Showing posts with label Open Letters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Open Letters. Show all posts
18 November 2020
Looking at the Moon
It's been ten years. Technically, your recorded death date is four days from
now. That's when your family pulled you from the machinery. However, I was there
that night after your rollover, looking upon you battered and bloodied frame.
Your body spasmodically working to push out your unborn son who would die in
your mother's arms. My experience in transplant helped me recognize the
obviousness of your situation; the lights might have been on, but you were not
home. You were not so much my friend as family. Oh, how you could piss me off to
the point of wanting to spit coffin nails. To throttle you and never speak to
you again. Yet when things came down, if I needed you, you were there with a
fury and without hesitation. When my mother was diagnosed terminal, when, a year
and change later, she died, you were one of the few to call. An online comment,
a text, would have been too impersonal, you said. When I announced I was done
with city life and heading to the mountains with that woman I'd been running
around with, you were one of the few who thought I hadn't totally lost my mind.
Although I know it is vanity to second-guess the dead, I like to think you'd be
behind me on this zany scheme we've concocted involving a tropical island. Your
dying inspired a mantra I still use when things go pear-shaped;
it's not okay. It's not going to be okay. It just going to be, and what will
be is not what any of us expected. Perhaps that was your last lesson to teach me... It's been ten years. You
were far more family than my friend. Like family I have lost, you do
occasionally show up in my dreams. Like them, you are missed more than all the
words in all the languages could ever describe.
18 January 2018
Grace
When I first met you, you were so much larger than life that the term rockstar would have been an insult. You were my hero and guru. Somewhere along the line, our roles got reversed and I was never sure of how to approach the subject.
Twenty-four years we knew one another. In that time you watched me grow into the person I am now. I saw you be diminished slowly, like sandstone whittled away by desert winds. Your death, whilst it elicited an emotional reaction from me, was, in the end, not shocking. Sadly, I saw it coming.
After I learned of your death and its cause, one question still remained; when did you lose your grace? I am not one to leave such a mystery unsolved. I began to dissect. It is my nature to do so. Were I to give it a date in clumsy timekeeping of Man it would be June twenty-first, two-thousand seven. That was the day you told me you were getting divorced.
She was your high school sweetheart. The one who got away. When you told me you found her again, that you were going to marry her, your smile threatened to swallow the rest of your head. When the end came to your love story, it broke you.
That is when you gave up...
First you lost the home your father left you. Once the divorce was done you were sentenced to a one-bedroom apartment with barely a couple coins to rub together. Somewhere in there, you decided to stop taking your insulin. To say your health suffered because of it is as blindingly obvious as the direction of the rising sun. Your body began to betray you, soon making it that you could not earn a livelihood.
There were the amputations. First, a finger. Then, a toe. Your foot. A leg. They were going to take the other leg when you had your septic stumble and all fall down. It was as if that deity you so zealously believed in, to the point of being born again-because the first time didn't work out so great?-was taking you a piece at a time.
I watched you move from one toxic situation to another. When you moved down to Arizona, I though you might get things turned around, but you fell into your pattern pretty quickly. Almost like habit. You once told me you saw yourself as a knight, owing to your time in law enforcement and security work. Did you really think you were going to save any of those cats you fell in with?
"The fact you have fallen is interesting. The time you remain down is important."
You said that to me once. I was going through my divorce, sitting in coffeehouses scribbling bad poetry to a backbeat of Nine Inch Nails. I was in pain, certainly, but I got up. That was when I decided nothing would break me. That is when I decided not to bare my jugular to anyone.
No matter how many times I said that to you, you never got up. You never even tried. I am not a saint or a superhero, but you showed you cannot save someone who had no desire to be saved. You lost your grace.
The last time I spoke to you was shortly after the leg amputation. Whilst you glibly said you were glad you did not have access to a firearm, you sounded relatively cheerful. That was the thing; no matter the drama or tale of woe, you knew there was no one to blame for it than yourself. You may have been beyond grace, but you knew how you got there.
You left rehab in anger, without medications of any kind. Without crutches. You stopped talking to everyone; your sister, your favorite cousin, even me, supposedly one of your best friends. The mental image of you crawling on your hands and knees in a manure lagoon is seared into my mind's eye. I would rather remember that picture of you when you got your Harley, your smile threatening to swallow the rest of your head, or any other moment in the twenty-four years we knew one another, but that's what I keep seeing.
