I went to the Gilgal Sculpture Garden a week or so ago with about half a roll of Kodak Gold and a whole roll of Lomo Turquoise.
It's a weird place, full of odd, extremely Mormon sculptures from a time when Mormonism was much more comfortable with being The Weird Christianity. A time that, even though I've since left the Mormon church far behind, I still find fascinating.
Before, when I was still calling myself Mormon, it was a weirdness I longed for it. It's hard to explain why, but I think as I was clinging on so desperately for something, anything about the religion I grew up in to be true, the last safe refuge for my doubt—but also the first cracks—before the dam broke was the hope that, if not now, then at some point it was true. That contrary to the anodyne, sanitized present, there was a past full of strange and beautiful wonder. That before the church became, in essence, a real estate company, there was something true and good that all the weirdness was springing from.
There never was. It was always just oddities. Neuroses all the way down, just like it is today but with a different coat of (millennial gray) paint (and soda shops* and depressing buildings that, I can only imagine, are used as examples in architecture schools to show the most boring possible ways to design a building).
For my money, the hope in that weirdness is the thing I miss the most about being Mormon.
*I will defend to the death the soda shops. The drinks are delicious and they also make a damn fine mixer, if you're so inclined. Really the only knock against them is that sometimes to get what you want you have to say some truly deranged shit like, "Yeah, can I get a large extra dirty Boy Scout*."
*It's a root beer drink with toasted marshmallow and heavy cream. It's really good please believe me and it's also really good with a shot or two of whiskey.