Category: Platypus people

The introduction of the platypus was such a shock to the British scientific community, in the early 1900’s, that they considered the monotreme an elaborate, well-conceived hoax. They thought they had the animal kingdom all figured out. Those of us who know some platypus people empathize, for when they began to express themselves we thought they were joking. We thought we had human nature all figured out. As we learn more about them, we realize they’re not kidding, and our shock turns to intrigue, as we begin to think they might be able to teach us more about ourselves from their funhouse mirror perspective.

Platypus People

Rilaly1 Comment

“Did you know that your friend’s dad is an infidel?” my friend’s mom whisper-shouted at me when she opened the door. She had her angry face on. Mrs. Finnegan was not quite right in her normal state, but when I saw that look on her face, I knew something was brewing in the Finnegan household. I could’ve just walked away, I see that now, but I was a good kid. When you’re a good kid, a vital definition of your being comes from other kid’s parents. I was so far down this road that the thought of walking away didn’t even cross my mind. I just considered it my lot in life to endure whatever was going on beyond that door. Even though her angry expression put me on edge, I was accustomed to the greeting. Mrs. Finnegan greeted me this way whenever she had a topic that we needed to discuss before she would permit me to hang out with her son. I called it her headline hello.  

“Hey, it’s mister cigarette smoker!” she said to introduce me to the Finnegan family discussion of another day, one that involved regarding my smoking habits. “It’s the heavy metal dude!” she said to introduce me to another discussion we were going to have about my decision to wear a denim jacket, a t-shirt of whatever band I was listening to at the time, and jeans. She called my ensemble ‘the heavy metal dude gear’ in that discussion. I was fair game for these family discussions, Mrs. Finnegan said, because I had such a huge influence on her beloved son, and the state of my home required that I receive further guidance. 

The “Your friend’s dad is an infidel” greeting informed me that the Finnegan family discussion of the day would involve her husband’s recent business trip to Las Vegas in which “he happened to get himself some [girl]”. I substitute the word ‘girl’ here for your reading pleasure, in place of the more provocative word that Mrs. Finnegan used to describe the other party in Greg Finnegan’s act of infidelity. 

Mrs. Finnegan was a religious woman who rarely ever used profanity or vulgarity. She reserved those words for moments when she needed to severely wound the subject of her scorn, with a ‘Look what you’ve made me do,’ plea in her voice to further subject the subject of her scorn to greater shame, ‘I’m using profanity now.’

I would hear Francis Finnegan use vulgar words on this afternoon, but it wasn’t as shocking to me as hearing that initial misuse of the word infidel. As a self-described word nerd, Mrs. Finnegan prided herself on proper word usage, in even the most casual conversations. I was into it too. I was so into using proper words that she informed me on another occasion, half-joking, that I was her apprentice. She enjoyed teaching me, and I was her eager student. In the beginning, I viewed her assessment of our roles in that light. As the years went by, however, I began to believe she said that to relieve whatever guilt she may have felt for correcting every other word that came out of my mouth. It could prove exhausting at times. There were times when I was almost afraid to open my mouth around her, lest she correct me, but I did enjoy our respective roles in this relationship. 

I figured that the emotional turmoil of this moment might have caused the faux pas, but her diction was so proper and refined that I didn’t consider her capable of such a slip. Even during the most tumultuous Finnegan family discussions, the woman managed to mind her rules of usage well. Thus, when she made the error of attributing the word infidel to her husband’s act of infidelity, I assumed she intended to pique the interest of the listener in the manner her sparse use of profanity and vulgarity could. Either that or she was providing herself a respite from the rules to creatively conflate the incorrect use of the word, and the correct one, with an implicit suggestion that not only had her husband violated his vows to her, but his vows to God.   

My friend James was seated on the couch, next to his father, when I entered the Finnegan home. The two of them were a portrait of shame. They sat in the manner a Beagle sits in the corner of the room after making a mess on the carpet. 

James mouthed a quick ‘Hi!’ to me, as I walked by him, and he pumped his head up to accentuate that greeting. He then resumed the shamed position of looking down at the carpet. 

“Mr. Finnegan decided to go out to Las Vegas and get him some [girl]!” Mrs. Finnegan said to open the proceedings when I entered the living room. I did not have enough time to sit when she said that. When I did, I sat as slow as the tension in the room allowed. “Tell him Greg,” she added. 

“France, I don’t think we should be airing our dirty laundry in front of outsiders,” Mr. Finnegan complained. The idea that he had been crying was obvious. His eyes were rimmed red and moist. He did not look up at Francis, or me, with his complaint. He, like James, remained fixated on the carpet. 

