Billy Coffey

storyteller

The value of our art

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.

The tension between truth and magic

Screen Shot 2014-01-06 at 10.45.46 AMMy wife—God bless her—is a person of many virtues. She is kind. Compassionate. Faithful, to both her family and her God. And she is as honest a person as you will ever meet in your life.

It’s that last one that’s been causing all the trouble lately.

It began the day after Christmas, when my son decided to spend some quality time with his new Calvin & Hobbes comic book, whereupon he found The One. You know—The One where Calvin rushes downstairs because it’s Christmas Eve and he thinks he hears Santa. The One where Hobbes rushes down, too. The one where both child and toy discover not jolly old Saint Nick setting out Calvin’s gifts, but Calvin’s parents.
My son is not stupid. Two and two were put together in short order, leading him in a straight line to his kind, compassionate, faithful, and honest mother, who cannot bear to lie to her children. About anything. And so with our son staring up at her with two brown, saucer eyes, she had no choice but admit the truth.

Now, more than a week later, our family is still in collective mourning. Christmas vacation ending and school beginning once more has not buoyed my son’s mood. These are dark times in the Coffey home. Dark times indeed.

Good thing we have a dog. Daisy is her name. Part lab, part retriever, part crazy. A rescue from the local pound, and a paragon of many virtues herself. Kind. Compassionate. An expert snuggler. She is also quite the escape artist.

Daisy managed to finagle her way out of her crate today. The damage was minimal and upon first inspection limited to moving every chew toy in the house to my bedroom closet. When my son and I left to walk the dog, all seemed well.

A second pass by my wife, however, revealed something else. At some point during the day, Daisy decided to attack my son’s favorite stuffed animal. I suppose I can blame myself for what happened next. Upon arriving home, I asked if she had spotted any further wanton destruction.
My son flashed his brown, saucer eyes once more. I am convinced such a thing operates as some kind of parental polygraph. My wife held up the stuffed animal. She didn’t stand a chance.

As it turned out, the damage required nothing more than a little cosmetic surgery to reattach a fuzzy nose. And yet three hours later, my son is still crying over Winston The Stuffed Dachshund. You would think our dog had mauled Santa.

I haven’t said much about this to anyone else, though I did offer this bit of advice to the mother of my children:

Lie. Lie to our kids. Lie like a freaking dog.

She still can’t, of course, nor will she ever. It’s not in my wife’s nature to do such a thing, and it’s all a very large part of why I love her. But the fact remains that I have no compunction to lie to my kids when I feel the situation warrants it.

Is Santa real? Absolutely. He lives at the North Pole and has a bunch of elves and rides around in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer.
Did the dog tear anything up? Nope, not a single thing. Now you go wash up for supper and ignore the needle, thread, and severed puppy nose in my hand.

See? Not that difficult. And yet…

And yet a part of me feels horrible knowing I’m spreading such falsehoods. It’s guilt and remorse and everything bad, and the only way I can feel better is to tell myself all those nasty feelings are okay because those lies are keeping my kids believing just a little while longer, and safe just a little more.

Deep down I know my wife is right. But here’s the thing—she knows I’m right, too. Parenting is compromise, after all. That is why when circumstances warrant a truth from now on, whether soft or hard, my wife will be the one to deliver it. But when situations call for a little magic, that cue is mine.

We’ll see if it works. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go arrange some Matchbox cars. My son’s still convinced they come alive at night from time to time and race around his room. Should he ask his mother about this, she’ll tell him to go ask me. Should he ask me, I’ll tell him this:

Hang on, son. Trust in magic. Because that’s the stuff of dreams.

Christmas magic

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

Much thanks for all the kind emails and comments regarding Little Girl’s post Monday. I’ve passed each of them along, and she’s most thankful. There are few things more important to a fledgling writer (as well as a not-so-fledgling writer) as a good dose of encouragement. I know this from experience.

