A Meditation on Waiting...

A Meditation On Waiting...

At this point in the calendar year, and also in my life, it seems apt to think about waiting.  An impatient person who is really rather fond of this defect of my character, I find events like the New Year’s Eve celebrations to be less than thrilling.  Two years ago, we observed the passing of the old year with our next-door neighbors, whose young daughter dearly wanted to stay up and toast at midnight, but simply couldn’t keep her eyes open that long.  So, being somewhat technically sophisticated, the group of us came up with this simple solution – we found a landmass where midnight arrives three hours earlier than our local time; we tuned in to a streaming television station, to watch the popping of champagne corks; Brazilians ran around in shorts and t-shirts, in the midnight warmth, and we NorteAmericanos made a toast and then all went to bed by ten.

Inspired, by this tiny manipulation of my own experience of time, I want to talk about waiting – one time when I wanted to wait, and other times when waiting was mandated, but not what I would have preferred. 

In the winter of 1996, I spent a month in Buffalo NY, in a residency with the arts group, Hallwalls.  I stayed at a Buffalo hotel, on North St, a mile from the studio building.  My little 7^th floor hotel room featured a small kitchen, and the studio space was in a huge former factory where windshield wipers were first made.  A number of other artists also shared that space, each person with a partitioned-off work area. 

I had a bit of open floor next to the artists’ lounge.  I set up folding tables, stowed boxes of tubes, hoses and pieces of blown glass underneath, and began working on a large, two-section piece of sculpture.  But I kept having difficulties – what was this… art…  about, anyway?  One evening, when it seemed I would never resolve my problem, an impromptu meeting unfolded with the unnatural clarity of a dream. 

A small, dark-haired, brightly dressed woman burst into the studio, looking for another artist working there.  This woman wore a tight jacket over a full, bright turquoise skirt, and she had on a pair of brilliant, orange suede high heels.  I didn’t know her, but I complimented her on her shoes, which really were remarkable.  The artist she’d come to visit wasn’t there, but she took an almost urgent interest in my work instead.  She asked what I thought about, as I make things.  Her questions were more insightful and challenging than those I expect from casual passersby, and our discussion grew more personal and, for me, particularly self-revealing.  (As we talked, I noticed, almost peripherally, how sharply focused everything seemed to be.  I felt it important to be alert.)  Explaining some formal choices I often make, I mentioned that I had lived in an orphanage – something that, at that point in my life, I didn't usually let people know. 

Immediately, the vivid woman urged that I read a particular book, as soon as possible.  She mentioned the title,  “Man’s Search for Something or Other” and I almost retched a little, deciding immediately that, if it was another self-help book, it was the last thing I wanted to read.  Years earlier, I’d been advised to study Norman Vincent Peale’s ‘The Power of Positive Thinking’, and while I was trying to put his principles to work in my life, I fell and broke my leg, which needed surgery on both my leg and my foot, which required the insertion of a pin to keep the bone pieces together, and led to a second operation, all of which totaled thousands of dollars in doctor bills.  And me with no health insurance.  Oh, and not to mention three months of daily round trips between my fourth-floor walkup in Hoboken, and my job in the Exxon Building in Manhattan, while on crutches and in a knee-length cast.  Groceries and laundry extra.  Positive Thinking, indeed.  I tend to look askance at such works – in my opinion, they help the authors more than they’ve ever helped me.   

But the colorful woman wasn’t to be put off.  “It’s by…” and she hesitated.

Then, from down the hall, a deep male voice boomed out the author’s name, and provided the correct spelling.  (This, from someone I’d never seen in the studio before)   “Oh, yes,” the bright woman said, “that’s who I mean.  You must read this book.”  She insisted.  “Promise me, you’ll read it,” she repeated.  I thought she was going to pull out a contract and a notary’s seal.  To at least seem polite, and in keeping with that lingering sense unusual sharpness about this conversation, I wrote the title, and the author’s name, on a scrap of paper.   I said would try to find it.  In a swirl of color, the woman left, her orange heels clicking down the hall.  

