living – Page 4

The value of our art

April 14, 2014 by Billy Coffey 3 Comments

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.

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.

The lost art of snail mail

November 21, 2013 by Billy Coffey 6 Comments

Screen Shot 2013-11-21 at 6.33.49 PM “Can you help me?”

A common enough question in the course of my workday as a college mailman. Asked by the old and the young alike, but mostly the young. And I am generally in a well enough mood to reply Yes, I certainly can help you, even if I am generally not in a well enough mood to be excited about the prospect. Because if there is one thing I’ve learned in my long and storied career of postal delivery to a bunch of 18-21 year-olds, it’s that they often need a lot of help. A LOT.

So, just a bit ago—“Can you help me?”

Yes.

Young lady, nineteen-ish. I pegged her as a junior. Not because I knew anything at all about her, but because I’ve been here long enough to be able to guess such things with a modicum of accuracy. It was the way she dressed—pajama bottoms and a raggedy sweatshirt, which told me she’d been here long enough to not care anymore but no so long that she understood it just may be time to start growing up a little—and the way she addressed me—in the eye. She’d laid the envelope, pen, and stamp on the counter in front of her. When I walked up, she was staring at all three as if they were all pieces to some exotic puzzle.

I asked what sort of help she needed, which could have been anything from needing a zip code to how much postage was needed to mail something to China. But no, neither of those.

Instead, she said, “I don’t know how to mail this.”

“Just fill it out,” I told her. “I’ll mail it for you when you’re done.”

“No. I mean, I don’t know . . . how.”

“How to what?”

“You know. Like, fill this out.”

She pointed to the envelope and stared at it. I stared at it, too. Because I had no idea what she was talking about.

“You mean,” I asked, “you don’t know how to address an envelope?”

“No.”

“You mean, No, that’s not it? Or do you mean, No, I don’t know how to address an envelope?”

Now she looked at me. Her brow scrunched. I got the image of her seated in some classroom desk, trying to split the atom.

“I don’t know how to address an envelope,” she said.

I’ll be honest—it took me a while. Not to show her how to address an envelope (which, as it turned out, took much, much longer than a while, took what felt like an eternity), but for what this young woman told me to finally sink in. She really didn’t know how to address an envelope. Had no idea where to put the stamp, where to write her home address (it was a card, she said, to her mother) and not only where to write the return address, but what a return address was.

Nineteen years old. Junior in college. I can assume this young lady was bright, or else she wouldn’t be in college. And resourceful. And driven. Capable, too—she whipped out her iPhone and danced through so many apps to find her mother’s address that it nearly gave me a seizure. But when it came to something as commonplace as sending a letter? Nothing.

“Nobody sends letters anymore,” she told me. “It’s so 1800s.”

She finished her envelope and affixed the stamp (after being told where that went, too). I had to sit down for a bit afterward. My head was killing me.

Now I’m thinking:

Is this really where we’ve come? Have we really raised a generation of children who are so dependent upon technology that anything without a button is an unsolvable mystery?

But there’s something more as well, something far worse. In our instant world of texts and emails and Facebook posts and tweets, that poor girl has missed out on one of the true pleasures of life. She has never sat at a quiet desk with paper and pen to write a letter. She has never pondered over the words that have leaked through her hand and fingers, never slowed enough to find the rhythm of her words and her heart. She has never felt the trepidation of folding those words (and her heart) into thirds and stuffing them in an envelope sealed with her own saliva—her own DNA—and placing it in a mailbox. Never worried that her letter maybe wouldn’t get to where it was meant to go. Never felt the exhilaration of finding a sealed reply waiting for her days or weeks later.

Give me the new, the world says. Give me the shiny and the bright. I say take it. I’ll keep my paper and pen.

Willsey the dog

October 29, 2013 by Billy Coffey 2 Comments

Having the evening breeze blow over you and make ripples in your glass of tea is a pretty nice way to end your day, which is why I love my porch. It’s a good vantage point to my own little slice of world, one that unfolds before me in the sort of high-definition that far eclipses my television.

My porch serves as a good object lesson, too. It’s proof that if you hold still and listen long enough, something pretty insightful will happen.

