Billy Coffey

storyteller

The value of our art

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image courtesy of google images. Spangled Blengins, Boy King Islands. One is a young Tuskorhorian, the other a human headed Dortherean by Henry Darger
image courtesy of google images. Spangled Blengins, Boy King Islands. One is a young Tuskorhorian, the other a human headed Dortherean by Henry Darger

Let me tell you about Henry Darger, the man who wrote one of the most detailed and bizarre books in history.

Never heard of him? Me neither. At least, not until I happened to stumble upon his story a few weeks ago. Seems strange that someone who did something so grand could be so unknown, doesn’t it? But it’s true. In fact, you could even say that’s why Henry was so extraordinary.

image courtesy of google images
image courtesy of google images

He was a janitor. Nothing so special about that, but nothing so wrong with it, either. There is no correlation between who a person is and what that person does for a living. Einstein was a patent clerk. Faulkner a mailman. Henry Darger mopped floors.

An unassuming man. A quiet man. He never married, never really had friends. Just a regular guy living a regular life, one of the faceless masses that occupy so much of the world who are here for a short while and then gone forever.

Henry left in 1973.

There are no accounts of his funeral. I don’t know if anyone attended at all, though I like to think they did. I like to think there was a crowd huddled around his casket that day to bid him farewell.

It is an unfortunate fact of life that so many people are discovered to have been truly extraordinary only after their passing. Such was the case with Henry. A few days after his passing, his landlord went through his apartment to ready it for rent. What he found was astonishing.

What he found hidden among Henry’s possessions was a manuscript. Its title may give you a clue as to the story’s scope and magnitude:

THE STORY OF THE VIVIAN GIRLS, IN WHAT IS KNOWN AS THE REALMS OF THE UNREAL, OF THE GLANDECO-ANGELINIAN WAR STORM, CAUSED BY THE CHILD SLAVE REBELLION

Did you get that? If not, I can’t blame you. I had to read the title three times to even understand a little of it, and that doesn’t count the time I actually wrote it out.

The breadth and scope of Henry’s book went well beyond epic. The manuscript itself contained 15,000 pages. Over nine million words. Over 300 watercolor pictures coinciding with the story. Some of the illustrations were so large they measured ten feet wide.

A lifetime’s worth of work. Years upon years of solitary effort, hundreds of thousands of hours spent writing and painting, creating an entire saga of another world.

And all for no apparent reason. Not only did Henry Darger never seek any sort of publication for his work, he never told a soul about it. His book was his dream and his secret alone.

I’ve thought about Henry Darger a lot since I first read about him. Which, as change or fate would have it, just to happened to be the very week my newest novel released. A tough thing, that. You’d think it wouldn’t be, perhaps, but it is. No matter who an author is or how successful he or she may be or how many books or under his or her belt, the most important thing to us all is that our words matter. Matter to others, matter to the world. We want what we say and think and feel to count for something.

But Henry Darger reminds me that none of those things mean anything. In the end, we cannot account for how the world will judge our work, and so, in the end, the world’s opinion really doesn’t matter. Simple as that.

What matters—what counts—is that our words stir not the world, but ourselves. That they conjure in our own hearts and minds a kind of magic that neither the years nor the work can dull. The kind of magic that sustains us in our lonely times and gives our own private worlds meaning. The kind of magic that tinges even the life of a simple janitor with greatness.

When you make a mess

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image courtesy of photobucket.com
image courtesy of photobucket.com

How it ended up like this I cannot say. I know I didn’t intend for it to happen. But happen it did. Not all at once—these things never unfold all at once—but slowly, like how spring turns to summer or twilight melts into full dark.

And it’s dark now, oh yes it is. Metaphorically, anyway. It’s just after one in the afternoon on a beautiful Saturday, and in this, at least, I’ve found a blessing. It’s early still. Which means if I get started now, I can get this mess cleaned up by tonight.

It started simply, as most messes do. And also like most messes, I went into it with the absolute best of intentions. And yet what was to be a quick trip upstairs to straighten my office has resulted in an apocalypse of papers and books the likes of which seem almost Biblical. My wife nearly called 911 when she walked in a few minutes ago. My kids dared me to ever tell them to throw away a notebook again. FEMA may have to be summoned.

I don’t know how this happened.

I promise you.

But that’s what we always say when we make a mess, isn’t it? Me, anyway. They’re often the first words out of my mouth—“I don’t know how this happened.” Followed closely by the points I’ve already mentioned:

I don’t know how things got this way.

I never wanted this.

I had the best of intentions.

Of course none of those matter, at least not now. All that counts is the mess. The whys and hows are irrelevant.

The only question is how I’m going to clean it up.

