The Grain in the Cauldron
Outside, the cool whisps of wind find the warm fallow field, causing steam to rise in the (s)light morning, a reverse gloaming, or maybe just sunrise. That's a nice sentence but it's as picturesque as this story will get and I have to confess that it's actually a sunset, and I'm stuck inside of a conference room.
An orator introduces himself, southern twang snapping up every word. What's he saying you ask and I just point to the mouth in your mind's eye, pantomiming a zipper being closed. The first few words were "Hello, I'm so and so." Ten supple leather horseshoe-shaped chains form a circle in one corner of this garishly decorated room. A menagerie of rolling desk chairs form a semicircle outward bound, radiating like waves from the Sun, as drawn by ancient Aztecs, as celebrated in some Mel Gibson film before we found out he was such a huge douchebag and started ignoring him so I'm pretty sure you've forgotten about the Aztec aspect.
Quick trivia aside, I think those dudes were Mexican-Indians but I don't remember much from that film so don't go around parading this like some delineation of their exact lineage, like a red cape of confidence because you might get bulldozed, intellectually at least. They called corn maize, which confused me, at the time of watching the movie—Serpentico, I finally remember the title—confused because of corn mazes I never went into as a child of nebulous origins, confused further because these crop constructions could have been called maize mazes but that would only make sense conveyed by written word because a person would sound like an idiot saying maize mazes and maybe even a five-alarm idiot if he said, That was an amazing maize maze.
Seriously, that might just confuse someone so badly he might have to go to a rectangular room like the one being described herein with four large windows on the east and west sides, the east side also holding an unexcitingly white door with the prerequisite all-caps EXIT sign, inside of which (the room) contains 35 people of varying ages, ethnicities, sexual persuasions, heights, outfits, hometowns and (hopefully) identities who are hashing out the problem that binds them, the problem that in fact brought them (us) all to this room with a twenty-by-four-foot matte black table at an obtuse or acute angle depending on one's perspective. Whereupon he/she/they, perplexed, would ask, What the fuck is up with those Mexican-Indians whose name I forgot and further with those needlessly complex labyrinths of corn? And where is the coffee?
Inconsolable shadows splash from behind me. A crowd slowly creeps in, pleasantries flowing. In a sense it is a jovial wake, a good-natured burial of things we need dead. Then silence to tame the shame, tamping down the bile-of-past that threatens to come vomiting back up on a daily basis. We check in with dates, but not the yummy kind, nor the romantic variety.
The analogies that can be crafted, indeed, are necessary. They are trying to draw out each individual's feelings about his/her situation. There are so many variations but none is completely unique. The Mexican-Indian in that film Apolitico (mentioned earlier) had to navigate a vicious jungle with constant threats abounding. His awareness and survival instinct kicked into a gear I have never known. That could be a symbol for my struggle—despite what others tell me—if mine is a jungle of my own making.
A facade constructed by scab workers, my life has become derelict and condemned. It is, however, salvageable; a reclamation project. I have deemed it worth the effort. The basic support structure is a bit rickety but it needs a new front, one that is easily readable and honest about its contents. That front might still be a facade, but not a false one. Free-flowing jazz will trumpet its reopening. Not the Mardi Gras type of jazz but the kind of jazz from smoky clubs of yesteryear. Inside I will still be a mess, a maize maze, a clutter of debris which can still be normal, natural.
Mine is an imperfect structure but these renovations will hopefully make it more inviting, more true. I will even shelter the Mexican-Indian if he can outrun that large black panther hot on his heels. My heels, however, will remain for now on the tic-tac-toe granite floor of this rectangular room along with the heels of those around me, who also find themselves in the fixer-upper trade.
Normal and abnormal are weirdly amorphous terms, their meanings entirely a social construct. And if a person fails to meet the qualifications for one designation (A), he must of course fit the other (B), right? And if he doesn't fit the description of A or B, what then? Does he bounce between the two like a neutron looking for a home? Like a Heisenberg personality principle, never to be pinned down by a very large, unstriped charcoal tiger, always running around a labrynthine forest, wondering if there is any escape, and if there is, what lay on the other side of it? And should the bouncing, unclassifiable neutron-person find his/her/their way to the other side would they find any other unclassified neutron-people lurking there? And if another person were to be found in such a way would the two unclassified neutron-people repel one another, like magnets, because they were not supposed to have met? Or would they cling together like two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule making the water needed for life and its continuance? Would I find an oasis?
