There's the opening scene from Fellini's classic film, 8 1/2, that comes to mind as the ideas of this blog begin to fester and swirl between my brain and my fingers. The lead actor, Marcello Mastroianni (playing, essentially, the director himself), finds himself in some surreal traffic jam where the heads seem to be missing from the passengers of a crowded bus and voluptuous women (and voluptuous Italian women too) are but a seat away for us to ogle and fondle. The car's interior begins to fill with suffocating smoke. No one seems to be really noticing the man trapped inside of his car, writhing to escape. They see it happening but are paralyzed to act.
Suddenly, he's floating above the cars. Higher he soars, as if he's drifting towards heaven itself. It's then we see Mastroianni below, sitting causally at the beach, tethering a line in the sky. The line he's pulling is not a kite but the man himself. Pulling, tugging, at himself from achieving the lofty goal of transcendence, of becoming one with God.
Then free fall. It's one of the most disturbing openings in a catalog of great foreign films I've seen over the years. I haven't seen the film since I was in college, and I see the scene now on some grainy youtube screen and I remember the feeling I had then. Artistically, I had wanted to become a poet, a writer, some beatnik that toured colleges speaking from a microphone in dusty-floored townie bars, the guy that had the Great American Novel tucked away in the bottom drawer of his antique desk (isn't it always in the bottom drawer in those movies about writers? Why can't it be sprawled on their desks in broken chapters?) I related to the film as some craving lad who was seeing his window of opportunity shrink with every passing day in a class full of writers 10 years younger, saying everything so much more eloquently than my own. Fellini was making an autobiography by way of farce. While making his masterpiece, he becomes the leader of a circus. Tethered by writer's block, creative differences, the lustful looks of (voluptuous Italian) women.
The priorities have changed since then. Films have passed through my eyes that sometimes they run together. I see films through a different lens, but I still feel like there's some part of me flying through the clouds, only to be yoked back by some force that wants to keep me submerged, marooned on some lonely Mediterranean beach.
Discussing this feeling with a friend tonight allowed me to place some of this feeling into perspective. Two days prior I was sitting on this same table that I type this blog, reading the Bible, watching my kids read theirs, feeling adequate in the moment. This is what grace feels like. These are the blessings God provides you when you trust, when you're faithful, when you submit.
Then today happened. The tethering guilt of some past sin pulls you back down to earth. It's not anything new, just me in a different set of clothes. A younger me, a more immature me. The old me.
And a chain reaction begins that breaks the trust. For the record, the trust is not in my belief or awareness of God's power or grace, but the trust that I lose on a daily basis. That struggling trust.
There's many sayings I could quote now about being dead to my old self. So why is it that we resurrect our old selves like a re-run of a favorite zombie film? We know where heaven is, can point to it like some dog on the hunt, and yet we can't shake the coiling line of our own guilt. I joked tonight that it must be a Catholic thing. My upbringing on tortillas, Hail Mary's and a bleeding-foreheaded Jesus portraits evoked these feelings that went skin deep.
And that logic follows a linear path. One sin will be multiplied upon you. Eye for an eye. Sin for sin upon you.
So simple things like the hum of a talkative room begin to itch more that normal. Outlandish occurrences befall the room. All around you are a swarm of kids, crying, running through the halls, emotionally diseased. Your sin is so much a stain that it affects even the ones close to you.
Theologically, I firmly believe that one cannot lose his faith. Then why do we (I) work so hard on wanting to lose it? I spoke with a parent of one of my students today on this topic. After a similar day of headaches, he said that he too was on the mountaintop the day before, only to fall back down an avalanche of circumstances. "Overfed," he coined it. Besides the awkward laughter of knowing that you simply cannot overfeed yourself on God's love between the two of us, he had somewhat of a point. My trust failed me, not the sin.
I also hold firm to the notion that being mediocre is how the devil truly wins. Being right below the proverbial "bar" like we're playing some game of monotonous limbo is what keeps us mediocre. The devil doesn't have to shame us in front of a congregation. He just wants us to not even want to participate for fear that we'll be caught with our zippers down.
Each day I pray there's a target on me, and most of the time I'm peering down the scope of my own rifle at my naive reflection. I'm committed to climb this mountain, but damn if the avalanches, frostbite and jagged rocks that make me want to set up camp. No need to trek further.
This past Sunday my son experimented with an emerald green can of spray paint. He wrote, "Cruz was here," on the side outside backyard fence. I didn't believe him, but when I saw it I wondered what he must have been thinking. Later, he realized I had posted the incident on Facebook. "I didn't want anyone to know about it," me muttered. "Then don't use green spray paint!"
I spend so much time trying to make a splash that I forget that I'm already unique, loved, wanted. The old beatnik dwelling inside fights his way onto blogs at times, sometimes in the fifth-grade level poems I model for kids in class. The stardom is different, some pious Christian stardom.
And back to the dead to self. I read more and more about waking my dead spirit. I was dead and now I'm free. This means the atrophied disease of my former self resides in my blood stream. It's the struggle of all of us who challenge ourselves to want escape from that car that fills with smoke, awaiting the time when we fall asleep at the wheel. Waiting for our us to drift off onto the county road into the abyss.
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