Je est un autre

To the 8 or 9 people who read this blog before now, be aware that I pulled a Total Recall on your ass. BAM! We are not us. I went back through and changed my kids’ names to Jackson & Lucy. Truth be told, I always wanted to name the boy Jackson anyway. Back when he was a fetus I was in this huge Jackson Pollock phase; I was really pushing to call him Jackson Hockey Jesus (or Linus).

But how cool is this? I’m fictionalizing my family. The distinction between what’s fiction and what’s “real” is blurred. I’m in the freaking Matrix or something. It’s only a matter of time before my worlds collide, blend, and confuse each other. “Lucy! Lulu! Lily! Whatever your name is. 2nd Kid, the grouchy one. Get over here!” I understand that this will complicate the use of visual imagery as well, so I’m thinking that I’ll denote my son Jackson with a picture of Gary Coleman.
I don’t have any rational ground for denoting Jackson with an image of Gary Coleman. It just dawned on me as I drove to work like an epiphany. This will inevitably lead me to call his little sister “Willis” starting today and forevermore. It can’t be avoided. Sorry Lucy. The blog’s main photo will remain the same, but I’ve heard that they grow up so fast. Soon they won’t even resemble my children. Or no wait—I actually found the blog’s main photo on a clip-art site and thought it was goofy. Who the heck are those kids? In the video of us playing guitar & drums (2 posts down), the stand-in for Jackson is some random neighborhood hooligan and I am masterly played by our reasonably priced gardener, Raul.

So… let’s review:
I am Black Hockey Jesus.
My son is Jackson Hockey Jesus.
And my daughter is Lucy Hockey Jesus. Or Willis, depending on my mood.

I’m going to call my wife by a different name every time I mention her. The reasoning for this is threefold. 1). Every time I see her, the world rejuvenates into a vivid sparkling newness articulated by various Asian religious traditions as satori, moksha, etc. (Sparks will FLY in the Black Hockey Bedroom tonight.) 2). A frequently changing identity for my wife will help express James Hillman’s notion of a polytheistic psychology, one of the cluster of ideas that motivates this entire blog. And 3). Giving my wife a new name all the time will seem like I sleep with all kinds of different women! (The Black Hockey Bedroom is dark, sparkless. Not a creature is stirring.)

My place of employment will shift with my whim: now the factory, then the hospital, and then again the potato fields from some lonely Van Gogh. Even my location will be a function of whatever hunk of geography autonomously hurls itself through my mind. I busily type this current blog from lovely Sequim, Washington (Population: 4334).

THERE! I’m a myth, as easy to locate as Keyser Soze. And why, my curious blog reader wonders, am I picking up all the bread crumbs that lead back to my identity? Because my step-mother-in-law thinks that my liberal use of the word “vagina” in the blog title will inevitably lead to termination of my employment (from the Herman Miller furniture plant in Zeeland, Michigan). Did you read that correctly? My STEP-mother-IN-LAW. She’s not just a stepmother and she’s not merely a mother-in-law—no no not so fast—we’re talking STEP-mother-IN-LAW. She makes me do all the chores AND I’ll never be good enough for her little girl. Anyway, no one’s gonna be all that shocked even if I do get fired (from Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in Akron, Ohio). When Beatrice (my wife) met me, the only thing I owned was a copy of Rimbaud’s Illuminations and a carton of smokes that I had just bought with a credit card. Wasn’t the writing on the wall back then?

To tell you the truth, I don’t see the big problem with using “vagina” in my blog title anyway. It’s been 12 years since that watered down feminist wrote those Monologues and Oprah and everybody and their moms & aunts were screaming vagina this and vagina that. I’ll be straight up. I’m cool with vaginas. Jo’Quisha (my wife) has a fabulous vagina. In fact, I burst onto this scene straight out of a vagina, and proudly too. And wasn’t there some Walt Whitman poem like “Out of the vagina endlessly rocking” or something?

But I’m being silly. The potential problem of course with my use of the word “vagina” in my blog title is that I’m talking about my YOUNG DAUGHTER’S vagina and the way this might connote pedophilia and incest. Well, those possible interpretive moves sadden me. They make me feel like syrup and Monday and Adam Duritz. I don’t even have the energy to defend myself against them. My value for tolerance is challenged by them. I think that if my blog title offends you or if it leads you to make suppositions about lewd relations between me & my daughter—I think you should be shot. I think you should be taken behind some tired old church, and shot.

(Important clarification in the interest of maintaining family relations: I’m not talking about my sweet step-mother-in-law in this regard. She doesn’t need to be shot; she is however worried about me being harmed by the kind of people that do indeed need to be shot.)

My daughter screaming from a swing that the wind feels nice in her vagina was a pristine use of expressive language. It was pure and funny and true. I love you so much, Willis. Let the wind blow where it may.