Faith Based Learning

The greatest carnivore in history looms on the side of the road somewhere between Phoenix, Los Angeles and the desert sprawl in between. In his period of dominancy during the Cretaceous period, the Tyrannosaurus Rex was the master of all things destruction. He was fear itself. Now, his livelihood is the cherry atop a slice of Americana and religious conventions. The Tyrant King himself, condemned to a life plaster, rebar, metal wiring and an exterior support system so tourists can waltz through his interior while their children destroy the nearby restroom.

For those of us who live in the Los Angeles basin, we have seen this roadside attraction at some point in our lives. Before we have found ourselves in the midst of the sprawling meadows of air-powered windmills, we drive by the Cabazon Dinosaurs. A roadside attraction that has attracted film crews, Japanese tourist, teenagers stoned on dope and me when I was taking care of a little girl who wanted to see dinosaurs. It was closer than the Natural History museum on a Friday afternoon and I could snag a banana-date shake afterwards. Unfortunately I missed the roadside market and found myself peering from the inner jaws of a stucco monster.

I visited the antiquated structures of the booming 1960’s recently. In the vein of Pee Wee Herman and Jenny Lewis circa The Wizard, I wandered underneath the belly of a dinosaur shaped museum. While the initial kitsch factor made me giddy, the interior of the gift shop came as a surprise. Much to my pleasure, the gift shop was loud with Creationist propaganda. I had to suppress a laugh after the unibrowed employee shot me a disconcerted look as my girlfriend’s daughter asked me why we couldn’t touch the dinosaur models. It might have been because they were holy icons, the little one thought they would become real and the woman; I really can’t grasp what she believed on the matter. Nonetheless, no touching was done.

I never would have expected something so hackneyed to take a sharp turn for the bizarre. Posters of stegosaurus where coupled with a fresh verse from the book of Leviticus. A superimposed likeness of Jesus was atop a fiercely colored flying reptile in a scene that looked like a child’s coloring book mated with the New International Version. Nearly every square inch of the interior that was not plagued with plush dolls and motorized plastic figurines was saturated with Biblical adages that apparently prove the dinosaurs were made of a Christian God and not through evolution.

Normally, I would snicker at these declarations of faith for being so affected and so obvious. My liberal-agnostic-leaning sentiments would lean to remarks about Moses fighting off megafauna with his olive tree staff during his stay in the wilderness. I would have even taken a picture on my phone and sent it to other sardonic friends to mock the irony of these egregious claims. But this was not so, instead I watched in horror as flocks of bright eyed children swarmed around the toys that were strategically placed underneath these posters. The Creationists who ran the exhibits were not only wrapped in the bosom of religious zealotry, they were coy. They followed the old proverb of “get ‘em while they’re young”.

My horror came not for me, all of 23 and sour toward religious institutions but for my tiny companion. Accompanying me was a four year old; who, while clever to slightly shocking measures, was still four years old. As she stood under a rousing poster playing with a foam dinosaur age I realized how keen these Creationists actually were. Take a quizzical young lady like her; add toys and propaganda and you can sink a hook of interest. The Creationists, much like the carnivorous dinosaurs gracing the “walk-back-through-time” exhibit took full advantage of youth. While they challenged or at least sparked curiosity in adults, they could snag a child with their overwhelming bombardment on the senses.

As I stood there with the little one, listening to her chat in a singsong like trance I thought back to my own childhood. I grew up in with private school education. Even more so, the faith based learning that was spouted upon my classmates and I in our early stages of critical education. I recall engaging with an academic agenda similar to the thunderous posters tacked throughout the museum gift shop. While I was taught through pointed science books with Biblical affirmation to back these posters harkened the education I received. But I can’t say I fully beat this style of learning, since I will always remember what I learned regardless if I believe it or not.

I wonder if the little one, like myself will recall that someone somewhere told her Jesus of Nazareth walked with the dinosaurs. I wonder if the appeal to youth will take hold of her as she might look up once or twice the posters and recall that a bearded man is embracing a reptilian creature that was long dead before he came to prominence with claims miracles and slight of hand tricks. That of course is just me being cynical, but regardless of how I felt I still remember being taught that. With that in mind I whisked my young companion away from the toys and thought I would try my luck at the robotic dinosaur walk through.