France was the name Mrs. Finnegan grew up with, and she hated it. Only her immediate family members addressed her with such familiarity. She had very few adult friends, but to those people she was Frances. To everyone else, she was Mrs. Finnegan. She may have permitted others to call her less formal names, but I never heard it. Mrs. Finnegan was not one to permit informalities. 

“NO!” Mrs. Finnegan yelled at her husband. That yell was so forceful that had the room contained an actual Beagle, it would have scampered from it, regardless if it were the subject of her scorn. “No, he has to learn,” she said pointing at me, while looking at her husband. “Just like your son needs to learn, just like every man needs to learn the evil of their ways.” 

A visual display followed that verbal one. It was carried into the living room by the Finnegan’s dutiful daughter. The daughter appeared as removed from this family discussion as she had the prior ones. She was more of an observer of the goings on in the Finnegan home than a participant, in my brief experiences with Finnegan family discussions. She rarely offered an opinion, unless it backed up her mother’s assessments and characterizations, and she was never the subject of her mother’s scorn. She was the dutiful daughter, and she walked into the room, carrying the display, in that vein. She carefully positioned it on the living room table and pulled out its legs, so it could stand. She then lit all of the candles in the display and sat next to her mother when it was complete. 

Mrs. Finnegan allowed the display of Greg Finnegan’s shame to rest on the living room table for a moment without comment. The display was a multi-tiered, wood framed, structure with open compartments that allowed for wallet-sized photos. The structure of the frame was a triangle, but anyone who looked around the Finnegan family home could see evidence of Mrs. Finnegan’s fondness for pyramids. Greg Finnegan purchased the triangle to feed into her obsession, but it did not have the full dimensions of a pyramid. When the daughter pulled its legs out, however, the frame rested at an angle. At that angle, the frame took on the appearance of one-fourths of a pyramid. 

Before this discussion began, Mrs. Finnegan somehow managed to secure enough photos of the “harlot, slut, home wrecker” to fill each of the open compartments in the pyramid with unique photos of woman. Each photo had a small votive candle before it to give the shrine of Greg Finnegan’s shame an almost holy vibe. 

“It’s the pyramid of shame,” Mrs. Finnegan informed me with a confrontational smile. “It was Greg’s gift to me on my birthday. Isn’t it lovely? I’m thinking of placing it in our bedroom. I’m thinking of placing it in a just such a position that if Greg is ever forced to sex me again-” Except she did not say sex. She uttered the word, the big one, the queen mother of dirty words, the “F-dash-dash-dash” word. “-he can look at those pictures while he’s [sexing] me. Do you think that will help your performance honey?” she asked her husband. 

As we sat through that uncomfortable comment, the question of how far Mrs. Finnegan might go with her characterizations of her husband’s weekend was mercifully interrupted by a knock at the door. For obvious reasons, we did not see an individual approach the door, so the knock startled us. The construction of the Finnegan duplex was such that when the drapes were open the inhabitants could see the knocker if they were facing in that direction, but we were all looking at the carpet before us. The knocker was Andy, the third participant in the adventure James and I planned for the evening. 

“Welcome to the home of Greg Finnegan, adulterer and infidel,” Mrs. Finnegan said after leaping to her feet to beat everyone to the door. No one was racing her to the door. We were scared and shamed into staring at the carpet. “Come on in,” she said stepping back to allow Andy’s entrance. 

Andy turned around, walked back down the steps, got in his car, and drove away. Just like that, Andy escaped what I felt compelled to endure. Andy didn’t respond to Mrs. Finnegan’s greeting in anyway. He didn’t go out of his way to show any signs of respect or disrespect. He just turned and left.

I didn’t know we could do that, I thought. I turned to watch him walk away, and I turned even more to see him step off the Finnegan patio. I realized he was actually leaving, and my mouth fell open. I didn’t know we could do that.

Andy left, because he knew what Mrs. Finnegan’s headline hellos entailed. He knew what he was in for, and I did too. To my mind, his departure was not only inexplicably bold, it was so unprecedented that it set a precedent for me. I didn’t know we could do that. 

“How could you do that?” I asked him later. 

“I didn’t want to go through all that all over again,” he said. 

“Well, of course,” I said. “Who would?” 

Andy further explained his reaction, but the gist of it was that he just didn’t want to have to sit through another Finnegan family discussion. His impulsive reaction was so simple that if he laid it all out before me, I would’ve countered that he never would’ve been able to pull it off. I’m sure he would’ve asked why, and I don’t know what I would’ve said, but it would’ve involved the inherent respect and fear we have of other people’s parents. Andy and I were good kids, and good kids consider it a testament to their character to maintain model status around other people’s parents, so I didn’t think Andy would be able to be so bold. When Andy did it, and Mrs. Finnegan did nothing more than close the door, I realized that I would have to do a much better job of considering my options in life. 