Your sister told me, like an animal, you chose to die alone. That you gave up. I know that. We just have different idea of when you gave up.
And, oh, how she raged. After the two of you buried your father, that was supposed to be it. She didn't want to be the last one. Part way through, she stopped herself and apologized to me for unloading.
"No, you need to do this. You may need do it a few more times before you truly work through this," I said, not out of empathy, but honesty.
Once, when relating a bit of trauma, you said your life should serve as a cautionary tale to others. You may have gotten your wish. There was this one last lesson for you to teach me; never lose your grace. Never, ever, give up. Once you do, although it might take years, it's lights out, and it will be lonely, and cold, and disgraceful. You must keep raging.
Keep raging...
You loved to quote this jam when we would speak;
"No one told you when to run
you missed the starting gun..."
Twenty-four years we knew one another. In that time you watched me grow into the person I am now. I saw you be diminished slowly, like sandstone whittled away by desert winds. Your death, whilst it elicited an emotional reaction from me, was, in the end, not shocking. Sadly, I saw it coming.
After I learned of your death and its cause, one question still remained; when did you lose your grace? I am not one to leave such a mystery unsolved. I began to dissect. It is my nature to do so. Were I to give it a date in clumsy timekeeping of Man it would be June twenty-first, two-thousand seven. That was the day you told me you were getting divorced.
She was your high school sweetheart. The one who got away. When you told me you found her again, that you were going to marry her, your smile threatened to swallow the rest of your head. When the end came to your love story, it broke you.
That is when you gave up...
First you lost the home your father left you. Once the divorce was done you were sentenced to a one-bedroom apartment with barely a couple coins to rub together. Somewhere in there, you decided to stop taking your insulin. To say your health suffered because of it is as blindingly obvious as the direction of the rising sun. Your body began to betray you, soon making it that you could not earn a livelihood.
There were the amputations. First, a finger. Then, a toe. Your foot. A leg. They were going to take the other leg when you had your septic stumble and all fall down. It was as if that deity you so zealously believed in, to the point of being born again-because the first time didn't work out so great?-was taking you a piece at a time.
I watched you move from one toxic situation to another. When you moved down to Arizona, I though you might get things turned around, but you fell into your pattern pretty quickly. Almost like habit. You once told me you saw yourself as a knight, owing to your time in law enforcement and security work. Did you really think you were going to save any of those cats you fell in with?
"The fact you have fallen is interesting. The time you remain down is important."
You said that to me once. I was going through my divorce, sitting in coffeehouses scribbling bad poetry to a backbeat of Nine Inch Nails. I was in pain, certainly, but I got up. That was when I decided nothing would break me. That is when I decided not to bare my jugular to anyone.
No matter how many times I said that to you, you never got up. You never even tried. I am not a saint or a superhero, but you showed you cannot save someone who had no desire to be saved. You lost your grace.
The last time I spoke to you was shortly after the leg amputation. Whilst you glibly said you were glad you did not have access to a firearm, you sounded relatively cheerful. That was the thing; no matter the drama or tale of woe, you knew there was no one to blame for it than yourself. You may have been beyond grace, but you knew how you got there.
You left rehab in anger, without medications of any kind. Without crutches. You stopped talking to everyone; your sister, your favorite cousin, even me, supposedly one of your best friends. The mental image of you crawling on your hands and knees in a manure lagoon is seared into my mind's eye. I would rather remember that picture of you when you got your Harley, your smile threatening to swallow the rest of your head, or any other moment in the twenty-four years we knew one another, but that's what I keep seeing.
Your sister told me, like an animal, you chose to die alone. That you gave up. I know that. We just have different idea of when you gave up.
And, oh, how she raged. After the two of you buried your father, that was supposed to be it. She didn't want to be the last one. Part way through, she stopped herself and apologized to me for unloading.
"No, you need to do this. You may need do it a few more times before you truly work through this," I said, not out of empathy, but honesty.
Once, when relating a bit of trauma, you said your life should serve as a cautionary tale to others. You may have gotten your wish. There was this one last lesson for you to teach me; never lose your grace. Never, ever, give up. Once you do, although it might take years, it's lights out, and it will be lonely, and cold, and disgraceful. You must keep raging.
Keep raging...
You loved to quote this jam when we would speak;
"No one told you when to run
you missed the starting gun..."