That didn’t seem to be the case last night. I was holding still well enough. That wasn’t the problem. And the problem really wasn’t the listening, either. I was doing that, too.

The problem was what I was hearing.

The dog was a mutt. Half beagle, half Australian shepherd, with maybe a little bit of border collie thrown in. Having all that muddled DNA inside you would surely cause more than a little confusion. Trust me when I say that dog was more than a little confused.

So was its owner, who at the moment seemed a little perplexed as to if he was walking the dog or the dog was walking him. He tripped and pulled and pushed. The dog ran and stopped and tangled the leash around its owner’s legs. It was a sight.

And over and over between the barks came pleas of despair and sorrow:

“Willsey, stop!” “Willsey, come!” “Willsey, hold still!” “Dang it, Willsey!”

It took a full five minutes for the two of them to get from the corner of my block to the front of my house. And even though I was enjoying the cool of the evening, the man was sweating as much as a boxer after a ten round fight.

Willsey stopped and sniffed at our mailbox post. Just before he was ready to do his business, I let out a small cough. The owner looked at me on the porch and gave the dog a quick jerk. He’d have to hold it for the next post down the road.

We smiled at each other and said hello.

“Wouldn’t want a dog, would you?” he asked me.

“Sorry,” I said. “Looks like he’d be a full time job.”

“Buddy,” he said, “you don’t know the half of it.”

I nodded toward the mutt hanging from the end of the leash. “Kind of a strange name for a dog. Willsey?”

He laughed and said, “Yeah well, happened by accident.”

He bent down, rubbed the dog on its head, and was rewarded by a face full of slobber. He snorted, the dog snorted, and I snorted.

“My little girl brought him home,” he said. “Just had to have a dog, and she worried me to death. You think this dog’s ugly now? You should have seem him when he was a pup. Looked like Satan himself had coughed him up. And she says, ‘Daddy, can we keep him?’”

“And what’d you say?” I asked.

“I said, ‘Well, we’ll see.”

“Which I’m guessing became Willsey.”

“Yep,” he said. “Seven years ago. Hated him at first. Still kinda do. But you know what? He’s growin’ on me.”

He patted the dog again and got another face full of slobber.

“I like it,” I told him. “The name and the story.”

The man laughed and then proceeded to drag/push/pull Willsey on down the road.

“Neighbor’s got a fresh coat of paint on the mailbox post,” I shouted to him.

“Oh, Willsey’s gonna love that,” I heard.

I smiled to myself and resumed my rocking. I didn’t know who to feel sorry for the most, the man who was stuck with the dog or the dog who was stuck with the man. Maybe both should have been pitied in equal measure. Then again, maybe they both deserved each other.

But I wondered about all those things I’d said “We’ll see” to in my life, all those things I thought would happen or wouldn’t and then didn’t or did. And then I wondered about all the other people who used that phrase every day. We never know what’s coming in this life. We can seldom see what challenges or blessings wait just around the next corner.

And we can seldom see the blessings in our challenges, too.

Taxi cab confessions

September 23, 2013 by Billy Coffey 4 Comments

Screen shot 2013-09-23 at 10.10.16 AM I had the honor this past weekend of flying to New Orleans to attend the annual Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance, where I signed a few books and listened to people much smarter than myself. It was a great time with great people, and I left with more stories than I know what to do with (I spoke with friend Karen Spears Zacharias and a man she introduced as “Paul” for nearly half an hour, only to find out when they left that Paul was William Paul Young, author of The Shack. To me, he was just Paul, the guy in the jeans and polo shirt who said he liked my hat).

Yes, lots of stories. But for now, I want to tell you just this one about my cab driver:

She grabs my bag at the airport and chucks it into the trunk, smiles and calls herself Antoinette. It’s a pretty smile that’s all white teeth and kindness, and when I tell her I’m Billy she says, “You ain’t from nowheres around here, is you?”

“No’m,” I say.

She looks at me up and down and gives a sad shake of her head. “Careful child,” she says, “this town’ll chew you up and spit you out. Good thing Antoinette’s here.”

And even though I don’t know this lady and have never seen her before, I think that’s right. I think that’s exactly so.