After Andy left and Mrs. Finnegan sat back down, she encouraged Mr. Finnegan to begin the confessional phase of the Finnegan family discussion, a phase that required Mr. Finnegan to provide explicit details of what he did, I wasn’t there to hear it. I was imagining that Andy impulsive reaction to Mrs. Finnegan’s headline hello so emboldened me that I just stood up and followed him to his car. Just like that. Just like he did. I imagined the two of us driving away, laughing at the lunatics we left behind. I imagined calling the Finnegans platypus people at one point in our round of jokes, and how that might end Andy’s laughter, until I said: 

“What is a platypus, but an animal that defies categorization. One study informs the world of science that they should fall into a specific category, until more exploration reveals that the duck-billed mammal does something to contradict all of their previous assessments. Comprehensive study of the animal creates more questions than answers, until even the most seasoned naturalist throws their hands up in the air in futility. “Experts in psychology might think they have a decent hold on human classifications,” I would add,“but imagine what one day in the Finnegan family home could do to them. 

“At its introduction, naturalists considered the platypus another well-played hoax on the naturalist community, I would add. “I say another well-played hoax because it happened. Some enterprising naturalists stitched together body parts of various parts of dead animals to lead the scientific community to believe that the hoaxer discovered an entirely new species. Thus, when someone introduced the platypus, the scientists who received it believed it was but another elaborate hoax of taxidermy. 

“Those who guarded themselves against falling for future hoaxes, even had a tough time believing the platypus was an actual species when they saw one live,” I would add. 

Even after this afternoon concluded, and I had all the sordid details of this Finnegan Family as Platypus People story to tell, I wondered if anyone would believe me. My penchant for stitching facts together with exaggerated details to try to weave them together for an exceptional story might come back to haunt me. They might not even believe the story if Andy stuck around to corroborate the details of it, and they might not even believe it if they saw it live, I realized while Mr. Finnegan continued to offer me explicit details of his weekend. My audience might think they’re the subjects of an elaborate hoax. 

“He already confessed all of this to his children,” Mrs. Finnegan said to interrupt Mr. Finnegan’s confession, “and he will be offering detailed confessions to the mailman, a traveling salesman, and whomever happens to darken our door this evening.”

After Mr. Finnegan’s continued confession failed to meet Mrs. Finnegan’s requirements, she interrupted him again to ask a series of questions that further explored the humiliating details of Mr. Finnegan’s weekend, details he would not reveal without prompting. When that finally concluded, she forced us to acknowledge the primary reason the Finnegans married in the first place. 

“No one would play with Mr. Finnegan’s [reproductive organ],” she said, except she didn’t say reproductive organ. 

“He was lonely,” she said with tones of derision. “Mr. eighty dollars an hour consultant fee, and Mr. professional student with eight degrees would be nothing without me, because he was nothing when he met me. He was a lonely, little man who had nothing to do but play with, except his little computer products, designs, and his little reproductive organ when no one else would.” 

“That’s enough France,” Greg said standing. He stood to bolster his claim that he’d had enough, and that he was prepared to leave, but he couldn’t and Mrs. Finnegan knew that. 

“Do you play with your reproductive organ?” Mrs. Finnegan asked me, undeterred by Greg’s pleas. “Do you masturbate? Because that’s where it all starts. It all starts with young men, and their pornographic material, imagining that someday someone will want to come along and want to play with it.” 

I had no idea how this family discussion would play out, of course, but I could see Mrs. Finnegan’s confrontational demeanor building. She was a confrontational person, and I never saw her attempt to restrain herself, but this display of resentment and hostility was unprecedented for her, as far as I was concerned. She was all but spitting these questions out between bared teeth, and her nostrils flared in a manner of disgust that suggested her hostility was directed at me. 

“You think it’s about love?” she asked me, aghast at a comment I never made. She had a huge smile on her face when she asked that question, and that smile might have been more alarming than the way she asked all those previous embarrassing questions. Seeing that smile surround those angry teeth led me to wonder if she was losing control of her facilities. 

“You think every couple has a story of dating, that hallowed first kiss, and love?” she continued. “Go watch a gawdamned love conquers all movie if you want all that and once it’s over, you come to Mrs. Finnegan with your questions, and I’ll introduce you to some reality. I’ll tell you tales of young men, grown men, who marry because they’re desperate to find someone to play with their reproductive organ. Isn’t that right Mr. Finnegan?” she called after Mr. Finnegan, as he finally mustered up the courage to begin walking away from her. When he wouldn’t answer, or even turn to acknowledge her question, Mrs. Finnegan watched him leave, she looked at me, and then she tore off after him. 