14 September 2017
Sixty-Six
You would've been sixty-six today. Seven years to the day, we gathered at that one bristle cone between the ruins of Waldorf and the bones of the Santiago Mill to scatter your ashes. Me, the heretic, reading the requiem I composed for you, playing preacher-man because of that zaniness with the Universal Life Church, but that's another story.
Nine months and nine days before that, your youngest, my brother, and I stood over your cooling body. The stench of the disease that devoured you was still heavy in the air. My brother did not understand why I asked for two coins to cover your half-lidded eyes, and, in the moment, I was not in the mood to deliver a mythology lesson.
It was that night I truly cast my lot to the winds of chaos and let's just roll them bones...
Seven years, nine months, and nine days later, I often dream of you. You're never sick then. There was a hoodoo-voodoo article about visitation dreams I came across recently, and, you know me; I get curious, I dissect well past the marrow, watching the worms beneath squirm with savage amusement. So, of course I read it, and none of those dime-store diagnostics fit.
Brass tacks and bedposts, mother, I miss you. Terribly.
Nine months and nine days before that, your youngest, my brother, and I stood over your cooling body. The stench of the disease that devoured you was still heavy in the air. My brother did not understand why I asked for two coins to cover your half-lidded eyes, and, in the moment, I was not in the mood to deliver a mythology lesson.
It was that night I truly cast my lot to the winds of chaos and let's just roll them bones...
Seven years, nine months, and nine days later, I often dream of you. You're never sick then. There was a hoodoo-voodoo article about visitation dreams I came across recently, and, you know me; I get curious, I dissect well past the marrow, watching the worms beneath squirm with savage amusement. So, of course I read it, and none of those dime-store diagnostics fit.
Brass tacks and bedposts, mother, I miss you. Terribly.
05 November 2015
From Beyond
I'm chatting with the owner of our local watering hole and she's asking me to speak to some new neighbors. Something about getting a feel for them, though I am not inclined to cop a feel from complete strangers, let alone, ones with parts missing. Still, I have somehow become the metaphoric go-to guy.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see you. Your gait is purposeful. You mean to speak with me. I have several problems with this, with seeing you walking toward me with that purposeful gait. Quickly, I turn away.
"Gotta go," I tell the owner of our local watering hole. She goes on to talk with you as I make my escape.
I'm walking down the street in the lengthening shadows of the deepest blue of evening. Summer is long gone and the first snows have fallen. It gets dark so quickly now. I pull my layers close against the growing chill.
Turning the corner, there you are, walking with a purpose. You mean to speak with me. I know why you shouldn't. Why you can't. Quickly, I duck down a secret way I know, avoiding you once more.
Normally, I'm not out so late, but here I am. The gypsy and I are having cha'i and talking about books. It'd been a bit. Then her phone rings. A phone call, not texts. She talks for a few before handing her phone to me with that one look she'd get, which I used to call that foreign girl look.
"You need to take this," she says.
"Hello?" My voice echoes into an abyss.
"Don't go moving to the south," you tell me. "It'll look like you're running away."
"Bah!" I snort. "Have you fucking met me? I don't run. I'm dug in here. If I were to move, west is the closest direction to forward for me."
Of course, I'm remembering back to when things went down between the jewel-eyed girl and I, and you were amongst the school that implored me to move. For my safety. I refused, because I wouldn't run. I would not be broken, because there is not a force in the universe that can break me. I dug in. You must recognize I'm musing this by my silence.
"You still there?" You ask.
"Ummm...you do realize you've been dead almost five years, mon amie," I say finally, my voice is small and lost. "Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhttttttttttt?????"
And you're silent for only a second, but it seems like far longer than the almost five years...
"I know," your voice is distant and disembodied. Phantasmal. "I've known for a long time." You pause to stifle a sob. "I miss my son."
"He died the day after the accident," I say with reptilian honesty. "Two days before your family pulled you off those machines."
"Never pull your punches, do you, you bastard?" You're fighting tears.
"You'd despise me if I did," I reply.
"I told you you'd find enlightenment," you say. "Sometimes, you'd doubt me."
"I'm not that pretentious," I say. "Besides, you said that over the tarots. I met others of your ilk who could read their mark and use the cards to tell them what they wanted to hear. I'm a skeptical bastard, I admit it. If nothing else, between my mother and you dying taught me that."
"I meant what I said," you say with that sense of confidence I admired. "No matter what you think. Remember that."
***
The clock says four o'nine. I am wide awake, and my mind, which never shuts down completely-sucks for meditation at times-is running at full bore. There goes the rest of my sleep. What just happened was so vivid and spit-shiny real I can smell and taste it.
