Re-Thinking Education; Still Thinking Tanner

Carver got his registration book for BYU-Idaho the other day. I'm in it twice! That's right, folks. Tanner can leave the Burg, but the Burg can't let go of Tanner. I was so tickled with my self that I signed Carv's book in my own honor.

November 19, 2007

A fourteen year old kid stabbed his mother in the chest and head last night. She didn't die. The kid's life is over. He faces attempted murder charges, and plead 'not guilty' this afternoon behind a straight jacket and a black eye. He couldn't weigh more than 120 pounds in a fat suit, but he raged the steel knife bent on his mother's skull. Granted, innocence is presumed, but the four people who wrangled the knife out of his hands and plugged his mother's body with washcloths will have a ghastly story to tell a jury. Bloody pictures won't phase most film-going sorts - who hasn't seen someone shot or stabbed? - but I imagine that these four will tell quite a story with their eyes.

There is nothing free about this kid's agency now.

On the other hand, James Talyor came to town the other night. He sings songs for a living. He's bald, but he didn't seem to notice. He kicked around with with the Beatles, Jim Croce, and Carol King. His music listens easy, and, though he claimed to have performed it everyday for decades, I know I've heard "Way down here, you need a reason to move" more times than he has sung it. JT knew that we wanted to hear Country Road, Fire and Rain, Something in the Way She Moves, Walking Man, and Mexico; he obliged. He is a musician, but we weren't too interested in his new music.

I suppose we make some choices, and consequence makes the rest.

Nick Drake Pink Moon

We'll create our own fairy tales...

About your utopia in the trees, about all our crazy animals that magically make you happy with their little faces and paws. And their sweet, sweet, trusting spirits. Flying horses... We could even have a pine-tree eating beaver as our villian...

And my childhood? You've loved us through it all. And you gave us a love for books, Mother, so many beautiful books...

Thor vrs Helpless woman waiting for Princes

OK. OK. Yeah. I always get my fairy tales mixed up because they used to scare the crap out of me. Although, I do relate to the dancing around the fire and stamping my foot in a rage. Chan says it's Rip Van Winkle, but I think I'll go with Sleeping Beauty--no, no, never mind. Wasn't she surrounded by briar's and brambles (like my house now) and had to wait for a man to wake her up? And that let's out Snow White too? Wow. No wonder I didn't tell you guys regular fairy tales; Too many sexual innuendos and helpless woman. I remember having nightmares after reading Hansel and Gretel: Then when Mom stuffed our pockets full of treats before a school outing, I was sure the bus was driving us into the darkest forest, that Mom had given us away, and I was so sorry for reading Gone with the Wind by flash light under my covers until she come up and grabbed the light last night. Whew. Even look at Rock a bye baby. It's so gross that people sing a song to little kids with a wind breaking a branch, and a baby goes splat on the ground, cradle and all. I'm glad I told you other, more gentle stories than were in the books we bought you, like Thor sulking, after fighting other gods with lightning bolts and thunder. (Oh, what a childhood you've had.) But I have learned we do have to wake ourselves up, every other minute. It's an constant art that takes practice.
Ahhhhh, but I'm beginning to think that sleeping is an art form also. You know, like those stretched-out, deep down sleeps after long horse rides? Remember the good tired left over from rainy days, the smell of leather and sagebrush? Ummmmm that sounds as good as eating lobster or watching waves wash up on a beach. Let's write our own fairy tales. I like that scene in 6th sense when Bruce Willis is dead, but he's trying to tell the little boy, who sees dead people, a bedtime story about a little prince who drove , and then drove further, until the kid says, "You haven't read many bed times stories, have you? ----Once Upon a Time . . .

You're the bravest woman I know, and by the way...

The correct spelling of your fairytale dwarf is Rumpelstiltskin or in it's German origin Rumpelstilzchen. I think you're mistaken in wishing to be him (though if he had slept for one hundred years I'd idolize him also) However... the story of Rumpelstiltskin begins with a poor miller who lied to a king and told him his daughter could spin straw into gold, so the king locked her in a room for three days and demanded that she produce the gold and if she could not he was going to execute her. So Rumpelstiltskin appears to her in the night and in trade for his magic to make the gold, she traded him her necklace the first night, her ring the second, and on the third night having nothing left to give, the evil imp made her promise her firstborn child to him. So she marries the prince and when her first child was born the dwarf appears demanding the child, but she makes another deal with him that if she can guess his real name (he refused to tell her his name before) than she can keep the baby. She gets three days. So one night she hears him dancing around his fire deep in the forest singing his name and she guesses it the next day. And the stories say that Rumpelstiltskin got so mad that "in his rage he drove his foot so far into the ground that it sank in up to his waist; then in a passion he seized his left foot with both hands and tore himself in two." How's that for silly? I think we relate to his frustration...
Crazy little guy, huh? But yeah, I just thought I'd educate you on one of my favorite fairytales. People always relate him with sleeping for 100 years, but where in the stories does it say that? Can't find it. Beau and I used to watch the old movie of Rumpelstiltskin all the time when we were kids. It kind of used to freak me out, but Beau sure loved it.

You and this story got me thinking about who Beau really is and how much I miss him. How I used to know he was always someone I could count on, how he walked me to school most days even though I know he hated to. Helped me with my math, let me stay in his apartment in Salt Lake. He used to get so angry at the way I lived my life.
One day this will all be light again, Mother. One day, I know. I believe this, if we do not choose to believe we will live our lives small and afraid and alone, with no faith in a God that has the power to lift us high above this tiny piece of eternity we're wandering in.
I believe, Mom. Do you know that I relate my testimony to you? The example of your love for Christ in my life was my beacon. You weren't exactly the ordinary mother who was Relief Society whatever, but you were the one handpicked for me. The only one who could have stood beside me and helped carry me in my storm. Who else besides you?
I love you with all my heart. Beau will be okay. Whether in this life or the next, he'll become Beau again. I love the scripture in Morman Chapter 9 that says "When has God ceased to be a God of miracles?" Never.

