perspective – Page 3

Our inner Bam Bam

January 19, 2017 by Billy Coffey Leave a Comment

mountain bike pixbay

He is eighty-one pounds of pure energy, a spring wound tight and apt to blow at any point into any direction,

and he has lived across the street from me for the entirety of his nine years on this planet. His name isn’t near as important as the nickname he’s been given.

We call him Bam-Bam.

Pure boy, Bam-Bam. Blond haired and thick-chested, he has the eyes of one both enthralled with the world and eager to conquer it. I’m not sure how far he’ll get in that regard, but he’s done a fair job subjugating the neighborhood. Every house on our block is his domain, every bit of dirt his playpen. You’ll see him zipping down the street on his bike (complete with one of those electronic gizmos on the right handlebar he turns to make a motorcycle sound), or his scooter, or his Big Wheel. Very often he’ll be half-dressed. Bam-Bam doesn’t hold to shirts or shoes, preferring the feel of the wind at his stomach and the good earth between his toes.

His momma tries to dress him, I promise you. It doesn’t take. The other day I watched Bam-Bam come out the front door decked out in so many layers you would have thought he was embarking on an arctic expedition. Two minutes later I looked again, and all he had on was his jeans. I never knew what he did with those clothes until the mail lady came the next day and dug out a sweater, a scarf, and a heavy coat from the mailbox before putting in the mail. From what I heard, Bam-Bam had to answer for that one.

He is impervious. Cold doesn’t bother him, or snow.

Bam-Bam has a penchant for running around in the yard during thunderstorms and soaks up the heat like a lizard. Think of a mini-Jason Bourne.

Not that everyone on our street is always thrilled when he’s around. I can’t count how many times I’ve had to tell Bam-Bam not to shoot at our birds (not that he listens, and not that the birds are in any danger; Bam-Bam loves to hunt, but you can’t kill much with a Nerf gun) and to please-for-the-love-of-God don’t run out in the road when Harold Thompson races by in his souped-up Camaro. He’s loud: the only thing more ear piercing than Bam-Bam’s laugh (which is near constant) is his crying (which is just as often). And you have to be careful what you let him do. Bam-Bam is more than willing to help you with just about everything, so long as you realize what you’re trying to fix will likely end up more broken if he’s involved.

You have to love him, because he’s that way. But that won’t stop you from taking a peek out the window to make sure he’s not around before you step outside to do something. Bam-Bam’s daddy summed it up nicely last summer when he told me, “My boy’s a blessin’, no doubt. And he also must be punishment for some past sin I cannot reckon. Either way, I expect that boy’s gone drive me to drink.”

I could only agree.

And yet I will sit on our porch in the evenings after school and watch him try to shoot down a cloud or sneak up on a deer or spin himself in circles until he either yarks up his lunch or falls down giggling, and I can feel nothing but envy for my neighbor Bam-Bam.

Because I was once like him, once upon’a. I was that boy through and through, and so was my son (truth be told, my son still sometimes is). There was a time I treated life a gift to unwrap every day, and I looked upon it all with an unquenchable joy.

There are times I wonder where that boy I was went.

Maybe he’s gone, died away so the man I was bound to be could come. And maybe he’s still inside me somewhere, wanting out.

It’s funny how so much of our youth is spent wanting to be grown up, only to spend so much of our grown-up years wanting to be kids again.

I’ve heard that youth is wasted on the young. I think wonder is, too.

Washing away the mess we make

July 1, 2016 by Billy Coffey 2 Comments

OuterBanks16 1

I stand upon a sliver of land off the North Carolina coast that I call home for one week a year, looking at what has been written in the spot of sand at my feet.

For seven years now, this spot has been my special place. All the information I need to navigate my day can be found right here without use of a screen or wifi, without any device at all.

Here, the tanagers and mockingbirds are my alarm clock. Deer move silent along narrow trails cut among the sea oats, calling the weather by the way their noses tilt to the air. Dolphins dance for their breakfast, twirling and slapping their tails in the calmness beyond the breakers, telling me when it is time to cast a line among the waves.

Yet while solitude here is plentiful, I am reminded that I have not wholly left all things behind.

There are others here as well, a family far down along the beach, a man patrolling the dunes, who have come to this place in search of the very comfort I crave.

I tend to study these others with the same sort of fascination I give to the constellations that shine over these deep waters at night, or the cockles and welks I pick up from sandbars that rise up and then fade in the changing tides. A trip through our tiny parking lot reveals that many who have answered the ocean’s siren call have traveled quite far—Ohio, Michigan, even Idaho. We are all travelers here. As such, friendliness presents itself as a thing ably given, but only with the unspoken expectation that all parties will be allowed to return to their own families, their own lives, in short order.

