I got my first tv from the set of a play I was working backstage on when I was an intern at the old Circle Repertory Company. When I saw the tv on the stage, I knew they’d be selling it after the show closed, and I put in my bid for it. I think I bought it for ten dollars. It was a good one too, and I had it for years, but then I moved into a new apartment that was really old, one of the old tenement buildings that barely exist anymore in their original form. Everything about it was original, and they would have had to drill through the brick walls to give me cable, and I didn’t want them to do that because it would ruin the look of the walls, and cable was expensive by then, so I gave my tv away - out with the new, in with the old. I love old things, I grew up in a house that was built in 1723, and old feels like home to me. It was a small price to pay to give up tv and have my old brick walls intact.
The media frenzy during times of tragedy is always
astonishing to me. I’m glad I don’t have a tv so I can’t watch the footage of
carnage over and over and over, and hear the endless updates with information
that isn’t really information because it’s only speculation. It’s important to
have real news, to know what is happening in the world, but media is money, so
there has to be a story even when there isn’t anything new to tell, and there
have to be graphic images even though those images are heart and gut wrenching
and should not be shown just for the sake of selling a story. I know I’m
probably sounding like an old crotchet, but grief is a private thing, tragedy
is something that we need to face in the way we can face it and deal with it in our own personal way.
It’s not fair to the families and the people who were bereaved and traumatized
by the bombing in Boston to have themselves splashed all over the news. If they
want to post their own photos and stories, that’s their choice and it’s fine if they want to
do that - for some people that is a way of dealing with grief - but to use them to tell a story for your own profit or self promotion isn’t kind and seems rather cold.
I have a thing about not sharing other people’s stories. God
says it’s gossip, and that it’s a sin. Even before I was born again it never
felt right to be talking about someone else when they weren’t there unless I
was giving them a compliment, and even then I’d go right back to them as soon
as I could and let them know they were being complimented. I found out the hard
way that not everyone is like that. I have no problem sharing my own stories
with people – I’m a writer and a story teller, and I write my stories often, or
at least parts of them, into the plays
and stories and poems I write. It gets people confused sometimes because I mix
fact with fiction - for years one of my brothers thought I had lived for a
while sleeping on a bar and had been a bar tender – neither thing I’ve ever
done, except by accident maybe. But I wrote about that in a play,
and he thought it was a truth from my own life. I used to share my own stories
with people all the time, until I found out that some people like to gossip, and
some people like to judge people, and some people like to throw things in your
face at a time when you’re at your weakest point because somehow that makes
them feel better. I’ve learned that I need to keep my stories between me and
God, that there are things that no one needs to be a part of because they’re
such a deep part of me. When God is taking me through something, or when I’m
waiting on a promise He’s made, it’s between us, and anyone else who gets
involved is a third wheel.
It’s not that I have anything to hide, “My life’s an open
book, you read it on the radio,” as the Neil Young song goes. It’s just
that somehow when people start to give their opinions or talk their talk, things
get messy and unclear. There’s a word I learned from my Puerto Rican friends on
the lower east side, bochinche, and to me that word sounds exactly what it is.
There's almost an ugly sound to it, rubbish talk, garbage talk, gossip, a waste of time and energy. Between me
and God there’s no bochinche, only rivers of flowing water, fresh air, wisdom, and
vision for the future.
I’ll still tell my stories – I’m writing this blog, so
you’ll still be hearing from me. I’m just more careful now, and it’s better
that way. If I talk in general terms it can be more universal – my stories can
be all of our stories – I could be anyone, and the story could be anything you
want it to be. The promises I’m waiting on can be your promises, the challenges
I have can be your challenges. Fill in the blank, put yourself on the page.
Keep your own secrets, and share them with God. He’ll keep them between you, and answer them better than
anyone can.
Blessings,
Jannie Susan
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