Life As Performance Art 149

Today, Gentle Reader, is Nothing Day. So I am going to write about...Nothing. I really can't think of much more to add to the many comments, insights, complaints, and outrageous remarks I usually have to contribute to these august pages. The end of August always feels transitional. Even with warm weather, it no longer seems exactly like summer, but neither are we in autumn. Perhaps today, I can write a little bit about what I was doing in past years at this date in time. Two particularly significant years come to mind right now. 1991, when I was thirty-five and recently returned from Europe. And 1971, when at the tender age of fifteen. Both were times of reinstating order in my life. In 1991 I had cut short my time in Europe to help clean up the mess and chaos that Dippy had made of our Christian community. Of course that is not her real name. It isn't that I fear a defamation suit, I just don't want to be that mean as to name and publicly shame her. Even if she did happen to be one of the most absolute idiots I have ever known, who single-handedly almost completely destroyed the work of ministry and community we had so painstakingly built over the previous three years. She was the one who had brought in a young drug addicted schizophrenic to live with her in our ministry house. He trashed the place, screwed her brains out then trashed her as well. This wasn't rape by the way. She was thoroughly in consent of their relations. and he beat the crap out of her. Twice. Of course I had to intervene! It wasn't easy. Even after he was gone, he returned a couple times to trash the place even more, while we were out. I was intentionally staying with her then, to keep an eye on things and give her support. She didn't seem to appreciate my help, but we managed, somehow, and I did have to close the house because her idiot Romeo kept coming back to trash it even more, so we all ended up living together, without her pathetic white trash Romeo, in the retreat house in Richmond. She was not a teenager, by the way, but in her late forties. Seriously! In 1971, August 30, when I was fifteen, the Children of God, a highly dangerous cult, had moved up from California to absorb the Jesus People, who had been over the past eight months or so, my Christian community. They wanted me to move in with them, change my name to a biblical name (didn't do that till 1995, without pressure, by the way), and hate absolutely everything and everyone in order to truly follow Christ. For three days I argued, cajoled and begged people whom I had once admired for their common sense and spirituality, to not swallow the Kool Aid, and finally, with support from another outraged visitor, distanced myself from them and I think in many ways saved my life. What I went through at fifteen matured me very fast, and helped transform me into a young man, mature and wise well beyond my fifteen years. Today it is overcast and raining and eighteen degrees. I like the way my life has evolved and I am most grateful for those difficult past lessons that did much to make me grow into the person I am today. Happy Saturday, Gentle Reader!