I offered Little Girl the proverbial blank canvas. Write about anything, I told her. That she chose a story that included Santa was welcomed by both of her parents. It also, in a way, confirmed something that’s been wriggling around in my mind this Christmas season. Something that involves not only Little Girl, but Little boy as well.

They’re older now, if you consider eleven and nine old. I do. How and when my children began growing up are questions that continue to elude me. One of the best pieces of fatherly advice I ever received was from someone who told me it won’t matter at all how old my children are, to me they’ll always be just getting out of diapers. I’ve found that true. I expect it will be true for a long while.

Normally, their reality doesn’t get in the way of my perception. My kids can grow all they want. The toys that got them through the early years can find their way from the tops of their dressers to the backs of their closets, forgotten and dusty. I can walk into their bedrooms and see the squiggly penciled lines that mark how tall they’ve gotten. They can start asking weird questions about other girls and boys. I’ll notice these things, but I won’t see them. A person will go to great lengths to protect the lies they tell themselves, and the lie that nothing is changing especially.

But I’m finding that’s hard to do at Christmas.

On the surface, everything is the same. Both of my kids are still gung-ho about decorating the tree and the house, finding the little porcelain wise man who wanders around from Thanksgiving to Christmas Day looking for the Nativity atop the fireplace, baking cookies and singing carols. All of those things are going well. Fine, even. But there’s one part of Christmas that has gone missing this year — there’s been little desire for Santa. There have been no outgoing letters placed in the mailbox, no mention of going down to the mall and sitting on his lap. Nothing. Nada.

You know what? I think they both know.

It pains me, having to admit that. But I can deny no longer. Little Girl and Little Boy know there is no Santa, at least not in the way they’ve both been led to believe. Santa is their parents, the North Pole the Charlottesville mall, the elves all those daring people behind the cash registers, the flying reindeer my old truck.

It has to be crushing. I remember finding out the truth myself, right about their age. It crushed me.

It would be nice to be able to talk to them about this, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Neither can my wife. Because even now there is that tiny strand of hope deep within us both that says maybe they still believe, and even if they only believe a little, that little is well worth protecting. So there is only a shaky silence now — a hole where there used to be a very big Something.

But here’s the thing: Little Girl still wrote that story.

And written on the small chalkboard in the kitchen is this note in Little Boy’s hand: “Dear Santa, I’ve been really good this year. Please bring me stuff.”

And last night while we were all outside looking at the stars, both of them pointed at a flashing jet in the sky and pronounced that light to be Rudolph’s nose. A practice run, they said, and then they both smiled.

I smiled, too. It was to me a small dose of a new sort of Christmas magic, one just as meaningful and powerful as the one we all have perhaps now lost. A magic that proved our time on Earth can be best drawn in a circle rather than a line. My kids are still playing the game, but it isn’t for their benefit. I’ve spent years helping them to believe. Now, they’re helping me.

A world of possibility

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

The book is about magic, which ranks high on my list. But it’s really about the secret behind all those magic tricks that enchant me, and that ranks pretty low. It was a gift from a distant relative, given with the best of intentions. Still, it missed the mark by quite a wide margin.

It sits here on the table beside me, shiny and new, several of its pages still sticking together from lack of handling. If I turn the book over I can still see a section of wrapping paper, evidence that I got only as far as taking at look at the cover before thanking the giver for the thoughtful gift and setting it aside. To him (or her), it was the perfect present. I like books, and I like magic.

But I’m not reading it. No way.

I say I like magic, but that’s not quite the correct word. I love magic. Can’t do it of course, unless you count marveling a bunch of preschoolers with the old Hide Something Behind Your Back trick. But I love to see it done. Professionally or otherwise.

It doesn’t have to be anything so extravagant as to involve tigers or disappearing airplanes. In fact, the smaller the magic the more it appeals to me. I love the agility, the misdirection. I love the showmanship. Yes, it’s all just a trick. All an elaborate sham of skillful legerdemain. I know this going in. And it matters not.

