Repurposing the Bricks (Thank you, August)

One of the positive things that came out of Superstorm Sandy for me, is a new ease in letting go of things. (Ok, maybe ease is not the right word. I mean, if you look around my classroom, most of what adds the personality to the room as been gifted to it, or me, over the last 10 years or so.) But in the short span of time since the catastrophic wave with which Sandy turned my home into into a host for growing fuzzy mold and my stuff into a floating garbage heap, both of my parents have passed away. It’s been a rough three years, and a lot of stuff to let go of. But, like I said, Sandy left me with a newly honed ability to purge things.

It was with that purging skill at full throttle that I was tearing through the desk in my office and I came upon a small square sticky-note unanonymously anonymous, upon which the sticky note writer had left me this:.  “You know how we all want an August Boatwright in our lives? Well, you’re mine.”

Much as I love that thought, and hope that some piece of it is true, I have a hard time accepting it, because August is one of the wisest people I have ever met. You know the kind of person I mean. The ones who know unknowable things. Who make you feel safe and challenge you at the same time. Who take your questions seriously, without mocking, without that “someday you’ll understand” smirk that the false sages wear. The ones who don’t have to say much, don’t offer advice in the traditional way, but hold up a mirror in which we can see ourselves and get a better sense of our place in the world. The ones who seem to have mastered, as much as that is possible,  what it means to be human.

I rarely think of myself as a master of anything, let alone the infinitely complex and paradoxically simple practice of being human. There is so much to figure out as we fumble our way through the incalculable combinations of person and circumstance that flow around us and near us and through our lives every day, that the thought of mastering even one thing seems laughable at best, megalomaniacal on a Donald Trump scale of pathological egotism.  

But I am a master builder.

Like Donald Trump, I can build a big, beautiful wall.

It’s not a skill set I set out to learn, like writing, or teaching, or learning how to play the guitar  (which I haven’t learned yet, but it’s on the “What are you going to do for yourself?” list that my therapist asks about).  In fact, masonry is a trade I am trying to unlearn, to put in my paperwork for early retirement.

I picked up my trowel and cement bucket and started laying bricks when I was about 7 or 8. The reason doesn’t matter. I mean, it matters, but it’s in the past and the past only matters when we carry it with us into the present. And the truth of it is that even as I was building, I didn’t really know why, or even that I was building at all.

My bricks, especially the ones at the foundation, are stamped with things like sadness and hurt and anger and fear.  Oh man have I done a lot of building using those.  And I am so skilled, that without even trying I built my walls in patterns like crop circles, only instead of fallacious feats of geometric magic, they spelled out things like “Go away,”  and “No,” and “F*** you.”

My walls were tall and thick. Protective structures at their inception, I built, beyond rational limits of architecture, sky scraping stark and ascetic temples of homage to fear. And though sky scrapers might look cool, they cast cold, dark, suffocating shadows. But you know how it goes, I just thought that was normal. I thought shivering and gasping for air were my only options.

Turns out, they aren’t.

I first met August after another patch of struggle years - fortunately without the fuzzy mold. I wish I could say that when I read what August had to say, I shared Emerson’s joy of recognizing my own genius, but I didn’t recognize anything. Walls definitely throw some interference into the genius signal. But somehow, August worked her way through the labyrinthine  intricacy of bricks spelling out words and names over and over and over and over. Maybe because I was born in August. Maybe because somewhere unconsciously I could hear the ghosts of my own thoughts haunting her words. Maybe I was just ready. I was ready to drop the damn cement bucket and put away the trowel.  

One of the first things I learned from August is that “Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.” I had never thought my story had much worth telling. But as I listen to August tell her stories of the statue, and her life, and May’s - and when I see in my mind the way she goes through profound joys and sorrows - I am reminded that our stories are who we are, and that is always worth remembering. And maybe more importantly, telling our stories - that’s how we escape being trapped by them.  The details of our lives may be printed on the bricks, but it’s the not telling that turns them into walls.   We don’t build walls because we are strong; we build walls because we are afraid. But fear can’t stand up to the sunlight that rises out of the story when we tell it.

Another thing I have learned from August in our many conversations over the years is that, “People can start out one way, and by the time life gets through with them they end up completely different.” I know this is true because I see it in myself. I see it in you sometimes. It makes me a little sad for the things that have been trimmed away by life, and boundlessly hopeful, because I think it works in the positive too. Knowing this enables me be more generous with people, and more forgiving. It makes me a person of infinite chances (most of the time). And it makes me want to make life a little better all around.

August taught me, or at least gave me the words to say that “Depressed people do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do.”  And she gave me this practical piece of advice: "If you need something from somebody, always give that person a way to hand it to you." She helped me see the hugeness and the minuteness of love when she is talking with Lily about the bees and tells her to send the bees love. She tells Lily, “when you get down to it, Lily, that is the only purpose grand enough for a human life. Not just to love but to persist in love.”  And that at the very heart of everything is this: “every little thing just wants to be loved.”

The most important thing I have learned from my friend August is something I try to remember every day. As an antidote to perfectionism. As a reminder that most people are doing the best they can most of the time. As a reminder that I am not alone in struggling with difficult things, I am not the only wall building, mistake making, so human human. In a profound  moment that follows many moments of overwhelming choose-the-truth-and-tell-the-story storytelling, August reminds Lily:

“Every person on the face of the earth makes mistakes, Lily. Every last one. We're all so human. Your mother made a terrible mistake, but she tried to fix it.'

'There is nothing perfect,' August said from the doorway. 'There is only life.”

Every time I get to this part I think, “Yes, holy shit she is right, again, ‘There is only life.’” And it’s hard sometimes. And people do things that hurt us, and scare us, and confuse us, and leave us to figure out what to do in the after.

And what I have figured out is that walls don’t make us safe, and they don’t make things easier, and they keep us cold, and pale, and wanting for air and light. And though we always leave a little opening so that we can peek out at the world from what we think is our safety, and we could probably just stand in the little bit of light that hatch lets in, we are better off knocking down the whole damn thing.

We can’t unlearn things.  We can’t unknow.  We can’t be unhurt, or unscared, or unabandoned. We can’t undo. But we can demolish. Or, to put it in more constructive terms - we can repurpose. We can knock down walls and repurpose the bricks to build pathways in the light.  

That, perhaps, is the sign of a real master.

When I finish writing this, knocking out a few more bricks and laying a few more steps forward, I am going to say a silent thank you to Sue Monk Kidd, because from a distance she reminds me that writing is important, and to the ghost of Emerson for reminding me to keep looking for my own genius, and to  August, because I know she is really imaginary and an audible thank you might mean I’m crazier than I thought!  Then, I am going to take a picture of the sticky note I found that percolated into all of this and send it, with this, to the person who gifted me with a remembrance of how I want to be in the world, and a chance to do some figuring.

And then I may or may not purge the sticky note. That I haven’t figured out yet.