Later, because I was hungry, I called it quits for the day.  On my drive back to the hotel, I saw a bookshop, and stopped in.  The clerk said they had just one copy of ‘my book’ in stock; it was small and thin and inexpensive, so I bought it.  The clerk put it in a bag, and I went on my way, deciding I would read it back in Rochester.  Or some other time, maybe years from now.  Or never.

In my hotel room, I boiled some frozen potato pierogies.  Butter; pepper; dinner.  I settled myself on the bed, held my warm bowl on my lap, clicked the remote, to watch a little TV.  But it wasn’t working – no picture, on any channel.  Not even useable sound.  I called the front desk; they said they couldn’t fix it until the next day.  Annoyed, I took out my new book, and started to read.

‘Man’s Search for Meaning’, by Viktor Frankl.  As they say in the blurbs, I couldn’t put it down.  I really couldn't.  I think I read it all the way through that night.  And then again, many times.

I’d read Holocaust accounts before, but Frankl’s book was written from the perspective -- and with the understanding -- of a survivor.  He describes the slender, perverse tricks of fate, and the brittle survival instincts that helped just a few people endure the unthinkable.  He highlighted the less obvious, but persistently gnawing torments suffered by his fellow inmates -- torments of which their keepers were completely unaware. 

One of these torments was the not knowing – not knowing how long they would be there.   Indefinite incarceration, Frankl says, first saps and the sucks the human spirit dry.  The inmates, isolated, deprived of any word from outside, had next to nothing on which to pin even a frail  hope.  No bracing sense of ‘this many days left’, ‘just this much longer, and I’ll be free’, ‘only this many more barefoot trips through the mud, between the barracks and the worksite, and back again.’  Endlessness lay like a veil over them, over their minute triumphs – the extra bit of bread, the hidden cigarette – as well as over the countless deliberate indignities and cruelties, atop the crushing burden of physical pain and psychic distress. 

So I was surprised that, instead of any of the more gruesome examples at his command, Frankl would choose this particular feature of detention – this ‘not-knowing’ -- for special mention.  I was surprised because… I’m pretty sure I know it.

I’ve always been embarrassed that I wasn’t in the orphanage longer.  Compared with the duration of my brothers’ stay in that place, my own stint in that particular holding pen for inconvenient or unwanted children, my own piddling 18 months, seems to disqualify me from even remembering that I’d been there.  Any weakling can do 18 months in an orphanage, on his head.  It’s a snap. 

But Frankl’s observations brought back to me this sense of ‘not-knowing’, like an unexpected whiff of something unpleasant.  Unlike most of the dramatic depictions of such places, institutions do not encourage warmth and camaraderie among the residents.  There are not spontaneous dance routines, featuring mops and buckets of sudsy water.  We kids tried to attract as little attention as possible from our keepers.  We also guarded ourselves from each other.   We barely admitted to ourselves how we really felt.  We certainly didn’t talk with anyone else about what might be keeping us awake at night, what little rosary of woe each might recite, waiting for sleep.      

Here is my list of things not known:

Where am I?  Why am I here?  Who decided to put me here?  How long will I be here?

Where is my father?  Will I see him again?  When?  Why can’t I have his address, so I could write him a letter?  Why can’t I have his telephone number?

Where is my mother?  Did she finally run away her boyfriend, and take my sister?  Does she think of me?  Will I ever see her, or my sister, again?  

Did I do something wrong?  If I did, what was it?  Can I make up for it?   If I didn’t do anything bad, why am I here?  While I’m here, if I do some good thing, so I can go away?  How much good does it cost, to be able to leave?  If I’m bad again, will I stay forever? 

What does it mean, to be ‘put up for adoption’?  Have my brothers and I been ‘put up for adoption’?  If someone adopts us, will they tell my father?  If someone adopts one of us, will the others stay here?  If someone wants to adopt me, will I have to go?  Will I ever see my brothers again?  If one of them is adopted, will I ever see him again?

