Tag Archives: Nonfiction

Whose Language Is It, Anyway? #nonfiction

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Whose Language Is It, Anyway? Musings on Words Fair and Foul

     Several years ago, I found myself in an annoying online conversation with one of my oldest daughter’s friends. It started out civilly enough, but eventually, due to the sensitive nature of the subject, I had to let him know that what we were discussing was really none of his business. At that point, like many keyboard warriors of the Information Age, he got awfully brave, knowing that he lived what he considered to be a safe distance away from me. His messages began to border on the disrespectful, at which point I advised him to stop talking. His reply should be familiar to anyone who has tried to tell a teenager that he or she should watch his or her mouth: “I have free speech, so I can say what I want to.”
“Son,” I replied, “just because the government won’t come and arrest you for saying something doesn’t mean I won’t show up at your door and kick your ass.”

     The problem with this kid’s thinking was that he believed “free speech” means that anyone can say anything at any time. But “free speech” does not mean “speech without consequence.” Whenever you say something to anyone, in public or interpersonally, you have to gauge the possible consequences of your language. Otherwise, you might find yourself in jail (if, say, you yell “fire” in a crowded theater when no fire exists) or expelled (if, say, you use hate speech in a university classroom) or beaten to within an inch of your life. Other possible consequences include losing friends, being socially censured, and having to defend your ideas and diction.

     As a writer and an academic, I am hyper-sensitive to language, its uses, the forums in which it is used, and its consequences. I firmly believe in a free press, in free speech, in freedom of expression. I hate censorship in any form. But I am also aware of the difference between censorship and disagreement, between free speech and rudeness or hatefulness. I don’t believe that I can control others’ language or that I should try, though I do often call attention to how that language might be perceived and whether or not it should have been used. In the example above, I wanted to stop the discussion about private family matters because they were private, and I wanted him to reconsider his tone not only for my sake but for his; after all, if I didn’t bother to kick his ass, someone else likely would in the future if he kept trying to hide his rudeness behind an imagined shield of unimpeachable “free” speech. I’m still waiting for him to thank me for the lesson.

     Another example—my students are, by and large, decent and smart enough not to use words like “nigger” or “faggot” in class, knowing that such words constitute hate speech and that such language would create an uncomfortable learning environment for everyone else. I want to believe that they don’t use such words because they know that doing so would be morally and ethically wrong, but even if they avoid those words out of their own sense of self-preservation, at least that’s something.

     They often don’t consider the implications of more innocuous hate language, though. I still hear them say “that’s so gay” when describing something that they consider stupid or ridiculous. Somehow they don’t make the connection that using “gay,” a state of being, as a synonym for “stupid” or “silly” is just as offensive as calling someone a “faggot.” I have a friend who asks her students, “Would you be comfortable talking about the same thing and saying ‘that’s so black!’?” Most of them have never really thought about it like that before, and some of them reconsider their use of the phrase in private or in other social situations, having learned that the ability to say something legally does not always mean you should do so ethically or morally. If they still choose to use such language in their homes, at their parties, and the like, I have two choices: 1) keep trying to educate them and hope they eventually see the light, and, failing that, 2) avoid them. I can’t force them to be good people at heart; I can only make a good case and hope.

     If they do use language that is universally considered hate speech (except, of course, among bigots, who often firmly believe that they aren’t bigots, evidence and common sense be damned), they are rightly subject to discipline. If you call someone a “faggot” in class, for example, I will ask you to leave (and call security if you refuse) and report you to the administration. The university will determine your punishment. We, the faculty and administration, are not forcing you to like and accept gay people; we are not prohibiting you from using such language on your own time or in other forums. We are simply saying that hate speech is unacceptable in our forum, not because you don’t share our values (though if what you value is hate, you don’t speak my language anyway) but because you make LGBTQ peoples and their allies feel afraid or uncomfortable in an environment where everyone should feel safe and cared for and nurtured.

     Similarly, take a major publication like The New York Times or Rolling Stone magazine. They are not guilty of censorship if they refuse to provide column space for, say, a Ku Klux Klan grand wizard or a neo-Nazi leader or a Republican like Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum, and so forth. They are not obligated to give everyone a forum, just as the New Republic is not required to provide space for Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow. They are not guilty of censorship if they run columns and articles against those with whom they ideologically disagree. They are not guilty of censorship if they refute alternative ideas and suggest that other people shouldn’t support such concepts.

     They are only guilty of censorship if they try to quash—not question, but actually stop— the opposition’s ability to produce their own forums, to disseminate their own ideas in their own spaces, and to make their own lingual and ideological choices in private.

      For an example of how to cross this line, take the Parents’ Television Council—please. This conservative, allegedly Christian watchdog group scrutinizes television shows and reports on any “objectionable” content. Objectionable according to whom, you ask? Why, according to the Parents’ Television Council, who seem to believe that they speak for the rest of us. Now when they watch those TV shows with their own agenda in mind, that is not censorship. That is their right. When they publish their findings on their own website and their own newsletters, that is not censorship. That is their right. When they tell us that we shouldn’t watch these shows because the programs don’t evince the right values, that is not censorship. That is their right. They are expressing an opinion and allowing people to consider their point of view.

     However, the PTC often does not stop there. They often try to organize boycotts of the shows’ sponsors and write to the networks, demanding that the shows be removed from our TV screens. At this point, they cross the line into attempted censorship. They don’t want to provide an alternative viewpoint; they want theirs to be the only viewpoint. They don’t want to influence my choice; they want to take it away. This is wrong. It’s unethical and un-American.

     Much of the debate over what we should or should not be allowed to think comes down to the language we use. A lot of those “objectionable” shows use so-called adult language—though, having once been a kid, I can personally testify that adults aren’t the only ones who use such words. And no, I didn’t learn the words from popular culture or art; I learned it from adults.