She settles me in the backseat and climbs in behind the wheel, all arms and legs and long, braided hair. We exchange the bustle of the airport for the bustle of the freeway. I’m gawking like a tourist, trying to see everything. She’s watching in the rearview and shaking her head.

“Just you, son?” she asks. I say yes, that my family’s back home. “Well, ain’t no thing. It be just me and my cab.” She nods and gives me half a smile in the mirror, as if what she’s just stated makes her happy only because things are what they are. They are what they are, and there’s no changing them. “Kids gone, man gone.”

“Gone where?” I ask her.

Antoinette says “One in the ground” like she’s saying the hotel is just up the road a piece—all fact, little emotion. She makes the sign of the cross. I don’t know if it’s for the kids or the man. “Other’n done left.”

I don’t say anything. Buildings blur outside the window. Beyond them the sky touches the ground in a straight line that ends at my eye level. A crazy thought enters my mind that if Antoinette takes a wrong turn somewhere, we may just tumble off the edge of the world. For not the first time today, I miss my mountains.

“Man gone, too,” she says finally. Another nod, a bigger smile. This time, she really is happy that things are what they are. She’s happier that there’s no changing them. “Done took off with some floozy. She can have’m. Twenty year we together. Twenty year.”

She looks at me again. I bend my head down and study the hat in my hands, not knowing what to say. I’m sorry seems too petty, even though I am just that. One in the ground, one more done left. Another taken off. Just her now. Antoinette and her cab.

“You learn,” she tells me. Her eyes are still in the mirror when I look up. Still looking at me. The cab is cutting through traffic at over ninety miles an hour, but Antoinette’s eyes don’t have to see the road because the cab knows the way.

“Learn what?” I ask her.

“You learn to get by. Keep goin. Dream on. You got the faith, son?”

“I do.”

Now she looks away (and just in time, another second and we’d have met the back end of a dump truck). I can’t see her mouth, but Antoinette’s eyes wrinkle at the corners.

“There you go,” she says. “There . . . you . . . go. You might be alright, Willie. Cause all we got’s in the end’s our faith. This town can get hard on’ya, but you be alright. I be alright. One in the ground, one gone, one shacked up with Susie-spread-your-legs. We all got pain, don’t we?”

“We do.”

“We do,” she agrees, then rubs the silver cross dangling from the mirror. The front of it is dull, almost the color of pewter. I think to myself that cross has been rubbed a lot over the years. It’s like Antoinette’s faith—beautiful because it’s so worn.

“I’m sorry for your trials, Antoinette.”

The words come out sudden, so fast that I can’t pull them back in even if I want. I think maybe I should. Antoinette doesn’t seem the sort of person who’d take the pity of another, no matter how well-intentioned that pity would be.

She shakes her head. “No sir,” she says. “Don’t you be sorry no way. I ain’t. I know the secret, you see.”

“And what’s that?”

She looks at me again. “Ain’t no trials, Willie, no matter how much we call our troubles that. Hard times, they just God’s mercies in disguise.”

Baring all

August 22, 2013 by Billy Coffey 6 Comments

Today marks the fourth day of my daughter’s junior high career. So far, it’s been a bumpy ride. She’s done everything she’s been taught, keeping that chest out and chin up and upper lip stiff. But I can see the cracks that have formed on that tough exterior. Even the strongest dam will break with enough pressure.

It’s been a long while since I was in the sixth grade. At a certain point, all those years beyond the last ten or so melt into one fuzzy memory of misshapen moments. Tough to tell the truths from the imaginings sometimes. My sixth grade year was like that until this week. Having my daughter endure it has allowed me to remember much, especially how scary it all was.

The news kids and new teachers. The new school. The extra homework. The hormones racing. Waking up in the middle of the night, trying to wipe your mind of the nightmare you just had about not being able to get your locker open or not finding a seat at the lunch table. Go ahead and chuckle. You know what I’m talking about. Chances are you’ve had those very dreams at some point and maybe even still do from time to time. To me, that proves just how important this time is in my daughter’s life, and just how much of it will cling to her in the coming years.

The biggest test of all came yesterday. She had been warned ahead of time—over the summer, in fact—but that didn’t make things easier. Seeing a thing coming from far off might lessen the surprise, but not necessarily the dread.

