we be ogres

Sometimes I feel like an ogre who has just noticed he stinks. All the other ogres stink, too, but this ogre realizes that among all putrescent examples of ogerity, he is the most noxious. While most ogres actually see this as a sort of a virtue, this ogre begins to cringe at his truly awful smell, and to try all manner of methods to kill the swill. He sleeps in rosebeds. He eats scented candles. He gives orations to packed halls on the Problem of Stink. In the end, though, it’s like spraying perfume on a fresh turd – it just makes a nasty smell sicker.

Despite my Eau de Ogre, though, I keep getting onto this website and writing about the problems in this world. I blather and blather, slathering the internet with the glop off the top of my head – and am unlikely to stop. In fact, my purpose in getting on here is to spout off once more about what the heck is up. So without further ado…

THINGS YOU / I / WE NEED TO CHANGE:

1. We need to re-examine the real and imagined delineation between the concepts “I need” and “I want”.

Having done this, we need to re-evaluate how much money (that hallmark of our temporal-obsessedness) we are spending on each.

Because we are all native English speakers on the internet here, we probably spend a lot more on “I want” than we are willing to be aware of. We need to evaluate, in light of this, the sickening global reality that “we want and we get” while “other people need and they die”.

If we happen to be Christian (or even if we don’t), we ought to evaluate what our answer is to a Christ who is perpetually asking us why we saw this manifestation of his person in the faces of the world’s underprivileged majority and turned our backs for the more interesting/self-gratifying realm of “I want”.

We need to change – not towards legalism and a pinching of pennies, but towards a glorious freedom that allows us to give ridiculously until our pain becomes a glowing pleasure. We need to stop serving the relentless, unsatisfying master of our insatiable whims and start serving the truth.

2. Rather than just giving people money (give a man a fish…) we need to give them ourselves (teach a man to fish…), or at least to give our active support to people who will actively become involved in changing the patterns that have created the problems.

We need to become aware, and then to act wisely and responsibly - beyond some palliative minor wallet-opening - to create real, lasting change.

3. We need to re-examine the way we live in relation to other people. We need to question our culture of unchecked individualism and discover ways to create more and better community. We need to stop staring, in groups and alone, at glowing boxes and start listening to each other’s stories.

Maybe we need to move from the suburbs to the city. Or maybe we just need to re-calibrate our typical suburban lifestyles to become more involved with other people. One thing is certain, though - the rampant individualism that sends us crying into the arms of expensive therapists is just not cutting it. We need each other.

4. We need to take responsibility for the way we are pissing all over the earth, metaphorically speaking. We need to own up to the fact that as the most consumptive, wasteful people group in the history of the planet, we are wrecking our most precious gift for the titillations of a moment.

We need to have compost heaps and to recycle and to make a game of minimizing how much goes into the round green roadside receptacles of greed.

We need to vote with our wallets and take economic responsibility for our ecological reality. We need to pay more for products wrapped in recyclable materials and products made in an ecologically responsible manner. I know it sounds crazy, but we need to stop buying so much stuff we do not need, so the amount of material ending up in landfills and the amount of energy and pollution required to shape those materials will be diminished.

5. We need to stop writing this stuff on websites and start doing it. Seriously.

The problem with any utopian vision is that it is just that. “Utopia” literally means “no place”, so the word implies its own impossibility. We pretend to yearn and strive for an ideal, but in an ideal world, every individual’s mind/heart/soul would be in perfect alignment with the Truth. There would be no need for reform because any necessary or useful reformation would occur spontaneously, out of the Truth-derivative essence of the compendium of humanity. This will not happen.

In light of that, why write or paint or think anything? Why struggle for change in myself and/or others? Is it vanity, vanity, vanity to think that I – a slug among men - should presume to prescribe for the ills of my kind? Indubitably, yes.

And yet, I remember again that glorious scene in The Lord of the Rings when that King dude says, “What can men do against such evil?” and that other king-to-be dude replies, “They can ride out to meet it.” And who knows? Maybe some Gandalfian Deus-ex-Machina will come charging down the hill with a staff of light to make the bad, stinky ogre-men go away.

That, I suppose, is the hope that this faith is all about. In the meantime…

loopy-doo

If you haven’t bought any of my paintings yet, maybe you should consider it. Why, You ask? Well, I’ll tell you (and this is the insider scoop).

