Chickisha : Church : Altar and Cross : Me and my family: Approximately 1973
Oldest: Sister (from left), Middle Son (second from left), Mother (white dress), Oldest Brother (upper right), And that's me (Philip Haggard Berry) (lower right) in the pinstriped jacket, brown shorts, and silly shoes.
Hunt Souls: “This gives us the situation of the disciples he called: for they were from Bethsaida. And this is appropriate to this mystery. For ‘Bethsaida’ means ‘house of hunters,’ to show the attitude of Philip, Peter and Andrew at that time, and because it was fitting to call, from the house of hunters, hunters who were to capture souls for life: ‘I will send my hunters’ (Jer 16:16).”
My father was a priest and was constantly searching for his own church and his own way so we moved around a lot. I started out 1st and 2nd level Primary, then 1st and 2nd grade at a Christian Episcopal prep school in Oklahoma City, OK.
Chisolm Creek : Oklahoma City, OK Dad, a.k.a.
The Right Reverend Dr. Max Bright Berry Jr. Lieutenant Commander USCG BA MA PHD
(Doctorate in Divinity [Theology])
I know you're really too young to make judgements like this, but I was very popular as a kid at that school. Endless friends, crushes on girls maybe a little too early for that (though I never did have a "girlfriend" back then.)
Moving from Oklahoma City---
----short but necessary interruption: people are so freaking dumb and ignorant, Oklahoma City has a population of roughly 750,000 in the "metropolitan area" and ranks 20th in the most populated cities in the U.S. Now think about this, there are approximately 19,405! cities in the U.S. and Oklahoma City is in the top 20. So pull your head out of your ass, we don't have teepees. . . I could go on...) ----
---so we pulled out of the big city and moved to the city of my birth, second largest in the state, Tulsa Oklahoma (population just over 400,000 [i.e. around half a million] not small)
It was culture shock going to a public school with hundreds of kids where you could quickly be swallowed up by anonymity. It was the opposite at that small prep school. Everyone knew everyone. I found out very quickly that you couldn't just walk in and become the popular kid. I didn't know how to adapt, I'd never had to do it before. People began to dismiss me as "weird," a description I would carry for the rest of my life.
On that first move I was very rapidly tossed down the rungs of the social ladder until I was at the very bottom, in the dirt, and had almost no friends except a few very cool ones who lived in my neighborhood.
(as an aside: my school was directly, like a few steps, across the street from my house. It was exceedingly strange. But one benefit I had was that I just had to cross the dead end road to have access to the playground, the cent of which was one of those big wooden forts with sand at the base called a "Big Toy." I had the coolest time playing Star Wars figures there with the entire place to myself. A had recently been gifted a action figure sized Millennium Falcon which made it all the more cool [and a little prescient considering the "final" film of the actual factual "trilogy" began on Luke's home world, the dessert Tatooine (reminder, the big toy was on a big sand box.)]
Anyway, back to my shit show life (great name for a tv show) I learned pretty quickly, through changing schools about every few years, that people hated the class brain, and the teachers pet. So, I became the class clown, the comedian, embraced the "weirdo" way. In doing impersonations and acting out movie (or cartoon for the best laughs) scenes.
This got me a free pass from the bullies. They could yell at one kid down the hall, "meet me after school on the playground, I'm gonna kick your ass." And then turn around to me, "oh, Philip, do that British accent."
So, my advanced IQ and my natural ability to do well in all subjects became buried. I did poorly at schoolwork on purpose. A feat easily done by just not studying for tests, and not doing homework. And who would ever think the class clown was a genius? And this became so ingrained in my personality I couldn't shake it, even at college. I skated through classes (with the great exception for Literature and Art), faking my way along.
I was shocked and really really pissed off that we had to take "electives" (I didn't elect these wastes of time!) which were basically reruns of high school. I went there to learn how to be a writer, not be a "Renaissance" man who could master Biology and Physics and Sociology along the way. Fuck all that!
It wasn't until my four semesters at the Masters level in the Creative Studies Department of the Liberal Arts college that I finally was doing what I wanted to be doing in every single class after 5 years of fucking about as an undergrad (oh, failed to mention, I ended up with a B.A. in English Literature and Criticism, and a stupidly "undeclared" minor in Art and Design (the head of the Graphic Design "wing" asked me to switch from English Lit to Graphic Design. He told me I had the right kind of mind for it, as well as the artistic chops. But I was set on becoming a writer. I wished I could be both.
So, back to Masters school: this was what I had imagined college was. It was unfortunate, and quite expensive, to fart around as an undergrad drowning in classes I despised. Here I was right were I belonged, class after class of perfecting my writing skills.