Not math or science or language arts. It was dressing out for P.E.

The thought horrified her. Standing in front of a chipped wooden bench in that smelly locker room, feeling your toes on the cold concrete. All that silence banging off cinderblocked walls. Taking your shirt off first because that’s bad but not nearly as bad as taking off your pants, only to discover after that your pants are all you have left. Trudging through the next forty minutes of laps and volleyball, knowing you’re going to have to do it all over again when that’s done.

Baring yourself right there, in front of everybody.

I remember that well, and how terrible it felt.

It’s not only a girl thing, either. The boys suffer, too. One teacher even told me the boys react worse. The girls cry. The boys throw up.

I never yarked my lunch, but things did reach the point when I started wearing my gym shorts under my jeans. It was uncomfortable and god-awful hot, but at least there was little chance of anyone seeing something they shouldn’t. Something only my doctor and mother should see, and only in extreme circumstances.

We don’t like baring ourselves. We’d rather be covered and clothed. We need that barrier between us and the world, even if it is just a thin layer of denim and cotton. If we don’t have that, there’s nowhere we can hide.

I tell her she’ll get used to it. I think that’s true, even if I never did. Of all the lessons my daughter will learn this year, I think the one she’s found in gym class is the most important. Not because I particularly want her just fine with prancing around wearing little more than what the good Lord gave her, but because there will come a time when she will have to bare other, even more private things.

Her heart, for one. Her fears. Her weaknesses and worries. Her faults and failings. We go to great lengths to cover those things, too, and with more than jeans and underwear. And sometimes, we hide behind those things better.

My daughter made it through yesterday well enough. It wasn’t bad, she said. No one looked at her because they were too busy staring at themselves. I think that’s true for a lot of things.

She still doesn’t see this as a learning experience, mostly because she’s stuck in the middle of it right now. That’s another lesson my daughter will learn soon. Unlike junior high, the tests we get in life often come first. The answers come later.

Saying goodbye to summer

August 19, 2013 by Billy Coffey 1 Comment

I write this late on a Sunday evening, sitting at my upstairs desk as the frogs and crickets sing along the creek outside. The house is quiet, dark. Everyone else is in bed. It’s just me up here, watching the clock tick the last few hours of summer away.

Sure, there will be more warm days ahead. More late evenings when the sun still sets well after the supper dishes have been washed. Still plenty of time for a walk in the woods or a little fishing at the lake. But really, the end of summer has little to do with the weather and much to do with the calendar. Just ask my wife and kids. Because school starts tomorrow, and that marks the end of all that is right and good in the world.

It was the same for me when I was a kid. Still is, in many ways. My children are young, my wife is a teacher, and I work at a college. Our lives are inextricably linked to the school year. Enduring it to find summer on the other side feels like a rebirth. Facing the prospect of a new year? That feels more like a death.

Right now, we’re all dying a little.

A tad dramatic, I know. But it’s true in the sense that we are all about to give up a time of relative calm and quiet for nine months of stress and busyness. Despite our best attempts to inject a bit of excitement into the promise of a new school year, my wife and I have so far failed to inspire our children. Mostly because we aren’t very inspired ourselves.

That’s how it often goes, though, and for most of us. Life can be better measured in seasons than years. There are times when the sun shines and when it goes hidden, times when everything is green and beautiful and when the world lies gray and ugly.

We learn early on that nothing lasts. This life just isn’t built for permanence. Things fade and go away, both good and bad, and those things always come around again. We never suffer so much that we forget how to laugh, nor do we ever experience such joy that we no longer remember the salty taste of tears. That’s what I tell myself, and so I believe. My children aren’t quite there yet, and that’s fine because they will be one day. They’ll discover that often it’s the things you really don’t do that become the greatest things of all. There’s a blessing in pushing on and trying, in facing the inevitable. Even if what’s inevitable is something as small as the end of a summer vacation.

We’ll be okay. My wife. My kids. Myself. You, too. We’re all gonna make it through this little bit. We’ll all find ourselves laughing as we come out on the other side. It isn’t so bad, embracing the new and the unknown. There is great promise in it.

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