All that matters to me is that I remain ignorant of the means by which that magic is done. I don’t want to know those secrets of where the rabbit is before it’s pulled out of the hat or how the buxom brunette is put together after being sawn into. Knowing would rob me of my wonder. And that’s exactly what magic is all about.

Wonder.

I’ve spent much of my life searching for answers to the questions that preyed on my mind. Big questions. Important ones. Like how can I find love and why does everyone have to hurt and why God sometimes just doesn’t seem to care and what does it all mean anyway. I talked to giants of both faith and the mind, read countless books, prayed and meditated. And do you know what I got out of that?

Not much.

I did acquire a head full of knowledge and theories, many of which contradicted either one another or reality. But that was okay at the time, because I believed I had much more than when I began. I had facts. And when it came to understanding this world and the life we live in it, facts seemed to be the most important things I could possess.

Unfortunately, those facts didn’t carry me far. They were a weighty spade to plunge into the hardpan of my life, cracking the surface of my doubts and questions to water that arid ground with the elixir of truth.

But those questions did not yield. The head of the spade held true, but the handle, that part where flesh met iron, could not hold.

I had learned that tears were drops of salty fluid secreted by the lacrimal gland to lubricate the eyeball, but that did little to explain why I shed so many of them. That death was to stop living. I learned, too, that a rainbow was formed by the refraction, reflection, and dispersion of light in rain or fog. Those were the facts. But those facts did little to explain why I shed so many tears and why people had to die. And somehow knowing the facts behind a rainbow made it less beautiful to me, as if it were more of a process and less of a miracle.

Sometimes ignorance really is bliss, and there’s nothing wrong with that. We don’t have to know everything. Our task is the search for truth, yes. But the truth is that there are some things we are simply not supposed to understand. We’re not supposed to know everything. And because of that there is beauty to our unanswered questions and a sweet mystery to our doubts.

There is magic in this world. I’m convinced of it. It flows not from the hands of a skillful conjurer, but from us. From our very being. We are surrounded by every day by enchantment so thick we almost must brush it from our faces.

I won’t return this book. It will remain unopened but in a predominant place here on my table. It will be a reminder that knowing with the head is much different than knowing with the heart.

And that given the choice, I will take possibility over fact any day.

There still be dragons

image courtesy of photobucket.com

My maternal grandparents were Amish/Mennonite. To this day I don’t exactly know how to write those two words, if they should be separated by a slash or a dash or some other form of punctuation. I suppose it doesn’t matter so long as you understand this one important point—when I stayed there, I had to entertain myself.

No television. No radio. No electronic games. Nothing.

It wasn’t all bad. Strip away all those technological whiz-bangs we surround ourselves with, and what’s left is real life. Sunshine and sweet breezes and garden dirt. That’s what became my childhood. And books. Lots and lots of books.

My grandfather’s den was where I’d mostly hole up when the weather was cold or wet. An old recliner, a massive roll top desk, and shelves of books. One in particular was always the first I’d reach for—a giant volume of ancient maps. Europe, Asia, the Americas, darkest Africa. I loved poring over those old things. To this day, I believe that’s where my love of all things mysterious began.

I have my own collection of books now, complete with my own volume of old maps. Replicas of those drawn by explorers and seafarers from a time when the world was wider and deeper. I still take that book down from time to time, just to think and imagine. That’s what the best books do.

My daughter was wondering about the Pacific the other day. Something about school. I came up here to my office and brought out my book of old maps, she reached for the Google Earth app on my iPad. Sometimes the space between generations seems more a chasm than a span.

We sat together on the sofa, she swiping and pinching the screen, me turning the pages and tilting the spine. She saw detailed photos of remote and uninhabited islands surrounded by clear waters. I saw vast stretches of faded emptiness pockmarked with mermaids and swelling waves.

She leaned on my shoulder and pointed to a spot in the bottom corner of the page. Coiled there was a serpent, mouth open to devour. “What’s that, Daddy?”

