I am not a Saint.

It may seem odd to people who don't know me well, that I am compelled to explain that I am not a saint. 

I am compelled because I have plenty of evidence refuting this point. I even have a list. And for a couple of reasons, this idea, "Clarica is a Saint," seems to keep recurring in my life.

And because I love a good digression, and because I am very probably more narcissistic than the next guy (you), I will tell you about some of those reasons. This is a much shorter list.

A friend of mine recently wrote this about me: Clarica is like magic angel permanent marker--everything good.

When my oldest nephew went through Catholic religious training, he was given a worksheet to help clarify his thoughts on saints, and I was the best example he could come up with from real life.

And same story, different nephew.

God bless my sister, she laughed uproariously both times and passed it on to me.

Now I will happily admit that I am quite a nice person. I cannot deny that I love to help people. And I have only very recently admitted to myself that my capacity to understand my fellow man only seems limited by my capacity to endure finding out more about his pain. Which is not large. And by time and space, because like Saints, I am not infinite.

I would like to add another digression here, before I get to the evidence supporting the differences between me and actual saints.

I love Neil Gaiman, and I love Lenny Henry, and I probably adore Trinidad, which I do not know much about. I am willing to take a chance, and say that all of you are definitely cupcake worthy!

Neil Gaiman is an artist, a writer, whom I have adored from afar for far too short a time.

Lenny Henry is an artist, an actor, whom I have adored from afar for almost exactly the same length of time.

And Trinidad seems to be home to a people who seem, based on the two things I know about them, to be kindred spirits. And what I know about them is not much. 1) What Neil Gaiman wrote in his book, Anansi Boys. (Which I can't, in fact, remember. This book was narrated by Lenny Henry. Thank you for that book, guys. It may have saved me from madness many a time. Long nights suffered through the hell of insomnia. A lot less hellish, because of you.) And 2) a little bit of chat from some friends of mine who experienced Trini's in person in college, and through the wonder of modern technology: international long distance technical support. And based on those three things, god bless you!

Back to the main point of this essay: I am not a saint. And I probably am not a bodhisattva of compassion, either, whatever that means. Here is a partial list of the evidence against it.

I do not have a mission to help some people. Or all people, unless they will all benefit from me writing this blog.

I am not classy.

I can barely be bothered to pick up after myself, and I loathe picking up after almost everybody else.

I am too lazy to do a lot of work, mostly because everybody else is much better at it than me. Oh wait, that's not lazy, that's easily discouraged. Trust me, I am lazy too.

It's really easy to hang around with me. Or so I hope. Feel free to chime in if you disagree. (But especially if you don't!)

I laugh at fart jokes.

I make jokes about God, and cancer.

I am entirely uninterested in forgoing the pleasures of the flesh.

I do not like being sorry about most of the times I have hurt somebody's feelings because I am actually willing to be mean spirited.

And I am not sorry about any of the times that I share the limited fruits of that tiny joy with you all.

I don't even like the idea of god's will or god's plan, and I can assure you I have no pretensions to understanding such a lame-ass idea. No offence meant, I just don't like it, and I really don't get it.

And this last point is really, I feel, the most persuasive, but I am not going to end this post on that point. And not because it is long-winded and self-congratulatory at the SAME TIME as being modest and self-effacing.

And not because I would like to say something about shadenfruede pie. Because I can not shut up yet.

I'm going to end it with a link to a video based on a song apparently performed by Neil Gaiman, and quite possibly written by him, and a bunch of other cool people.

Because I just found out about this video today, and today I am trying to explain how I am not a saint.