Transparent Christian Magazine

Let everyone else tell you their New Year’s resolutions. I’m telling you a story.

Two days ago I woke up in the town I was raised: Twin Falls, Idaho. It was snowing. Great big complicated flakes that fell without noise or fuss. Wet snow. Good snow. It had been awhile so I decided to go for a walk.

I put on my little brother’s boots and my dad’s good hat and set out. Crunching sounds and I could see my breath. I was happy.

I don’t know why, but in my pocket I brought with me a short stack of 3 x 5 cards. I have a habit when I’m reading of writing down quotes I like. And I keep these in a stack on my dresser. And sometimes at odd moments I sit down and read through them.

Anyway I brought some from Nashville for the trip home. Just a random collection pinched off the top of the stack on my dresser. Maybe 20 cards. It had been a long time since I had looked at any of them. So here I am walking down the street I grew up on, pulling a card out of my pocket and reading it.

We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. George Orwell

I laughed. My breath squirted out of me and made little shapes in the cold air. That was probably something i wrote down a long time ago. I remember I used to enjoy pithy words like this because they led me to believe there were people out there–like George Orwell I guess–who were in possession of forgotten knowledge and who could be counted on to come forward and set the rest of us straight. I also remember once driving past a billboard for a church that said simply in white letters on black, ‘We know the way!” and I thought man I should go to that church. I am a sucker for confident statements.

There were no cars so I was walking down the middle of the street. The snow still falling and crunching. The day cold and grey and bright and me warm in my own pea coat and my dad’s good hat. I dug into my pocket for another card.

Search your own heart with all diligence for out of it flow all the issues of life. Psalms

Well, I thought, I don’t remember when I wrote this down, but it still means something to me. I looked at it and read it again out loud. Search your own heart with all diligence for out it flow all the issues of life. The quiet snow made the words sound holy. I thought, “I love this because I feel it is true. And my own experience confirms it. I have never failed when I have honestly listened to my heart.” It is so true. It is so true.

Then I thought I am the most religious agnostic person I know. I laughed. More breathy shapes in the air.

The road T’d into another and so I turned right, toward the river. The river being the Snake River. A slow old man who lives in the bottom of the canyon and who holds enormous sturgeon fish and alot of my childhood memories. I walked and thought about how i almost drowned on my 17th birthday because I tried stupidly to swim below the Shoshone Falls, just upriver from here. But how I loved almost drowning because the girl I was dating at the time was there to watch and worry over me. Ah, a boy will subject himself to any number of horrors as long as there’s a girl there to cry over him. Man I should write that down I thought.

Another random card.

Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what recompense might come from outside. Rainer Maria Rilke

That one is a secret. I said to myself. You can’t publicly identify with statements that include the words “burden” “artist” and “greatness” because you sound like a pompous ass. Especially when you are poor and unknown. Because then you are in danger of being proud of your poor-ness and your unknown-ness, and nothing is more stupid than that. I dropped the card in the snow and kept walking. Which didn’t matter because I had read it so many times I couldn’t forget it if I tried.

I was a few miles away from home now and the wind was picking up. I was still warm and there were several cards to read and thoughts to think so I pressed on and after another quiet mile I was standing on the jagged lip of the Snake River Canyon. If only you could have seen this magnificent thing. Five hundred feet deep and nearly straight down all the way. Black wet rock carelessly decorated with white snow and in the bottom a lazy blue river that had been there since the beginning of time. Idaho is a magical place to have grown up in. A card:

It’s no good trying to get rid of your own aloneness. You’ve got to stick to it all your life. Only at times, at times, the gap will be filled in. At times! But you have to wait for the times. Accept your own aloneness and stick to it, all your life. And then accept the times when the gap is filled in, when they come. But they’ve got to come. You can’t force them.
D.H. Lawrence.

I put the card back in my pocket and looked out on my childhood canyon and the great void before me. I stood for a long time. And then I sat. I felt the cold snow on my butt and I felt the cold wind on my face and looked at the bluing twilight sky and I thought how very lucky I was to be alive. To feel cold and warm, to be inspired and disillusioned, to bleed and be healed, to see my laugh poke out and dissolve in the air before me, to feel lonely and loved. It is so good. This life.

Just then a gust of wind took the hat off my head and over the lip of the canyon. “Oh s$#%!” I yelled and stood up and made some kind of vague gesture of saving it. But it was so gone. I watched it tumble down and down and then disappear into the milky blue river. “Oh s$#%.” I said again. That was my dad’s good hat. And I am a broke-ass clown poet.

I turned around and thought of a funny story I would tell my father about how the dogs up the street had tackled me and stolen his hat right off my head and how lucky I was to be alive, and uh without any other signs of being mauled. It would be funny when I told it. Then I would ask my mom where he got it and then I would spend some time on Ebay.

And I was just kidding about dissing New Year’s Resolutions. Here are mine.

To be more brave.
To be less lazy.
To remind my family regularly that I love them.
To make better art.
To not take a bath for the whole month of January. Only showers.

-

-

-

-

To hear some of Korby’s “better art” pick up a copy of his new EP Lovers & Fools here – for free.

-

-

-