I might being going crazy. Not only will this possibly slow down the production-line paintings I have been cranking out at a rate of one every two months, decreasing the availability of my work (supply and demand, baby!) it is also likely to seriously increase their value. Think of Mozart and Van Gogh – would they be half as famous if they’d been half as batty? I think not.

Before you run out and throw all your money away on something as frivolous as my art, I guess I ought to back my assertion up with some evidence.

People’s Exhibit A: A few nights ago, while brushing my teeth, I started crying for no apparent reason. Sob, sob, teary, teary – the whole bit. I wasn’t pregnant, there was nothing particularly wrong in my life, but there I was: brush, blubber, brush, blubber, blubb. That is some weird-butt monkey poo.

People’s Exhibit B: Two days ago I was driving to pick my wife up in Abbotsford. I got to the light before the onramp for the highway and BAM, totally blanked out. Not only did I not know where I was going and what I was doing, I also had no idea where I was. I honestly had no idea if I was in Vancouver, Surrey, White Rock, or Albuquerque, New Mexico. I didn’t know whether to go left, right, forward or back, so I just sat there at that green light, panicking. And this was no isolated event! More and more often, I find myself having difficulty placing myself in space and time. I also get mixed up about whether something happened a long time ago, yesterday, or in a dream.

I know what you are thinking – he is not crazy, he has just got that whatchamacallit old-timer’s disease – and I would tend to agree with you. If I was, say, fifty. But I am only twenty-seven. No, my friends, this is no senile dementia, this is straight up dementia of the first order.

So here is your golden moment. Invest now! Last chance! Etcetera, etcetera!!

yes, we have no pictures today

Jon, the creator and sustainer of this pinpoint in webular space, is a very busy man. As such, he has been unable to get this thing fixed so I can once again add pictures to my posts. This makes for some embarassment, since this is ostensibly a site dedicated to my artwork. Do I complain, though? Of course not, I make lemonade.

So instead of adding a picture, I am going to describe for you an image for which I wish I had had a camera ready. Then you can imagine it, and it will be almost like there is nothing at all wrong with this site.

I have a dog. He's a quarter border collie, but the only sign that he's not completely black lab is his tail, which is feathered and curls up over his rump in pompadourical panache. He has a big, black, stupid-looking lab face, a bark that rattles your teeth, and the nicest disposition you could want in a dog. His name is Edgar Phillpots Barkey the First.

Edgar likes to follow me around, because I'm his boyee. So when I'm out in the barn watering the chickens and shovelling horse turds, he is padding along right behind: nosing things, eating anything fecal, and trying to convince the horses they should play with him. The horses don't mind, and only occasionally have a go at playfully trotting after Edgar, trying to step on his head.

The chickens mostly ignore him, but if he comes bounding through the barn at full gallop (as he likes to do at random times, and for no apparent reason), the two roosters who live in the hallway because they're too cantankerous to get along with their brethren and sistren act offended by giving a bit of a hop-squawk. The most indignant of these two roosters is Chauntecleer. He's a beautiful bird, black and yellow and red, with a few pompous plumes poking out of his hind end - very dignified and pretentious.

So here is the image: today, as I was pitchforking out the gunky hay from a chicken pen, I happened to look down and see Chantecleer strutting his way in, looking for hens to violate. The panoply of pretty little chicks that bobbed around before his beady little eyes appeared to have distracted him, because he was not even flinching at Edgar, who chose that moment to stick his naughty little nose directly into the delectable stench factory that was Chauntecleer's butthole.

Can you picture it - the black nose of the dark, hunched dog disappearing into the flouncing tail feathers of the pompous looking rooster with his pink comb flopped dashingly to one side like some dilettantish beret?

Such a moment. Hopefully you went there with me. If, however, your imagination is a bit rusty from a few too many television shows, I suppose you can pop on over to a collection of pictures I've put on the internet of the trip I took to Peru back at the end of 2005. It goes from our trip to Huaraz to our time in the Jungle, including nature, Pucallpa, and what remains of the missionary center where I grew up.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/61634777@N00/

Oh, and there are a lot of pictures there of Peruvian people that I have posted without getting any kind of model release form (hey, national geographic does it). Please respect their dignity and value as individuals by not doing anything you shouldn't with the pics.

The Beast

One thing bank accounts love to do is dwindle. Mine, for example, seems to have a very dwindlish tendancy. Sometimes, I just lie on my back and listen to it dwindling.