     Someone recently raised the question of what is or is not acceptable language on Facebook. One of my friends, a 63-year-old Christian politician who often disseminates progressive ideas on his personal page, used the phrase “Life’s a bitch” in a status update. The consequent debate over the word “bitch” should fascinate any linguist; were that my area, I’d probably write and publish a paper on it.

     Many of his conservative Christian friends attacked him—not questioned or debated him, but attacked him—for his use of the word, even going so far as to question his own religious beliefs. I personally don’t remember the Biblical passage that says “bitch” is an affront to God, so I didn’t really see their point. I’ve been lectured to more than once about using so-called “foul” language on Facebook; my usual response is that you’re questioning my use of the word on ethical or moral grounds, and I don’t agree with your ethical or moral definitions, so your argument doesn’t convince me. In fact, I think that “foul” language represents some of the most versatile words in English. Let’s look at a few of them.

     The word “fuck” is often unpleasant for people to hear, but it has become almost ubiquitous due to its adaptability. Taken on its own, it is a verb, one that means “to have sex,” though people often contrast it to “making love,” which has a tenderer connotation. Put a “you” after it, though, and it becomes a combination insult/aggressive response. Follow it with an “off” and you have an imperative sentence that, at the very least, seems unfriendly. If you preface it with a “to” or add an “-ing” suffix, the results are verbals that can act as nouns, meaning that they can function as sentences’ subjects, direct or indirect objects, and so forth. Pair the “-ing” form with a helping verb and you get a different verb tense than if you simply add “-ed.” Take the word by itself and put an exclamation point after it and you get a popular interjection. The “-ing” form can also function as an adjective, as in “holy fucking shit,” a phrase you often hear in the movies. Yet that form can also be an adverb, as in “fucking gross.”

     Are these expressions crude and, in certain situations, impolite? Sure. But sinful? That’s debatable. Unless “Thou shalt not say ‘fuck’” is the lost eleventh commandment, it seems that the only way to call this word “sinful” is if you stretch the definition; one might argue that since the word as a noun refers to a sexual act, and not necessarily one that takes place inside a monogamous marriage recognized by a church, then using it might—might—be sinful. But still, it seems to me that using the word itself is no more sinful than using the word “lying” or “stealing.” We might consider its use uncouth because talking about sex in public settings goes against certain social conventions, but that does not necessarily indicate sin.

     The same is true of words like “shit” and “piss.” They refer to bodily excretions, or to things that we compare to bodily excretions, and they are blunter and cruder (to some listeners, anyway) than more euphemistic words or scientific-sounding terms like “defecation” or “urination” or “excrement.” Perhaps they aren’t pleasant for some people to hear or contemplate, but that hardly makes them sinful. “Crucifixion” is unpleasant to contemplate, but we don’t censor people for using that word in public. Again, it seems to me that we’ve conflated sin with something else, whether we want to call it impoliteness or crudity or bluntness—or simply the use of colorful language.

     “Bitch” and “bastard” are considered acceptable if used in certain contexts—i.e., to mean “female dog” and “illegitimate child,” respectively. But if we talk about someone’s bitching about something, or mention that bastard at work who keeps stealing our stapler, or say that “life’s a bitch,” then the words become, to some people, unacceptable. But it’s still tough for me to understand how they can be considered sinful.

     The term “god damn” or “goddam,” as some writers (like me) spell it, could be considered sinful from a Christian perspective, given the commandment not to take the Lord’s name in vain. So I suppose I could understand if self-appointed lingual guardians took issue with it. When I use it in my fiction, though, it’s for purposes of realism or emphasis, not because I or my character is asking God to damn something or someone. Is that still sin? This word seems to exist in a moral gray area. Of course, for non-Christians, using the term is likely a non-issue.

     My point here is that the complainers on my friend’s Facebook page seem to be arguing for a version of Christianity that might not exist and is certainly not universally agreed upon. This makes their implications that my friend is somehow less Christian than they seem especially offensive. You might find his word choice blunt or crude or impolite, if you are of certain mindsets, but that’s as far as I’d take it. To the best of my knowledge, no one tried to have my friend exiled from Facebook, so no one is guilty of censorship; but I would suggest that there are better, more conciliatory ways of making your point about his language than deriding his faith. To judge him as less of a Christian based on his use of one word in one context seems too judgmental and unlikely to make your point; it would probably only anger him and lead to his de-friending you.

     In fact, the nature of Facebook as a social networking site implies that you are there voluntarily. No one’s holding a gun to your head and forcing you to be friends with anyone. It’s not a shared, paid-for, goal-oriented community like a college classroom. Thus, if someone’s language offends you, you should feel free to take issue with it as long as you do so in a way that makes your point, that encourages discussion and debate rather than destroying the possibility for them. And if you can’t convince them with your logic and evidence and reasonable arguments, if they still want to use language that bothers or offends you, you can always hide their posts or de-friend them. If the consequence of their language is that you will no longer be their Facebook friend, and they are willing to accept that consequence, then you have little recourse.

     What you shouldn’t do is try to censor them; it’s their page, and you don’t have to read it. You shouldn’t insult them; to do so is to react to a possibly controversial word or idea in a definitely unacceptable way. You shouldn’t assume that you know what God (or, for that matter, Mark Zuckerberg) wants and thinks better than they do just because their ideas are different. And you shouldn’t expect everyone to share your definitions of what is moral, ethical, or sinful. It simply won’t happen.

     We should not use language that devalues someone based on their states of being—language that is homophobic, racist, sexist, classist, and/or xenophobic, for instance. Everyone has a right to be who they are without someone’s using language, laws, and/or violence to oppress them. If you disagree, I won’t try to censor you from spouting your views, no matter how dangerous and sickening I find them. But I will choose to debate you civilly or ignore you. That is my choice, my freedom. Likewise, if I say “bitch” and it offends you, feel free to tell me why, as long as you’ve actually got an argument, not a knee-jerk emotional judgment. In that way, perhaps we can learn something from each other. If not, there’s always the “de-friend” button.

