The Final and Forbiding Doors, Themselves A Kind of Shrine
I decided that a pilgrimage to California would be a good destination for location-scouting and casting. It's far enough away that it has nothing to do with the "real" me. Right?
(Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental)
"California" itself was also was one fo the voices in my head. In 1984, it was beginning to be more than a whisper, not yet the poignant conversational partner it would become
So the doubleness of visiting a literal, material place that also goes by the name of "California" was deliciously resonant, poetic and outrageous.
When I was very young, I ran away and joined the circus. I had seen the work of the Flying Wallendas and I knew ther as nothing else for me. If I wasn't swinging from trapeze or taking a death defying walk across a slender wire every night that why or how would life be worth living? (I didn't realize at the time, of course that my father's gravity-defying spectacles peformed in the pulpit were absolutely as breathtaking as the Wallendas.)
The literal circus was one that I enticed my grandmothers and my aunts to come outside in the back yard and watch. I cleverly used the alternating rhythm of the 4' shadowbox wooden fence that ran from the church to the parsonage, whose ancient red paint had mostly turned into faded hint of a glorious past, to balance my weight with delicacy and the pretence of immanent danger. To make an ordinary task seem deadly, dangerous, thrilling and magnificent -- this is the work of a true showman. It was a short circus, but the audience seemed sufficiently worried, concerned and - when it was over- grateful with dutiful applause.
What was this post about?
Ah yes, talking about circuses and spectacles.
In Pasadena I pressed my eyes against the glass beside the locked door and saw these doors.
I spent my "California" research scouting expedition mostly visiting Baptist Churches, and not just any Baptist Churches, specifically those Baptists Churches who espoused 3rd Degree Separation. All the doors were locked* and I was even bullied to leave the parking lot of one of them. (I mean they are 3rd degree separationists, and while I like to think I can use spectacle and bravado to simulate a legitimate Baptist man -- sometimes the tinsel of my performance outpaces the necessary sawdust.)
When I pressed my face against the glass of Pasadena, I found these doors delightfully ornate-in-a-1950s-style that had been perfectly preserved which it seemed was a perfect expression of my own experience of separationist Baptist life. A glamorous and practical, inviting and declining set of closed doors. My peeping at doors that led into the sanctuary was a proxy for my desire to be peeking into the auditorium through the those diamond windows.
Is it true that all pilgrims must find their holy encounter at a shrine that is not quite what they thought they were seeking?
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