Hopefully, you got a chance to read about "The Good Homosexual", about which I have been very passionate for the past little while. But no more! See, while my bank account continues to downsize, my stomach and the stomachs of my wife, dog and cat do not.

Ergo, I have decided to once more brave that Balroguesque beast, Darth Ebay, to try to de-dwindle my dough. On January 17th at 7:00 p.m., my "Faith" is going up for sale. It will be listed in Art/Paintings/Contemporary/Other, under the heading "J.L. Barkey. Original Acrylic Painting - Faith".

I put this off for so long because ebay tends, like all interactive internet places, to suck my soul forcefully through my nose. It is painful, and I do not like it. The only other option (and you should seriously consider this, people) is if hundreds more people call up Mike Masterton at Solace Energy and start buying fireplaces. That way, they'll need more installers and I can get hired back. However, since that pretty much never happens in the months following Christmas, I am afraid I am going to have to succumb to yet more nasal-soul-stealing.

For sooth, I say unto y'all, I wish to Texas I didn't have to resort to this, but while I myself could probably handle a three or four month fast until my next bout of summer labor, round about day fifteen I think the dog and the cat might start sizing me up as steak.

The Good Homosexual - Part One

UNO

Miguel Ortiz crossed the border as you, who are not Mexican, would expect – illegally and under cover of night. I could start Miguel’s story back in Mexico – could tell you of his soccer exploits and his mother and younger sister and all the other humanizing background that will make you care, but I think instead I will jump right to where Miguel got off the bus at the corner of 32^nd and Las Palmeras Drive in the City of Angels. It was a hot summer night and he could feel the warmth of the pavement through his llanquis, the cheap, tire-rubber sandals he wore on his cracked feet.

If you or I were to put on a pair of these sandals, we would be blistered and wincing in a few short steps. But Miguel’s were the feet of a barrio kid – toughened from years of barefoot soccer and hobnailed tire rubber. Miguel smiled as he began to walk up the drive, marveling at the even, un-cracked pavement, manicured lawns and rows of graceful palms. Tomorrow he would take his uncle’s advice – find a communidad of his countrymen, people would help him find work and a place to stay. Soon he would be learning English and earning real American dolares to send home to his mother and sister. Tonight, though, Miguel was walking.

He had always loved walking at home, and here beneath the towering palms of his future he strode with confidence and an eager smile upon his face. Soon, Miguel found himself in a quiet residential area. The houses grew bigger and bigger, and more elaborate. Many had gates and walls, and the blue light flickering off the trees and second floor walls whispered of the luxurious swimming pools and high lifestyle Miguel had seen on TV. This was the Los Angeles he had dreamed of.

The Good Homosexual - Part Two

DOS

It was a quiet night for the most part, until a shiny car with dark windows turned the corner two blocks away and started thumping its way towards Miguel. It was an inky black muscle car, so new and clean that it glowed and flickered in the light of the street lamps as it came nearer. Miguel stopped and admired it for its beauty as it pulled close.

Then the car itself stopped. The doors opened, the music got even louder, and three tall young men got out. They wore small white sleeveless shirts, blue jeans and brand new white shoes. Miguel fixed his eyes on their shoes immediately, for he saw that the young men wore expressions of anger. He turned quickly away from the car and started to walk again. “What is up, Izzy?” The freckled one said, blocking Miguel with a swarthy forearm and a hard smile that rested only lightly on his lips.

“Lo siento, no intiendo, no quiero dificultades…” Miguel apologized as he tried to step by but was cut off with a “Fuck right, you don’t want trouble” and a hard fist to his face. His head cracked back and Miguel fell hard to the pavement and then the beating began in earnest. Angry blows and words rained down on him until blood ran all in his eyes and he felt consciousness slip away. For a brief moment he wondered “porque?” and then everything disappeared into a throbbing unconsciousness.

The Good Homosexual - Part Three

TRES

An hour later, Peter Terrance pulled his new silver Porsche out down his long driveway and into the street, where he throatily worked his way quickly through the gears as a grin tugged the corner of his mouth. Peter was much too serious a person to smile very openly, but this car was like butter. He was in fourth by the time he passed Miguel. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw a raised arm, and the further he got down the road, the more certain he became that there had been a severely damaged human being lying there.