It won’t be easy. Messes never are. It requires digging through the garbage you’ve made for yourself. Cleaning up a mess hurts so much because along the way you always discover those things that should have mattered but were somehow forgotten instead (like the I love you Daddy! card I just found mashed into a novel I never finished reading). It hurts because so much damage has been done that you think things will never really be fixed—the mess will always be there, and things will never be the same again.

And in that moment of absolute remorse, a part of you believes that’s the way it should be. You messed up. You—the one who is old enough and wise enough to know better, the one who’s witnessed friends and family and strangers on the television news make their own messes and said “That’ll never be me.”

You.

Me.

So here I sit, in my mess.

For me, in this moment, it consists of little more than notebooks and papers and half-finished manuscripts and, amazingly enough, a half-eaten box of Fiddle Faddle. For you, things may be much worse.

Trust me when I say that makes no difference. When it comes to a mess, there are no degrees. A mess is a mess. And you and I will get through our messes together. We will fix things.

For me, it’s book by book. For you, perhaps relationship by relationship.

Paper by paper.

I’m sorry by I’m sorry.

Cleaning.

Healing.

Minute by minute.

Day by day.

We will straighten and clean. We will dust off the important things we’ve misplaced and toss out those things we thought we needed but didn’t. We’ll put away and take out.

We will make things sparkle again.

What makes us laugh

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image courtesy of photobucket.com
image courtesy of photobucket.com

In town on a very warm and very bright Saturday:

My family is parked at a picnic table outside the local ice cream shop, slurping down all manner of frozen treats. The shop is busy. People mill about, eager to partake in a ritual designed much more for spring than winter.

Some are more eager than others. Our eyes settle upon one man in particular who has summoned the courage to order three dips of chocolate ice cream on his cone. He pays and does his best to balance his desert until he can get to the table near us. Halfway there, though, his hand goes left while the ice cream goes right. The entire thing, cone and all, takes a ride down the front of his white shirt.

I snicker, which turns into a chortle, which turns into the sort of involuntary shaking that comes when you can’t help but laugh but don’t want to be seen laughing. My kids laugh, too.

The same very warm and very bright Saturday, but later:

On our way into the grocery store, we’re met by a woman carrying no less than five shopping bags making her way toward the parking lot. She’s trying but not quite able to see where everything is—her car, the traffic, a neighbor who says hello. She doesn’t see the rock in front of her, though. The one she trips over. She tumbles, spewing everything from hamburger to washing detergent.

My kids snicker, which turns into a chortle, which turns into the same sort of involuntary shaking they saw their father succumb to earlier at the ice cream shop.

I, however, don’t laugh. And I tell them they shouldn’t, either. Then I explain the difference between someone having an accident that could hurt them and someone having an accident that could just embarrass them. They stare at me. It’s tough having to explain the subtleties of humor to your children.

I’ve pondered about my children’s laughter since. Not that there is so little of it or even so much, if there is such a thing. No, what I’ve been thinking about is what they laugh at. What they think is funny.

Such a thing seems important to me. I think what makes us laugh says a lot about the sort of people we are.

If that’s true, then I would suppose my children are typical. What makes them laugh? Any sound emanating from any orifice on the human body. Boogers? Funny. Sneezes? Funny. Sneezes that produce boogers? Comedic gold.
But the scene at the grocery store bothered me. Partly because I was afraid I’d put the notion into their heads that such a thing was laughable, but partly because I’ve always been aware of the thin line between what should be funny and what shouldn’t.

The Bible never mentions Christ laughing. It mentions Him crying, of course, but never giggling. And though it may seem strange to say that God can giggle, I’m willing to bet that He can and does. Often. I’m sure Jesus had a great sense of humor. I’m sure He laughed. I think it was a pretty big oversight not to include that in the gospels. Knowing what Jesus found funny would come in handy to parents.

The question of whether we should find cause to laugh in this life is one that I think never needs asking. As dark and dreary and frightening as the world can be at times, there is an equal measure of light and beauty and anticipation. I like to think that no matter what our circumstances or worries may be, there is always plenty to be joyful about if we go looking for it.

A day without laughter is a day lost. It means that in the ongoing struggle between the hope we all seek and the despair the world seems intent upon handing us, the world has won.

That’s what I want my children to know.

But I want them to know this as well—much of the humor they’re privy to is merely hate wrapped in a punch line. It drips meanness. It lifts our spirits but tarnishes our souls. It isn’t nectar, it’s sweet poison.

I’m going to make it a point from now on to watch what I laugh at. To pay attention. To be a better dad.

Because I have a sneaky feeling that a lot of what makes me laugh would make God cry.