But I begin to think. Burden and a boon. I begin to dissect. Such is my way. These days, when being poetic, I might say part of my mysticism is inquiry and analysis.
"You're such a Virgo!" Another Pagan of my acquaintance once told me when I was being curious and questioning.
"And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?" I asked her. She never answered, but instead shot me stupefied look that I'd even inquire.
Pieces of reality begin to slide across the phantasm of the dreaming. Everyone may have known and loved you, as I often joked, but you didn't know the owner of my local watering hole. The street I walked down was far more urban/urbane than anything I've regularly walked in years. It's been almost as many years as you've been in the ground since I've shared any liquid with the gypsy.
I was dreaming...
Of course, I start asking why?, after all, it's me. You know that. The gypsy sent me all those old pictures, that one of me and you from a thousand years back, which I think of as the description of our acquaintance. Of course, like pond silt when you step into the water, memories will come flooding back. It's been nearly five years-thirteen days away-since your rollover. My mother, dead ten months before you, still shows up with vivid ferocity in my dreams.
The answer. Mystery solved. Logic.
Yeh, logic and answers do not change one simple fact; you're dead and gone almost five years, and, my dear, dear, sweet friend, I miss you...terribly...
Out of the corner of my eye, I see you. Your gait is purposeful. You mean to speak with me. I have several problems with this, with seeing you walking toward me with that purposeful gait. Quickly, I turn away.
"Gotta go," I tell the owner of our local watering hole. She goes on to talk with you as I make my escape.
I'm walking down the street in the lengthening shadows of the deepest blue of evening. Summer is long gone and the first snows have fallen. It gets dark so quickly now. I pull my layers close against the growing chill.
Turning the corner, there you are, walking with a purpose. You mean to speak with me. I know why you shouldn't. Why you can't. Quickly, I duck down a secret way I know, avoiding you once more.
Normally, I'm not out so late, but here I am. The gypsy and I are having cha'i and talking about books. It'd been a bit. Then her phone rings. A phone call, not texts. She talks for a few before handing her phone to me with that one look she'd get, which I used to call that foreign girl look.
"You need to take this," she says.
"Hello?" My voice echoes into an abyss.
"Don't go moving to the south," you tell me. "It'll look like you're running away."
"Bah!" I snort. "Have you fucking met me? I don't run. I'm dug in here. If I were to move, west is the closest direction to forward for me."
Of course, I'm remembering back to when things went down between the jewel-eyed girl and I, and you were amongst the school that implored me to move. For my safety. I refused, because I wouldn't run. I would not be broken, because there is not a force in the universe that can break me. I dug in. You must recognize I'm musing this by my silence.
"You still there?" You ask.
"Ummm...you do realize you've been dead almost five years, mon amie," I say finally, my voice is small and lost. "Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhttttttttttt?????"
And you're silent for only a second, but it seems like far longer than the almost five years...
"I know," your voice is distant and disembodied. Phantasmal. "I've known for a long time." You pause to stifle a sob. "I miss my son."
"He died the day after the accident," I say with reptilian honesty. "Two days before your family pulled you off those machines."
"Never pull your punches, do you, you bastard?" You're fighting tears.
"You'd despise me if I did," I reply.
"I told you you'd find enlightenment," you say. "Sometimes, you'd doubt me."
"I'm not that pretentious," I say. "Besides, you said that over the tarots. I met others of your ilk who could read their mark and use the cards to tell them what they wanted to hear. I'm a skeptical bastard, I admit it. If nothing else, between my mother and you dying taught me that."
"I meant what I said," you say with that sense of confidence I admired. "No matter what you think. Remember that."
***
The clock says four o'nine. I am wide awake, and my mind, which never shuts down completely-sucks for meditation at times-is running at full bore. There goes the rest of my sleep. What just happened was so vivid and spit-shiny real I can smell and taste it.
But I begin to think. Burden and a boon. I begin to dissect. Such is my way. These days, when being poetic, I might say part of my mysticism is inquiry and analysis.
"You're such a Virgo!" Another Pagan of my acquaintance once told me when I was being curious and questioning.
"And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?" I asked her. She never answered, but instead shot me stupefied look that I'd even inquire.
Pieces of reality begin to slide across the phantasm of the dreaming. Everyone may have known and loved you, as I often joked, but you didn't know the owner of my local watering hole. The street I walked down was far more urban/urbane than anything I've regularly walked in years. It's been almost as many years as you've been in the ground since I've shared any liquid with the gypsy.