Umbrellas pop up along the beach in the early morning as though the sand has broken out in a multi-hued pox, each widely spaced so as to neither intrude nor interfere: islands on an island. This partition extends even into the ocean, where one is expected not to stray from the invisible line stretched outward from one corner of your square of beach to the next. If one does, should the waves you jump over or ride atop carry you in front of where your neighbors sit reading Dean Koontz and sipping glasses of wine bought at the island’s only Food Lion, your fun must be paused until you stand and fight your way back across the current to where you belong.

I’m unsure whether this need for boundaries is expressed unconsciously or with intent—if it speaks toward a desire to allow others their own attempt at peace and renewal, or if it rather tells of a deep-seated wariness toward short-term neighbors.

Hillary4prison But a little bit ago I took a long walk along the shore, and now I think I have that answer. Here among the piles of scallop shells and oysters and augurs, HILLARY FOR PRISON 2016 has been written into the sand. Not far down comes BERNING FOR NC. Then, TRUMP’S FIRED ’16. Each carved by a different finger or big toe, each thus far saved from the encroaching tide but not by the vandalisms of others.

I thought of two things as I stood by each of those pronouncements, and how those pronouncements had been scrawled at with such rage. One is that we can leave our problems and cares at home for a short while but not our divisions. The other is that increasingly, our divisions are becoming worse and angrier.

This in itself is nothing new; our country has always been an angry one. But our collective mood has changed these last years in such a way that it now feels more a souring that hangs between us all. Our rage and distrust has gone from a thing—the government, the economy—to a person—the hated Other who dares not believe as we believe.

It is a depressing thing, really. And to be honest, it is also the very thing I wanted to get away from for a few days. But here I am yet again, a neutral witness to a raging culture war, and it saddens me as much as I’m sure it does you. It saddens me a lot.

I’m only glad I’m out here alone with only the pipers and gulls. Should the Hillary supporter, Bernie person, and Trumpster meet, there may be violence. That’s where things have arrived at now, or at least where things are headed. And I’m willing to say that’s why even here this year, everyone mostly keeps to themselves. Because we’re all tired of it, all the fighting. Because we all just want a break from the notion that we’ve come to associate the opinions and stances of others with their entirety as people, and from the ugly truth that we have somehow gone from mere disagreement with those who think other than us, to wariness, to distrust, to blame, and now, finally, to hate.

I am a writer. That term is a broad one, though I’ve found its job description narrow enough to fit inside a single sentence: Every time you sit to work, try to tell the story of us all.

Thankfully, that story has been fairly easy to come by for most of my life. Lately, though, it’s gotten a bit harder. Diversity is the magic word now, just as the celebration of all that makes us different has in certain circles become our national religion. And while that might be right and good, I’ve found that celebrating of differences often casts aside all those things that makes us the same.

Like you, I don’t know where we’re going as a country. Like you, I’m worried about it. If the recent tragedy in Orlando speaks of a single thing, it isn’t that there are those who would focus upon the weapon a terrorist used rather than the ideology behind why he used it, or that it is far too easy for a sick man to purchase an instrument of war. To me, Orlando says that we have reached a point now where we can no longer even come together to mourn.

But I’ll leave you with this. That family I saw far down the beach made their way past me a little bit ago. Dad, mom, and two little kids. They did not avoid me as they passed, did not take the easier path toward the dunes to walk around me. The father did not look at me as though I were some potential threat, nor did his children glare at me with Stranger Danger eyes. Instead, the mother smiled and offered me a sand dollar they’d found just up the beach. The kids wanted to see my tattoo. And the dad, grinning, merely said, “How ya doin’, buddy?”

And you know what? I’m doing fine. I am.

OuterBanks16 2 Because I nodded and said as much to that beautiful family and then left all that scribble in the sand for the tide to wash away. I walked on as they walked on, all of us looking out toward the ocean with the breeze in our faces and the smell of salt filling our lungs, thinking much the same: in spite of the mess we are prone to make of things, ours is still a beautiful world.

Where you belong

July 13, 2015 by Billy Coffey 1 Comment

In January, 2010, satellite pictures of the Amazon rain forest revealed the presence of a hidden community living in three clearings in the Javari Valley, which lies near the Brazil/Peru border. Subsequent flight expeditions over the region confirmed about 200 people lived in the tiny village. Not a big deal, really. Despite notions to the contrary, the Amazon is home to many communities. What set this community apart, however, was that it had never been seen before. Scientists had stumbled upon a tribe of people unknown to the world.