“That’s where nobody’d gone yet. They used to mark those places with pictures like that. Sometimes, they’d just write ‘Here There Be Dragons.’”

“Why?”

“Because it was a mystery. Something had to be there, I guess. Why not a dragon?”

My daughter went back to her screen. She couldn’t find any dragons on Google Earth. I figured she wouldn’t. We don’t think there are any mysteries in the world anymore. Everything’s been mapped and plotted by satellites whizzing above our heads. We think we have all the answers, know exactly where we are. There was a time when the center of the world was Jerusalem or Rome or London. No more. Thanks to GPS and Google Maps, the center of the world is wherever we happen to be. I suppose that’s pretty empowering in a way. And sad.

It’s worth mentioning that there are still plenty of dragons in the world. Only 2 percent of the ocean floor has been explored. Thousands of new plants and animals are discovered every year. Just recently, a group of scientists stumbled into a hidden valley in New Guinea that had never been seen before. The animals didn’t even run and hide from them. They had no reason to. They’d never seen a human before.

If there is anything I want my kids to know, it’s that there’s still plenty out there for us to find. I want them to love the mystery of life just as much as their father does. I want them to bask in the unknown. I want them to ponder it and find their places in its midst.

Passing on the magic

image courtesy of photobucket.com

It’s looking more and more like this is the year it happens. That I knew it someday would (“Sooner or later” is how I’ve always put it, and I always assumed it would be later) hasn’t dulled the pain. I thought it would be like getting a shot—if you know the needle’s coming, it won’t hurt as much.

Not true.

Yet here I sit, this sixth of December, and I can doubt it no longer:

My kids won’t go to see Santa this year.

There’s been no mention of the mall and the temporary Christmas village that’s set up there. No pre-planning of what cookies to put out on Christmas Eve and how much milk. And the closest my kids have gotten to writing letters to Jolly Old Saint Nick are the two pieces of scrap paper I found on the coffee table this morning, one in the bubbly script of a little girl, the other in the barely legible writing of a little boy. Disheartening, to say the least, even if they were kind enough to list their wants in descending order of importance.

My daughter is ten now, my son eight. I wonder how that happened, and so fast. Just last year they both bought into the whole thing, the reindeer and the elves and the he-sees-you-when-you’re-sleeping. Now, even though they’re both silent on the issue, they know. I know they know. There’s not denying it anymore, at least to them—Santa isn’t real.

Bid deal, you say. But I say it is. I don’t want my kids to grow up. I don’t want them to lose sight of the magic that permeates this world, because it’s there. It’s everywhere, and once upon a time I knew that myself and then grew up and forgot it and they—my children—were the ones to teach me about that magic again. And a very selfish part of me is afraid if my kids forget about that magic, then I might forget about it again, too.

They’re still into the other things. At least I have that. They love the trees and the lights and the carols. They love the secret packages that are hidden and shared only in whispers.

Most of all, my kids are still into the wandering wise man.before—how one of the magi from our nativity somehow manages to get lost each year between the attic and the living room. He wanders the house between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, appearing in bedrooms and bathrooms and—once—on the front porch. Trying to find Jesus, just like the rest of us. It’s still the first thing my children look for every morning. They need to know where the wise man’s gone to next. Yes, I still have that. I figure if I have that, I’m okay.

He was in the kitchen last night, propped up on the counter between the coffee maker and the sugar. I went to move him after the kids were asleep, meaning to put him in front of the little Linus figurine in the dining room that says THAT’S WHAT CHRISTMAS IS ALL ABOUT. He was gone. Moved not by my hands or the hands of my wife, but (I suspect) ones much smaller.

I guess that little secret’s out, as well.

But you know what? That’s okay. Finding that wise man gone saved me. It taught me something important. Discovering that some of the magic we’ve always believed in isn’t real can be an okay thing. Maybe even necessary. But discovering that you can turn around and make some magic of your own? That’s not only okay and necessary, that’s a blessing.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a wise man to find.

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