Mrs. Finnegan was a deliberate woman who appeared to consider her motions before moving as carefully as the words she used to express herself, so to see this otherwise sedate woman move so quickly was a little startling, troubling, and in retrospect foreboding. 

Pushing a grown man down a flight of stairs is not the feat of strength that some might consider it. We didn’t see it, but we figured that he must have been off balance when she did it, resulting from his refusal to turn and face her in his path to the basement. She was screaming things at him from behind, and her intensity grew with each scream until we could no longer understand the words coming out of her mouth. Mr. Finnegan continued to refuse to turn around and face her, but he should’ve suspected that his wife’s intensity would lead to a conclusion against which he should guard himself. Thus, when she pushed him, he was in no position to defend himself or lessen the impact of falling down a flight of about twenty steps. 

When we ran to the top of the stairs –after the sounds of him hitting the stairs shook the house in such a manner that all three of us instinctually put a hand on the armrests of the furniture we sat in to brace ourselves– we witnessed her haul her six-foot-five, two-hundred-pound husband upstairs by his hair, one-handed.”

Mrs. Finnegan’s final scream, that which proceeded her pushing her husband down the stairs, led us to believe that whatever frayed vestige of sanity she clung to for much of her life just snapped. I couldn’t understand what Mrs. Finnegan screamed as she pulled him up the stairs by his hair, but I wasn’t sure if that was because the screams of her children, and her husband, drowned out those shrieks. 

“France!” I heard Greg scream in pain. “France, for God’s sakes!” he screamed repeatedly. 

When I saw Mrs. Finnegan’s contorted facial expression, it transfixed me. In their attempts to either help her, or break her hold on Mr. Finnegan’s hair, her children blocked most of my view of her face. I bobbed and weaved to see more. I didn’t know why my need to see her face drove me to such embarrassing lengths, but I all but shouted at those obstructing my view of it to move out of the way. 

I’ve witnessed rage a couple of times, prior to Mrs. Finnegan’s, but I couldn’t remember seeing it so vacant before. This almost unconscious display of rage was one that those who aren’t employed in various levels of civil service might see once in a lifetime.

Her body blocked any view we might have had of Mr. Finnegan, but I assumed that he was back stepping the stairs to relieve some of the pain of having his hair pulled in such a manner. We could also guess he was putting his hand on the handrail in a manner that assisted her in pulling him up. Regardless the details of the moment, it was still an impressive display of strength fueled by a scary visage of rage. 

She was in such a state that when she was finally atop the stairs, standing in the kitchen with her children trying to calm her, she couldn’t form intelligible words. Her lips were moving but no sound was coming out, and when that initial brief spell ended, the self-described word nerd could only manage gibberish, the same gibberish that proceeded her pushing her husband down the stairs, and all moments between. She later suggested that that gibberish resulted from being overcome by spirits. Once she escaped that state, she stated that the gibberish we all heard was her speaking in tongues. She believed that divine intervention prevented her from further harming her husband, in the manner divine intervention once prevented Abraham from harming his son Isaac in the Biblical narrative. I believed it too, in the heat of the moment, but I would later learn that I just witnessed my first psychotic episode. 

I don’t know what happened in the aftermath of this incident, as I never entered their home again. I do know that the Finnegan marriage survived it, and I’m sure that Mrs. Finnegan still believes that divine intervention played a role. I’m also sure that if anyone doubted her assessment, they would be greeted at the door with a “Welcome to the home of the divine intervention!” headline hello to introduce them to that Finnegan family discussion of the day. If those future visitors were to ask me for advice on this matter, I would advise them to consider their options before entering. 

Art is Dog. Dog is Art

RilalyLeave a comment

A man let his pet out for a tinkle. Nothing strange about that, right? His pet was a rooster. I was the visitor walking my dog passed his property, witnessing a homeowner doing what he does from the comfort of his own home, so I was in no position to evaluate his activities. Watching the man do that, led me to feel that I was a stranger in a strange land, and I couldn’t shake it. Other than this small, relatively insignificant episode, it wasn’t a strange land to me. Even though I was born and raised in a relatively industrial city, my home state is generally considered an agricultural one, and just about everyone I knew and spent some time in and around the agricultural industry. The state was I was now walking my dog in was so close to mine that I didn’t expect to see anything different from what I knew, and I didn’t, until this rooster sprang out the backdoor that the homeowner held open for him. 