     Hateful and bile-ridden responses, though, teach us nothing. They leave us all in the dark, grasping for illumination. To echo Full Metal Jacket, they leave us in a “world of shit,” an ugly metaphor for an ugly situation.

     See? Sometimes the “bad” word seems like the right word, even if it makes you cringe.

Follow me on Twitter @brettwrites.

Email me at semioticconundrums@gmail.com.

A Hole in the World: Life, Death, and What We Leave Behind #nonfiction

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     My next nonfiction piece here was going to be about language fair and foul. That column is still coming, but I felt that this one was more pressing. Thanks for indulging me.

A Hole in the World: Life, Death, and What We Leave Behind

     Yesterday, Kalene walked into the room, her eyes filled with tears.

     “What’s wrong?” I asked.

     “Tom Pilkington died,” she said, her voice broken by deep sobs.

     I felt shocked like I suppose you always do when someone you know dies. I began calculating his age and knew that he was, by my standards, far too young; I think that with today’s medical technology, anybody’s too young to die unless they’re at least 85. Tom was much younger than that, and, I had assumed, healthy. But after her crying abated for a time, Kalene told me that he had in fact been severely diabetic, a condition that likely contributed to his death. It’s too soon for us to know all the details, but the very suddenness of his passing seems too tragic and frightening to ignore. I guess we’re all truly living on borrowed time. To echo Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption, we’d all better get busy living, because we’re already busy dying.

     I suppose that’s morbid, but it’s also true. I think about what I’m doing with my life all the time—the work I’m doing, the effects I’m having or lack thereof, and so forth. We probably all do it, especially when someone we know dies.

     I didn’t know Tom Pilkington well. I met him once, ten years or so ago. He struck me as a fine man—kind, generous, intelligent. He was an academic who took his profession seriously, yet he did not strike me as the kind of man who only thought about overblown theoretical abstractions. More to the point, he served as Kalene’s professor, Master’s thesis director, mentor, and friend. She thought the world of him, and that’s good enough for me.

     Word of his passing spread quickly. Kalene found out from a friend’s Facebook post. She called her other friend and mentor, Dr. Mallory Young, and together they commiserated, sharing information and memories. I did not listen to their conversation, but knowing both of these wonderful people as I do, I know they were supportive of each other and devastated that such a good friend and colleague had passed on.

     Tom’s death has left a hole in the world. People like Kalene will miss him greatly for the rest of their lives. He made a positive impression on people. He leaves behind a body of academic and critical work that will keep his name and spirit alive. His death created ripples that touched everyone who knew him and set off a chain of Facebook posts, phone calls, and, undoubtedly, emails and face-to-face conversations in which the news spread quickly, running just ahead of the sadness and pain.

     By contrast, let us consider the case of Yvette Vickers, the 82-year-old former actress and pin-up queen. On April 27th, the same day that tornadoes ravaged Alabama, a desiccated, nearly mummified corpse was discovered in her home. According to Entertainment Weekly and other sources, the body is believed to be Vickers’, though its condition will slow identification. Authorities believe that Vickers, if the body is indeed hers, may have died nearly a year ago.

     At the end of the fall 2010 semester, I took a portable DVD player to school during finals week. I also packed a cheap collection of old horror films, just to pass the time as I waited for students to show up and turn in their final papers. I reached into this collection, which contained some true gems like Metropolis and Nosferatu but mostly covered B- and C-pictures, and randomly pulled out Attack of the Giant Leeches.

     This film just happened to star Yvette Vickers.

     She played Liz Walker, the hottie cheating wife of a local store owner. If you should ever have the misfortune to watch the film, you’ll probably find that Vickers’ portrayal of a backwoods cuckoldress is about the only memorable part. The acting is forgettable (including much of hers); the “monsters” look less like leeches and more like men dressed in poorly-painted garbage bags. At barely over an hour, the film’s running time doesn’t even qualify it as feature-length by today’s standards.

     But Vickers’ character is much more interesting than the rest—the annoying lover who glad-hands the cuckold husband until they get caught, at which point he happily throws his lover under the bus; the overweight husband who, the audience is encouraged to believe, should never have been with this woman in the first place for all kinds of reasons; the bland hero and heroine, who seem to have nothing better to do than paddle around a swamp all day. Vickers’ Liz Walker dismisses her husband as the hick buffoon that he is, her voice dripping with condescension. It’s a mostly one-note performance that calls for little else beyond a bit of screaming and lolling about in underwater caves, pretending to be exhausted from all the blood-letting. But she plays the one-note well enough to stand out in such a crummy film.

     Vickers starred in other cult films like Attack of the 50 Foot Woman and even had a part in HUD. She was hardly Elizabeth Taylor or Meryl Streep, but she worked in film and TV for years. She was not homeless; in the news articles I’ve read, neighbors described her as a quiet person who kept to herself, who seemed to love her flowers and her privacy. She was not, unless I’m mistaken, a shut-in, given that people had seen her outside her home enough to recognize her.

     In the age of Facebook and Twitter, of cell phones and Skype, of iPads that can track your location and GPS systems available for cheap on the Internet, how does a person like Yvette Vickers disappear for nearly a year without anyone noticing?

     Though we should be disgusted and saddened at the fact, we would understand if she had been homeless or a completely isolated agoraphobe. Our society seems to view certain people as disposable; in fact, we seem to have implicitly agreed to a hierarchy of existence. Somehow, even though she was white and financially solvent enough to afford a house, Yvette Vickers fell through the cracks. She lived; she died; she shriveled up like a piece of jerky. And for almost a year, no one noticed.