I was dreaming...
Of course, I start asking why?, after all, it's me. You know that. The gypsy sent me all those old pictures, that one of me and you from a thousand years back, which I think of as the description of our acquaintance. Of course, like pond silt when you step into the water, memories will come flooding back. It's been nearly five years-thirteen days away-since your rollover. My mother, dead ten months before you, still shows up with vivid ferocity in my dreams.
The answer. Mystery solved. Logic.
Yeh, logic and answers do not change one simple fact; you're dead and gone almost five years, and, my dear, dear, sweet friend, I miss you...terribly...
03 January 2015
Five Orbits On
Miles Davis's Sketches of Spain, The Beatles Let it Be, The Rolling Stones Let it Bleed on the stereo, and a tumbler of whiskey. It is snowing. Puttanesca cooks upon the stove. There is catharsis.
Five years later, I still miss you, mother...terribly...
Five years later, I still miss you, mother...terribly...
25 April 2014
Mixed Blessings, or, Getting Up?
You have fallen. Ever since she took you to the metaphoric cleaners you have tumbled oh so very far from Grace. Every day, every conversation, just a little further down the spiral, for, I have heard it said, there is no ground floor in Hell.
And that anthropomorphic sky-father deity you place so much faith in? I've wanted to track that one down, slit him neck to nuts, fill the hole with wasps, sew it shut, and leave him with a good hard kick to the ribs in retribution for fucking with you so. That's the kind of friend I am.
You tell me you're leaving. There's an eye for the main chance in Arizona. I've been there; deserts are the other landscape, aside from mountains, that fascinate me. I tell you it's a mixed blessing; the warmer and drier climate may be kinder to your condition than that of Colorado. It's a chance to start afresh without the emotional shrapnel you leave here.
Bury the bodies, turn the page, and press on...
Mon ami, I know better than to lie and say it'll be okay. It's just going to be. It will be an adventure. A chance to turn it all around. It's that chance you and I have both been hoping for in differing degrees; the chance for you to get up.
Use this opportunity, or it won't be your deity whose belly gets stuffed with wasps, because that's just the kind of friend I am...
And that anthropomorphic sky-father deity you place so much faith in? I've wanted to track that one down, slit him neck to nuts, fill the hole with wasps, sew it shut, and leave him with a good hard kick to the ribs in retribution for fucking with you so. That's the kind of friend I am.
You tell me you're leaving. There's an eye for the main chance in Arizona. I've been there; deserts are the other landscape, aside from mountains, that fascinate me. I tell you it's a mixed blessing; the warmer and drier climate may be kinder to your condition than that of Colorado. It's a chance to start afresh without the emotional shrapnel you leave here.
Bury the bodies, turn the page, and press on...
Mon ami, I know better than to lie and say it'll be okay. It's just going to be. It will be an adventure. A chance to turn it all around. It's that chance you and I have both been hoping for in differing degrees; the chance for you to get up.
Use this opportunity, or it won't be your deity whose belly gets stuffed with wasps, because that's just the kind of friend I am...
22 December 2013
Carhartt
It was four years ago this past Tuesday that you went into the sickhouse and never came back out. You told me it wasn't your last rodeo and I spent longer than I'd like to admit being angry at you for unintentionally lying to me. Whenever I look up at the ridge of Leavenworth Mountain, toward the ruins of Waldorf on the other side of that ridge, where we scattered your immolated bones, I smile bittersweetly, thinking perhaps you're really not that far away after all.
When I saw her kneeling to snap a photograph, I saw you. Right down to the Carhartt ranch jacket. The same hair-before you got sick and the chemo shaved you bald-and the same smile. Even a similar lack of chin. I tried very hard not to stare.
With purposeful stride I put some distance between us. Once I rounded a corner, I caught myself trembling slightly. As with most any time I see a ghost of memory, I found myself rattled. There were so many things I wanted to ask and tell, but she wouldn't have understood. But part of me thinks I should be grateful for that doppelganger in the Carhartt ranch jacket that looked so disturbingly like you. If I allow myself a moment of superstition, I could theorize it was your way of letting me know you're really not that far away after all.
When I saw her kneeling to snap a photograph, I saw you. Right down to the Carhartt ranch jacket. The same hair-before you got sick and the chemo shaved you bald-and the same smile. Even a similar lack of chin. I tried very hard not to stare.