I tried to look away quickly, because I didn’t want him to know I saw it. I didn’t want to share that uncomfortable smile that we share with someone after they do something we consider embarrassing, and I didn’t want to have to come up with some comment to lighten the load for him. Just before I could look away, the homeowner waved. It was a hearty wave, strengthened by a pleasant smile. The man’s smile and the wave suggested that letting a rooster out in the backyard was nothing but routine for him, and there was no reason for me to stress out about it in the moment. I returned the smile, waved back, and continued walking my dog.

While attempting to force the conclusion of the episode in my head, I almost missed the rooster rush the fence after it saw how close my dog and I came to its territory. It quickly ambled down the considerable stairs that descended from the porch, and it sprinted across the yard to us, until its beak protruded through the fence. It eyed my dog, and it eyed me. It offered us an unmistakably foreboding eye to caution us against stepping any closer. It did not cockle-doodle-doo us, but some sound, like a bark, seemed like the next logical progression to punctuate its warning. 

It followed us along the fence line with that foreboding eye. The silent tension percolating between us was not one of fear, but I was so confused that I wanted to hurry up and end this episode before a more confusion progression occurred. The writer side of me wants to write that when we reached the end of its fence line, it stood there watching us as if it didn’t know what to do, but even though its actions were born of mimicry, the rooster appeared to know exactly what it was doing. The rooster’s actions were so foreign to my limited understanding of roosters that they unnerved me. They unnerved and confused me so much that I thought if I were a four-to-five-year-old when I experienced this episode, I might walk away in tears. Especially, I thought, if this rooster tried to bark. If it tried to bark, or make some sort of sound to punctuate its warning, I thought it might rattle my foundation in the same ways some of the early David Lynch films could. 

I forgot about this incident soon after that walk ended. I didn’t consider it a “You’ve got to hear this!” type of story for months. I considered it a “you had to be there” story where so many stories go to die. When one of my friends told me a story about an incident that “kind of freaked them out a little”, I dropped this story on them in that “You think that’s weird, get a load of what happened to me one day” vein that we do to outdo their stories. His reaction to this story was such that I began telling it so often that it became my story. I told it so often during the next year, that when I returned to the locale where it happened, I began telling it again without proper foresight.

“Oh, that’s my brother Harley,” a man said. “He has a pet rooster.”

Harley’s brother interrupted me in full story mode. I was in my element as a storyteller with a number of people listening in, and I was on a roll. Harley’s brother locked me up. I couldn’t think of anything to say. It was equivalent to driving down the street at eighty miles an hour and slamming on the brakes.

My favorite stories are of the “strange but true” variety that can stand on their own. They don’t require embellishment or a clever, fabricated conclusion. A more clever writer might’ve added something more to ignite laughter or some sort of other sense of satisfaction for their audience. They might have the rooster bark, or have it make some sound that it mimicked from the dogs it was obviously raised around. Strange but true stories like the-rooster-that-thought-it-was-a-dog are my favorites, not because they’re hilarious, but because they’re so true that they leave the listener with that “All right, but what do you want me to do with this?” reaction. When I’m in the middle of one of these stories, and someone interrupts the timing and emphasis I’ve developed after so many retellings, it annoys me. When that interruption deflates my story, I become visibly flustered.

I had a finger in the air, and a smile on my face, as I prepared to launch into my critically acclaimed conclusion, but this man’s intimate familiarity with the rooster’s owner brought me to that screeching halt. It locked me up so bad that for the next couple of guilt-ridden moments I wondered if there was a colloquial antonym for verbal diarrhea. I considered the term verbal constipation, but I wasn’t sure if that captured it.

“Harley had two dogs,” Harley’s brother added. “They died. That rooster is the only thing he has left.”

There was something in the man’s tone I couldn’t immediately place. I immediately assumed it was compassion that he was directing at his brother’s loss. The more I thought about it, however, the more I began to believe that he might have felt bad about ruining my story and causing me a mean case of verbal constipation. He might have noticed how much I enjoyed telling this story before his interruption, and he might have recognized that he had taken one hell of a good story away from me.

Whatever the case was, the man provided me an answer for why a homeowner would release a rooster in his backyard. The rooster grew up around dogs. The rooster either mimicked the patterns of those dogs protecting their property, for so many years, that it couldn’t stop after they passed, or the rooster thought it was a dog. I did not ask if the rooster scratched at the door when it wanted to go outside, or if it saw my dog and I approaching and began running in canine circles, until Harley picked up on the visual cues that the rooster mimicked when it wanted outside. I didn’t ask about Harley, and if Harley participated in this routine because he missed the dogs so much that continuing the routine provided some sort of therapy? I didn’t ask if Harley thought the rooster’s actions were kind of cute, or funny in the beginning, and he ended up doing it so often that whatever drove him to do it in the beginning was gone and the routine of it all took over, because by the time I saw Harley do it, I saw nothing but routine on his face. I wish I asked some of these questions, just to fill out the details of this story, but Harley’s brother caught me so off guard that I ended the moment with a mean case of verbal constipation.