This put Peter in a bit of a spot. Today was a big day for ICBN, where he was the chief producer. Fox network wanted their relatively small Christian Broadcasting company to handle production on local sports news – an arrangement that would give their organization a serious financial shot in the arm (and help them reach that many more people with the Message). Peter was point man on this project and was trying to get to work early to go over the graphs to make sure that everything was just right. If he did not do his job right the deal could fall through – a risk he could not take.

ICBN needed him, the kingdom needed him, and somebody else would surely see the poor chap and help him out, he decided as he fingered the volume on his satellite radio and nodded as he caught the chorus of one of his favorite Michael W. Smith tunes. “Gotta remember to have Michael in for another interview”, he thought, as he cornered at fifty miles an hour and raced on towards glory.

After another hour had passed, Miguel groaned and rolled over. He could see through a slit in the crusty dried blood around his right eye that the sky was lightening a bit. What he could not see was James Banks, walking towards him on the sidewalk on the other side of the street. He could hear the whining of Mr. Banks’ dog, however, but there was nothing he could do about it. James had noticed Miguel almost immediately when he walked down his driveway because Abe, his golden retriever, had started whining and straining at the leash. James was initially curious, but soon noticed the dark skin and bedraggled, look of the fallen youth. You can always tell border-jumpers, James thought.

This presented a problem. James was extremely Republican, and toed the party line on everything from Kyoto to Communism (bastard reds). He was even more vehement these days, now that the party was being run by a good respectable, Bible-believing native Texan like himself. As a devout church-goer and Texan, it seemed to James that God was at long last getting his way in this country. James’s hobby horse, though, was the Republican border-tightening penchant. While James had managed to claw his way to comfortable wealth through hard work, luck, and some ruthless and (it must be admitted) occasionally questionable insider trading, for his father it had been a different story.

Not that James had particularly liked his father, mind you, but John Banks would not have been such a hard, violent man if he had been able to find and keep a good construction job without having it yanked out from underneath him by some “god-damned wetback”.

James would probably have turned and walked the other way – just on principle – but he was also a creature of habit (methodical, he liked to tell himself) and if he had done that he would have had to walk an extra half hour to get to the corner Starbucks where this morning every week he enjoyed a nice hot brew and the company of his men’s accountability group. James Banks walked quickly by, dragging Abe with him.

Miguel thought briefly of the cur he’d kept alive with scraps back home, then blacked out again completely – for so long that he did not even hear the white Lexus purr by with Simon Stopps inside. He didn’t. Stop, that is – but before you get to thinking that I’ve made this man and even this story up (that name it is just too neat and ironic, you’re thinking), know that it was not entirely Pastor Stopps’ fault. He was a very busy man, the leader of a five thousand – plus church that was bursting at the seams. He had a million folks to care for (well, at least half a million, if you count the TV audience) and no end of responsibilities.

Simon saw Miguel’s plight, yes, and to his credit he made a mental note to call the police when he got to the office (he had a strict policy against cell-phone use in the car – it wasn’t safe and it distracted him from one of the few quiet times he got with the Lord.), but just before he pulled into his spot in front of the ten-million dollar blockish pink monstrosity that was his sanctuary, he thought of a perfect story to complement this week’s sermon and in his rush to get in and have his secretary write it down, Miguel just plumb slipped his mind.

Miguel, you may care to know, was at that moment rapidly wheezing his way towards a final breath. The initial beating had been bad, but with early attention he probably would have pulled through fairly easily. His protracted time on the street was rapidly cutting his chances short. As he flickered in and out of consciousness, the strangest things began to pop into Miguel’s mind: random conversations, the smell of burning enchiladas, a mudfight after a game of rain soccer. Mostly, though, he thought of his mother and sister, and wondered if they were thinking of him, too.

The Good Homosexual - Part Four

CUATRO

He was close, to be sure, but not yet dead. At that moment a man named Samuel Cummings opened his front door and stretched, fists balled and scrunched eyes to the sky as he inhaled the early morning air. It was going to be another beautiful day, and a gentle breeze had begun to stir the feathered fingers of the palms that lined the high walls surrounding his villa and the immaculate gardens of his three-acre property. Samuel opened his eyes to the golden beauty of the morning but he did not smile, for he was overwhelmed on this day by a deep, abiding sense of sadness.