     Even if the body in her house turns out not to be hers, she has still effectively disappeared; in fact, that would mean that two people have vanished as if they never existed—Vickers and whoever lay in her house for all those months.

     How is such a thing possible? How could we have let it happen? Are we so self-involved that we don’t even miss people when they’re gone unless someone calls us or leaves a message on our walls or waves a sign in front of our faces?

     Whenever we think about our deaths, it is, I would imagine, difficult for us to picture the world without us in it. After all, we’ve never known life to go on without ourselves. Sure, we know logically that the universe existed before us and will keep on going long after we’re gone. But it’s one thing to know logically and another to understand on a deep emotional level. When we die, we will leave people behind. Our houses and our cars will still stand where we left them, and someone will have to deal with them. But we all hope for more of a legacy than that.

     For some of us, our kids will be our legacy. For others, the work we do will resonate in the post-us world. I am lucky enough to have both three children who are all turning into good people and careers in teaching and writing. Though nothing is guaranteed, I’ve got a better shot than most people do, the kind of shot Tom Pilkington had.

     But it’s also similar to the kind Yvette Vickers had, and I believe that even the most jaded among us don’t want to end up like she did. We hope people will remember us fondly. We hope they will remember us, period.

     Vickers worked in the horror industry, so I think it’s fitting that I end this piece with a reference to the best horror-romance-comedy-adventure universe in the history of television—that of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In a classic episode of the Buffy spin-off Angel, our main character and his frenemy Spike have ventured into a subterranean realm in an attempt to cure their friend Fred, who has fallen victim to the vengeful spirit of a demi-god. Afraid for Fred and saddened at their failure to find a cure, Angel and Spike find themselves looking down the throat of an enormous cavern that, allegedly, goes all the way through to the other side of the planet.

     Spike, his voice much more somber and restrained than usual, looks at Angel and says, “There’s a hole in the world. It seems like we ought to have known.”

     Tom Pilkington left a hole in the world, and everyone who knew him is standing beside that hole, wishing that he were here to fill it. Yvette Vickers left no such hole; her passing barely made a ripple.

     How will we end up? Who will notice when we’re gone?
Follow me on Twitter @brettwrites
Email me at semioticconundrums@gmail.com

**UPDATE** This week’s Entertainment Weekly has a feature article on Vickers, in which they provide subsequent details. It seems that, suffering from dementia, Vickers did become a shut-in during the last months of her life; the woman who found her reports that she had barricaded herself inside the house. Still, I think the point holds; how could no one realize that she had been dead for so long?**

Another Storm of the Century #nonfiction

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Another Storm of the Century: A Voice from Tuscaloosa

     Back in August of 2005, I sat in my second-floor Baton Rouge apartment and watched Hurricane Katrina swirling over the Gulf of Mexico. The monster storm angled ever closer to the Louisiana coastline, headed, it seemed, for New Orleans, my favorite city in the world. Like every other person who gave a damn, I could only watch in helpless horror as the coasts of not one but three states—Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama—crumbled before Katrina’s fury. In my part of Baton Rouge, we lost power for thirteen hours or so. Some of our refrigerated foods spoiled. An hour away from New Orleans, I listened to the rifle cracks of trees splitting in half around our complex and could only imagine what it must be like at the sites of landfall. I ventured outside to check on my car, performing the mime “walking against the wind” routine, only with actual wind; I had to lean forward nearly forty-five degrees and plod along as if I were knee-deep in swamp mud. When I ascertained that my car had survived the floral carnage in evidence all around me, I turned back and found myself high-stepping along like a cartoon sprinter, the hurricane-force winds now at my back. For a moment, I felt as if I might lift off the ground and sail away.

    Later, when the levees broke and flooded the city, I screamed in frustration. As the remaining inhabitants of New Orleans stood on rooftops and small concrete islands just above the putrid waters, as those stuck at the Superdome and Convention Center stewed in their own filth and died while waiting on an absent government to help them, Kalene and I donated to shelters and prayed for the city. We waited fearfully for word from our friends who had been stuck in town or stayed out of a sense of duty. We watched the news religiously and saw Hollywood actors and pro athletes arrive to help, long before the President showed up. We heard tales of lower parish officials welcoming members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who somehow arrived before FEMA. A week after most people had finally gotten out of the city, we saw a good friend who had stayed behind at his university in order to help students with nowhere to go. He had easily lost thirty pounds and told tales of returning fire while unknown assailants shot at him.

     Six years later, New Orleans still needs help. And as I sit in Northport, just across the Black Warrior River from Tuscaloosa proper where I work and spend half of my time, I have to wonder what the state of Alabama will look like in 2017.

     I’ve heard a lot of comparisons between the tornadoes that ripped apart the south last week and Hurricane Katrina. I suppose some of these comparisons are apt. Both storm systems devastated enormous areas of the south. Having lived through both, and having been lucky or blessed enough to experience only a near-miss each time, I would have to say, if you put a gun to my head and made me choose, that Katrina seemed worse to me; it crushed the coasts of three states, put an American metropolitan center under water, and destroyed millions of people’s faith in the American system itself. The death toll was higher; the victims waited much longer for aid.

     But such comparisons are, I believe, ultimately pointless. The fact is that both storms unleashed almost unimaginable power. They both trashed homes and took lives indiscriminately. Argue that Katrina is worse until you’re blue in the face, but I defy you to do so in front of those who lost loved ones to the tornadoes. Tell that to those standing outside the giant piles of kindling that were, just a week ago, solid homes that people had spent lifetimes creating. Suffering is suffering; death is death.

     What I am more interested in talking about today are the lessons that Katrina taught us and how I’ve seen those lessons in action over the last several days.