The cost of failed dreams

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I don’t think of him often, only on days like today. You know those days. The kind you spend looking more inside than around, wondering where all the time is going and why everything seems to be leaving you behind. Those are not fun days. In the words of the teenager who lives on the corner, they’re “the sucks.”

I had a day like that today. It was all the sucks. And like I often do, I thought of him.

I’ve been conducting an informal survey over the years that involves everyone from friends to acquaintances to strangers on the street. It’s not scientific in any way and is more for the benefit of my own curiosity than anything else. I ask them one question, nothing more—Are you doing what you most want to do with your life?

By and large, the answer I usually get is no. Doesn’t matter who I ask, either. Man or woman, rich or poor, famous or not. My wife the teacher has always wanted to be a counselor. My trash man says he’d rather be a bounty hunter (and really, I can’t blame him). A professor at work? He wants to be a farmer. And on and on.

Most times that question from me leads to questions from them, and in my explaining I’ll bring him up.

Because, really, he was no different than any of us. He had dreams. Ambitions. And—to his mind, anyway—a gift. The world is wide and full of magic when we’re young. It lends itself to dreaming. We believe we can become anything we wish; odds, however great, don’t play into the equation. So we want to be actresses and painters and poets. We want to be astronauts and writers and business owners. Because when we’re young, anything is possible. It’s only when we grow up that believing gets hard.

He wanted to be an artist. I’m no art critic and never will be, but I’ve seen his paintings. Honestly? They’re not bad. Better than I could manage, anyway.

His parents died when he was young. He took his inheritance and moved to the city to live and study, hoping to get into college. The money didn’t last long, though. Often he’d be forced to sleep in homeless shelters and under bridges. His first try for admission into the art academy didn’t end well. He failed the test. He tried again a year later. He failed that one, too.

His drawing ability, according to the admissions director, was “unsatisfactory.” He lacked the technical skills and wasn’t very creative, often copying most of his ideas from other artists. Nor was he a particularly hard worker. “Lazy” was also a word bandied about.

Like a lot of us, he wanted the success without the work. Also like a lot of us, he believed the road to that success would have no potholes, no U-turns. No dark nights of the soul.

He still dabbled in art as the years went on. But by then he had entered politics, and the slow descent of his life had begun. He was adored for a time. Worshipped, even. In his mind, he was the most powerful man in the world. Because of his politics, an estimated 11 million people died. I’d call that powerful.

But really, Hitler always just wanted to be an artist. That he gave up his dream and became a monster is a tiny footnote in a larger, darker story, but it is an important one. He didn’t count on dreams being so hard, though. That was his undoing. He didn’t understand that the journey from where we are to where we want to be isn’t a matter of getting there, it’s a matter of growing there. You have to endure the ones who say you never will. You have to suffer that stripping away. You have to face your doubts. Not so we may be proven worthy of our dreams, but so our dreams may be proven worthy of us.

He didn’t understand any of that. Or maybe he understood it and decided his own dream wasn’t worth the effort. Painting—creating—isn’t ever an easy thing. That blank canvas stares back at you, and its gaze is hard. That is why reaching your goals is so hard. That’s why it takes so much. Because it’s easier to begin a world war than to face a blank canvas.

The sanctity of writing

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Image courtesy of google images.
Image courtesy of google images.

I don’t remember how old I was when I first read To Kill a Mockingbird. No more than a boy, most likely. I do remember how I felt when I reached the last page — that odd sense of relief that the story is done mixed with the desire that it would keep going forever, as though I was at once both full and hungry. I still have that old copy. It’s beaten and dog-eared and underlined so much that entire passages are nearly illegible. It remains one of the very few novels I re-read every year.

Part of the book’s allure goes far beyond the story of Scout and Atticus and Boo Radley to the author herself. To Kill a Mockingbird is the only novel Harper Lee ever published, choosing instead to spend that last fifty years or so away from the public eye. Until last week anyway, when news broke that Lee will be publishing a second novel, Go Set a Watchman. Written before To Kill a Mockingbird, the book will feature many of the characters I first fell in love with years ago, centering around an adult Scout returning to her small Alabama town from New York to visit Atticus, her father.

I first heard the news on Facebook of all places, where I wrote it off as wishful rumor. Harper Lee has long been adamant that she would allow no more of her writing to be published. “I have said what I wanted to say,” she told a friend in an interview four years ago, “and I will not say it again.” But then I saw more posts and then more, and then it hit the major news networks and the publishing blogs and a flood of writer friends proclaimed this a high point in literary history and yes, I felt the same. I really did. Because this is Harper Lee, and she is in no small way one of the reasons I call myself a Southern writer.

I was thrilled. But only for a while.

