This Journal

8.26.99 - Thursday

They call this gymnasium an arena, and it bears the family name of a current conservative state politician who is a graduate of the school (though the arena is not named for him). I don't care very much for this politician - would never vote for him. But some members of his family have contributed generously to provide this useful and fairly comfortable (for a gym) space. There's a track balcony for indoor running and...but I don't want to talk about that.

High up in the bleachers with my sophomore homeroom, I'm wondering where these little tears come from as mass begins. I squish them back into my eyes. All I need is for this crowd to see me wimping out for no discernable reason. "Is he cracking up?" I don't think so.

I'm almost always bushwhacked by my tears; they seem to leap out from behind the most ordinary bushes. I guess I'm that much out of touch with the emotional parts of me. I guess some part of me is just An American Guy.

I wasn't feeling especially sad. Maybe I was too happy. Maybe I was touched by the sneaky beautiful opening song and its words (which I cannot remember now). Maybe I'm still having some displacement twinges from The Big Move; this was just a tiny corrective aftershock. Maybe I was feeling how lucky I was to be here; maybe I was falling in love. (Can you do that? Fall in love with a place? With a roomful of people you don't really know and who don't know you? Sure you can - falling in love has nothing to do with what makes sense.)

I've got a CD on which this guy Tom Bodette talks about men and crying. He makes the point that research says crying is a thing the body does to rid itself of certain toxins produced by stress. If we don't get rid of these things they end up giving us physical trouble like ulcers or something. Makes sense to me.

The male license to cry (particularly in public) should be granted freely to boys and older men. Those in between should also have it, though they don't seem to want it much...just too messy, I guess. As I creep toward 50, I'm probably due for some old guy crying spells. For me it has something to do with my sense that Life is Beautiful and Sad, a perfect snowflake of desire vastly unfulfilled. Yeah, it may all come down to the contemplation of mortality, not just personal but universal as well.

I hesitate to write about this topic at all, since a friend of mine has been very concerned about my emotional state over the past few months. (He's not the only one to be concerned; I've gotten lots of concern-vibes from quite a few people - and am grateful for it all. But he's pretty direct about it.) When he reads this he'll be wondering how I'm doing and if I'm really feeling like this or if I'm really sad like that. I appreciate it, but I don't really want to talk about it cuz I'm really doing fine. Besides, American Guys don't actually want to spend a heck of a lot of time talking about their more delicate sensibilities. We are easily embarassed.

I had a good time at this morning's liturgy, felt at home among these thousand mostly anonymous folks. Bob's homily was inspiring, profound and had a really cool Flannery O'Connor story in it and a touching vignette of Edith Stein (more tears?) I like smart homilies. Afterwards I blasted into the shortened classes with good energy. I got to read Eliot's "Macavity: The Mystery Cat" and Poe's "The Raven" to the freshmen. They think I read real good. But I must have been running at full throttle; I was pretty beat by the last bell.