Kinky

I was sitting across from Kinky Friedman at a Mexican restaurant in Austin when out of nowhere he asked me what I believe. Being a “professional religionist” back then I jumped at the chance.

I was delivering great hunks of truth across the gulf between us when he held up his hand like a traffic cop and said, “Put it on a bumper sticker.” I didn’t appreciate it. For one thing I was on a roll. For another, I’ve never been able to put anything on a bumper sticker.

To put truth on a bumper sticker you can’t repeat everything profound that you’ve heard, or read. You can’t perform your Greatest Hits of songs somebody else wrote.

All Kinky wanted me to do what the restaurant had done. He ordered soup and they delivered. They brought him their specialty, hot, original and nourishing. What I brought him was dried tongue.

My high school career took a sharp turn for the worst when my 10th grade algebra teacher said three words: “Show your work.” Just filling in the blank with the correct answer was worth only two points out of ten. I panicked. If I truly showed my work, I would draw a picture of me copying off Trudy McTrusty.

Kinky wanted to hear the result of my own digging. He wanted to know what I believe, not some professional believers. He wanted a live conversation with me, not an encounter with some of my dead heroes. In other words, truth can’t be pickled.

I still can’t put it on a bumper sticker. I talk too much. But I have learned to put it in a story. That is what I am trying to do in this blog.

It is time, as King Lear said, “to say what we feel, and not what we ought to say.”