EPISODE 232: OBSERVATION DECKS

POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW

One of the strangest thing about living in New York was the way the city could so completely absorb major events taking place basically next door. Our offices were located at 56th St. and 6th Avenue; the Saint Patrick’s Day parade was just one block away on 5th Avenue. From our offices you could hear shouting, but in a distantly ghostly, “Is Hell a couple miles over and nobody told me, or is that just New Jersey?” kind of way.

There’s just so much going on all the time everywhere in New York, and the buildings (at least in Midtown) are so high, it’s difficult for anything to stand out beyond the block or two where it’s happening.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot this week as Harvey has gone through Houston. As I’m writing you the weather here in Los Angeles is gorgeous; a little hot for my liking but otherwise your standard “another day in paradise” fare.

Meanwhile many people in the same country have spent the last week been hiding on roofs or in attics, desperately calling 911 and waiting for police, good Samaritans (or neighbor kids) to come rescue them.

These rescuers (the boys in back) are apparently around 15.

The New Yorker has a great piece filled with details of people’s experiences; earlier this week the New York Times offered this first hand account from a reporter struggling to figure out what to do as the waters rose in his house. And if you want a glimpse into the craziest of the crazy, the Atlantic posted this insane story about the enormous floating colonies of fire ants Houston now has to contend with.

(For those playing along at home, in the last week we’ve had a total eclipse, catastrophic flooding of our fourth largest city and plagues of fire ants. I don’t know who it is we refuse to set free, but it might be time to figure that out and let them go. Jeez Louise.)

But the fact that life goes on here in Los Angeles while the fourth biggest city in the United States just underwater seems surreal, and kind of wrong. It shouldn’t be so easy to just go on with everything, should it? But just like New York, the U.S. is so big and varied, in all but the very rarest of circumstances it absorbs all but the most enormous of events.

Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure people in Chicago or Biloxi worked on 9/11. And probably people in the Bronx, too.

++

A different kind of observation...

Early on the morning of August 22nd 1992, I found myself jogging down St. Paul, Minnesota’s stately Summit Avenue. Supposedly I was "Jim McDermott, post-college Saturday morning exerciser" – that was the performance I was going for. But in fact I was doing reconnaissance on the condition of my very near future.

Later that day, I would be moving into the Jesuit Novitiate of the North American Martyrs at 1035 Summit Avenue, directly across from the Governor’s Mansion, where Jesse “The Body” Ventura would in the not too distant future be making a case for fake-reality television stars in government. (The government had a four billion dollar surplus when Ventura was elected in 1998; when he left in 2002, they were 4.5 billion in debt.)

"NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL BALANCING THE BUDGET!"

A two-story, unassuming former convent, greyish-green and receded a bit from the street, the Novitiate [pronunciation: No-Vish-Shit (forgive me)] was not at all the kind of property you might imagine across from an honest to goodness mansion. Nor did it have the 1950s-era mental institution vibe people still tend to imagine when you use the word “seminary”. It was completely unassuming, the kind of place your mind would erase to leave room for more interesting things as soon as you saw it.

Though I was about to spend two years of my life at the Wisconsin Province Novitiate, I had never visited before, in fact if truth be told I had worked hard to avoid ever even being invited to visit. It all seemed way too strange, the dwellers within almost certainly freaks and oddballs.

You see, even though I grew up in the faith -- my Mom in the choir and communion minister to the sick, us at Mass absolutely every week and to CCD on Tuesday nights –we were basically what I would call (with gratitude) Saturday Night Catholics. That is, we weren’t professionals in the faith; when I was growing up I couldn’t have told you who the bishop was, or much about the Pope. We didn’t talk church politics around the dinner table, though both my parents went to Catholic school and Christmas Eve at my grandmother’s house the church was definitely a main topic of conversation. (One of my aunts spent her life teaching and administrating in Catholic schools; another made her career doing social work with the elderly. My dad’s mother, too, worked as a Catholic school teacher for a time.)

But no, for us being Catholic as a family generally was about showing up each Saturday night, hoping for (but not necessarily expecting) something solid from the priest, receiving communion and then heading out before the final blessing.

(In the very early days of the Novitiate I can remember classmates criticizing Catholics who left early. It was the first I’d ever heard this practice was a problem. And all I could think was, you try herding four kids at 6:30 on a Saturday night. Once they’re up and moving, both from a physics angle and a “peace in our lives” standpoint it’s a heck of a lot easier to keep kids moving out the door than to try and get them to stop and sit again.)

(I love thinking about liturgy, and I’m now a big believer in the value of the final blessing. But you know, as I’m writing this I’m realizing it is actually kind of strange to ask people to stand up and walk as though they’re leaving church, only to instead make them sit down again, especially when they’re going to be leaving for good in just a couple minutes. I don't think Mass should end with Communion, but it does make you wonder if there isn't some better way to do these things.)

