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Your Global
Positioner
by
Marvin Payne
How to use your
journal in place of a GPS (global positioning system): You can buy
one of these fancy global positioners to find out where you are
on earth at any given moment. They magically connect you with vectoring
satellites out in space and display on a digital screen messages
like "You are in Barstow. At the McDonald's." And it will only cost
you $149.95 to obtain this knowledge (in the global positioning
world, we call it "data." In the politico-military world, we call
it "intelligence." In the Interstate nutrition world, we call it
"indigestion.")
It's a useful
device, if indeed you care to know where you are, but expensive,
and restricted to our planet. Or you can look in your journal for
free and get an idea of where you are in all of eternity. There
is an advantage to the global positioner--you can wear it on your
belt. But for the difference in expense, you could probably rig
something for your journal that would make it just as accessible,
sort of like a six-gun. A little holster. You could be a quick-draw
journalist.
(Maybe even
other, younger, journal-keepers who are out to make a name for themselves
would face you off in the middle of the street and see who was faster
at closing the gap between recognizing blessings and writing them
down. Think of how different the history of the West would be if
people had toted journals on their hips instead of Colt forty-fives.
For one thing there would be a lot more of it--history, I mean.
And the marshall would never have had to meet you at the edge of
town and say, "Sorry cowboy, if you're goin' into town you'll have
to leave your journal with me." Just imagine, the modern legacy
of that difference might be that now we'd have bumper stickers reading
"If journals are outlawed, only outlaws will have journals." ((Now
THIS is what parentheses were invented for, to allow us, when we
have gotten ourselves stuck on some bizarre tangent, to just type
in a few parentheses and pretend we're not lost at all.)) )
The primary
value of knowing where you are located is that it might give you
some clue as to who you are. (In the sixties we learned a phrase
that covered both issues: "Where you're at.") This morning I looked
in the bathroom mirror and really wasn't sure at all--who I was.
I mean, there was something familiar about the eyes. But if what
I understand about cell replacement is correct, not only were they
a little blearier and saggier than I remembered from how they used
to be, but they're not even the same eyes! (What I can't figure
is how if all your cells are replaced regularly, how come the cells
that needed bifocals aren't replaced by cells that don''t need them.
I mean, how do these new cells know they're supposed to not see
so well. Well?)
Even two weeks
ago I looked into the same mirror (or have its cells been replaced,
too?) and knew exactly who I was--Josiah Lamborn, prosecutor of
the murderers of the Prophet in Hancock County. Up until
two weeks ago, people clapped, wept, and stomped their feet. Apostles
stuck around afterward and said, ""Way to go, Marvin!"" (Really,
only one did.) Forgive me, this angst may be just an actor thing.
You see, I'm between things. I'm so between things I'm considering
writing an absurdist one-man show that consists entirely of intermission.
At least then there would be popcorn (and a life with popcorn cannot
be considered an utterly lost life--I feel a bumper sticker coming
on).
Actors hate
this, when their global positioners display the words, "You are
precisely in between." When you're in between, it doesn't much matter
what you're between. (Actually, I''m not even supposed to BE in
between. I'm supposed to be collaborating with Steven Kapp Perry
on an exciting musical celebration of the Proclamation on the Family,
but my collaborator is in Hawaii--ostensibly writing. Yes, when
Waikiki freezes over, I think.)
So. To the
journals (the other "positioners"). I haven't even pulled them down
from the shelf yet, so we''ll all see how this goes, together.
Okay, today
is 19 March 2002. Let's go back a year. Hey, on 19 March 2001 I
got some new scriptures. That seems healthy. I must have been feeling
like a spiritual person. Let's go back further. On 19 March 2000
I wrote, "Honesty is merely reverence for the truth. Humility is
merely honesty. If you're honest, you''ll be humble. If you're humble,
you'll be grateful. If you're grateful, you'll be happy." Can't
argue with that.
Re-calibrate
for the last century. Oops, nothing for the nineteenth. But on the
eleventh I wrote about having had a sort of stroke--lost the use
of my right arm entirely, couldn't speak, more fascinating than
scary, but a little scary, too. It passed quickly, after paramedics
and an ambulance ride to the hospital and the beginning of myriad
tests. But, according to the journal, "Before anything, Jeff Simpson
grabbed Rob Honey out of the control room (this anomaly occurred
in a recording studio) and they gave me a priesthood blessing, in
which I was taught that the Savior knows exactly how I was feeling.
As does, I suppose, Alma the Younger and Steven Hawking. I'm grateful
to be writing this with my right hand."