After paying 17 dollars for our way into the exhibit, we looked upon a robotic dinosaur mouth opening and closing in succession. The mechanical movement of the jaws of some creature that was claimed to devour men like me in single bites was not the least scary. Even my tiny companion wasn’t impressed. Having put the fear of exposure to ridiculous religious notions out of my head, I moved us to the next exhibit. There we watched the shaking head of a triceratops, my personal favorite as a child. This dinosaurs neighbor, an armor clad statue of a knight with a lance, seemed to heighten the urgent sense of lunacy that dripped from the walls of the fine desert museum.

Now I can see how Creationism is backed. I can picture why and how people believe such things, but the collage of robotic dinosaurs and an Arthurian knight was the topper. I imagine the look she had on her face was similar to mine. Shock. While hers was more the “how does this work?” look mine was the “what the fuck?” look. Without discussion we kept moving, putting such a peculiar notion behind us. And when she said, “I’m scared of this place,” I wanted to admit that I was too. But I had to muster up my skills as a caretaker and move us to the garden walkthrough that brought us back even further back in time. I decided that if I was visibly shook by this place then maybe the fear of God and his Jurassic pals would be tangible to her.

In the desert garden we walked amongst the fiercest creatures of their day. I pictured that this was what the disciples did according to the Creationist beliefs. I might be wearing a goatskin tunic and she would be in something adorable and fitting to the era, perhaps a silk garb. She would be on my shoulders and we would stroll through olive groves while plesiosaurus and therizinosaurus watch us with doleful, passive eyes. We might hear of the latest miracle by the daring Jesus then the girlfriend and I would join friends for wine recently converted from water. Yet, in reality it was very hot and the statues were fading from the sun beaten years they had spent out in the trail.

At the end of the garden we made it to the terrible lizard himself. She wanted to see up stairs, all three flights of them and we made it to the inner jaws. On the way up we passed more posters expressing belief. I noticed that these had become more aggressive than the ones in the museum shop. As though these announcements presented a challenge to the brave who made it this far into their compound. My particular favorite read: EVOLUTION, WHERE IS YOUR EVIDENCE! The little one had not noticed and I could breathe easier.

When we sat in the jaws of Tyrant King and looked at the sprawling desert past the blacktopped parking lot I wondered what she would take from this. I was nostalgic of American gaudiness, but would she get feel anything when she passed this attraction in her adult years? I hoped that our visit to the dinosaurs would trigger a flood of tacky statues, poor animatronics and fun. Not Creationism. For me it complimented the thought that a strange concept like Creationism would dwell away from a major city, but not far from a casino. Out in America’s deserts people could practice worship freely and if they felt it necessary, house their beliefs in giant hollow dinosaur monuments.

As we walked through the parking lot, the sun was setting. A desert wind had picked up. The mini was roosting on my shoulders with handfuls of my hair and pomade for good measure. I asked her if she had fun and she answered yes. But she questioned why we hadn’t seen any bones, real bones. She wondered if they were under the ground, the same one I was walking above. I answered probably because I hoped they were. I hoped that dinosaurs would be as mysterious to an adult as they would a four year old. I hoped that their bones were deep down in the earth’s crust, away from the side of the Interstate 10 freeway, away from religion.

I caught the jaws of Tyrannosaurus Rex in my rearview mirror as we entered the onramp. He was smiling about something, maybe it was the fact that I had spent the day wandering in his innards or maybe it was the fact that I would miss my exit for a banana-date shake. He might have been laughing at how ridiculous the whole thing was. It might turn out that Creationists were right. It’s prospective. But I don’t really know and neither do the Creationists. But like childhood memories and values of faith, these possibilities will be rooted up in time.

We And Only We Are Right

I’m sitting in the captain’s chair of this classroom. As it turns out, not even the instructor, a published novelist has this seat, I do. But that’s in my mind, so hey, I can make that call. But here I am, captain, king, alpha-male in a room full of Stephen King fan’s and adult women with orthodontic gear. And there’s instructor, he’s been talking for an hour and fifty-two minutes. I’m listening to him talk about a novel written by a young British upstart. He alludes to an argument between the protagonist and her lover as a form of sword fighting. He says parry as he twists his exposed wrist and pale arm in an effete manner, supposedly mimicking a counter draw cross of the saber.

I’m not concerned with this speech my professor is giving though. I’m still in my own world, suspended above a blizzard peaked mountain in my captain’s chair. Just above, slightly higher than my supposed peers. I hear nasal voices and the whistle of hot breath through metal braces with pink plastic bands. We are in a creative writing lecture. And I’ve deemed myself the best. I do this every time I set foot in a workshop. I eyeball, size up, belittle. I am standoff-ish. I daydream myself out of the monotony of style choice lectures and writer’s craft.

