The Closet
Sometimes you sit in frozen immobility at the keyboard and ask yourself the question “What can I write about today?” Dead silence is the usual response, so you start to rummage through the old, musty closet of your mind, to see if there’s something – anything – lying around in there that could be dusted off and repurposed into a serviceable item of your soul’s wardrobe. The closet is often a scary place that makes soft “clacking” sounds at night, as if it was putting things in order. Against my wishes, of course. Doesn’t it know that I actually like the disorder of my closet? Look at it from my perspective. if everything were in order, then I wouldn’t have a single thing to motivate me to think outside the racks. I would have to accept the status quo, and that always leads to lethargy and the need for yet another nap.
No, I need my mental closet to be complementary to my accustomed lifestyle: mussy,, disorganized, and just disapproving enough to nag at me until five minutes after deadline, then force me to sit down, turn on the device, and “open a vein,” as the late Jim Murray would put it. Another friend might say “There’s nothing to motivate a person like a little debt.” To which i could append “and receiving the second late notice on the mortgage.” In those situations, I take the pledge, vow to clean house thoroughly, including forgotten closets, amend my life, and get organized like all my millionaire friends. There’s nothing wrong with having a lot of money, which is something I only know through hearsay. And of course, if I really bent myself to the task, I could pump out four, maybe five, columns a week,
But my irregular bouts of organization are merely another way of going to confession. And I can remember, as a younger sinner, holding back from the priest on telling the darkest, most dastardly deeds I had I committed, even though the stated penalty was eternity in hell. After wrestling with the old conscience for years, and mentally amassing yet more tons of fire to be heaped on my condemned soul, I began to think outside my sulphur-smelling closet of the possibility that my years of rote memorization of the catechism might just be another form of mind control, conceived so that we future condemnees would empty our pockets every time the collection plate was passed. Then the last-ditch possibility of salvation eventually presented itself in the form of a compassionate wife who happened to belong to another church. It was time to fumigate the closet, I finally reasoned. And I learned that other churches, unlike my own, were far more relaxed in their concept of sin and forgiveness, and that forgiveness for “trespasses” could be obtained through a process of quasi-public, group confession, wherein the essence of the misstep was confessed directly to the Supreme Being, without having to employ the brokerage services of a priest, who I believed all operated under the principle that “whose sins you shall retain, they shall be retained.” In other words, you always ran the risk that you’d catch the priest on a bad day, he wouldn’t authorize forgiveness, even though they were probably the same sins he used to commit before ordination.
And having once made an actual decision on the direction of my future journey through life, I found it to be wonderfully liberating, allowing me to view life through an entirely new prism. And now you know why I like to keep the old closet door closed. What you can’t see can’t hurt you, and that particular closet, among several i use, is locked tight, with only the occasional few seconds of panic when I hear the “things” going “bump” in the night inside the forbidden door. God bless those who are content with memorizing the Kuran or whatever religious tract. But now I feel free again, with only the recurring panic of writer’s block to tempt me into approachingThe Closet.
George Thatcher
May 2023
George is an American Bad Ass. He grew up in Jersey, flew B-52s in Vietnam, taught English, Spanish and other languages to children around the world, makes his own salsa, has been known to enjoy a beer or two and has called Lubbock home for a few years, just to entertain the locals. Welcome to Raiderland, Major. We are going to feature some of his writings going forward. Some new, some old. Some rhyme, some don’t. When it comes to George, there’s no box. So… enjoy our friend and enjoy his writings! – Hyatt