The Art of the Nod 

A speaker began speaking about himself. He began informing us of his talents, what he planned to do with them, and all of his subsequent dreams and expectations. His life story was interesting in the beginning, but he just went on for too long. He was also the type of speaker who provides far too many details, and he provided so many alternatives that no listener would be able to maintain interest no matter how much they wanted Ari to like them. I managed to maintain the façade that Ari intrigued me, but it was a struggle. When everyone else failed in this regard, I became the center of his attention. When that happened, maintaining interest became more of a chore for me.

My friend, a third party in this conversation, was not as successful in her efforts to purport interest. She nodded off. I was, presumably, the only one who saw her nod off, and I was the only one to witness her artistic recovery.

When she nodded off, her head went down and some instinctual part of not wanting to appear so bored that she fell asleep took over, and she jerked her head up. The art of this nod occurred a second later when she nodded down again. This second nod was not a result of falling asleep, but an attempt to rewrite any theories we might have had about her falling asleep in the first place. She performed the second, voluntary nod to re-characterize the first one as nothing more than the first in a series of nods of agreement.  

She even added a “Yep!” to further characterize the hearty series of nods further. 

She had no idea what she was agreeing to, but she got away with it. I looked out at the faces of the others in the room. No one else saw it. I was impressed. I looked back at her, and she had not only maintained her agreement, she strengthened it, until she was garnering more attention from Ari than I was.

In the halls of social protocol, I considered this art.

I all but applauded her for this reaction when I asked her about it later. I mentioned that I didn’t think a person could carry something like that off once “That!” I said, “was too artistic. That requires practice!” I asked if she ever did this to me. She said she hadn’t. She said I was never that boring. I was grateful for the compliment, but I had to know how often she did that. She said as far as she was concerned it was the first time. She had no other explanation for it, other than the fact that she was trying to avoid appearing rude. She tired of my questions after a while, and she stated that the moment embarrassed her, and she asked that we move onto other subjects.

Old People

Old people? Old people? Let me tell you something about old people. Old people set the parameter. If it weren’t for old people, your nuance would have no contrast. All that rebellion you cherish, that avant garde comedy, would just be blather. Old people? Have you ever watched the movie Caddyshack? Did you find it humorous? Uh huh. Ask anyone that knows anything about the finer nuances of comedy, and they’ll tell you that that movie would not have been half as funny as it was, were it not for the old person in that production, Ted Knight, providing contrast. Without contrast in comedy, the movie is just a bunch of buffoons standing around reciting lines to one another. Contrast provides the pivot point for comedy, and that old man in Caddyshack, that fuddy duddy as you call him, set the standard for the role that straight men would play in comedy for the next four decades. The straight men set the parameters for other players to bounce off, and that’s what we old, boring types do. We set the parameters for the rest of you to appear funny, cool, hip and sexy. Try writing a cool, hip, funny scene without a Dean Wormer, and we’ll see how far you get.

Like Boxing for Writers

Some writers believe that what they write is witty, humorous, or a display of their as of yet undiscovered talent in the art of comedy? We’ve all watched them write about clouds and trees, and we’ve all let that go, because we know all writers have to preen themselves every once in a while, but when they attempt comedy some of us think these writers need an intervention. 

One of the dangers inherent in comedy is that it’s relative, and every audience member should acknowledge that before they castigate another’s attempt at being humorous, but some attempts at humor are so bad that I want to say that we can all see the writer’s haymaker coming.

When the author writes about a disagreement they had with their daughter about what television show to watch, we know to put our laughing galoshes on. We also know that every author, if they are male, will provide exhaustive detail about how they regard their daughter a superior intellect. They will provide us with eyewitness testimony of their daughter’s brilliance, and for some authors this will last for about a quarter of the story.

At this point, many of us envy those who can start a story and ‘X’ out of it when it fails to intrigue them. Those who are able to find their way through the maze of the author’s shame, apologies, and qualifiers are introduced to a flurry of jokes that are intended to impress the judges. There’s no power behind the punches, because the author doesn’t want to offend the reader, their daughter, or any judge that might happen upon their story. We see their effort dangling, and as the joke plays out we all learn what not to do when we’re looking for a laugh. The author is the butterfly that floats merrily through our head without the fear, or the need to fear, the bee sting. They’re the Pernell Whitaker, Sugar Ray Leonard, and Floyd Maywhether of the writing world that gets points from the judges, but bores those of us who don’t understand the art of boxing. We want something exciting to happen, the judge can call it blood lust if they want, but if the reader wanted to witness the majestic art of dance, they would’ve attended the ballet.