I also like to preach about gravity and what force=(mass x acceleration) tells us about God's love.

No one in my family thought I’d be a priest (oh honey, trust me), nor did anyone ever suggest it; when I told college friends I thought I might want to enter the normal response was “Um, have you met you?” And the truth was, as much as I did want to enter, I had few categories by which to understand “Jesuit novice” or “Jesuit Novitiate.” While I had been an R.A. in an all-male residence hall, and that definitely gave me something to go on, really the closest I came was probably the Catholic youth group I was forced to be a part of every single semester of every single year of my entire high school life (not that I am still bitter about that, not at all).

(Honestly, I probably shouldn’t be, because the husband and wife who ran it were very nice and easy going, and the others in my group were fine; I just didn’t like being forced to do it.)

(It’s interesting, while I had no real sense of a spiritual life in high school or even belief that such a thing was a thing that was a thing, deep down I think I knew that your spiritual stuff was about as personal as your stuff gets, and as such it absolutely is not the kind of stuff you should be forced to talk about, PARENTS.)

(Not that we were forced to talk about anything, mind you. But we could have been and I'm not over-reacting it's totally legit here look at this meme.)

(Funny story: the group was called “Branches”. While I was a member they had a contest to come up with a slogan, which I somehow won. My take: “I’m Rooted to Branches.”

Which, yes, was ridiculous, not only because I myself was the opposite of rooted to Branches but because barring some sort of post-apocalyptic mutation that sentence is a physical impossibility.

Or at the very least enormously nightmare scary.

I remember pointing this out to my mother after I won, as part of yet another argument that this whole youth group (aka Catholic religion) thing was nonsense and not good for a growing boy. I don’t remember her exact response, but I’m pretty sure it boiled down "Details, details. It's the thought that counts.”

Meanwhile my grandmother was more like “Kid, somebody just gave you $50. Take the money and run.")

In any case, even if I was about to join a religious order for what I expected to be the rest of my life, and was happy to be doing so – all of which is a whole other story -- the only image I had of what that world looked like, deep in my unconscious, was strange too-happy people who felt okay being forced to share too much and had no problem with radioactive mutant trees that iare clearly silently screaming because isn't Jesus everything anyway? And I didn’t want to visit that loony bin of joy ahead of time because I didn’t want those fears confirmed.

So instead I snuck out of my parents’ hotel room early on the day I was going to enter, and ran by that old convent on the corner across from stately Wayne Manor where the governor was almost certainly pile-driving his staff while shouting about public policy in growly “Come at me, bro” catchphrases. (I know he wasn’t even governor yet, but that’s how I remember it.)

Although having never visited there was no one who would know what I looked like, still I was afraid I might be noticed and branded some kind of weirdo pre-admittance Jesuit-stalker. So I kept my head down as I got close to the building, just throwing little furtive glances while fighting my mind’s programming to immediately erase what I'd seen.

And I saw...nothing. There were no people praying outside on crushed glass before crucifixes, piped-out organ music or macrame Jesus banners (which by the way are a terrible idea for a humid climate). It was just an ordinary looking house-ish building.

Then I had passed it and that was that and it hadn’t amounted to much of anything. But somehow I was relieved. Normal was nothing to be scared of. I could do normal. Normal was good.

++

All of that happened twenty five years ago last week. I hadn’t given the anniversary a single thought beforehand, in fact I have been fighting any impulse to treat the moment seriously. The year I was ordained a priest I watched a Jesuit turn his twenty-fifth anniversary of priesthood into a huge "There she is, Miss America" me-fest and found it all kind of stomach-turning. I didn’t come here so others would throw me parties. (Although I do accept prayers, iTunes cards and anything pop culture.)

My brother recently sent me this glow in the dark Darth Maul head and now I know what love looks like.

It even changes color.

The only thing that Darth Maul fears...BLUE DARTH MAUL.

So anyway, I'm altogether not doing the anniversary thing, when one of my classmates – there are three of us left from a class that started with eleven; so basically I am two away from winning this thing – wrote to wish me a happy anniversary. And at the very moment I got his note I was in a very stupid argument on social media that was not even an idea in anyone’s mind in 1992 about something supposedly sacrilegious happening on a television show that I could also never have imagined twenty five years ago being connected to.

And it just hit me, this life of mine is nothing like I imagined it as I did my pre-insertion surveillance on the Jesuits of Minnesota and Jesse "the Body" Ventura's mansion wrestling studio twenty five years ago.

And it’s also in pretty much every way far better than I had imagined (if also far stranger and maybe harder).

It made me think maybe that’s what anniversaries are really for. Not for "Oh You Shouldn't Have" parties but perspective. Like standing on a spaceship’s observation deck and getting to see from high above the farm your long-dead parents sent you to live at just before your planet blew up because people wouldn't stop arguing about climate change. And now you're an orphan and debris from your planet actually make you sick (because while they were arguing man did they pollute that baby), but your adopted parents are pretty nice and also you can fly.