I confess to a geeky side. News stories such as that one rock my world. Imagine that in an age of telescopes that can see into the farthest reaches of the universe and submarines that can reach the very depths of the ocean, there are still entire cultures that have somehow managed to remain hidden in the untrodden places of our fair planet. Cut off from civilization, blissfully ignorant of things like ISIS and presidential elections and Keeping Up with the Kardashians. It’s a storyline straight out of Indiana Jones.

It’s enough to make me giddy.

It’s also enough to make me wonder what happiness they must enjoy. Imagine being able to live life unfettered by nasty things like time and career. You rise with the sun, venture into the jungle to either kill or dig up some breakfast, and eat it in a hammock surrounded by your family and friends. Repeat again for lunch and dinner. Maybe weave a basket or have a dance. Watch the kids play with critters and pets. Make sure the fire has plenty of wood. Go check the crops, then maybe visit your buddy who lives in the next hut to shoot the breeze and engage in a bit of gossip. Watch the sun go down. Go to bed. Do it all again the next day.

No taxes to pay or commutes to endure. No 401k to watch as it shrinks into oblivion. And who cares about gas prices when you’ve never even seen a car? No, the busy world you’ve never seen simply passes you by and leaves you alone. No muss, no fuss, just a hammock and the jungle around you.

I’ll be honest, I envy those people. They don’t know how good they have it.

Regardless of how much I long to chuck it all, fly to the Amazon, and apply for admission into the tribe, it won’t happen. The Brazilian government has a strict policy regarding uncontacted tribes. They are not to be bothered.

But just in case I would get that chance, I could see myself trekking down some forgotten jungle path and coming across the tribal chief, who would invite me to his hut for a little food and a lot of talk. And more than likely, he’d look at me and laugh.

“What are you doing here?” he’d ask. “What, you think WE have it good? Really? Tell you what, you try growing all your food in the jungle. Doesn’t always work, you know. And it’s not like you can just run down to the Food Lion for some chips and dip if the animals and the weather take your crops. Which happens, like, ALL the time.

“You can go hunting. Lots of animals in the jungle to eat. Of course, most of them will just as soon eat YOU. Try stepping on a snake or a spider or running across a panther. Tell me how that goes for you. And you better hope you don’t run into anyone from the tribe down the river, because they’ll just as soon kill you as let you pass.

“Can’t go to the hospital, either. We don’t have one here. We have a doctor of course, and he’s a real smart guy, but in the end the only thing he can do is pray to the gods and give you some plants to eat. Plants don’t cure everything, you know. And the gods…well, let’s just say they do their thing and we do ours. We don’t understand them, we just try to keep them happy.

“Sure, you can stay. You’ll probably live a few more years, most of us make it to 50 or so before we’re so worn out that we drop. That’s assuming you don’t get bitten or eaten or killed, though. Actually, why don’t you just run on back home where you belong.”

At which point I probably would.

And I would take with me this lesson: Life is tough. Doesn’t matter who you are or where you are. We’re all looking for something better, we’re all stressed, we’re all struggling for a little hope.

In a world that seems determined to point out our differences, those are similarities we will always share.

A nation at war

June 29, 2015 by Billy Coffey 3 Comments

Now comes the growing notion that we are at war, a phrase I’ve heard from more than a few these last days. A war fought not with guns and planes but words and ideas, the territory our hearts rather than battlefields. And though both sides cannot agree on much, there is an accord that this war contains both a “good” and a “bad” and that one is either on one side or the other—in this fight, there can be no spectators.

Nor can there be hesitation. If you disagree with a man’s right to marry a man or a woman’s right to marry a woman, if you do not believe that a Confederate battle flag is something akin to a Klansman’s hood, then your side is already chosen. Silent introspection is tantamount to cowardice, and for these things the punishment is to be thrown in league with the -ics and -ists. We are branded with the very thing that is now looked upon with contempt—a label.

I haven’t figured out why it’s gotten this way, or if “this way” is really just the way it’s always been. I’m still thinking things through. That’s what we should all be doing now. Not picking fights, not turning to the nearest social media platform to scream and blather. Think.

For instance:

I do not think anyone has a right to be happy. Live even a tiny amount inside this world and you will discover just how impossible and fleeting such a belief to be. This life was not built for happiness, but for the pursuit of it—for each of us to strike out into our days and search for meaning and beauty and purpose. The pursuit of happiness, yes, that is our right. And does that mean same-sex marriage should be legal? I don’t know. Perhaps. Is same-sex marriage and a homosexual lifestyle a sin? Maybe. But if homosexuality is a sin, that makes them like you and me in every way. Like everyone. It doesn’t matter to which sex you find an attraction, we’re all broken. We’re all the same.

