Well-Done, You!

A Black Eyed Story

Barbara Kruger | Chicago Art Institute 2020 Exhibition

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I can look back and see sharp shadows, high lights, and smudgy inbetweens. I have been in Sorrow’s kitchen and licked out all the pots.

Zora Neale Hurston, “Looking Things Over”

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Find an audio reading of this Black Eyed Story above.

To You, Dearest One, Who Feels Most Humiliated & Most Disappointed with Yourself: 

So you shot your shot and you missed. Take it on the chin, dearest one. We’ve all been there. You’re not the first to trip and fall. Your fate isn’t the first scar. Most of us—at least the ones who are honest enough to admit it—have miserably failed. Just this morning, some of us got out of bed and immediately failed. From there, “up” was the only option. 

Some us fall flat on our faces with such regularity and with such spectacular fanfare that every step we take is a walk of shame, every bungle a slap-stick comedy in the making. Our failures are the stuff prestige television shows are made of. We are the Kendall Roys of our particular situations. The Malcolms-in-the-middle of the mess-ups. For those of you from a more Technicolor generation, we are the Jans—not the Marcias—of our episodes.

And I know you think your failure is somehow far worse or darkly different or more embarrassing than mine, or this one’s or that one’s. You think, “At least theirs was only a minor fall from grace.” But yours? Well, grace was never in attendance. Yours was no swan dive executed with perfect precision. You goofed like a limp duck into the water upside down and backwards while (it seemed) the whole world was watching and snapping pictures. It wasn’t just uncomfortably awkward and excruciating for all involved, it changed your whole world for the absolute worst. Never the same again. You’re mortified, scarlet with embarrassment. Disgraced. Your mishap—the thing you did that shall not be named—was an epic pothole-of-a-bump in the road that shook and jerked you so silly, the whiplash will be permanent. Your flailing put the crunch in cringe, the whip in the snap. You may never lift your head to the sun again.

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Barbara Kruger | Chicago Art Institute 2020 Exhibition

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I get it. I understand – but I’m here to tell you, my dearest, you must move on from this. You know you can’t stay here, rolling around in your own excrement. It’s time to change the bed linens and, for goodness sakes, open a window, filter out the putrid air molecules. After all, at the end of the day, you’re still here and that’s at least something. You didn’t die. You’re still breathing, and right about now, consider that a win! You need every simple basic good thing to count. 

You know why I like Saint Peter? Because he was a big ole failure. Constantly getting it all wrong. He had two left feet and two right thumbs. He was a bundle of errors, a gigantic mistake. Legion, the man with many demons, had it more together than poor old For-Pete’s-Sake-Petey. The woman at the well must of heard about him and probably pitied him. Who denies a nice man like Jesus, not once, not twice, but three times in a row? Who tells Jesus what he should do and what he should say? Who questions the Son of God? Lord knows John—the one Jesus loved—would never. But Peter? What a lunkhead! What a know-it-all dunce! Who would fall asleep while praying, and upon waking immediately slice off a Roman guard’s ear with a sword? (Hint: it wasn’t John.)

But you know what? Despite all of that, Peter kept showing up. Kept throwing out nets. Kept fishing. Kept swimming along the shore.

This is why I still love a good thumper of a Bible story. Really the whole dang Bible is a rebel rouser, chock-full of distinguished sinners and lesser saints. Rammed to the rafters with cowards and thieves and gossips, roughnecks and rednecks. Stuffed to the gills with goons and neanderthals. Brimming over with bigots and harlots and bandits, mobsters, fugitives, hoodlums, tricksters, brutes and ex-cons. No one’s perfect in there. And God just barely makes the cut. God of fire and floods. God of boils and rivers of blood. 

But then suddenly there are stars and rainbows. Water and wine. Trees and lilies. Fields and gardens. Manna and mountaintops—and my! Oh my!—there are poets and carvers and songwriters and fire dancers and thieves in paradise.“Let there be light,” and everything is made alright. 

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Barbara Kruger | Chicago Art Institute 2020 Exhibition

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I know you have all your reasons why none of this applies to you. You’ve convinced yourself your so big and so bad – a wart-on-a-witch’s-derriere bad. Let you tell it, your name has been forever scorched into the dirt somewhere in the land of the unforgivable. The ricochet of the crash still reverberates so loud, you can no longer hear the kindness of a mercy whispered.  

But it was bad, Marcie. Oh, girl, it was so, so godawful bad. I’ll never forgive myself. I’ll never recover. I’ll never be able to look at my face in the mirror. 

To which I say: so what!

What’s your worst sin? 

Did you disown your kid? Did you leave your dog by the side of the road? Did you have an affair? Did you cuss out your mother like you were speaking to a stranger on the corner? Did you sleep with your sister’s husband?  Did you push some old lady down a flight of stairs? Did you cheat on your taxes? Did you eat the whole dang cake in one sitting? Did you wreck your credit? Did you get high again? Did you not quit but got fired? Did you never text them back? Did you light the match that started the fire? Did you give yourself bangs? Did you drink and drive and crash and fold? Did you black out? Did you lie and then lie again to hide the fact that you lied? Did you curse God? Did you wish someone you loved to suffer just a little? Did you skip out on the bill? Did you steal from your grandma? Did you promise you would do something but then didn’t do it? Did you promise you wouldn’t do something, but then, wouldn’t you know, you did it? 

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Barbara Kruger | Chicago Art Institute 2020 Exhibition

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What’s your damage, partner? Lay it all out on the table. And then, forgive yourself. Shoulder-shrug and move on from whatever it was that cracked your perception of yourself. I know, you thought you were different. You thought you could never. "Who was that person?”you ask yourself. It was you, my friend. Now be polite and introduce your better self to that sad sack you placed over there, high up on the shelf. 

Remember the fable of the ugly duckling? All that time a swan wasted swimming in self-hatred. Gliding on waves of sheer dread of itself. All that time believing it was wrong and awful and stupid. All that time it thought its wingspan was ill-fitting and feathers pale and paltry. All that time thinking its swan song was supposed to blend in with a duck’s quack. The wasted hours of humiliation. The time it’ll never get back. The days and days of disappointment, repulsed at its own feathers and then suddenly… beauty becomes it. 

And I’m not saying you’re a swan. After all, the swan probably didn’t take the piss out of his own brother or shoplift a scarf. I’m not zoomorphizing your great plunder. I’m not saying that all you have to do is gracefully soar like swan with your neck elegantly bent in atonement. I’m just saying the story fits because mistakes make a story better. And who of us hasn’t made the same the mistake the swan made? Who of us hasn’t made the mistake of believing that we were supposed to be something else? 

So what? You face planted into the gravel. You tripped a priest on purpose. You mooned a bunch of nuns. It happens to the best of us. Forgive yourself and move on. Remember when Peter tried to walk on water? He began to sink like a cast iron tub. A clodhopper. But then he was saved and he indeed did walk with jellied knees on the waves.

Oh dearest you of such little faith. Why did you doubt yourself? You were doing just fine on dry land. No one said you had to be a miracle. You could’ve just stayed in the boat. 

But what’s done is done. You shot your shot and missed. But by gosh, look at you now! You’re still here. 

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