Three weeks ago I drove two hours out of my way to the Bighorn mountains in Wyoming to see a Medicine Wheel on top of a big cliff with my friend Diana.
It was late in the day and a mile and a half hike to the Wheel itself. Our final destination was still two hours north. We had no time to spare and a spiritual experience to metabolize. Diana taught me something then. She taught me that if you make your eyes big and act a little sad and say without saying: “Oh Please Mister Park Ranger Can’t You Make an Exception When We Came All the Way From Washington DC?” Then Mr. Park Ranger will aw shucks in the most delicious way, exactly like Barney Fife, and happily let you drive all the way to the top of the mountain. And that is what we did.
When we got there, there was an elderly couple bickering around the Medicine Wheel. “You’re the expert,” said the old man to his wife in what I felt was a sarcastic tone. It spoiled what was supposed to be a moment of personal revelation. I stepped out and walked towards the cliff’s edge to have some space for myself.
The West is beautiful. I don’t like to spill words about it, or love, or tragedy, because I run the risk of making a good thing cheap. But for the sake of scene-setting we were high, high up on a clear day, surrounded by an almost Martian landscape, by orange and brown rock crumbling down an immediate, steep plane and then a bunch of arid trees appearing gradually, and then the dried, late summer grass lapping down towards a green valley and plains extending out for miles on end into an imperceptible horizon. It was so quiet I could hear the bones in my neck crack when I turned, and the breath expand in my stomach when I held still. I felt unsettled. I thought that the silence might be an invitation for the voice of God to emerge from Creation, in contrast with the Medicine Wheel (hand-crafted. pagan. possibly touched by God’s voice, but certainly tainted by man’s.) so I calmed my heart and waited for God to speak, only I think the pressure was too much. I’d spoiled my own sensitivity. All I could think was all this exists in silence and for what.
We offered the couple a ride on the way back and found out that the woman was actually a trained archaeologist. She did know best.
Four weeks ago I got dinner with an old man who spoke to me at length about the affairs of his youth.
“I used to fall asleep with my hand on her tits,” he said of a former lover, “it was a beautiful, nonsexual experience.” I wish I could say the same of our dinner.
Last week I sat down with an Episcopalian priest to discuss some of the basics of their worship.
He works in a beautiful home next to the church. A rectory, or a vicarage it’s called sometimes, he said. I said I know what that is. I’ve read Agatha Christie. It wasn’t just the rectory. He had the air of an Agatha Christie vicar too. He spoke perfect French and kept disappearing out of sight to open some hidden cabinet and bring me a new small item to contemplate: an icon of Christ, the book of common prayer, a glass of water. He reminded me of my old ministers.
I told him my background. He was warm about it. “I was non-denominational once, for a couple of years when I was young,” he said. I felt him mold his approach towards me evangelically, as he started out explaining the significance of the sacraments. I remembered suddenly that the Catholics believe the sacraments turn into the literal blood and body of Christ, and that this was a point of contention for many Protestants. I let myself become like clay.
He told me why the order of things was so important. The standing and the sitting and the readings and the sermon, all leading to the moment of communion: the reason for being there. Christ. I said that’s beautiful. I said I can appreciate that. I said in my old church, we claimed we didn’t believe in any formal ritual or rules per se, but actually we had a lot of them. He laughed, and said that’s usually the case with evangelical churches.
The only thing I don’t like about talking to Catholics and Anglicans about my old way of life is the knowing laugh. As if we’re all on the same page now that I’m out, and we all share the same certainty. In many ways we do, and I know they don’t mean it unkindly, but I’m still a little sensitive. Some things, so clear to the rest of the world, are not self-evident when you’ve bathed in them your whole life. The acceptance of the idea that I had been living under the thumb of pure ritual was life-changing for me. I also still do not understand why I should accept a new (to-me) ritual as definitively better than my old one. I am scared of being lost in ritual.
A week and a half ago I reconciled with a friend I had stopped talking to for a month.
I’d say thirty is too old for dramatics, but I’ve met too many thirty-eight-year-olds who barely know how to act. At the very least, thirty is too old to stop talking to a dear friend for four weeks.
Saturday night I was at a birthday party.
The problem with good whiskey (or mezcal, or red wine, or any kind of martini) is that it makes me unbutton the top button (or top two buttons. or three, if the whiskey’s expensive enough) shirts of any (single) man in the vicinity. It’s a compulsion, a genuine mental illness like OCD, only instead of pens being straight and socks being matched, it’s button-up shirts at a festive occasion. Especially, especially in DC. Those poor little buttons all tied up at a party. Begging for help. Honestly it doesn’t even have to be a buttoning shirt. It could be a t-shirt or a sweater or really anything. When there’s a will there’s a way.
Today I texted my best friend.
She said wow people are mad at john mulaney and olivia munn for having a second baby after he publicly said he didn’t want to have kids when he was with his first wife and cheated on her with olivia. I said they literally already had one kid didn’t the public get it out of their system then. She said yeah no exactly. I said are you on this rfk nuzzi stuff. She said no i’m getting married in three weeks. She also sent me this:
So good
🪄
Nice to see you back.