my mind reeling from the message this environment was obviously trying to impart to me. “Ticks… clock… seconds? Jesus… crucify… coming again? Second coming??!?” I was a mess, feeling my tattoos rise up on my skin like hives, as if they were inked with a lead base and I was passing through an MRI machine. Time stretched on — it seemed to have lost all purpose.
“Okay, you ready? We’re gonna go for lunch. Her husband is at work.”
It was my wife. She had come back downstairs with Sunday at some point — I’m not sure when. I looked at one of the clocks. 1:17 pm. She had been gone for three minutes.
I took one heavy breath, smiled, got up from the sofa and went to a Boston Market down the street.
I had the meatloaf. It wasn’t bad.
Y’all be good humans...