Out Of Line

My father was raised as an Anglican ... my mother as a Baptist ... what is the Baptist ethos ... the fear that someone .. somewhere may be having fun ... 'our' church was literally just up the street .. St. Judes ... I have no idea what St. Jude did or didn't do ... 

I can remember attending Sunday School ... which was just before Church proper .. I think ...  or it may have been during the service ... I am not sure ... I just had no interest ... dressing up in a small suit with a bowtie? ... and then listening to stories about what amounted to armed conflict .. plaques .. pestilence ... an angry supernatural force .. and a man who was hounded, betrayed and tortured to death ..

I made up my mind early that whatever this was ... Santa Claus was far superior ... and he always came through on the 25th December ... but my mother did her duty exposing me to this part of life .. I was baptized .. and I took communion somewhere in the 12 - 14 year old period .. I still have the communion card somewhere ... and the small new testament that my grandmother gave to me to commemorate the occasion ... I remember saying to my mother after the communion service that I felt drunk ... she gave me a look of disgust and said ... 'really' ...

I only remember seeing the old man in church once ... laid out ... we're not there yet ... 

Another experience along this line I had ... and I think it only happened once ... the old man took me down into the west side one night ... we may have gone with another father and son in a car ... and we went into this old gothic looking structure ... I don't know if we walked into this large room immediately  .. or were ushered in later ... but when I entered in there .. there were a number of men in robes and one at the far end of the room in a larger robe and sitting on what appeared to be a throne ... there was staves some of the mean were holding ... I remember nothing other than what I am describing ... 

Of course .. this had to have been a Masonic Lodge ... I don't remember going back again .. I don't know if the old man was a card carrying member or not ... I never asked anything about it .. nothing was volunteered ... I assume it is still there .. somewhere ... 

I did though ...  join the local cub troup .. again .. I was signed up for this .. probably by the old man ... the meetings were in the church hall ... and again I saw no purpose .. I am going to do what ... and then I get a badge ... and it gets sewn on my shirt ... and we will dyb .. dyb .. dyb ... and dob .. dob .. dob ... wtf ..

Obviously I wasn't somebody looking for a group to be part of ... or somebody who would compete within that group to be number one or get ahead ... I didn't realize it then ... I was the ultimate loner ... paint inside the lines? ... you kidding .. look at all that area outside the lines ... and that is where I have dwelled my entire life .. outside the lines ... wherever and however they were drawn ...


Phil (19 December 2020 - San Patricio de Melaque - 7:47 PM)


Krome Koan - 'The fact that no one understands you doesn't mean you're an artist'




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Swearing Off

Image
Before I venture any further ... let me say that this blog is not dedicated to slagging my mother and father .. it is my story .. not there's .. but naturally they play a large part ... I was screwed up enough on my own ... the only thing I can blame them for is my genetic make-up ... which I think plays a major part in this story ... let me give you an example ... The old man every once in a while would take it upon himself to try and repair something .. in this case it was a lawn mower ... now my head does not handle sequences or patterns ... or three dimensional space ... North .. South .. East .. West ... are simply concepts to me ... in first year university, we had to take drafting ... given objects to measure and then plot out in three views .. top .. side ..end .. I did it but with great difficulty. So my job in the lawn mower repair was to remember the order of the dismantling and therefore be able to pick the right part at the right time for re-assmebly ... and this was a...
Read more

Coda

Image
If you examine the timeline of this blog ... I basically was boarding away from home in the fall of 1969 .. with no prep for anything outside the home .. dealing with a number of issues that only in the last decade have I come to even barely understand ... and then it gradually accelerates to marriage 7 years later ... it is hard to comprehend and hard for me to believe looking back on it ...  Knowing what I know now .. I would have sought counseling in June/July 1974 .. instead I was starting a new job and a new life ... so take all my issues ... add to it a serious break-up .. a new job .. away from school and home .. not knowing anybody ... it was a recipe for fucking disaster .. but I was saved by Bill Jaques ...  Bill loved to laugh .. and act a fool .. but he was a brilliant mechanical engineer ... and meeting him and having him accept me as a friend .. saved my life .. I am not the suicidal type ... but death by misadventure was well within reach based on my behaviour a...
Read more

A Golden Oldie

Image
My father was a stationary engineer at the Cold Storage Plant in Saint John, NB .. it was part of the  CPR ... in West Saint John ... the West Side .. you usually worked for the railroad or were a long shoreman on the docks. I knew he worked for the CPR directly before moving to the cold stoarge operation ... but how I knew that ... I don't know ... he obviously got his engineer's ticket somewhere alomg the way and transferred but he never said and I never asked. I worked there for 2 summers and part of a third. I worked with a general handy man who did odd jobs around the plant keeping things in shape ... the plant mangers son worked there as well .. the old man tolerated the plant manager but couldn't stand the crew foreman .. who was always turning the screw into him .. I am sure it reminded him of home. The Plant Manager's son also worked there but doing his own thing .. he was a go getter and he and his older brother .. who worked in the office .. had rented a blue...
Read more