Give me a cloth for my loins! -or- If Society Would Allow It

I want to wear a loin cloth. I'm not kidding. I have this quickly-becoming-public desire to go tribal, if only for a moment. I have no idea why or how it developed, but my blood starts rushing when I think about wearing a loin cloth, drums beating, digery-doos blowing (courtesy Carney and Stevezy) and feet pounding around a fire, kicking up wet clouds of dirt and dust I would tell stories and wear masks. I don't know if this will ever be an attainable event that will take place in my life, and that saddens me deeply.

I also have a suppressed longing to live the life of a pirate. I want a long beard and no shoes and songs about rum. I want to swab the deck and take in the jib. I want to be like Ahab from Moby Dick-- by far my favorite literary character. I want to say wild things about monsters and myths. I want to tell sea-tales. I would say things like, "Spirits come in the heavy mists, beware!" I want to revel in a pirate pub on shore leave (I'd prefer not to recieve any communacable diseases) and eat limes to ward off scurvy. (Here I point out that only pirates and doctors are afforded the regular use of the word "scurvy" in their vocabulary, and I don't have the means to be a doctor, but I love that word, probably because I have never had scurvy).

I wouldn't mind the life of a mountain-dweller in Arkansas. Once again, I would grow my beard long. I would dance a jig to fiddle music on my wooden porch. I would once again tell wild tales and believe my own legends about wrestling bears. I would shoot things and eat them with only minor preparation. I would yell hog calls. I would have many things made out of animal skins and furs. I would bang on pots and pans. This will probably never come to fruition either, as I have seen the movie "Deliverence" and know what all a life in the mountains entails, and what all I am not prepared to do at this point.

I was trying to see what common threads ran through some or all of these scenarios... bare feet, culture-specific music, long beards, and telling stories. The only thing that I think runs through all of them is telling stories. Here is what I've determined this means:

I am desperate for a wild story and a captive audience. Give me those two things, and I am a euphoric man. That's why I love telling stories to people.

Maybe the single most faith-progressing aspect of my life thus far was realizing that in the history of God and his people, I have a wild story, and in this world and the people around me, I have a captive audience.