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Why Life is Multidimensional and Labels Aren’t
There’s something about... being alive. Something about that realization that you’ve woken up to a new day that just isn’t the same as the old day no matter how sweet the old day was. Just when you think it can’t get any better, your fingertips turn stones into chocolates and roses into pre-dawn whispers.
An interviewer said, “Give me a fun fact.”
I shrugged: “I have four tattoos.”
“Okay.” He jots that down. He’s not impressed. Not fun enough, I guess.
I sip my Coke Zero with Cherry. “Wings, a cross, fish skeleton and a strawberry,” I add.
He says, “Cool.” but doesn’t look up. He’s twenty-two. Gamer boy with long hair and thick eyebrows over ice-blue eyes. He’s wearing a shirt that reads, “The Bronze” It makes me smile.
I squint my eyes. I lean back in my chair. “I’m a New Testament Christian. Fight-clubber. Raver. Non-smoking, non-drinking, non-swearing gamer chick. Eight piercings.”
He looks up with a snap that’s almost audible. He squints *his* eyes. Gaze darts. “Seven.” He has counted the studs and d6 earrings in my ears.
“Hm...” I grin... unbuttoning my collar, smoothing out the cotton. My hand falls to rest on my Kawasaki belt buckle. “Eight.”
And he writes a *very* good review. Starts with “There’s something about Eliza Jean...”
Yeah, *something*... who knows what it is, but there’s somethin’ ;)
I am sitting in a Starbucks in Los Angeles thinking about a nightclub in Kosovo, then wondering about the back-room deals manufactured in another club in Moscow shaped by the needs of the working man and paid for with the make-believe of five nineteen year old “dancers” who I have come to care about.
“Because the Night” shakes my eardrums, earbuds in. I rewrite some of the lyrics, as I’m apt to do, and I smirk. Christ has cast me in a shape and made me with a voice that speaks primarily to the generation just after mine (or so reviewers claim). The New Boomers, more plentiful than the first Boomers, and not so much the same as the old day, or the old boss. And yet here I am, bobbing my head to the music of their parents. Born in the late ‘80s and ‘90s, they are more eclectic than I often give them credit for but I never underestimate their influence – “prime demographic” isn’t just about marketing dollars. Prime, if one looks at the Latin root, means: Mind-blowing
“On my knees, baby, tell me what can I do?
I had a dream, for a moment I believed it was true.
I’d have given anything
just to be there with you.”
I’m studying my pumpkin scone and steaming hot cup’a when I realize that any industry that makes it smexy for adults to drink hot beverages out of cups with sippy lids is destined to succeed. There is no stopping the caffeine trade; The delivery devices are just way too back-to-the-womb, abdicate RL, might as well roll nude in mash potatoes, mac ‘n’ meatloaf, comfort-food welcoming. Every adult in this Starbucks looks stoned and really, really happy. Several look so severely buzzed that they might explode into dark roasted beans.
I have an insane desire to stand on the table and kiss you. (Don’t worry. The cup’a is decaf ;) Though my hearty laugh is absolutely infectious.)
I finish my drink, snarf my scone and grab my helmet from under the table. There’s a moment when my cheeks burn (people watching) then helmet is on and I’m out into the anonymous night.
“I think of flying down into a sea of pens and feathers
and all other instruments of faith and sex and God.
Lay me down in a field of flame and heather.
Render up my body into the burning heart of God.”
We’re talking about the rest of the world. Outside of our friendship -- which is comprised of stolen grins spread across twelve hundred miles and – shh! – secrets that only us and Christ share – the rest of the world seems slightly less satisfying than we learned about in health class. What is *with* the rest of the world? *smirk* Are they... out of synch? Bad dub? How come everything makes sense to us? Politics, love, death, faith, music, sex, resistance, revolution, sickness... and yet everyone else swallows intolerance and homogeny poppers with chasers of lazy ignorance. What is *up* wit’ that, Wings?! I mean... *geez* ... *wicked grin* ;)
“It got better,” you tell me. “It evened out.”
I raise one eyebrow. Yeah, often hell does ease up occasionally. Easy to get better when it was the worst it could be. “At least it didn’t rain toads or locust,” I laugh.
“There may have been locust...” you admit.
I chuckle but I hope you’re claiming poetic license... goodness knows, I certainly do.
I’ve come to think of reality as layers of strata. They build over time, sometimes laying down for me, allowing me easy access to run my palms over open planes, other times, folding and twisting like temptress curves, escaping easy study. I live here (You Are Here <--) and it is just one strata in the stripes of this time. My strata has everything laid bare on her surface. She’s tattooed and pierced and delightfully, wickedly donned in leather and silk or sometimes buck naked. She wears expensive wild rose perfume and calls everyone “babe” but only “baby” for one... or two ;) From this strata, I can see Christ as a ripped, handsome warrior. His handprint is here over my heart. His signature is all over the fine science of this only green world. If I open my own eyes (instead of man’s book... or Book) He shows me everything I need.
My strata is, magically, four dimensions of sparkly fun. Oh look! A liopleurodon.
“I dream of rain. I dream of God.
I dream of love as time runs through my hand.
I dream of fire. I wake in vein.
I realize that nothing is as it seems.”