++

On the same day as my anniversary, my oldest nephew, who also did not exist even in theory when I entered the Jesuits and now along with his siblings and cousins puts me to shame with their talent, poise and generosity (which when you think of it is really inconsiderate, don't they know they're in my story?), flew to Boston to begin college. He is enormously excited and has amazing hopes and dreams.

And, if my experience of the last twenty five years is any indication, he also has absolutely no idea what he’s in for. Which is terrifying and also maybe at least some of the time the greatest gift.

Although flying would also be pretty cool. Or a Baby Groot that talks and dances and grows.

Which I guess when you think about it is really just me saying
it would be cool to hang with the real Baby Groot.

++

Lastly, speaking of the start of school....

When I went to college there was a week dedicated to freshman orientation before school actually started. Which meant that the campus came alive slowly, like flowers before a rising sun. (Or more aptly, like hung over students waking up.)

At Loyola Marymount where I live, all of that orientation happens over the summer. In August Freshmen arrive for school the Friday before classes (and upperclassmen over the weekend). And then BAM, Monday, it's on. It’s like in your sleep your body shifted into a parallel universe which looks just like our own, except it’s filled with students who are always going to class (or to not-class).

That's college. That's how it goes. But as I drove through campus on Monday, watching students stroll around like they never left, it just seemed a little surreal.

I guess on one level that's the whole tipping point idea: things keep seeming the same and the same and the same, while underneath small things are happening, shifting. And then one day all those little changes finally add up and BOOM there’s this dramatic visible change. Yesterday the campus was empty. Today it's full. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

But I think I prefer imagining it like electrons, how they’re somehow always in two places at once (because quantum physics is crazy and God is a lot more interesting than we usually give him credit for). Maybe it’s neither either/or, summer or school year, but like somehow summer and school are always both here.

I have a feeling when I step back I’m going to realize what I was really trying to say here was I think electrons are pretty great.

++ LINKS/ATTACKS ON SKIN-CRAWLING DRINK ITEMS++

Speaking of anniversaries, today is the 20th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death. I honestly didn't know much about her during her life, but over the last few days I've watched documentaries on HBO and Netflix, in which no one sheds a single tear, including her sons, because Brits know how to carry on, but I do not and so I shed all the tears for them anyway.

Netflix’s documentary (which comes from the BBC) is about the events of the seven days between her death and her funeral. Honestly, there are a lot of people interviewed I wanted to shake hard, particularly the journalists and the members of government who speak about the entire sequence of events like it was a really exciting roller coaster ride.

But it still has some pretty fine moments; it especially helped explain why the Queen wasn’t more out in front right away. (Basically, everyone in the family was completely focused on those boys. Someone said it was the first time in her entire reign that the Queen put her family before her country.)

HBO's piece is mostly interviews with William and Harry and other close family. It's a great glimpse of both her and them. From what I understand the only time they've done a TV interview like this. Highly recommend.

If you like thinkpieces, the Guardian has this one on the myth of Princess Diana from the author Hilary Mantel. And I made an attempt to have something worthwhile to say about what our response to her tells us about ourselves. I swear I never mention “Candle in the Wind”, though if I’m being honest it is going through my head right now.

I also did a piece on Game of Thrones. This whole season has really attacked the basic concept of the show, everyone scheming to get the Iron Throne. It’s a crazy bold move from a story point of view (or a disaster, depending on where you stand), but it also seems awfully relevant as we’ve watched catastrophe unfold in Houston.

We can bicker about so many things, take sides, try “to win” at whatever we’re fighting about. But underneath there’s a whole other thing coming that we can only deal with together. Or as Jon Snow says, "We are all on the same side."

Showtime’s Twin Peaks revival also concludes this weekend. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but it's not Pumpkin Spice either.

Step off, Pumpkin Spice. I know you're coming and I don't like it one bit.

Much prefer.

The new show, while following up on the story from Twin Peaks proper, has also unexpectedly tried to talk about life right now, the anxiety people feel.

If you’re interested, there’s this wild scene of a road rage woman stuck in a traffic jam, or this crazy moment from last week where two assassins get into an argument with some random home owner and things go very pear-shaped; or the slow-burn reaction of a college aged woman who gets thrown out of booth at a bar. (I don’t know why, because that last scene is not violent in any way, but it ends up being one of the most disturbing scenes in the whole series. And it’s a character we’ve never seen before; just some random person.)

Or if none of that interests you, enjoy this very funny true story about the Lone Ranger that recently-deceased actor Jay Thomas used to tell on Dave Letterman every year.

Keep your chin up and your heart open. It's not great out there, not at all, but you've got something important to add to this crazy stew, and you're not alone.

I've just discovered these. Prepare to see more of them.