     It all began so similarly. Again, I sat in my second-floor apartment, watching as an apocalyptic storm system bore down on my home region. With Kalene and our cat Cookie McSnowshoe already ensconced in the illusory safety of a bathtub, our electronics and important files piled around them, I watched the tornado sweep into Tuscaloosa. I was sitting in the center of my couch as the local news showed footage from their tower cam. They panned the camera until the tornado churned in the center of our television screen, the debris cloud clearly visible even in the distance. The wedge tornado split my screen so efficiently that, sitting before its bifurcated symmetry, I knew what an animal must feel like when the hunter looks through his or her scope and centers the target, crosshairs nestled just behind the forward shoulder. It seemed that the storm was coming straight for me.

     “Sweet Jesus,” I said to myself as rain drove against our balcony doors and forks of lightning split the sky outside. On screen, the city lay in the path of the tornado like a model Tokyo waiting for the man in the Godzilla suit to step on it.

     Soon enough our cable and internet failed. I joined Kalene in the bathroom and listened as my father, calling from a South Carolina hotel room on a business trip, narrated the tornado’s path. He stayed on the line, calling back whenever we lost the signal, until he heard that the storm had moved past Tuscaloosa and had headed on to Birmingham. At that point, Kalene and I emerged from the bathroom and into a different world.

     No, our apartment had not been damaged. We never even lost power. But as more and more reports came in about the devastation, we knew that things were different. We often think of our time in Louisiana as occurring in two periods—before Katrina and after. Now we would mark our lives in Alabama the same way. Our cable and internet came back on early Friday morning—probably the only good thing that Comcast has done for us in our five years here—and we saw the first images of what we had only heard about. Whole neighborhoods flattened. Businesses wiped away. A gutted Hobby Lobby stood beside a pile of rubble that had once been Big Lots. The Alberta neighborhood had been reduced to matchsticks. Forests of mighty trees had been crushed flat in odd patterns, like crop circles in corn.

     We would soon learn that some of our friends were homeless. Others learned that their lives had hung by the thinnest of threads. And some, like us, somehow escaped the carnage entirely. The tornado took a right turn and angled away from us. If it had kept on its course, it might have hit our apartment directly. And then they probably would have found me in Georgia, Kalene in Kentucky. We heard tales of young people dying—the three students who clung to each other in a bathtub until the storm was over, two of them surviving, the other found a quarter mile away. The four people who hunkered down in a closet until, the tornado having passed, one of them stood up and realized that he was the only one left, the others whisked away like so much straw in the breeze.

     Why were some killed and others spared? Why were some homes leveled and others not even touched?

     I don’t pretend to have those answers. What I do know is this: what I’ve seen so far inspires me.

     In the finale of Treme, season 1, Steve Earle sings, “This city won’t wash away. This city will never drown.” In spite of all the natural, political, economic, and sociological obstacles in their way, New Orleans and her people have endured. I am now seeing the same resolve all around me in Tuscaloosa.

     Trucks loaded down with bottled water, young workers and college students stacked in like cordwood as the vehicles roll into the teeth of the disaster. The sound of chainsaws and human voices singing their songs of labor as trees are removed from rooftops and living rooms. Low murmurs of comfort in contrapuntal relief with the wails for the dead. The hopeful calls of searchers as they dig through the heaps of refuse that were once houses, everyone hoping against hope to find more survivors. An outpouring of sympathy and money and labor and love.

     These are the best lessons from Katrina—that in this life, the only thing we can really count on is each other. Working together is always better than working alone. Pain shared is pain overcome. Helping one’s neighbors, and even one’s enemies, is the right thing to do, no matter the cost. I have seen a President appear two days after the storm, not a week, and rather than making a long speech in an empty square that he attempted to fill with false promises, he took action. I have seen federal monies allocated quickly. I have seen insurance companies acting responsibly—at least for now—rather than exploiting every possible loophole that might allow them to piss on the injured and the destitute. I have heard of FEMA sightings, which in Louisiana were as rare footprints of Bigfoot. I have seen a people rise from the debris to take the hands of other human beings who stepped outside their own spheres of plenty long enough to help.

     And so, thanks to the human spirit and their people’s own indomitable wills, I believe that my current home, like New Orleans (city of my heart), will endure. It may take time and effort and money, but it will happen. And I hope that in New Orleans and Tuscaloosa and numerous smaller towns ripped apart by wind and water—including Vilonia, Arkansas, where my two youngest children live—we will all continue to do our part. Let us take each other’s hands long after the television cameras are gone. Let us support each other even when there’s no profit in it. Let us look past our ideologies and into each other’s eyes. If we can hold each other’s gaze, we’re probably doing all right.

     To do so is not conservative or liberal, socialist or communist, democratic or republican. It’s the decent, human thing to do.

     And if we can do it in the aftermath of a storm, why can’t we do it when the skies are clear? Why can’t we apply these same principles and acts to the problems of disease, poverty, racism, homophobia, sexism, education, and homelessness? Why do we refuse to come together, to take care of each other, until nature tears us apart?

     Some would say that to do so would be to be un-American. If that’s true, we should be ashamed of ourselves. To me, the true American spirit can be witnessed in the former graduate student who’s coming back to Tuscaloosa on his own dime, bearing water and food and a chainsaw, because he cares. We can see it in the lives of those who take in the newly-homeless, who donate their time and money and the strengths of their backs to assure that this storm does not define Tuscaloosa’s history.

     We can see it in each other, if only we bother to look.

Follow me on Twitter @brettwrites.
Email me at semioticconundrums@gmail.com

Hard to Say I’m Sorry #nonfiction

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I make no claims that what follows is a great piece of writing. It is, however, highly personal, and it’s something I’ve needed to say for longer than I care to think about.