Find Your Own Truth

RilalyLeave a comment

“You need to find your own truth,” Ray Bradbury said to a caller of a radio show on which he was a guest. Mr. Bradbury expounded on the idea, somewhat, but he remained vague. He said some things about following the lead of influential masters of the craft, and all that, “But you’ll eventually need to find your own truth,”

We loathe vague advice. We want answers, thorough and perfect answers, that help us cross bridges. We also want those answers to be pointed and easy to incorporate, but another part of us knows that the seeker of easy paths often gets what they pay for in that regard.

When we listen to a radio show guesting a master craftsman, however, we expect nuggets of information to unlock the mystery of how a master craftsman managed to carve out a niche in his overpopulated craft. We want tidbits, words of wisdom about design, and/or habits we can imitate and emulate, until we reach a point where we don’t feel so alone in our structure. Vague advice and vague platitudes feel like a waste of our time. Especially when that advice comes so close to our personal core and stops abrupt.

Ray Bradbury went onto define his vision of an artistic truth as he saw it, as a guest on this radio show, but that definition didn’t step much beyond the precipice. I tuned him out by the time he began speaking of other matters, and I eventually turned the channel. I might have missed some great advice, but I was frustrated.

After I heard the advice, but I went back to doing what I was doing soon after hearing it, because he didn’t give me what I wanted and needed at the time. It did start popping up when I was doing something, and then it started popping up when I started doing something else. The advice initially felt like useless new-age advice we give to confused souls looking for guidance. It felt like sage advice from some kind of guru who never figured out how to succeed within normal structures in life, so he began dispensing gobbledy gook that others should interpret but never can, so they just label the guru a spiritual guide, because they don’t know what else to call him.  

It might take hours, it might take weeks, but this idea of an individual truth, as it pertains specifically to artistic vision, becomes applicable so often and, in so many situations, that we begin to chew on it and digest it. Others may continue to find this vague advice about an artistic truth nothing more than waste matter –to bring this analogy to its biological conclusion– but it begins to infiltrate everything the eager student does. If the advice is pertinent, the recipient begins spotting truths what should’ve been so obvious before. They begin to see that what they thought was their artistic truth, and what their primary influences considered true, is not as true for them as they once thought.

Vague advice might seem inconsequential to those who do not bump up against the precipice. For these people, a platitude such as, “Find your own truth” may have an “of course” suffix attached to it. “Of course an artist needs to find their artistic truth when approaching an artistic project,” they say. “Isn’t that the very definition of art?” It is, but if we were to ask an artist about the current project they’re working on, and its relation to their definition of an artistic truth, they will surely reply that they think they’re really onto something. If we ask them about the project after they finish the piece, we will likely receive a revelation of the artist’s frustration in one form or another, as most art involves the pursuit of an artistic truth coupled with an inability to ever capture it to the artist’s satisfaction. Yet, we could say that the pursuit of artistic truth, coupled with the frustration of never achieving it, provides more fuel to the artist than an actual, final, arrived-upon truth ever could.

Finding an artistic truth, involves intensive knowledge of the rules of a craft, locating the parameters of the artist’s ability, finding their formula within, and whittling. Any individual who has ever attempted to create art has started with a master’s template in mind. The aspiring, young artist tries to imitate and emulate that master’s design, and they wonder what that master might do in moments of artistic uncertainty: Can I do this? What would they do? Should I do that? Is my truth nestled somewhere inside all of that awaiting further exploration? At a furthered point in the process, the artist discovers other truths, including artistic truths that contradict prior truths, until all truths become falsehoods when compared to the current artistic truth. This is where the whittling begins.

In a manner similar to the whittler whittling away at a stick to create form, the storyteller is always whittling. He’s whittling when he writes. He’s whittling when he reads. He’s whittling in a movie theater, spotting subplots and subtext that his fellow moviegoers might not see. He’s whittling when we tell him about our experience at the used car dealership. He’s trying to get to the core of the tale, a core the storyteller might not see.

“I could tell you about the greatest adventure tale ever told, or a story that everyone agrees is the funniest they’ve ever heard,” she says, “and you’d focus on the part where I said the instead of the.” The whittler searches for the truth, or a subjective truth that he can use. Is it the truth, or the truth? It doesn’t matter, because he doesn’t believe that the storyteller’s representation of the truth is the truth.

Once the artist has learned all the rules, defined the parameters, and found his own formula within a study of a master’s template, and all the templates that contradict that master template, it is time for him to branch out and find his own artistic truth.