The issue with the Confederate flag is an easier one for me. You see them here, flying from rusting poles in the front yards of the mountain folk or billowing from the beds of muddy 4x4s driven by teenage boys. To be honest, the sight of it has always made me uncomfortable. I know its history, and how in the years following the Civil War it was adopted by those who wished to keep down those who should have always been raised up. But I know this as well—I am a proud Southerner. The region of the country does indeed hold many of our nation’s sins, but it holds much more of its graces. I know good men died on both sides of that great national wound, men of courage, godly men. I will tell you that racism exists here, but no more and no less than in any northern city.

I suppose in all of this, what I would like to know is where the line is now that we cannot cross. It seems to me that’s an important thing to consider, for me and for everyone. Because there has always been a line, hasn’t there? A mark upon the boundary of our society’s forward progress that we gauge as that place where, if trampled upon, we risk losing some special part of ourselves. I’d like someone to tell me where that line now rests. I get nervous when it isn’t there, when no idea of constraint is apparent. Jut this morning I read an article from a respected news source calling for the acceptance of polygamy, a notion that has in the last years begun to take hold. Another article extolled the plight of pedophiliacs who now feel left out of this cultural shift, their reasoning being that they can no less alter the object of their sexual attractions than can homosexuals. I wonder how many who support gay marriage would support the legalization of these as well, and if not, what reasons they would offer. Is polygamy the line now, or will that too be crossed? Is it incest? But how many do you suppose would be in favor of that, assuming both parties to be consenting adults? Is not love the most vaunted of emotions now? Does not love trump all?

And of course things have not stopped with the removal of the Confederate flag from state grounds. Chain stores and online retailers have taken up that very mantle, refusing to offer them for sale to private citizens. My own Commonwealth has halted the issue of license plates bearing the seal of Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy. Now there is talk of expanding things further, changing the names of schools and public buildings that bear the names of Lee and Jackson and Stuart and Davis. I’ve even read that some are considering a petition to dismantle the Jefferson monument. Chuckle though you might, what of that other flag bearing stars and bars that has presided over so much bloodshed? What of our country’s own banner to which we stand at parades and ballgames and pledge our allegiance?

Tell me, please: where is the line? Or are we so intent to race forward that we no longer care if there is a line at all? Are the limits of society now -ics and -isms themselves?

I’d like to know. We’re supposed to be at war, you see. And I’m more than a little worried. Because no matter the cause or the combatants and no matter whether the spoils are blood or ideas, the first casualty of any war is always truth.

Getting things wrong

June 25, 2015 by Billy Coffey 1 Comment

It should come as no surprise that the events in Charleston last week are still a big topic here in Carolina. As our vacation has largely removed me from the world beyond sun and sand (as by design), I’m not sure if that’s the case elsewhere. I hope it is. Whenever something like this happens—which we can all agree has become far too often of late—the first thing I often hear is something along the lines of, “This country needs to have a honest discussion about race.” While I agree wholeheartedly, I’ve often wondered what an honest discussion would mean. And I guess I’m not the only one, because that conversation has yet to begin.

What’s getting the most attention around here isn’t the act itself, the murders, nor the racism that sparked that act, nor even the now national push to have the Confederate flag removed from all state government buildings and grounds. No, people here seem focused upon the ones who deserve the focus: the victims. Namely, how those victims treated the young man who became the instrument of their deaths. How this young man told the police after his capture that he almost didn’t go through with his plan because of the kindness shown to him by those in the church.

That would be amazing if it were not so sad.

He had an idea in his head, you see. A belief that blacks were less, that blacks were a danger, that blacks were responsible for so much of the evil in the world that they must be erased in order that the rest of us could be saved. That belief had been ingrained over the years by a variety of sources, strengthened and ingrained to the point where it became, to him, fact. And yet reality proved something different. Once he sat down with them, listened to them, heard them pray and speak, once this young man knew their hearts, some part of him understood that what he had come to belief was false. These were not monsters, these were people. People like him.

And yet even that knowledge wasn’t enough to keep him from drawing a weapon and killing nine of them. Belief proved stronger than reality in this case, just as it does in most cases. That’s what people here are grappling with most, and what I’m grappling with as well.

These first few days at the beach have given me an opportunity to do what life in general often denies—the chance to simply sit and think. What I’ve been thinking about lately is this simple question: Have I changed my opinion on anything in the last five years?

I’m not talking about little things, like the brand of coffee I drink or what my favorite television show is or where I shop for groceries. I mean the big things, like how I think about life or God or my place in either, and how I see other people.