Others voiced their skepticism. Go Set a Watchman was believed lost until recently, when Lee’s lawyer discovered it. And the timing of the announcement itself comes only months after the death of Lee’s sister Alice, who also served as Lee’s former lawyer and had long kept the outside world at bay. A subsequent interview with Lee’s editor only made things seem more suspicious: “…she’s very deaf and going blind. So it’s difficult to give her a call, you know? I think we all do our dealing through her lawyer, Tonja. It’s easier for the lawyer to go see her in the nursing home and say HarperCollins would like to do this and do that and get her permission. That’s the only reason nobody’s in touch with her. I’m told it’s very difficult to talk to her.”

Which, okay. But then Lee’s sister Alice said this, just before her death: “Harper can’t see and can’t hear and will sign anything put before her by anyone in whom she has confidence.”

So what does this mean? Is releasing this novel Harper Lee’s wish, or is this a case of a publisher taking advantage of a senile old woman for the sake of what promises to be a buttload of money? And here’s another question, one posed by an article I read: If it’s a good book, does it even matter?

The Harper Lee fan in me almost answers no to that question. But the writer in me says yes, it matters more than anything.

I’m sure millions will line up for their copy of Go Set a Watchman, but I won’t be one of them. It pains me to say that, but I have to stand by it. It is an exercise in terror to pick up a pen and make it the instrument through which you spill those things buried deep inside, precious and frightening things that no right-minded person would dare confront. And it is often an exercise in lunacy to then seek to share those things with a world that will at best ignore them and at worse pronounce them lacking. Writing requires talent and discipline and unyielding relentlessness, but it requires courage most of all. And much of that courage hinges upon the one great freedom every writer holds dear—to choose when and where and especially if those words will ever be seen at all.

Patrick’s price

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image courtesy of photobucket.com

Sit Patrick down beside his senior picture in the yearbook, you’d swear he graduated only a couple weeks ago. If I told you the truth, you’d scrunch your brow in one of those looks that says Huh-uh, no way. Then I’d tell you I wasn’t lying, because I’m not—Patrick graduated fifteen years ago.

Still looks like a kid, though. Still has that longish hair boys seem to want to keep now, still engaged in a war of attrition with patches of acne on his cheeks. It’s almost like Patrick slipped into some kind of crack in time way back and has just now found his way out.

But that’s not the case. He’s been around. I’ve seen him.

He still lives at home, though not with his parents. They’ve passed on. It was rough on Patrick just as it would be rough on any of us. His parents left him the house in their will, he’s the owner now, but he still sleeps in his old room and refuses to claim the master bedroom. Patrick’s momma used to tease him whenever he sat on their bed, saying that was the very spot where he was conceived. That thought has never left Patrick’s mind. He says there’s not enough Tide in the world to clean those sheets enough for him to lie there at night.

I guess you could say he has a good life. Steady job, place to live, food on the table. Patrick says he’s free. I suppose he is in some ways. He comes and goes as he wishes and is beholden to none but the Lord, whom he dutifully greets most mornings and every Sunday. He has friends, and though he’ll blush and shrug when you ask him, I have on good notice that women have called on him. That seems to be the one flaw in Patrick’s life, more or less. He’s say that’s true.

He’s seen thirty years come and go. Some people pay little mind to such things and Patrick would count himself among them, but I’m not sure. Whether we pay attention or not to the ticking of that great clock in us all doesn’t really matter I guess, because it ticks on anyway. This moment is both the oldest we’ve ever been and the youngest we’ll ever be from here on out. I think Patrick understands that, even if he’ll never say it.

He likes to talk about how he’s the only one of his friends who’s never been married and divorced. A smile will always come along behind those words, as though he’s happy to say them. Patrick will say he’s not made for matrimony, just like Paul the missionary. Paul was too busy living to settle down. Patrick reckons he’s the same. Besides, he says, why go through all the trouble of loving if it’s just going to fall apart in the end? Why give that best piece of yourself to someone who’s just going to up and move on without you one day? Doesn’t matter if that person ends up on the other side of town (as his friend’s wives have done) or on the other side of the ground (like his parents).

No, doesn’t make much sense going that far. Safer to keep your heart in your own chest, where it belongs. Patrick says that’s why he still looks so young, because he’s still whole and hasn’t given half of himself away. He says it’s easier to go your own way like that. To be free.

Maybe. And on the surface, I suppose he has some good points. But then again, life is never promised to be a safe thing, is it? We may come into this world unscratched, but we leave it with all manner of scars. Risk is worth the pain, I think. That’s how you grow. Trying and failing is better than not trying at all, whether it’s love or a dream. It can hurt (oh, how it can hurt), but I’d still rather look old and haggard than young and untouched by life’s thistles.