You may know exactly what I’m talking about. (Or you may have moved on to Paris Hilton’s blog.) It’s the idea that what makes perfect sense to you and me, seems completely out of reach from the general smarmy masses. Why is it that logic escapes your parents? Why is it that Mr. Suit-and-Tie stares at your Star Trek shirt and scoffs? Why is it that “geek” and “nerd” and “grrl” are distasteful words in the bottom-half of our country? How come “Christian” is synonymous with “bigot”? Where is the big, juicy manifesto of preconceptions (prejudice = to pre-judge like an idiot) that got handed out but you and I didn’t get it and wouldn’t have read it even if had?
I crack open a paperback of...
Jeannette Winterson
Richard Calder
Joanna Russ
Charles Stross
Camille Paglia
Neal Stephenson
...and I wonder if I put them all into my backpack at once if they’d tear each other apart like opposing-type Digimon or perhaps spontaneously combust like when you murmured, “Guide my hands, baby,” and I fell off my motorcycle and almost hit a mailbox.
This dimension, this layer of strata that we exist on, where it’s intelligent to discuss game theory and to play games, to be a parent, to lose yourself to music, to pray on your knees, to exchange vows in private, to cruise the school librarian, to drink chai and blush... this is a dimension where divinity is living poetry and all men are not just created equally but treated equally. This is a dimension where math is sexy:
Me: See, here's the deal... math is naturally very sexy. Because math is one of the ways that God gave us to celebrate our bodies and our minds. Everything I ever needed to know about making love I learned from math: Always balance a complex, delicate equation equally on both sides before continuing; Take your time and always show your work; If things get tricky, talk yourself through it; Every theorem can be tested with enough attention to detail and gentle persistence; Time is relative to the action and reaction of forces. I think you and I may be able to skip addition and subtraction... maybe even skip multiplication and division... and jump right into algebra and geometry and physics. Something about testing equal forces, balancing equations and measuring open planes just really appeals to me.
You: If I’d had you as my math teacher I would have taken AP.
Me: If you’d had me as your math teacher this would be illegal.
And I can’t help but wonder if math is this cool on any other strata or if everyone else is just humming to “Whiskey for My Men, Beer for My Horses” and making “Yay Yay for McCain” banners from rolls of paper towels.
“This circus is falling down on its knees...”
On my strata, scripture is: "And behold, my love, my now and forever, that when I step into your embrace beneath the new dawn sky, that I am stepping into the arms of our Christ, for together our two bodies celebrate His life, His death, His resurrection and eternity. For not in creation but in passion did Christ walk this Earth and bide His time. Bide time with me, my love. Now and forever."
“May angels lead you in...”
On my strata, scripture is: "As the sun sets and rises, as the rose opens and closes by His unseen hand, so is the power of His presence in our lives. Unseen but always visible. As believers we must always remember that proof is the opposite of faith and faith is the eyes open as much as the heart open. For as in nature, so in Christ. For as moves the universe, so moves the soul. Mirrors of fractal base elements. The foundations of space, time, life, divinity. And there is nothing more natural than my love for you.”
“Poor is the man
whose pleasure depends
on the permission of another.”
And on my strata it all boils down to: Life is multidimensional, shades of fiduciary colors, and easy classification, rout definitions and simple black-and-white labels are not.
You say to me, “Am I corrupted?”
I look aghast and brush your hair off your barcode tattoo. “Corruption is the manipulation of God's desires to fit man's limited mind. Passion and defiance are pages out of Christ’s book, not man's.”
You are not a label. You are Christ’s own. Period. He doesn’t need to shove us into cubby holes because He is all knowing and all seeing and pretty much freaking awesome in every possible way and so He can grasp the big stuff and the tiny stuff. And the unknown or “nonstandard” stuff doesn’t phase Him because, you know, He’s *Christ.* But sometimes society and sometimes parents get scared and they like labels because then they can Google how to treat the label (like dry clean only) and be loving and supportive or tough lovey or just tough or whatever. They try very hard but, in the end, they are clueless. A little less clueless than their parents before them but still eons more clueless than our heavenly father. Christ knows that you, of course, are you. Just you. Specifically, contextually, you. A brilliant creature. A startling mind. A person who has claimed their sexuality as their own not to be controlled or dictated by tradition which is, by definition, a dying thing. You desire who you desire in life, from a lover, whatever. You do not say, “Oh no, no. *She* has breasts!” or “Not *him,* his butt is just too small.” You do not say, “I can’t read *that*!” or “I can’t think about *this!*” What matters to you is the honest truth that lies in your genes, the paths that time and Christ have laid for you. He made our bodies and hearts and minds very delicately. Very complex. He didn’t say: “I have made you this way... now put yourself in check!” *snap* Your only label: You. All other labels are politics.
And all those other strata? The one and two dimensional ones? The strata populated by masses of mob mentality revelers who swarm to single-minded preachers or politicos? Those strata may be out of synch with ours, but they are valid to the overall presentation of our era. Our time period, our snapshot of universal history, is made from all of these layers of contrasting, comparing, opposing stripes. And amen, PTL for that!
Winterson writes that the strata of time is like the pages of a book. The pages of all our books, written and bound and touched and read. All together they tell a story of our place in space and time. They whisper our existence.
That being the case, we must admit that even blind ignorance adds to the grander picture. Our immortal record, as captured in these layers, would not be complete without a strata or two of one dimensional idiots wearing wide ties.
Hey, isn’t diversity great?
;)
EJ
