RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,288
(in the middle of my journey?)
I've always worked my way into
uncomfortable situations, for the
good, like this Labyrinth spate - mostly
by being a good conversationalist, even
though I wasn't. However, to do that, one
needs to develop a good eye and a good
ear. Which I had. I watched everything,
noticing peoples' ways and likes, habits
and approaches, listening to the things
they said about where they've been, and
then those careful observations would be
my way in to delving a bit into the person's
head, starting at the least, a thread we
could fill out to find some common ground.
It was pretty easy, but it often ended up
with its own confusions and problems.
I can easily exemplify the strangeness of
my situation, outside of Huck Finn
already covered. As follows...
-
At a Halloween Party or somesuch, held
for employees, downstairs. I had stayed late,
to attend, mostly just to see what the young
kid employees would be dressed as. (NO
names will be used here. It's not my intent
nor place to do that to others. As it turned out,
out, that night there was almost one of most
everything you'd imagine in such a gathering:
Greek togas, Roman Gods, guys as girls,
along with Tinkerbells and Goddesses too.
What I saw that night got me thinking.
Many things in those Princeton years,
were tossing my brain like the flyleaf
in an old, cheap book. A lot of these kids
I worked with professed a 'Christianity',
but one which I never heard of. The
Princeton Theological Seminary was
represented in our employee pool fairly
well - people either finishing up a degree,
seeking a doctorate, or whatever. The
University itself did the same thing, but
those people, once hired, were slightly
different and easier to pinpoint. The Divinity
kids, on the other hand, were always vague,
secretive and even depressed, by comparison
(obviously, not ALL of them, but I'm making a
point), as if they were each carrying some
sort of burden. I've already made mention a
chapter or two back, of the ordained guy going
to a parish assignment near Philadelphia (on
what's called the 'Mainline' - a frothy, monied
row of expensive Philadelphia suburbs, sort of
headed west out of the Center City area - who
made the comment about my 'goodness' in
not having a 'carbon footprint' even though
I actually and obviously did - the same sort
of wishful thinking that makes religion go -
(this was the guy whose wife, you recall, was
the Princeton Chaplain). One of the girls who
worked in Receiving, with me, was the most
curious and sweet girl, maybe 23, or 25. Her
husband was a student at the Theological
Seminary as well, finished up, and he'd been
assigned some parish duties to a small church
in Highland Park, NJ - where they lived. It's
about 12 miles back from Princeton, just after
New Brunswick, on the river. She was really
sweet, worked nicely, was interesting, bright,
smart too. I asked her lots of questions, after I
first got filled in on her background and
upbringing (Michigan). She was Dutch, so
we shared notes and comments about old
Dutch NYC, Nieuw Amsterdam as it were,
and Philadelphia. Whenever a book came
through touching on old, Dutch NYC, or
old Philadelphia, etc., yes, she'd put it aside
and then bring it over and we'd look at
it, and talk about things. One time, after
a conversation, she came back to me and
asked about the word 'ennui' seeking a
tighter definition of what it meant, and I
gave the best I could think of and then we
just looked it up. (I then also told her that
ennui had been the original first of the
artist Henri Matisse, until he changed it,
because it was too depressing to go through
life as)[that was a joke]. Who of us would
want to know Ennui Matisse?
-
I once asked her what she hoped for in the
future, for herself. She told me she, first, wanted
a child of their own, her and her husband, the
preacher guy, and then she wanted to be a
Doulah. I didn't even know what a Doulah
was, so she told me. (It's a traveling midwife,
who goes around assisting at birthings,
whether by town, village, or county,
locations. Both of those were upstanding
aspirations I figured, and, combined with
the religious aspects of her husband's calling,
all seemed right and well for her. And then
the most odd thing happened.
-
I'd always figured religion to be staid, fixed,
sedate, and quite prescribed about things. No
room for experimentation nor, usually, not even
any intentions or urges towards that. I was fooled.
It took some time between sightings of her
husband, who would occasionally stop by the
bookstore. She'd originally always spoke of him
as a Michigan 'Gearhead', (car buff), who
had gotten possession of his Grandfather's
1968 Oldsmobile 442 and lovingly restored and
wrenched it. When I got to know him a bit from
the store visits, he seemed like anything but that.
He was thin, tall, and had a head of hair like
Art Garfunckle's say, which grew out and
upward if not clipped; making him seem
even taller. A few times we talked car things, but
he didn't seem to actually know that much, but
I blew that off, and anyway the car was in
Michigan, not in Princeton. Then I didn't see
him for a good while - she spoke of him as
always busy cramming for exams, writing papers,
etc. Then, seemingly out of the blue, she came
in and it somehow came up, about her husband,
that he had changed the name he wished to be
called (into a sort of generic, either-sex, Arabic
name). And that he was 'transitioning' (first use
of that word in that context for me) into a
female identity. Huh, come again? All of
that presented no problem, evidently to her
or any of those around us in the work area, who
welcomed as this easily and heartily. Yet it
represented nothing but disappointment to me,
though I said nothing. For her, I could only think
of it as a dream-breaker. Would she still have
her 'child?' We 'he' still profess is church's
religious precepts, or was that all by the boards
now? Could she still be a Doulah? Man oh man
(no pun) was I confused, yet, within all that
confusion, it was all just more of the same
intellectual 'transitioning' that always seemed
to be underway at this University setting, and,
very elastically, within this store environment,
where nothing traditional ever seemed any
longer to be valid. I had a lot more, and a
long way yet, to travel. Like Dante, I was
in the middle of my journey?
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