Darren: a poetic-historical exploration

Anyone who knows Darren has undoubtedly encountered and appreciated his unique view of the world - a view that he expresses candidly with his prolific writing and photographic ability. However, few of us have been priveleged to see Darren himself scrutinized by the camera lens. In attempt to fill that gap, I am posting pictures of "the big D" made a few weekends ago, positioned alongside text written by Darren himself. I've taken the liberty to extract quotes from several papers he has written over the past 5 years. It is my hope that these glimpses, while taken out of context, remain true to who Darren is, historically, presently and poetically.

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A guest editorial by Olivia follows . . .

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I cannot completely articulate or recover the origins of my faith. Yet I believe I am a product of the Truth, both poetic and historical, I have observed and absorbed. I can Live only in the present. And at present this is what I believe.



Life on this earth is impermanent.

We are all alive – more or less, and . . . all of us can fly.

I will not be content to define my self merely as a socio-cultural product in which I exist as a single event in a sea of dialectical impulses (or do I?)

I am not simply an individual member of a conservative Anabaptist sect, or even a single schizophrenic citizen of two kingdoms simultaneously. Rather I am a contradictory and somewhat ambiguous amalgamation of all sorts of processes.

I would like to think I comprise one part and at the same time the whole of my community – by internalizing, reformulating and contributing to the chemistry of Mennonite ideology and society.

As I search for what gives me meaning and purpose, I want to think carefully about why I chose Jesus as an archetype of right living, justice and salvation.

Am I a Mennonite because I am afraid to be alone? Is it possible to be alone?

I hope to move beyond the simple and comfortable empiricist mode of thought toward a more relational or dialectical approach to identity.

Although I’m still a boy, I feel as though I am beginning down the path of Life and Truth.

I cannot know about worlds to which I have not yet been exposed. I can only analyze the possibilities.

This is how I live, by choosing to follow life from tree to tree, flitting from relation to relation and back in a constant flow, measuring truth against truth and settling only to be upset(tled).

I want every day to be a new day when there’s a distilled sense of perception, a spare- ness, every line firm, irredundant, and the cherry blossoms are beginning to bloom, and nothing is wasted or unseen.

I would like to be able to make an intensely individualized art meaningful to the world.

The flourishing of any genuine work of art depends on its roots in native soil. “We are plants which - whether we like to admit it to ourselves or not – must with our roots rise out of the earth in order to bloom in the ether and bear fruit” . . . The problem is to recover a viable homeland in which meaningful roots can be established. Place construction therefore is about the maintenance of roots and the art of dwelling.

It is a novel wonder of basic sensation to observe the quotidian world – to look across a measured space and to be undistracted by the convention of signs and traffic lights and Sikh taxis and Mexican scaffolding, by your own sputtering mind, sorting schedules that simulate spreadsheets, and by the energy people make, lunch crowds with razor sharp cell phones cutting through traffic like nobody’s business, the lion roar of buses on the brake, Nigerian bike messengers bound by chains of paper pettiness, all that consciousness powering down the flumes of Manhattan, the tumultuous center of the “knowing” world, so that it is impossible to see that across the street the ghost of the moon is rising over a moon temple masquerading as a Harlem tenement.

What I have written is not my final or completely articulated situation, but it is close to my heart and my idea of Truth.

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Darren is the kind of person whose thoughts will drive the next social uprising.

I see a Mennonite father, the former owner of a Holmes county bulk food store, approaching Darren’s desk.

“Sit down,” Darren says. He turns in his swivel chair—upholstered in leather even though his wife is vegetarian—and tilts his head. “What can I do for you?”

The Mennonite father fingers his shirt collar nervously. He looks across the desk at Darren’s Party uniform. He clears his throat.

“Well, I ah, came to ask you for help with getting visas for my family. The new laws won’t let us own the store anymore, and yesterday some of our neighbors broke into our garage and took the food we had kept. We would like to leave. I thought you might understand, because…ah…your father…and…growing up like us…and”

Darren lifts the cigar he had been smoking before the man’s entrance from the ashtray. His lips are set in a line. He thinks about borders between countries and crossings and fathers. His eyes are cruel, but objective to their cruelty, like the eyes of a lioness ripping into her prey. He takes a long, quiet, drag on his cigar.


When the Mennonite Big Bang happened, Darren somehow ended up on a meteor heading top speed toward the limits of outer space. And yet, he looks pretty good with a beard. I wonder how he will bring the contradictions of himself together some day. He has determined to leave the traditions of Anabaptism behind, yet declares the dogma of Community from a lonely pedestal in the urban wilderness and wants to lose himself in the midst of the deep cultural traditions of an Asian tribe. He butchers any weaknesses he sees with bloodthirsty relish, but the only hint of these serial killings is a flicker of condescending light in his eyes. He holds his victims in an unforgiving grasp—brutally kicking them as they lie curled on the floor. But he will never be convicted in a court of law and will soon have the confidence to spurn the courts of religion too.

If Darren were a panther in the zoo, I’d sit there on a bench and watch him pace for a long time. I’d even write a poem about him, like Rilke, and give it to his wife. She would be another animal in the zoo I’d like to watch for awhile, but being behind bars would be so painful for her she’d flutter helplessly against the cage until she her feathers were broken and her song silent. I’d have to wait until no one was watching and steal the keys to her cage.