(They'll tell you, and should tell you, in both Liberal Arts and in the Art Program, that you can't have "talent" taught to you, no matter how many classes you attend or how hard you try. Talent for a subject (or subjects) is something you're born with. You go to school to "perfect" your talent, to "sharpen" it. But by no means can anyone "teach you a talent."
Apparently the Art School had waded out into some deep waters by allowing people who didn't have any of these talents they so wanted to have, graduate with a degree. Graduates were coming back to the school to complain that they were unable to find any work based on their submissions and portfolio. They were being told, quite frankly by many prospects, that they just didn't have the raw talent necessary for the job. Not even an Art teacher at an Elementary school! You actually do have to be an artist to land that job... at most schools (sometimes they randomly shuffle someone like one of the sports coaches to fall in and teach out of a text book. Thankfully I always had wonderful art teachers who were actual artists and encouraged me on my own artistic path.)
So, starting fairly early into my weird journey through the Art School I was running in to classmates who had been counseled to leave the Art School ("you're just not working out as an Artist, and we can't give you a degree just because you attend all the classes. We believe its in your best interests to feel around and find something else that you have a talent for.")
(shh... so we don't get sued by people we handed a degree but without the ability to land a job or otherwise use said degree.)
I counted myself lucky in both "schools" that Liberal Arts wanted me to remain in Liberal Arts, and that Art and Design wanted me to leave Liberal Arts for Art and Design (specifically Graphic Design.) It was a nice ego boost, but also, for a time, very very confusing.
Flash forward to Grad School: things, everything, went into the shitter by the end of the 90's and I never recovered.
When I returned to Oklahoma City from living with my parents in little (but cool as hell) Muskogee Oklahoma (birthplace of my father, and location of his last and favorite church, over which he was the Priest, Grace Episcopal Church. Muskogee population roughly only just 50,000, relatively small compared to the other cities listed, but not small compared to ALL the cities in the country. . . I've lost my self again, oh, I went back to Oklahoma City to finish out my Masters... and fuck all, they refused to give me anymore student loans. I only needed ONE more semester for my Masters in Creative Studies. But even after an appeal with notes from teachers I was told no. There was no way for me to pay for it myself. After going straight from Highschool in to College as an Undergrad and then into Grad school I had never actually had a "real" job, i.e. one that you could live on. Much less make enough money to also pay for Grad school!
After moving to Muskogee, Oklahoma, then back to Oklahoma City, then back to Muskogee again, I finally moved down to Austin, Texas (population [this is becoming a fixation] 1 million! number 11 in the top twenty most populated cities in the U.S. ...P.S. in this list Oklahoma City was not included in the top 20... ah well.
I was on my way to L.A. (to be a professional writer, of course.) But my brother convinced me to first move down to Austin with him to get a feel for what a major move is like, and then move on to L.A.
Well... I never made it to LA, but the unofficial town slogan of Austin is "Keep It Weird" so I figured it was a sign from the gods that this would be my knew home (and perhaps final home, at the rate I'm going).
I finally found out why I was so eccentric, weird, and sometimes had brief, and not so brief, psychotic episodes growing up, when I was eventually diagnosed with "Bipolar 1" AND "Extreme Panic Attacks" (which often had a crippling "Agoraphobia" just to add some spice to the panic) and all the medication I take (six kinds) sucked all my creative energy dry: several unfinished screenplays, a novel only just over half finished, art work abandoned, and the biggest casualty for me, my music has remained untouched for about 15 years now.
Oh, growing up, I did have great parent's who truly loved me, showed it, and told me so. Typical older siblings who only mildly, as per usual "bullied" the baby of the household, but always came together as, not too too close, but descent friends. I developed my own group of friends in middle and high school when we'd settled back in OKC even though I changed schools "four" friggin times by the time I graduated high school in 1990. We were all the outcasts at school which brought us closer together than the constant power struggle among the popular kids.
But flash forward to 53 years old and I've become imprisoned by my own mind and the meds it requires to keep me sane (you know, that thing necessary to hold a job, pay rent and bills and food and clothes and housewares) I've worked at a "big box" store for nearly 25 years, stoned out of my gourd every day on 6 different medications. No friends, no girlfriends, it's all just blech! One big Shit Show. And now really really stuck in a hole in terms of finances.
Father died of Alzheimer's and now my mother is batshit crazy from Dementia (she's 81). Oldest brother (who "tricked" me into movie down here) died of alcohol poisoning after a life of severe drug and alcohol abuse.
I have my older sister and brother (the middle son but about 4 years older than me) they are still around, but they're about a 9 hour drive north of here, straight up I-35 into Oklahoma City with complicate lives of their own (my sister basically takes care of my mother. I don't know how she does it but she's a freaking SAINT!)