Back a year
further. Nothing for the nineteenth, but on 16 March 1998: "It's
between three and four in the morning. This Joseph opera
has drawn me out of bed to the writing desk more than once. I'm
working with Joseph, The Rose of Sharon, intending it to
be an enormous Impressionist canvas, a storm of feeling rather than
a barrage of fact." Sounds lofty. Okay, let's get a ten-year bearing.
Ouch. First
marriage unraveling quickly. Still, lots of comfort from the Spirit,
who, in my life anyway, has been most evident in several instances
of rescue. I suppose I could say He has been my constant companion,
but mainly owing to the fact that I seem to be in need of fairly
constant rescue. Testimonies of the feeling of rescue fill these
pages. "Spring is here with winds of grace. I lie quiet and feel
blessed."
Let's try ten
years earlier. Whoa. Interesting entry. Dare I share it? Something
that has become a bad joke in my life is everybody recognizing me
as the Dad in Saturday's Warrior. This happens in McDonald's
in other states. (I think it may even have happened in Barstow.)
I usually admit it, because nobody means any harm by it. But once
somebody said, "Hey, aren't you the guy I saw in Shenandoah?"
and I almost picked him up and swung him around for joy, but he
was a Jehovah's Witness who had come to my door and I wasn't sure
if they believe in dancing, so I didn't.
Well, nobody
ever asks how I FELT about being Bob Flinders in several dozen performances
on the road in two or three different tours, not to mention the
holy video, so what the heck.
20 March 1982
"Early morning
at Warrior rehearsal. Got home from last night's at about
one this morning. I've felt strange working on this piece, a little
lonely and on the outside, because of being off in the Northwest
(where the first leg of the tour was), and because of being such
a newcomer in this world of theatre where everybody else seems so
comfortable... But late last night something happened that I suspect
will change me. There is a scene at the graveside of the crippled
daughter in which her rebellious twin brother, Jimmy, is reunited
with the family.
"Michael Flynn,
the director, took the family into the hall and asked each of us
how we felt about Pam, who had lived pretty nearly perfectly and
was now gone, and about Jimmy, who was a real pain in the neck and
might now come home. Michael thought about his recently-killed sister.
Mrs. Flinders, Beti Trauth, thought of her daughter, who died this
winter. I thought some about my family, some about Peter Garbett
(a young man I regarded highly who'd just been killed), and some
about my sweet friend Rosanna Ungerman, who plays Pam, but mostly
about Robert Flinders, pretend father, who'd just lost his pretend
daughter.
"I really, for
the first time, got into the guy. I told Michael that Pam's death
would produce in me an almost irresistibly fierce desire to go beyond
the veil myself, and that her death would leave a dark and wide
void on this side that nobody, not my wife, or my work, or any of
my children could fill--except Jimmy. And as I said it, I broke.
And soon others were crying some as well. I said that if I could
have Pam back for only one moment I would give anything for it.
How eager I would be to have Jimmy back, how utterly oblivious to
his faults.
"Then we came
in and played it, improvising entirely, and even the little kids
wept. We were a family. Dave Morgan, who plays Jimmy, hadn't been
with us in the hall, but cried and held me with love that was somehow
beyond acting. The whole thing was kind of sacred--the worth of
souls.
"I wept hard
on the way home, more when I got there.
"This is a crazy
show, sometimes masquerading as 'the beauty beyond,' which is the
gospel of heaven, invariably accepted by audiences in lieu of that
beauty, and occasionally putting me in touch with that beauty."
There. See you
at McDonald's.
What are the coordinates then, in this eternal positioning exercise?
Yesterday's disappointments and tomorrow's uncertainties? Are these
what I am "in between"? No. We have, chronologically, weeping over
the worth of a soul (even a pretend soul), the Holy Ghost as a cavalry
of One galloping in to rescue from spiritual Apaches (figure of
speech), an irresistible passion to tell the Restoration story in
art (this piece will come to the stage), the priesthood as a cavalry
of two galloping in to rescue from physical Apaches (figure of speech),
the dawning in my little head of the very simple idea that honesty
will lead to humility leading to gratitude leading to happiness,
and the gift of golden scriptures.
Well, that helps
me know a little more clearly my position. Where I am is in between
that stuff and, one would reasonably hope, more stuff like that
stuff. Not really a bad place to be, at all. Thanks for so patiently
observing the process.
(Actually, by
merely expecting a column this month, you compelled me through the
process.) Better knowing where I am, maybe I'm more likely now to
discover who I am.
"Awright Old-timer!
You carryin' a positioner? Draw! Write!"
--------------------------------------
Visit
marvinpayne.com!
"...come
unto Christ, and lay hold upon every good gift..." (from
the last page of the Book of Mormon)
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