Hard to Say I’m Sorry: an Open Letter to Someone I Miss

     As a doctor of American Literature, I am well-acquainted with the fact that most people don’t know much (or care to know) about Modernist poetry. But if I had to bet my paycheck that almost everyone had heard of at least one Modernist poem, I would wager on Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” In case you haven’t read it since high school, I hereby quote the final stanza, in which the speaker, having been presented with two possible paths, finally makes his choice.

          I shall be telling this with a sigh
          Somewhere ages and ages hence:
          Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
          I took the one less traveled by,
          And that has made all the difference.

     Once, during my Master’s program, I heard one of my professors say that he had always read “The Road Not Taken” as satirical. He had a hard time believing that a poet of Frost’s caliber would simplify to such a degree the difficulties in navigating life. After all, as we make most of our choices, we see not two paths but several, often looking much the same, the end never in sight. Try as we might to apply logic and foresight to our decisions, we often result to the mental equivalent of flipping a coin; “I’ve got to try something,” we say to ourselves, and we plunge ahead, hoping that we don’t sail over some cliff hidden in the foliage.

     Of course, some choices are more important than others. In the end, who really cares if you choose Taco Bell over Burger King on a given day? Does it really matter if you watch Movie A instead of TV Show B, especially in this age of Netflix instant access and DVRs? Possibly not. But some choices can literally change lives. I discovered that as I have discovered most things—through painful experience.

     Back when I was much younger—before fatherhood, before marriage, before graduate school and a truly adult life—I had to make a choice. I cannot get into specifics in a public forum, and so I am left with generalizations, half-descriptions, and facades. I hope that if the person I’m talking to ever reads this, she will recognize herself and understand what I’m saying. I have never been good at talking about my feelings, so if I lose my way, I apologize to you, reader, and especially to her for whom this is meant. She deserves better.

Here goes.

Dear ______,

     If you’ve found your way here, you probably feel like I’ve blindsided you. We haven’t spoken in many years, a situation for which I am solely to blame. I wish I could go back and talk to my younger self; I could avoid so many mistakes that way, including one of the worst—losing touch with you. I cannot, of course, turn back time or reach across the years and fix things. I can only apologize, and believe me, I know how much there is to be sorry for.

     We met at a tumultuous time in my life. I had experienced things that devastated me emotionally. After that, I made some dumb decisions about who to care for and trust; these people piled their own kinds of damage on top of what had already been done. I had been convinced that I was worthless, that I would never be happy, that at best I would not drive my car off a bridge. Some days, I hated getting out of bed, and I always teetered on the edge of grim mania, barely stopping myself from punching people in the face for the flimsiest of reasons.

     Then, on yet another gray day, I met you.

     We hit it off quickly. Something about the way you smiled made me feel warm, and for whatever reason, you seemed to smile at me a lot. We talked. We saw each other socially. Soon, in a moment of unbridled and spectacular surprise, we came together in a kiss that was as desperate as it was passionate. Perhaps you were looking for something, too. I don’t pretend to know. I only know that it happened, and that it shocked both of us, like something out of a movie. When we broke apart, we stared at each other for several weighty moments. Then you said, “Oops,” and I could add nothing more profound. It wasn’t supposed to happen. We didn’t mean for it to. But it had happened, and we would have to deal with it.

     We embarked upon a relationship. Your family didn’t like me (and in this, they were not alone); I was the very definition of “damaged goods.” You could have done better. But for us, it worked, at least for a while. I remember that you ended it once, knowing that things were too complicated, that the timing wasn’t right. I accepted your decision with disappointment, but also with understanding. After all, I wouldn’t have wanted to be with me at that time in my life, and I wanted you to be happy. So I watched you walk away. If I recall, I went out with one of my best friends and got drunk and pretended that I was fine.

     But I was miserable. I felt a roaring inside me, a howling emptiness that you had begun to fill, and while I was willing to let you go, I didn’t want to. I wanted to call, to drive around until I found you, to beg you to come back. I did none of those things; I was strong enough for that, at least. But I missed you. And the really odd part? This separation only lasted a few days.

     Because you did come back. You told me that you had made a mistake, that you knew the problems and the risks of loving me and that you didn’t care. And even though I knew I was too unstable to give you what you deserved, I weakened, because I loved you and wanted to be with you so badly. So we started up again.

     But in the end, you can’t run away from your problems. I was too broken for anybody to fix. Only time and a lot of self-analysis would do that. My guilt over some things I’d done and my desire to be a better person in the future led me to break things off. I’m here to tell you that I didn’t want to do it. Walking away from you was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life, and that’s saying a lot, especially now that I’m forty years old and have been through two divorces, family deaths, long separations from friends and loved ones. But I did it, because I knew that I had a lot of work to do on myself and that you deserved better than I could give. I simply could not ask you to wait until I got myself together.

     But because I was afraid, I handled things wrong. I let the situation drag out over a period of weeks in which you wondered what you had done wrong, why I was holding myself at a distance, when things would go back to normal. I tried to tell you the truth many times, but every time I opened my mouth, the words would fail me. The prospect of losing you scared me, and I have never frightened easily. By the time I finally told you that I would need time, that there were things I’d have to do in order to live with myself and be worthy of anyone’s love, I had hurt you. You were very understanding, but any amount of pain I might have caused is unacceptable.

     For my poor handling of our relationship and its conclusion, I apologize, from the bottom of my heart. Everything negative that happened was my fault. I tried to be a good person, but you know what they say about good intentions and the road to hell. I truly loved our time together, and if circumstances had been different, I would never have done what I did.

     For my silence in the years since, I also apologize. Of course, I don’t know if you even wanted to speak to me; I just know that I wanted to speak to you. But I was ashamed, and I was both hopeful and afraid that you’d moved on. So for any moment, no matter how fleeting, that I left you sitting near a silent telephone, I’m sorry.