This night had been the death of his dearest, deepest friend and companion, a young man named Jonathan. Samuel was a painter – not of houses, but of canvases, and the two had met twelve years before at one of his openings. Jonathan had immediately captivated him with his ready laugh and classic profile. Samuel invited him home and Jonathan quickly became his greatest muse, subject and confidant. The paintings of this man created a buzz that grew from L.A. to New York and then to Europe, making Samuel Cummings a name and a fortune.

Then came a day when they could no longer laugh off the interminable little colds and coughs. Samuel bought this walled property, stuffed the house with medical equipment, and began to help ease his friend and lover towards death. Long hours they would sit silently together on the porch facing the sea. They never went out, because here in the natural beauty and each other’s company they found everything they wanted. Besides, Samuel knew the sort of people who lived in his neighborhood, and what they thought of him. It was better for him to stay home and tend to his friend and his garden.

The long struggle had nearly bankrupted him (he’d stopped working) but none of this mattered today. After a night of pain the struggle had ended, and the doctor and nurse on hand were inside, filling out the death certificate and preparing the body for transport. He stretched again, and sighed.

Then, through the iron latticed gateway at the end of the flagstone walkway that meandered from his door to the street, Samuel saw what appeared to be an arm, lying palm-up on the sidewalk. Samuel did not hesitate. He turned, entered his house, and re-emerged moments later with stretcher, doctor and nurse in tow. Miguel was saved.

EPILOGUE:

This is an old story, yes, told by Jesus long ago. But the question it raises is as new as ever. Which of these four men really understood what Love is about? Was it the TV producer? The Texan broker? The pastor of the megachurch? The answer is obviously no. Only the gay painter acted in the knowledge and awareness of the Truth towards which Jesus was pointing with his actions and life.

While you may think I’ve cheated, creating a fictional world in which people behave in ways they never would in real life, whom among us is not metaphorically driving by the suffering people of the world every day on the way to a better life? Maybe the broken, oppressed, hungry and thirsty are not lying on our sidewalks moaning for help, but should that matter? We sit here in our comfortable little coffee shops and kitchens, making distinctions and delineating worldviews and having opinions, all the while ignoring the weak and underprivileged whom it is in our power to save. To such people belong the kingdom. Helping them will be our salvation. For now, though, they remain our shame.

get well soon

Being sick these past couple of weeks has made me doubt, a little, my until now vehement repugnance at the very hint of talk that tends to create a body/mind, sacred/secular dichotomization.

What if my body is out to get me? What if, indeed, my body and my essence (or soul, or "true self", or whatever) are at best uneasy allies, and at worst, outright antagonists? What if my body positively resents me and spends its time yearning for a return to that dust from which it was yanked? Could it be that to my corporeal frame is to it a sort of torture device, by which it is dragged to and fro and forced to enact my heinous acts of living?

Maybe that is why people who do live wicked, bitter lives are so often afflicted with ulcers, narrowed arteries, blocked urethras, and all other manner of ailments. Their bodies could just be crying "Enough! Release me to the wholeness from which I have been plucked and permit me once more to sink into the moral neutrality of the earth!"

A fanciful notion, to be sure. Could be the drugs playing mumbledy-peg with my brain.

If it is true, however, I have this message for my body: what about pollution? Go back to the dirt and you're going to have to deal with the byproducts of industrialization and improper farming techniques. Plus, you'll be buried in the midst of a bunch of other dead people, and everybody knows that dead people are even more toxic than live ones. Better just stick with me - I'll try to be better and who knows? I might just take up vegetarianism and the drinking of wine. Think about it, and get well soon.

hairball

I'm up to my nostrils in damp dog hair. It is a sort of metaphor, you see. The original "sick as a dog" not only did not seem to fully express my nauseatedhackingwheezingphlemmyheadacheness, but it also doesn't make any sense. You can imagine, however, being trapped in an underground cistern which is gradually filling up with moistened dog hair, hair which is just now tickling at your nostrils as you desperately try to poke your nose free.

This, anyway, is why I've not been diligent with my beloved barkingreed.

Perhaps, though, a quote to tide you over...

"Hope without patience results in the illusion of optimism or, more terrifying, the desperation of fanaticism. The hope necessary to initiate us into the adventure must be schooled by patience if the adventure is to be sustained. Through patience, we learn to continue to hope, even though our hope seems to offer little chance of fulfillment... Yet patience equally requires hope, for without hope, patience to easily accepts the world and the self for what it is, rather than what it can and should be."

- Stanley Hauerwas