Have I changed my beliefs in any way toward any of those things? Have I altered my thinking, or even tried? Have I even bothered to take a fresh look? Or has every idea and notion I’ve sought out only cemented what I already knew and believed to be true? Those are important questions, because they lead to another, larger question that none of us really want to ask:

“Have I ever been wrong about anything?”

Have I?

Have you?

Have we ever been wrong about who God is? Wrong about politics or social stances or what happens when we shed these mortal coils? Because you know what? I’m inclined to think we have.

None of us are as impartial and logical as we lead ourselves to believe. Often, what we hold as true isn’t arrived at by careful thought and deep pondering, but partisanship and whatever system of ideals we were taught by parents or preachers or professors. That creates a deep unwillingness to refine what positions we hold, and that unwillingness can lead to laziness at least and horrible tragedies at worst.

Whether we hold to the Divine or not, we all worship gods. Chief among them are often our beliefs themselves, graven images built not of wood or stone but of theories and concepts. We follow these with blind obedience, seeing a desire to look at and study them as tantamount to doubt or, worse, an attempt to prove them the paper idols they are. Yet truth—real truth—would never fear questioning, and would indeed always welcome it. That’s why we owe it to ourselves to test our opinions. We are built to seek the truth, wherever it may lead.

The poor folk

June 2, 2015 by Billy Coffey Leave a Comment

I ask Larry if he’s still watching over the poor folk every time I see him, and every time he says yes. He says yes and then offers me one of those nods that are accompanied by pursed lips. You know, the kind of expression that means it’s tough to look but you have to anyway. Someone’s got to watch over them, Larry says, and it might as well be him. Especially since he was poor once.

He’ll tell me he still watches over them from the same place, right across the river from the big building where they like to gather. Not a pretty sight—Larry will tell me that too, and always—but one worth watching nonetheless, if only for the education the sight provides. “There but for the grace of God,” he’ll say, and then he’ll nod and purse his lips again.

He says there have been times in the past when he’s taken the bridge across the river and gone to see them. Or tried. The poor folk will sometimes entertain Larry’s presence for a while. He was after all one of them once, and the poor folk are mannerly on the outside even if they are lost inward. They’ll say hello and how-you-doing and come-on-in. Larry will hello them back and say he’s fine, just fine. But he never goes in the big building. He’s been in there too many times in his life, he’ll tell me, and he’s seen all there is to be seen. I guess that’s true enough, but sometimes I think Larry’s afraid he’ll catch the poor again, like it’s some sort of communicable disease spread by contact.

Better than driving across the bridge to say hello is to stay on the other side of the river and watch. That’s what he tells me. It’s sort of a warning, though it’s one I don’t need. To be honest, I don’t have much of a desire to be around the poor folk. I like it where I am, right here with Larry and the rich people. Maybe I’m afraid I’ll catch poor, too. Maybe deep down I think they’ll sneeze on me.

Larry says he has God to thank for being rich now, and when he says this he won’t nod and purse his lips. He’s much more apt to pat the rust spot on his old truck—a ’95 Ford from down at the local car lot, which was a steal at $5,000—or take off his greasy cap as a sign of respect for invoking the Almighty. Yesir, Larry will say, God stripped away all of his poor and made him rich. I guess that’s nothing new in a time when a lot of people think God’s sole purpose in the universe is to shower down hundred dollar bills on everyone who’s washed in the blood of the Lamb.

Sometimes I’ll ask him if the people who gather at the big building across the river are all poor. Surely there are a few rich ones mixed in. He’ll tell me yes, there are a few rich ones, but they’re rare. Once he said I’d just as soon go in the big building looking for a unicorn as I would a rich person. I laughed at that. I think it was the way he’d said it—“Yooney-corn.”

Still, curiosity kicked in. I had to find out for myself.

I drove up to the big building one town over, careful to park across the river as Larry suggested. Lines of cars filled the parking lot—from my vantage point, I saw seven Mercedes, half a dozen BMWs, and three Jaguars. I watched patrons adorned in fancy dresses and pressed suits go in for dinner, watched the golf and tennis players come out.

Larry’s poor folk.

He was once one of them (it was the Mercedes and the golf for Larry, the fancy dress for his wife, and the tennis for his kids). They were at the country club five days a week and sometimes six, depending on how busy they all were. He’ll say he swore he was rich. But then came the recession followed by the job loss, and suddenly the Mercedes was gone (replaced by the truck, a steal at five grand) and so was the country club.

That’s when God showed Larry that what he thought was riches was really poverty. That’s when Larry found that wealth is better measured in love and family and simple things.

Larry says he never knew how poor he was because all that money got in the way. Now he says he’s the richest man in the county.

I think he might be right.