This I Used to Believe

Important dates for 200.

1066.

What is the Battle of Hastings?

14 letter words for 1000. 

Sartre. Despair. Synechdoche, New York.

What is Existentialism?

Bible stories for 800. 

Simple Solution. Cut the baby in half.

What is the Judgment of Solomon?

Are you following me?

My mother makes fun of my aptitude for trivia that will only ever appear on Jeopardy.

When I was little, I used to pray for wisdom. I used to believe that wisdom was a gift that only God could bestow on the most endearing of human beings. In my small bunk bed, I would silently obsess over the Judgment of Solomon. I would desperately pray for God for the same wisdom he granted the king. The wisdom for making choices. The wisdom to change and influence. 

I think sometimes that my insatiable appetite for knowledge is fueled by a small parable.

Yet, it is only a small piece of the puzzle. A quiet enthusiasm for something that I still feel is far beyond my reach. Wisdom is somewhat immeasurable. If I had prayed to be pretty, I’d at least know what I’d been granted through thoughtfully showered compliments and a propensity towards pageantry. No one compliments wisdom. It is a thankless job. I doubt that mother was thankful that a king offered to cut her baby in half. But I guess in this case, the end justified the means. A scary, scary thought.

To me, wisdom feels like a crystal that is left to cultivate in an insulated super-saturated solution of knowledge. I am on a quest for that crystal.

So in this quest, I consume. I probably consume more than is worth consuming. I read. I read unabashedly and without real restraint. I read things that can’t be unread. I examine. I write about what I examine. I obsess. I underestimate and over explain every single thing. I explain it again when you forgot to ask me to.

This year, I realized my greatest fear. It manifested itself one lovely Monday afternoon as I stood in front of a little over 100 of my peers lecturing on black theatre. I was terrified of one thing. Strangely, it was not a fear of looking stupid or the glazed over look that occupied the eyes of many of the students.

Here I was 22 years old, armed with literacy and terrified of not being understood.

I then realized that this fear is at the heart of many of my smaller anxieties and neurosis. It is something that has plagued my thoughts my entire life. It means a constant rehearsal of hypothetical conversations in my head.  It means ending 80% of thoughts with “Does that make sense?”

It all needs to make sense. It all needs to descend from a place of wisdom.

I realized that for at least 15 years, I have been terrified that God didn’t answer that one prayer.

Today, I think I will pray for faith.

-les

Home

            After dragging a somewhat dead lifeless body to class today after a long weekend at my parents, I find myself thinking about the value of home. I remember how hard I tried to get away from it, venturing into the wondrous land of boarding school at the age of 14 only to return after a year. The cliche says that “Home is where the heart is,” but I would venture so far as to say that home keeps a part of your soul as well. Maybe it’s not the actual physical structure but rather the memories and ideas engrained in those structures.

            As I trudged to campus, I was quickly mesmerized by the sound of lawn mowers and the idyllic smell of fresh cut grass. I thought immediately of my father seemingly gliding back and forth on his tractor across our three acres of land. I thought of the times where he had carefully carved a racetrack for my brother and I to ride our go-carts. I thought of my mother jumping at snakes while picking blackberries for wine in that same field. 

I smile, which is a rather inappropriate thing to do when you are trudging your way somewhere. Trudging is a smile-less, soul-less activity. I thought of the allergy attacks that I had suffered and the Benadryl I had consumed as a result of the grassy smell. If the smell of grass were a note, it would ring simple and clear, ready to harmonize with the other sounds of summer. It would sound like the careful hum of my dad’s mower and the energy of my mother’s voice calling my name. 

My home and my soul smell like grass.

-les

Story time.

I have always been what my mom calls a "third shift baby." During the majority of my life, my mom has worked as a third shift nurse at the local medical center. Ironically, the fact that she slept during the day, resulted in me having strange sleeping patterns. My insomnia aside, her work also helped me to sculpt my idea of a dream job.
My mother would constantly bring home random little hospital trinkets to appease my need to play doctor. However, I was anything but a normal doctor.
As a 6 year old child, I felt that it was my duty to save lives, one tragic emergency room patient after another. I can remember making CAT scans with Microsoft Paint, and drawing up MRI brain scans with my crayons. My mom would be working in our garage as I would create a appalling story of how her darling infant little girl tumbled down two flights of stairs and received massive brain damage.
As the child's doctor and neurosurgeon, I would report to the mother every few minutes. Due to my early pessimism, things would take a turn for the worse fairly quickly. The unsuspecting infant doll would enter my E.R in fairly stable condition. I would then quickly assess the situation as critical, screaming commands as I ran around my house. After I obtained the results of the x-rays and scans, I would diagram parts of the brain and then debrief the grief stricken mother in my garage.
 Her child, as always, would probably not make it.
Meanwhile, I had the wretched doll strapped down to my kitchen table. She had I.V's coming out of every vein and orifice and at least two casts on somewhere on her decrepit body. I would give the "child" shots of "morphine" which was slightly reminiscent of salt water, as I checked the data from her chart.
With my imaginary doctorate from John Hopkins University, the kid never had a chance.
I would have to tell the mother that her child had entered a comatose state that she would probably never come out of. I had to pronounce the child brain dead. It was one of the hardest moments of my imaginary career. Although it was hard, I got some kind of sick sense of pleasure that I had the child's imaginary life in my hands. With one piece of fictional scientific data, I could bring a smile or a tear. I was God, or so I thought and I was sure that I was destined to be on an episode of Trauma: Life in The E.R.
It turned out that John Hopkins University was a bit harder to get into than I anticipated and I hated math and biology. I soon realized that I would have to settle for portraying a doctor as an actor.
I am a pretender.

les

hello,
I am back.
I am currently a senior at UNC-Charlotte. Most days I am happy. Most days I just want to graduate. I am working on a lot of things right now. Foremost, I am trying to develop myself as a writer and an artist. I am not quite sure what that means. Most days I think it means it means dreaming and fighting for and with those dreams.
Speaking of dreams, I am having really odd ones. I have never been a person to dream about marriage...ever. Curiously, I have had two dreams about getting married/having a husband. I was a beautiful bride, blushing and whatnot, and then I woke up. Angry. My second dream included a specific gentleman by the name of James Michael Patterson (not related), an upstanding military officer with longstanding issues with his family. I loved him but quickly became a mediator between him and his family which I found irritating and altogether too realistic.
I am looking to graduate in December which means trying to plan for that magical, mystical Life-After-Graduation. I am currently looking at grad schools for playwriting and performance studies. It feels like there are too many schools and too few Les's. In my perfect world, I could graduate and get a dream internship with This American Life. I plan on applying, but I realize it's a stretch.
I feel incredibly blessed to surrounded by so many people that are incredibly supportive of my work and my goals.
My dad says that he's proud of me.
Most days, I try to be too.
-les