     I’m with my soulmate now, someone who loves me both for what I am and for what I’m not. We’re deliriously happy, something I never thought possible. I would not give that up for the world. I’m trying to be the best father I can be. I’m still trying to be the kind of man I can admire.

     But my healing started with you. Your love showed me that I wasn’t worthless, that happiness was possible. For that, I can never repay you. The point I’m trying to make here is that my feelings for you were real. They still are; for me, that kind of love never goes away. No matter the circumstances, I’ll always be here for you. And even in your absence, you’ve always been important to me.

     I know you’ve moved on. You’ve got a family of your own now, a life, a career. You seem happy, from what I’ve heard. And no one could be happier for you than I am. For any part I might have played in delaying that happiness, I’m sorry.

     I’ve hoped to say all this to you personally, but I can’t seem to get in contact. I’ve thought about this, and I’ve come up with three possible reasons why you don’t want to talk to me. 1) You still love me, even after all this time, and fear what might happen to your life if I come back into it. 2) You’ve realized you never really loved me at all and simply don’t care if you ever talk to me again. 3) Your own feelings (or lack thereof) notwithstanding, you’re afraid that I have some kind of agenda, that I will make trouble for you.

     But I’m not egotistical enough to think that you still love me, at least to the extent that you, as an older and wiser person, couldn’t control yourself around me. I don’t think you’d run and leap into my arms, consequences be damned. So I’m crossing out #1. As for #2, I hope it isn’t true. But if it is, I wouldn’t blame you. I can only repeat that my feelings have always been genuine, and that I’d like to be in your life in whatever capacity you’d allow. In terms of #3, I’m not the guy I used to be. I’ve grown up. I’m not selfish enough to cause you problems. I’m no longer confused about who I am or what I can offer. Know that I would never hurt you or the people you care about.

     What I’m trying to say is that I miss you, and I’d like to be your friend. I’d like to introduce you to my wife; I think you’d like her. I’d like to tell you about my life and how you’ve affected it. It’s a pretty good story.

     But you have more than earned the right to say no. If you don’t want me in your life, I don’t blame you. I will only say that I will always be here. If you ever need or want anything, call or write me. If it’s within my power to give it, I will. In the meantime, just know that I’m sorry for the way I mishandled things, and that I have thought of you often over the years, always fondly.

     Saying this has been hard. Thinking about your potential silence is harder. But I made this particular bed, and I’ll lie in it as long as I have to.

     I hope this finds you and yours well.

Best,

Brett

Belated Victims–Original Nonfiction #nonfiction #writing

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Belated Victims: Living and Dying after the Storm

      Her name was not Michelle, but that’s what I’ll call her.

     On the surface, she wasn’t much different from any other freshman English student. She wrote mostly middle-of-the-road essays and got mostly middle-of-the-road grades—usually in the low B or C range. She seldom spoke unless directly called upon. She even sat in the middle of the classroom—not a front-row overachiever or a back-row misanthrope, just a student who wanted what an education might bring into her life. She probably wanted a job she could live with and perhaps love, money, a place in the world.

     This is how I remember Michelle, the picture that formed in the sixteen weeks or so in which I saw her three times a week, the duration of a freshman-year course that she would complete only months before Hurricane Katrina killed her. These memories might be faulty, mashed together with images of a thousand other students I’ve seen since then. Or perhaps I’m creating a person that never was, reacting to my own guilt over not paying more attention to her in life.

     But faulty or not, this is the image that I carry, the one that I can share.

 

     In August 2005, I was living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and finishing my doctoral dissertation. I was working as an adjunct instructor at Baton Rouge Community College, and while much of what I experienced there frustrated me, I found the student population fascinating. Having only taught at universities, I had become accustomed to dealing with traditional students, many of whom were children of privilege. But at BRCC, I encountered over-25 students, budding small business owners, and people from the lower tax brackets. At the beginning of every semester, my classroom filled up with single mothers and middle-aged men working two jobs and youngsters whose parents could not afford LSU or Southern.

     And after Hurricane Katrina near-missed New Orleans and devastated the gulf coast, after the levees broke and the streets flooded and the city became a powerless third-world town, after the debacles at the Superdome and the Convention Center, after the evacuation and dispersion of the Crescent City’s poor and largely African-American populace began to resemble a new diaspora, after the universities and colleges that could still operate began to announce the creation of emergency courses for evacuees and the hiring of displaced educators, I went to work one day and met Michelle.

     I didn’t know then that she had lived in the lower parishes. I didn’t know about her home life or her relationship to her extended family. It isn’t the kind of thing that comes up in class, at least not often, and it certainly isn’t the kind of thing you ask about without cause. I only knew her name, and with all my other students to remember, it would take a few weeks for me to associate the name in my grade book with the quiet young woman who sat in the middle of class.

     More wasted time? No, it was only the natural progression of any semester, the adjustment period in which you learn who the students are and how badly they really want to be there. But in retrospect, it’s easy to wonder what each moment might have cost. Michelle’s life was already rushing toward disaster, as if someone had turned over an hourglass, one day in her life for each grain of sand, the pull of her destruction as inevitable as gravity.

 

     That isn’t completely true, of course. Michelle’s death was no more certain that the eventual appearance of a storm like Katrina, or its growth to Category 5 strength out over the Gulf, or its losing momentum just before making landfall along the Louisiana-Mississippi coast. But Michelle’s death was seeded decades before her birth, planted by governmental neglect, fertilized by Louisiana citizens’ indifference, nourished by an “it will never happen here” attitude that itself grew in power each time a storm veered east into Mississippi or west into Texas. Michelle’s death became more certain every time the levees held.