The Narrative Essay

Even while scouring the read-if-you-like (RIYL) links the various outlets provide for the books I’ve enjoyed previously, I knew that the narrative essay existed. Just as I’ve always known that the strawberry existed, I knew about the form some call memoir, also known as literary non-fiction or creative non-fiction, but have you ever tasted a strawberry that caused you to flirt with the idea of eating nothing but strawberries for the rest of your life? If you have, your enjoyment probably had more to do with your diet prior to eating that strawberry than the actual flavor of the inexplicably delicious fruit. In the course of one’s life, a person might accidentally indulge in a diet that leaves them vitamin deficient, and they might not know the carelessness of their ways until they take that first bite of the little heart-shaped berry.

“You simply must try these strawberries,” a co-worker said in a buffet line at the office. I have always loved strawberries, but I didn’t even notice these particular strawberries in the shadow of the glorious array of meats and carbs at the other end of the buffet. While I stood there, impatiently waiting for the slow forking procedures some have for finding the perfect piece of meat, she gave me a look. “Just try them,” she said. I did.

Prior to eating that strawberry, I knew nothing about chemical rewards the brain offers for fulfilling a need, and I didn’t know anything about it after I took that first bite either. The only thing I knew, or thought, was that that strawberry was so delicious that I experienced a temporary feeling of euphoria. I piled some strawberries on my plate, and ate a couple of them, but the line was so slow that I was allowed to eat a number of the strawberries on my plate before progressing. I normally do not do this, and I normally loathe those people who do. I prefer to assemble a meal for myself and wait until I’m at a table before I even take my first bite. My co-worker was so insistent that I try one, that I bit into to one to indulge her.

“These things are glorious,” I said.

“What are?”

“The strawberries.”

“Oh, right,” she said. “I told you.”

The sixth and seventh strawberries were as glorious as the first few, and before I knew it, I was gorging on the fruit when another friend behind me, in the buffet line, informed me that I was holding up the line.

At this point, the reader might like to know the title of the one gorgeous little narrative essay that spawned my feelings of creative euphoria. The only answer I can give is that one essay will not quench those suffering from a nutrient depletion any more than a single strawberry can. You might need to gorge on them in the rude, obsessive manner I did that day in the buffet line. One narrative essay did not provide a eureka-style epiphany that led me to understanding of all the creative avenues worthy of exploration in the form. One essay did not quench the idea depletion I experienced in the time-tested formulas and notions I had of the world of storytelling. I just knew I needed something more and something different, and I read all the narrative essays I could find in a manner equivalent to the effort I put into exploring the maximum benefits the strawberry could provide, until a grocery store checker proclaimed that she never witnessed anyone purchase as many strawberries as I was in one transaction. She even called a fellow employee over to witness the spectacle I laid out on her conveyor belt. The unspoken critique between the two was that no wife would permit a man to make such an exaggerated, imbalanced purchase, so I must be a self-indulgent bachelor.

An unprecedented amount of strawberries did not provide me with an unprecedented amount of euphoria, of course, as the brain appears to only provide euphoric chemical rewards for satisfying a severe depletion, but the chemical rewards of finding my own truth, in the narrative essay format, have proven almost endless. The same holds true for the rewards I’ve experienced reading the output of others who have reached their creative peaks. I knew narrative essays existed, as I said, but I considered most to be dry, personal essays that attempted to describe the cute, funny things that happened to them on their way to 40. I never thought of them as a vehicle for the exploration of the answers to our abundant questions on how to be, become, and live in  the stories written by those authors who accomplished it.

It is difficult to describe an epiphany to a person who has never experienced one or even to those who have. The variables are so unique that they can be difficult to describe to a listener donning an of-course face. More often than not, an epiphany does not involve the provocative shock of unique, ingenious thoughts. My personal definition involves all of the of-course thoughts nestled among commonplace events and conversations that one has to arrive at by their own accord. When such an explanation doesn’t make a dent in the of-course faces, we can only conclude that epiphanies are almost entirely personal.

For me, the narrative essay was an avenue to the truth my mind craved, and I might have never have ventured down that path had Ray Bradbury’s vague four words “Find your own truth,” failed to register. For those who stubbornly maintain their of-course faces in the shadow of the maxim the late, great Ray Bradbury, I offer another vague piece of advice that the late, great Rodney Dangerfield offered to an aspiring, young comedian: “You’ll figure it out.”

If advice such as these two nuggets appear so obvious that it is considered unworthy of discussion, or the reader cannot see how to apply it, no matter how much time they spend thinking about it, adding to it, or whittling away at it to find a worthy core, I add this: You’ll either figure it out, or you won’t.