There is a painting on the eastern wall of this room that depicts an Abercrombie boy with two faces. One face looks forward while the other one bleeds out of the right side of the boy's head. The two faces share one middle eye. That image might have implications. Or it might just be a minor detail, something to fill the room, a room that right now has a literal Butler speaking with a proper British accent. He tells the room that it is Paul McCartney's birthday, a bit of arcana that he cleverly wraps into his sharing.
The south wall of the room has a double-doored closet, a door leading to a hall connecting to the rest of the building, an electrical closet door, and a door to the bathroom. All of these doors are done in a cream color. The north wall is just a wall with nine three foot by three foot decorative cloth tiles spaced in a 1-3-1-3-1 manner. Above, two ceiling fans are located between ten fluorescent lights. The room contains exactly thirty people with unmanageable lives.
I am probably the only person ruminating on about Indian-Mexicans running through maize mazes to find and fix some inner me that be both respectable and authentic; a me that I can display in daily life. But as an alcoholic that is like a man without legs I wouldn't be surprised if someone was thinking about something much weirder and even more tangential than that. Something for instance like that legless man analogy that one of my cohorts just dropped. An analogy that, to be honest, doesn't make much sense especially in relation to recovery as a mix of growing the missing limbs back while at the same time learning to live without them. Maybe that does make sense but seriously, if I lost my legs I would probably drink more. Maybe I lost my legs from developing diabetes and they needed to be amputated—unlikely.
Or, more likely, I got into a gnarly car accident where I survived the crash but lost my legs and finally decided that drinking was bad for the business of living. Which makes sense but even in that event I would probably get a fancy wheelchair, like Stephen Hawking's, and I would proceed directly to the nearest liquor store. And if I were to do that could I get arrested for operating a moving vehicle while intoxicated? This seems unlikely considering the cop would have to be a big Mel Gibson-level ass-clown to stop a legless man solely to investigate his level of drunkenness, which in turn would be even more confusing and complicated because the cop could not just presume the willingness on my part to take a field sobriety test because if I were the theoretical inebriated double-amputee I would refuse a breathalyzer and the cop would then find himself in a quandary of logistics getting me and my chair into his patrol car in order to drive me down to the station for booking on suspicion of operating a moving vehicle while intoxicated. All this trouble for the cop while he also weathers the hostile and disdainful looks from his fellow officers for bringing in a man who has lost both his legs and understandably wanted to get a little tight because life is an unremorseful beast. It seems like a waste of time, if you ask me, especially since in this hypothetical scenario I'm the rambling man with no legs. All I can be sure of is that I'm an alcoholic with no metaphorical legs and three eyes wondering what the fuck was really going on with Dorian Gray.
Entitled, embittered, empty exemplifies each entity exactly earmarked. Assonance that is heavy on the ass planted in a rolling chair located in a second semi-circular row with an innermost circle of supple leather-bound rotating chairs in a rectangular room that is painted slate gray and the shadows dance as the sun sets outside in the west. Can you picture yourself there? As part of a group searching for a more gratifying and peaceful life, free of reverse-albino cougars, ridiculous maize mazes, facades of dubious construction, weak literary and cinematic allusions? Consider the oppressive guilt that brought you here, the complete sense of doom that proceeded and followed every blackout, brownout, and drown-out. How about a life in which you still had actual flesh-and-blood functioning legs that helped bring you here, where you found a fellowship, a menagerie of storytellers, a group of survivors, a roomful of resilient motherfuckers, people of every non-red stripe grappling with the howling existential dread of a sober life, painfully admitting their problem, supplicating themselves before an unknown higher power of each person's understanding, rigorously willing take twelve steps away from the ledge, downright giddy at the chance of reclaiming their disheveled lives, and looking with optimism borne out of the fertile earth? Are you ready to step into this rectangular room?
posted by J Rand at
2:59 PM
