I've procrastinated long enough. I told myself that I wanted to grow distanced from England before wrapping up my travel posts with one last glazy shebang.
I told people that was the plan. One big pleasant red bow to slap on this package of stories and travel narratives and then we're done here. We're shipping out. We're moving on.
But today, at the Center for Talented Youth's Scavenger Hunt, I became the Joker. White face paint, streaky scarlet lips, a purple jacket, and a salty admiration for the legendary Ledgerian interpretation of the Batman villain and BAM: tiers of teary half-horrified half-enchanted brilliant young students who also felt the air snap as the normal rules twisted, bent, warped. I'm no actor. But for the first time, I lost myself in a character. The Joker, ever his anarchist self, inverted the rules. And all I could think about was how I had to write about it.
So I've decided to resume this blog. A quick blog history: My original intent was to create a record of my trip to England, something just for myself and whoever else stumbles across. I fully intended to set this thing aside. I have other projects to pursue, other words to write, and at the moment, a hall full of gifted children building particle accelerators in their rooms.
But giving up this blog for a month or so was like living in a void. I started having less fun. I started taking less risks. I conceived of myself in a dingy lost at sea, the scent of my direction long lost and the adventures I'd logged since returning from England melting through my fingers like my last chocolate bars. I needed to write. I needed to write so I could be accepting of tragic twists. This blog was, is, and will continue to be a magic machine that turns lemons into lemonade sans sugar-coating. And you don't even have to pay a quarter to some sticky-fingered kids.
Why did I need to write? Why did it feel as if I'd lost not a space to rant and preach, but a friend? I'm not sure. But I think I part of the answer is the interpretation writing affords. (Interpret that.). The blog brought out this devil/angel quality of interpretation in many varieties -- especially streaks of introspection and skepticism. It proposed and I hope will continue to propose, with blackhole-inducing irony (you've been warned), the challenge to get the spotlight off of myself by focusing it so intensely on myself that I reveal where the machinery of moi exists, responds, clashes, and fuses with my environment.
Being the Joker was all of the above.
Exhibit A:
Unruly and Uncooperative Kid: "I'm Batman. You stink at being Joker."
Joker: "You're the Batman, eh? You look more like a Sit-Behind-The-Tree-Man to me. Go to that palm tree and sit behind it and stop being so serious, Sit-Behind-The-Tree Man."
The kids loved it. When they ran the obstacle course in the oversized shorts (i.e. "Batman's" shorts used to find out which of them was Batman), I -- or the Joker -- would kick the cone they were trying to reach. The Joker would approach them and force myself to laugh wildly until I actually was laughing wildly. The Joker would send the unruly ones to get me a glass of water, then spit it through my teeth as they ran through the obstacle course. The Joker quoted my favorite lines from the movie -- the Scar Story, the "why so serious?", all in that nasally pitch that masks a bright lust for anarchy, like magma cracking through the crust.
When I was done, I was sapped. My throat burned. My head pounded from wearing so much make-up in the sun. Absolutely drained, but absolutely exhilirated.
By being someone else, even for a moment or two, you reconnect with who you are. There are lots of ways to be someone else. One is to dress up as the Joker and lose yourself in the role. Another is to try lots of new things that force you into new shoes. Another is to travel. And another is to maintain a journal, blog, whatever.
Because let's be honest: no matter how detailed we are, no matter how scrupulously honest we aspire to be, writing about ourselves is about spinning some yarn to weave another identity as we step into it. These words that we write, these stories we tell, they are certainly not us, but they do give us a little more slack to climb a little bit higher on the endless journey to become us. Identity is a constantly recrafted thing, just like every couple months we are at the cellular level completely new people. We are forever reinventing ourselves, or at least should be. When we stop is when our lives become stagnant and dull.
None of that is pretty. Must we be someone else to be ourselves? Must we pretend, or, using the other L-word, lie, to gain some truth about ourselves? Honesty is the best policy, after all. We all know this. We like to think of ourselves not as beings but as a being. There's only one (your name here). We are individuals. One, uno, une. So to claim each tap of the keyboard is more play-acting with another identity than reliving, more dialogic theatre than documentary, seems ludicrous. A joke, maybe.
All I can do is speak from the trenches of my blogless existence. I felt I had lost a friend. And friends, even when made of suspicious things like stories, are special because they can dole it to you straight. They let you know who you really are because around them, you can be that person -- or, more accurately, those persons.
So I welcome this friend back with open arms and a sly smile. I predict many more adventures together, as we probe the world for its sweetness.
And we'll take with us a new lesson -- one straight from the mouth of the Joker: Sometimes, we should all ask ourselves, "Why so serious?"
No comments:
Post a Comment