Drilling for Jesus

Posted byjimmcgarrahPosted inLiterary

It’s been raining for four days here in Athens, Georgia. It’s probably some god trying to balance out the fact that we have a perfect football team in the Georgia Bulldogs with some imperfect weather. Gods don’t like humans to be too happy. Anyway, the rain put me in a somber mood because the constant drip and the drab sky reminded me of monsoon season in Southeast Asia, even though a monsoon isn’t the torrential downpour you might think it is. A monsoon is an upper air current that carries the rain onshore from the Gulf of Tonkin. I digress — sorry, it’s a habit with writers. Our minds wander from one obscure association to another. In this case from the rain in Georgia to the rain in the Gulf of Tonkin to the rain the day things hit the shit on Operation Lancaster outside the Rockpile along the DMZ in I Corps Area, Republic of Vietnam. Of course, that reminded me of a poem I wrote for Avatar Magazine last year after a trip to the dentist. See how that digression and association thing works. I’m posting it here for you because it’s my blog and I can.

Drilling for Jesus

The dentist spoke of Jesus today as she drilled a hole

in one of my molars, how she was reading Genesis

and how difficult it was to get from all that

Sodom and Gomorrah sex and blood to the same God

raising the dead and saving sinners because of love.

Numbed and nervous, I squirmed through the sound

of torture—the high-speed whir, the suck and gurgle

of a water hose, the agonizing tremolo of smooth jazz

on Sirius radio—and the stench of pain in isopropyl air.

Feeling a twinge of despair and the desire to appear

brave, I shared my pretend knowledge of theology

using a thought delivered to me a priori because I

had suffered neither recent sex nor death, forgetting

in the epiphany that my mouth was stuffed with cotton.

“Wat uff Hezeus ussent who he uss?” “What?” she said,

and the conversation left us both with an existential dread

as the truth misunderstood often will.

What if Jesus wasn’t who he was.

We learn when young to hear the lie as truth

if it serves us better and we forget that things

aren’t always what they seem. Forget Jesus.

I thought of Santa and how easy it was for mom

to get my compliance in the month of December.

Forget Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny, think

of my friend Bill who quit school and joined the Marines.

He wasn’t a child, but he was—full of self-doubt

and a sense of duty. Like many of us in those days

that followed the days when our fathers had saved

the world, Billy believed in his own good war.

Like Billy, many of us believed as well,

and by enlisting we bought a ticket to Vietnam. 

He stumbled on a land mine with his left foot

probably. No one knows for sure.

It was one of his pieces we never found.

Published by jimmcgarrah

Every single person on this planet is unique in many ways and yet, most people consider themselves normal (i.e. conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected). This dichotomy is how good writing works. It contains uniqueness in the characters or narrator and a normal progression of ideas in themes. Thus, a story will be appealing if it has unique specificity in a normalized world of some kind and that creates a universal connection between writer and reader. This symbiotic connection as an oxymoron, normal uniqueness, has always fascinated me, not only on the page but more importantly, in life. Over the past twenty years I have written a dozen books. None have made me famous or rich, but I am proud of the work. It has been published by respectable literary and university presses. My editors have been talented and conscientious and brought the best of what I do to the page. But publishing is not all of my writing life. I have long wanted a private space where I could more fully express this exploration between individuality and society normalcy without regard to the business of writing, the correction of images, the political implication of phrases, and while considering there might be an audience to some of what is written, not worrying about whether it would sell. Therefore, I give you my very first and likely last, public blog. It will explore whatever I feel like exploring at a given time in whatever form I choose—maybe a poem, maybe an essay, maybe a story, or possibly a simple “fuck you” to the world. Read at your own peril and comment whenever you want. I encourage dialogue as a learning tool for writer and reader alike. I do not expect agreement with all my ideas. That would eliminate the entire uniqueness side of my inquiry. This is a free space for us all.

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