I love you, I love you, I love you clear to china and back. And I can't wait to see you next weekend and walk among your trees with you...

My Silly Daughter, I do Believe . . .

that was not laughter; I call that hysterics. But how interesting that we both revert to giggling and uncontrolled rolling-on-the-floor laughing when faced with feelings of total helplessness (though I'm sorry I called your cat, husband and boss "stupid," when in reality only your husband and boss are stupid. Joke. I'm just still mad at Ben for taking you away from Idaho). I also think it's interesting both of us feel we've walked through most of the garbage trials life can offer--not with much grace (on my part anyway), but we've faced these trials and are still breathing and even still in love with living. I mean after brushing up against deaths, suicides, drug addictions, prison, divorce, prolonged illness, abuse--whew, never mind; I'm depressing myself; you know the rest--we actually thought ho, ha, famine, earthquake, terrorist attacks? Big deal. We'll be fine when those types of trials come. But, how could we have known that we'd smash up against another experience so far over our heads that we're craning and straining our necks looking into the heavens for understanding. I do not understand Beau.
I know hell. And I know you know what it feels like, looks like, etc also. We've visited there and know for sure we never want to go back. But Beau's particular kind of hell is one that's beyond me. His problems are surreal. I can't grasp them; they float in between neurotransmitters, deep in his hypothalamus, around dopamine levels, which reach out to circle the moon. But, I've got to believe that somewhere, somehow God's provided answers or that He will provide a way to ease some of his pain--even though, right now, it's a path that's invisible to me. This is more than simply changing, simply repenting. When he's driven by biology and mental illness, how much free agency does he have left? You are reading my words now, and my words are real to you; to Beau the voices he hears are just as real, only he has no reference point in his life to handle them. Can you imagine that kind of madness? His whole life, he's been brilliant, and now he's trapped in the very mind that was his greatest asset. And his thinking has betrayed him. On some level does his feel this? He must. Yet, when I talk to him, he justifies and slips between ideas so quickly--back and forth, up and down--that I feel like I'm listening to a thousand philosophers (every writer he's ever read) talk all at one time. I want to open his head with a knife and while it's open, quickly slide in this idea: "You are ill, Beau; You need medical help before you get worse. And you've got to help us because we don't know what to do." He jumps on a plane because the only thing he knows how to do anymore is travel, but he's lost track of where he's going and even where he's coming from. Has he told you yet he's in San Francisco? (I still can't figure out how you lost him when he lives right next to you; it's not like you're busy or anything. Another joke.) But I don't think he's going to Las Vegas. He's so slippery. Though I know this: things have to be very bad for him to call me for money, and last night when he called me to wire him $15.00 (Megan, even the amount shows his humiliation), I just sat there. I know he could sense my feelings through the satellites. "Never mind, Mom. the voices are just really loud today, and I wanted to get back to the airport." And I still had to say, "Beau, . . . I can't. I know you'll drink to get numb, to stop the noise in your head, and I don't blame you, but I'm more afraid of the alcohol.?" "No, Mom. It's OK. I can just run to Corey's; he's working, but he gets off soon." Then he just clicked off in humiliation. I felt so sick. You know the feeling: your throat tightens up, your head gets thick and heavy, you know you're going to throw up, then you want to rip the phone out of the wall, or scream and scream and scream, or jump in the car and drive all night to California to pluck him up off the streets yourself before some other person as crazy as he is finds him, before something irreversible happens, but you know it won't do any good because he'll just sneak away again to England or NYC, because nothing we do can help him, Megan. Nothing.
Later he texted me: Sorry. Phone needed charged. I texted him back: I will pray to God that He will send someone to help you get through this night because u r too far away to feel how much we love you. Then, I can't sleep again, Megan. I'm so stinking tired. I haven't slept in months, years. Somewhere, sometime, I'm going to find the softest cloud and sleep for a couple hundred years--like RumpleStilzSkin (msp)
In my life, Beau's always been this bird flying somewhere above my head. He's like a constellation I can't grasp. He was born thirty years old, much wiser than I, always sensitive to my every feeling. At Christmas or Thanksgiving, with a room full of people, he always knew exactly what I was thinking. I've never met anyone as sensitive, as beautiful, or as bright (except you, of course of course). To walk with him through an art museum, through China town, along a beach, to talk with him about Herman Hesse, Zen meditations, or any book (he's as widely read as you are), to hear him talk about India, Europe, Egypt, or Israel was to have a total involvement in a total experience. I don't know how else to say that. He lived so intensely. And now he works just as intensely to numb his pain. When he talked of swimming in the Thailand sea late at night, or running madly with Katy through the Himalayan mountains to shake off leeches, being attacked by the monkeys that guard temples in Cambodia, I was there with him. He's been a great gift to us. And now we want to give back to him in the worst way. We love him. But, like I said last night, this one is way beyond me, Sweetheart, way beyond the dark hall you just walked of also. This one we have to leave in God's hands now. Yet, more than anything else, we have to live so that if God whispers some idea to us, we hear Him. And we will not hear Him through worry. Worrying about Beau is too loud for us to hear God.
I'm so glad I have you. And, again, yelling about your stupid cat and your stupid husband and your stupid boss was me yelling at the whole stupid universe. In fact, "stupid" is my favorite word right now. In fact, if Beau comes back alive this time, if he isn't killed on the dark streets of San Francisco, when he gets back, I think I'm going to kill him myself. (Never mind. I can't find the keys to my locked down gun.)

My friend...

So good to laugh with you last night...