These, and other thoughts like them, were like a background electric hum, running through my head every day of the eighteen months I had no way of knowing would be eighteen months.  At times, my father made a phone call, or promised to visit, or would actually see us, and some of the not-knowing might calm, for an hour or so.  But the basic questions remained stubbornly alive.  If I tried to ask my father any of them, he would look pained, and not say anything.  ‘Not knowing’.  It was like having a sharp little nail poking up inside your shoe, pinching, every step you took, every day.    

 

The Orphanage had a special group of supporters, The Auxilliary Ladies.  Two or three times a year, these Ladies came to visit.  On these occasions, we cleaned our spaces particularly well, and made ourselves unusually presentable.  Rumor had it that the most important reason for this extra-special showing on our part was that, every once in a while, an Auxiliary Lady would take a child home with her.  One of the oldest Senior Boys swore that another Senior Boy before him said he had actually seen it happen.

So, on that Saturday morning in May, there was a heightened excitement and tension, a kind of animal watchfulness, among us children.  We were all arranged beside our neatly-made beds, as the ladies, in groups of two and three, made their way through the different departments.  As I remember them, they were young and slender, calm and well-dressed.  I was afraid to really look directly at them.  Their filmy pastel garments belied a terrible power of rescue.  I was a little miserable, hoping that one of them might choose me, and ashamed that I would even think of leaving what little was left of my own fractured family. 

The inspection tour was finished.  We children were sent outside to play quietly.  We were so careful and moved about so slowly, you'd have thought the playground was mined.  Suddenly, another boy -- I think it was Danny Reed -- and I were called, and invited to sit with two of the Auxiliary Ladies, in a four-seat lawn glider, on the grass beside a wall of privet hedge, sheltered by sycamore trees.  It was like the beautiful part of a fairy tale.  I remember the swaying of the seat as I climbed in.  I must have seemed skittish, trying not to wriggle about like a puppy, so desperate to please, but terrified of wetting itself.  After we rocked back and forth a few times, the Ladies asked us each a few questions about how we liked school.  Then they smiled and looked at their wrists, at their slender watches, and smoothed their skirts, before getting to their feet.  We were dismissed. 

The glider conversation was over.  Neither of the ladies had indicated that either one of us might be the boy who would be leaving with her.  Danny and I hated each other after that.   Each of us knew he had been that close to rescue, and each of us knew that it was the other boy who had messed it all up.

It was that kind of waiting, for that kind of deliverance.  

I’m afraid to talk about the other waiting.  I’m sure it will make me seem even more ridiculous than I already know I am.  But… I share what I have.

Recently, I took part in a Vespers service.  They needed someone to read a Bible passage.  I love to read aloud, so I volunteered.  I got to read the story of Jesus and the woman fallen into sin.  I enjoy the sensory images – fragrant oily balm, salty tears, long human hair rubbed against dusty human feet.  Other than that, like a bad boy, I doodled in the service leaflet, as I usually will, and didn’t pay much attention to anything else.  But at the end of his homily, the minister gave a challenge to all of us in attendance.

‘Spend five minutes with Jesus,’ he urged, with earnestness I found surprising and disarming, especially in a mature man of his sophistication.  “Just five minutes," he repeated.  It seemed both manageable and silly, so I decided to do it.

Writing as fast as I could, my five minutes was quickly up, but I wasn’t nearly done.  My salutation of ‘You son of a bitch,’ was followed by a great deal of anger welling up.  After ten minutes of listing the grievances and betrayals of just the first fifteen years of my life, I ran out of steam.

Then I sat back, with a striking revelation: Jesus -- whoever that is -- actually had nothing whatsoever to do with this partial list of betrayals and disappointments and abandonments, which to my surprise I’d laid at the feet of the Son of God.  Jesus, to the limited extent that I know anything about the matter, never seems to have said He would fix anything at all, for me or anyone else.  (Okay, there is the ‘Knock and the door will be opened unto you’ thing.  But even that leaves a lot of leeway)

My complaints, I realized, should be with the well-meaning adults – assuming they were well-meaning -- who gave me a complete (and, as it turns out, wholly imaginary) set of expectations and assurances, suitable for trotting out at any time, like a Sacred Repair Kit, for the unwanted but inevitable Flat Tires of Life, that each of us must face. 