When the talk of fleche attacks as word tags and counter attacks as dialogue breaks reaches it’s highest point I find myself counting tiles on the floor. The soiled linoleum has been rolled over and scuffed with the black plastic chairs we are sitting on. Even my captain’s chair. I’m imaging myself doing hopscotch. My right foot is in the third square and my single barrel whiskey with purified water is spilling. The radiant ice cubes frosted over inside my glass tumbler. My dusty sombrero has just fallen off when I reach the fourth square, switching feet (yes, I’m wearing a sombrero in my daydream. It’s normal). I’m drawn from the game inside myself when a classmate brings up an idea for a short story.

A young man dared to interrupt the instructor while he was knee deep in a fencing pose and explaining to us how the character’s discourse is “sharp”. The silence grows in the room as the professor sits down then looks long and deep in to the young man’s eyes. And he says, “I’m glad you asked that.” He’s not glad, nor am I. Nobody is. Now we have to engage ourselves in a discussion about writing.

Mr. Winter (our professor) can no longer enact his fantasies of eloquent duels in front of a group of gawk eyed science fiction worshippers. I can no longer elevate myself in my captain’s chair and watch myself play hopscotch in the bosom of Valhalla. The rest of the students can’t mentally masturbate to images of lush otherworldly planets, visceral red-crested dragons, laser beams and whatever else genre writers think about. Now we must come back to real life. We are harkened from whatever universe we have created for ourselves in the confines of our daydreams. Some are more fantastic than others, but the intent in cerebral escape is the same.

The problem with putting a group of people who have various interests in writing into the same room is that no one really knows how to deal with each other. I can’t fathom having a conversation with my neighbor at our desk table about whatever he claims to read (the book cover shows a desert landscape with two sunken moons) and I can’t understand him from way up in my lavish, velvet captain’s chair. Mr. Winter clearly can’t handle the thought of interacting with a human being in opposition to his invented sword-fight. We are a room of people who don’t know how to deal with other people close but very unlike ourselves. We are all in our respective captain’s chairs.

When I started writing I assumed everyone had read Ernest Hemingway. I imagined we would all sit in captain’s chairs in some smoky Creole billiard’s room having in-depth conversations about an overuse of the word “edifying”. This, however, was not so. I learned that those of us who write acquire and develop very different ideas and creeds of what “good” writing is. We are unlike the mathematician’s who can unify in thought about the plausibility of a cosine function. But we are more unlike the philosopher’s who agree there is no “right” answer. In our minds only we are right, and that’s why we put our opinions on paper.

Now as our lethargic discussion comes to a head I find myself asking about character develop, past trauma, intent of actions and so forth (his story is about a women who is exposed to a flaccid penis in a dance club bathroom). While I listen to the writer, my classmate, propose his solution to the logistical problem of how the flasher snuck into the women’s bathroom I find my captain’s chair is floating away again. It’s taking me back to the empty ashen planes of my mind where I can play c-lo with John Steinbeck and Allen Ginsberg while we listen to the Wu Tang Clan. From the glassy eyed look sweeping across the face and fortified mouth gear of the girl to my right, I can see other student’s are checking out as well.

Even Mr. Winter, with left hand running through his slicked black hair and right hand dimly motioning the gestures of a feint-parry thrust combination with his thought up saber, has checked out.

This is an advanced college fiction workshop, where average human beings are forced to interact for a letter grade. We deal with it in our own ways. Some of us are enthusiastic about third person omniscient tense, some of us became grammar Nazi’s, a large amount (like myself) daydream. When this brief dialogue between the five or six of us who at least want that easy, easy A dies down, Mr. Winter starts back up with his fencing/characterization battle. As he bears down on his fallen opponent (the story’s womanizing antagonist), with his sharpened épée I find myself back in my captain’s chair.

I’ve escaped the girl next to me, punching away at her Blackberry. I’m miles away from the young man to my left nodding off. His spittle splayed across his wrinkled, vanilla colored T-shirt. I’m ancient forests and weathered countryside’s away from Mr. Winter. Apparently he’s still in Great Britain, and he has just cut the ear lobe off his fictitious opponent.

flight/fight

these cosas snaking

inside me–

sprint like frothed animals through my

veinscellsnervesmusclesinsidesoutsides

palpitate,

pulsated,

pump,

pushed.

i shook and i shook.

my limbs astringent,

they throb like the jacitate

of a weathered bull elephant:

cinereal and marred out on the plains.

silent muscles, immersed over the mid morning

stillrain, calm like a frozen steppe when i heard her.

i slept.