Birdie's New Mexico Time Machine

caught in oil

Didi Menendez has painted an oil portrait of me for her American Poets collection. Please visit and let her know what you think.

I am grateful that she did this, for many reasons.

I hope to post a story soon, sorry for my silence.

Shoeless Joe Pitches the Priest

Late 1982

I shaved my head stone cold, left a strip of long mousy brown from forehead to nape, molded it into a row of egg-white solid spikes. My mom screamed. My dad pointed marched me to Father Ayer's confessional, to sit face-to-post-Vatican-II-face in a stuffed leatherette chair.

"Birdie, you didn't sin by shaving your head."

Father stifled a giggle. He wore bend 'n stretch jeans, a button-down shirt from Penney's, a pair of tasseled loafers. He smelled like Old Spice and hot dogs. My head itched. I sneered.

"Tell that to my dad."

I tried to act cool, smooth, a mohawk chick with three safety pins in each ear. I was nothing like the girls who listened to John Cougar Mellencamp, the girls who wore starched sideways ponytails and bright red lipstick, the girls who spread their legs for a ride in any hot Camaro. I wasn't like them. I told myself this, blasted The Clash while my mom watched Days of Our Lives, practiced smoking hand-rolled cigarettes in the second-floor bathroom mirror, my hips wound with two studded belts.

Father couldn't help it. He started giggling, a liberal preacher with sixty years of small parish life behind him, a life of sitting sin shiva with those Camaro girls, with sullen punks like me. His laugh pierced my ear a forth time. I tried to keep my sneer. I tried, I swear. But damn Father Ayers tripped me, the way he always did. I cracked, my parental pain giving way to a burst of laughter as sharp as my hairdo.

"I think it looks great." Father stood. His pants hung under a belly blessed by tater tot casserole, by seven layer church lady dip. He padded across the confessional to a Lazy-boy chair and grabbed the book sleeping on the green surface. "Jesus was an outsider, too. Did you realize that? Every time you buck authority, you're closer to Our Lord than ever. Now get out there and push over the money changers' tables, okay? And take this book with you."

Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella. A ghostly baseball player in profile held two bats on the cover. I waved goodbye, hustled home, stuck the book on my nightstand and retired to the bathroom to smoke another 'rette.

I didn't crack the book that night. I didn't crack it for a couple of years, not until one lonely Christmas Eve. I was pregnant, unmarried, my mohawk and safety pins melted into wistful memory. I pressed the play button on a yard sale cassette player, invited Elvis Costello to serenade my kicking child. I pulled the lid from the box I called my time capsule. Elvis began "Everyday I Write the Book." I pushed aside my favorite Blondie t-shirt, a three-inch diameter ball made entirely of rubber bands, my Rubics cube, a naked Barbie doll with a homegrown Mohawk.

I held the spine to my nose. The book smelled a bit like Old Spice, a bit like hot dogs, a bit like Father himself. I opened the cover, thumbed to the first chapter, Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa. I didn't close the book until I finished the last page, my eyes bloodshot and heavy with tears, my heart about to burst with home run love, with a new sense of hope. I gave the book to my mailman two days later when he handed me a blank envelope filled with ten dollars and told me someone must have left it in my mailbox. I knew he lied, but I pretended along with him, let him treat my unborn child to a grocery bag filled with real food.

I won't tell you what happened in the book. Maybe you've seen Field of Dreams, the movie taken from its pages. Maybe you've read the book itself. If so, you know the magic of a hard wood bat, the magic of seeing things that aren't the same kind of real as the bills that fill my mailbox these days. The book made me trust my inner voice, all those Heys and You Can Do Its no one else would call.

Shoeless Joe came into my life once more, a few months ago after I decided I was a bigger failure than a woman is allowed to be. I couldn't sell my own written words. I was facing a few years of study and apprenticeship to take on a new career whose shoes don't quite fit. He literally fell on my head at the Salvation Army Thrift Store as I perused the book stacks for something interesting to read.

I picked up the offending tome and realized it was the same edition as the book Father Ayers handed me. Shoeless Joe stood in profile, a diamond imposed on his thoughtful face. I wondered if I would ever hear his voice, hear any voice other than my own sorry ramblings. I opened the cover. Author Bill Kinsella's signature surprised me, a splash of ink across the title page, with a message I know was somehow meant to read, to hear:

"Go the distance - Bill Kinsella"

I read the book again, and sent a silent Thanks to Father Ayers, now in certain heaven, safe from old punk rockers like me. Thanks.

And because I believe in messages from the universe, because I believe that somehow someone, somewhere needs to know that she or he can Go the Distance, I am following my intuition and sticking this book on eBay. I know someone else needs these words, needs to know that Shoeless Joe moved Kinsella's hand in deliberate scrawl. I'm starting the bidding at fifty cents, no reserve. I trust that somehow both Father Ayers and Shoeless Joe will guide this book home.

My Shoeless Joe Auction

Hi there. Pull up a chair.

Welcome to my new little home. It's a cozy place, and won't get much bigger. I'm simplifying my life after taking a teaching job at an Expeditionary Learning school.

I'll post links to any stories I have published, and will add occasional updates as time and spirit permit. I might even post a story here every now and then. I will add a small selection of my favorite writings as an archive, and will be disabling my out-of-control list of other blogs.

The other use for this space is to engage in conversations via comments about all kinds of topics - New Mexico, life, the universe, teaching, writing, whatever strikes my fancy. These conversations can take a long time to develop, and in a world of fast words, fast hands, maybe something slow and occasional is a good, good thing.

I look forward to the conversation....