According to these instructors, a kind of Jesus in Coveralls (or, in the case of medical emergency, Jesus in Scrubs) operates a celestial AAA, with 24-hour roadside service.  And because I know I’d been paying my dues, and keeping my insurance premiums paid up to the best of my ability, where was the Tow Truck when I needed it?  Where was the Ambulance?  

Like the rest of us, I had to learn to change the tire myself.  As for the thrills of self-administered chest compression --  don’t ask. 

Leading to the larger Waiting.

I’m afraid that, until maybe four years ago, I was still nursing the secret hope of being around, doing nothing in particular (but being suitably dressed, of course), when the Great Return takes place.

For instance:  I was sitting at an outdoor table at a café in the West Village, having brunch with John, and struck by how splendid this Palm Sunday was.  The light was gorgeous, there was a lilt of forgiving mildness in the air, people looked unusually pleasant and genial, and I had my little sprig of lucky palm frond in my suit jacket.  I got a little twinge, and thought, ‘Today would be a great day for Jesus to come back.’  Or not. 

In Rochester NY, John and I were in bed and awake at 5 am, with the TV on, so we could be among the millions of observers of the state funeral for the late Diana, Princess of Wales.  The service unfolded; we commented to each other on the remarkable British capacity for ceremony.  When the recital of the Lord’s Prayer began, I got a positive electric thrill.  How many hundreds of millions of human beings, all over the globe, were witnessing, in real time, this solemn moment of simple petition, the prayer Jesus Himself taught – and with an even greater jolt, I thought, ‘This is it!  This is the moment!  Now Jesus has to come back!  After all, He’ll be on television, with Elton John and Queen Elizabeth…”   Or... not.

 

In a doctor’s office on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, I was undergoing hypnotherapy, to unknot some particular instances of childhood abuse.  While, for some reason, I was telling the Pentecost story to the Jewish therapist, I suddenly began to sob, from deep in my chest.   All I could manage to tell this bewildered man, when I could finally breathe again, was “I don’t think He’s coming back.” 

Now, 2011 has wound to its finish, and the year of Mayan Mania begins to unfold.  Here I am.  My partner is now Director of Music at Christ Episcopal Church in New Brunswick NJ.  I sing in one of his adult choirs (mostly because I’m loud, I think, and in spite of my tendency to go flat).  I attend church sometimes, and I participate in the service, but I’m afraid I’m more a culturally-imprinted Christian, than what many would think of as a ‘believer’.  (I may really be a Buddhist.  Or a Czech Communist.  I’m not sure) 

I always take Communion, but as an admission, with my fellows, of my real, ultimate helplessness and dependence, rather than as an act of consuming transfigured matter.  Despite the whirring of my uber-Presbyterian grandfather, spinning in his grave, I now bow my head when the cross passes, reverencing the innumerable sacrifices, traceable from the immediate present and reaching back, back, branching out through time, all of which have made it possible for me, simply, to exist. 

These human things -- hunger, and poverty, and suffering and sacrifice -- make complete, tangible sense to me.  All of these things, I think, are worth repeated human acknowledgement, however they may be blurred and buried within pomp and ceremony. 

But the waiting – the waiting for Jesus – the waiting, and straining to be rescued, and hoping to be found good enough – I am deeply ashamed to admit that I can no longer bear it.  I feel abraded, stretched, and grieved by waiting.  I feel wounded, orphaned again in a way, by this pious waiting.  I feel shame at my weakness and impatience.  Even though I repeat the affirmative words, at the heart of the Mass, I’m afraid to say that I am the one who has given up waiting. 

Instead, now I wait for something else, something I can be sure of, something that won’t abandon me.  A betrayal I can count on – a betrayal written indelibly in my flesh. Something that won’t dawdle for anything like 2000 years – something that won’t keep me waiting nearly as long as I wish it would. 

We all know what that is…