     You can blame Katrina on global warming, God, or plain old bad luck. You can blame people’s decisions to stay on stubbornness or on Mayor Ray Nagin or, more likely, on a collision of political, historical, and socioeconomic factors. You can blame the federal government’s slow response on George W. Bush’s general incompetence, on the rich’s laissez-faire privilege, on FEMA. But the levees—well, we’re all responsible for them. Whenever we failed to demand levee reconstruction or allowed the passing of one storm to lull us into believing New Orleans would always be safe, we hastened the day when Lake Ponchartrain would spill into the streets and carry away all our assumptions. And because we own the levees, we own Michelle’s death, and others like hers.

 

     The last time I saw Michelle, I hurt her feelings. It was the day of our final exam. She wrote her in-class essay quietly, as she had done everything all semester. When she brought her exam to my desk, she handed it to me. I took it and smiled.

     “Have a good break,” I said.

     Instead of leaving, she unzipped her backpack and pulled out a package wrapped in Christmas paper. She held it out to me.

     “This is for you,” she said.

     This kind of thing happens occasionally, and the moment is always awkward. Knowing that a student actually appreciates you warms your heart, even as the mind screams Danger! Danger! You want to listen to your heart, but accepting gifts from students is simply unethical. Even the appearance of favoritism can lead to appeals, even lawsuits. So being offered a gift in front of a classroom full of students, especially during a final exam, felt incredibly dangerous, as if someone had opened the door and tossed a cobra into the room.

     I didn’t take the package. I said, “I appreciate the gesture, more than you know. But I’m not allowed to accept gifts from students. I hope you understand.”

     For a moment, she just stared at me, the present still held out, hanging between us like a broken promise. Then she half-smiled, nodded, and put the gift back in her bag.

     “Merry Christmas,” I said, as cheerfully as I could.

     “You too,” she replied, not unkindly, and then she walked out the door without looking back.

     The next time I saw her face, it was on the news.

 

     In the spring of 2006, my courseload included a couple of argument-based composition classes. As an exercise in social awareness and practical argument, I required my students to participate in online discussions of current events. The responses I got from these Baton Rouge citizens about New Orleans evacuees were often disturbing. In spirit, they sounded like this:

     “These people are living in new trailers rent-free. Seems like they’re making out all right.”

     Or this:

     “When are they going to get jobs and stop expecting the government to take care of them?”

     Or this:

     “They could solve their own problems and get their homes back if they just worked hard enough.”

     “These people,” “they,” “them”—my students were using the language of exclusion. Worse yet, they were stereotyping, assuming facts not in evidence, oversimplifying, overgeneralizing—everything I was trying to teach them not to do. And though I tried to present them with alternative points of view, the flavor of the discussion remained, for the duration of that semester, largely the same. Some people, who otherwise seemed rational and empathetic, disdained the victims of Katrina and wished them gone from the city. If one person refused to work, these students thought, then all evacuees were lazy, sorry parasites on the body of hard-working America. Never mind that countless evacuees worked hard and that others might have good reason for not working. Many people who had not seen Katrina blow their lives away were sitting in self-righteous judgment of those who had.

     Luckily for the country, this kind of thought seemed to be seated in a vocal but comparatively small minority. But some people went far beyond words.

 

     One night my wife and I were half-listening to the local evening news when I heard the anchor mention Michelle’s name. Snapping to attention, I turned up the volume and then fell back against the couch, my stomach in knots. As the newscaster explained what had happened, I recalled every careless word that those students had written. I wondered how they would feel now, if they knew what I knew.

     Michelle had been living with relatives in the Baton Rouge area ever since Katrina had washed away her home. I don’t know her exact circumstances, but I witnessed first-hand how the shock of losing everything you ever had weighed on people. Some sat motionless, shell-shocked, unable to muster the motivation to pick up the pieces. Why build a life when wind can so easily knock it down? Others fell into a deep depression. Others became violently angry. Nearly everyone, even those who immediately went back to work, felt the tension.

     Like many displaced Katrina victims, who often had to squeeze over a dozen people into a few rooms, Michelle and her family had been living with relatives. One evening, Michelle got into a heated argument with two of her cousins. Emotions led to words; the words led to violence. Michelle’s own relatives stabbed her multiple times. According to the news, she died right there on the ground. She never had a chance.

     As I listened to the story and remembered the girl who had brought me a Christmas present, I had to remind myself to breathe.

 

     We bought a sympathy card for Michelle’s mother, but I never sent it. In spite of being a writer and a teacher of writing and literature, I couldn’t think of anything to say. Everything sounded trite and hollow. Was I supposed to tell her that I only knew her daughter long enough to turn down a thoughtful gift? Could I express hope in the justice system when the killers shared her blood? After Katrina and her daughter’s murder, should I appeal to her faith in a God she might not even believe in anymore? And somehow, “I’m sorry for your loss” seemed inadequate.

     Besides, there was too much to be sorry for: Michelle’s death, my failure to remember her better, the levees and the politicians who always deprioritized them, the citizens who never demanded more, the federal government’s creeping response, Mike Brown, the laughably-named FEMA. For what, or whom, should I apologize?

     I’ll always believe that Michelle’s was a hurricane-related death. The storm destroyed her home and dropped her in the maw of familial and economic tensions exacerbated by uncertain futures and cramped living quarters. When she, and far too many others, needed strong, quick solutions, too many agencies pointed their fingers at someone else. “Let them take care of this; it isn’t our job.” Too many private citizens failed to look past the ends of their own noses.

     I hope we can all see farther now.

What Is This, Exactly? #fiction #writing

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A seven-year-old piece I found in my files–flash fiction or journal entry? You decide.

February 15, 2004

     Quentin Compson once broke the face of his watch and ripped the hands from its face in an effort to stop time, but he could still hear the minute ticking of the second hand as it spoke away the hours even in its own absence. In this house there are six clocks and two watches and three VCRs and three computers and one microwave. They all tell time. Sometimes this fact is too much to bear.