With purposeful stride I put some distance between us. Once I rounded a corner, I caught myself trembling slightly. As with most any time I see a ghost of memory, I found myself rattled. There were so many things I wanted to ask and tell, but she wouldn't have understood. But part of me thinks I should be grateful for that doppelganger in the Carhartt ranch jacket that looked so disturbingly like you. If I allow myself a moment of superstition, I could theorize it was your way of letting me know you're really not that far away after all.
19 November 2013
Job
We first met in a diner. I was using a set of Chinese medicine balls as stage-prop in what could be considered a lewd joke. You came back with one better. We spent the first half of the evening trading dirty jokes. I might have blushed once or twice whilst giggling guiltily, had all the capillaries in my face not been damaged by the ugly incident in Calcutta when I went toe-to-toe with that militant faction of Up with People, but that's another story.
I was twenty-one. A young, impressionable, philosophy and theology student who was probably far too impressed with my own intelligence. I kept talking about writing a book. Being published someday was my rockstar fantasy back then.
You were eleven years my senior. Already, you had worked a molybdenum mine outside of Leadville and been involved in the constabulary. You had a vocabulary that made my other philosopher friend seem like a monosyllabic hick. When I told you I was starting to dig on far eastern philosophy, you implored me to check out Sun Tzu.
Some of the others may not have liked you as much as I did. Thinking back, you might be right about that. No subject was taboo to you. At all. You stood your ground in a dialogue and refused to mollycoddle. It could be that made some others, weaker in their constitutions and convictions, uncomfortable. Perhaps it was that shocking, violent honesty that fascinated me. Maybe it was because you were willing to hang out with me until night became another day whilst we drank coffee and discussed the whichnesses and wherefores.
You taught me the concept of the alligator mouth and the hummingbird ass. Something both of us still have a problem with-although, I like to say I have come to a place of acceptance and the rest of the world needs to catch up. During those dark days of my divorce, you offered unflinching advice, much like you did the time I quired you about a restraining order against an x-girlfriend. Some of what you said hurt my feelings, but I desperately needed to hear it anyway. I was perhaps the second person in the whole of creation you told you were going to marry your second x-wife the night you met her.
Over the years and lifetimes we've known each other, I've called you one of my gurus. A guru, after all, aids one in finding enlightenment. Whilst I'll not be pretentious and say enlightenment is something I'm even close to achieving, you have helped me pull away some of the cobwebs of ignorance.
When you told me you were born again, I flippantly wanted to ask what was wrong with the first time. You may have laughed. You might have entreated me to go fuck myself. Either response would've been appropriate. I did tell you I am pretty happy with my beliefs and we'd just have to agree to disagree.
"Robbie Grey, I didn't call you to convert you," you said. "I called because you're my friend and I wanted to talk to you."
Just like that, everything was zen...
And the shit you've been through in the last few years; divorce, bad health, loss of home, hearth, and income, you describe as your living perdition. Meanwhile, I am so very happy in my existence here in paradise. The dichotomy is enough to get me to believe that blasphemous rumor that god has a sick sense of humor. That, the Problem of Evil, is why I cannot even pretend to believe in an anthropomorphic deity that even remotely cares. Yet, to your credit, you've kept your faith.
And I name thee Job...
So, naturally, when you phone me up sounding all but broken beneath the blade, I catch myself worrying. Not that you'll go and do something utterly stupid and rash; I do believe you that you'll not go quietly. I worry that the man I've spent the last nearly twenty years admiring for calling it as it's seen and going where the angels fear tread for a laugh and intellectual curiosity, is considering bearing his jugular.
I understand; it's been a long time in this downward spiral. Kafka, Milton, and Dante would cross their legs and blush. But I've heard your stories, Sir. Those ones from further back. Back from before that night in a diner with a set of Chinese medicine balls and a volley of crass humor. You've gone toe-to-toe with worse infernals than this and they were the ones who limped away with scars.
There was that night during the bardo after my x-wife left and when my divorce became official. I was scribbling manic poetry to a soundtrack of Nine Inch Nails. Words fail in describing the psychic devastation and Shakespearian betrayal of it all. It, to this day, was one time in my life that I was closest to being heartbroken, which is queer, given my heart has no bones. You sat down with me and told me how sick to death you were with my wallowing.
"The fact you have fallen is interesting," you said in a steady, yet harsh voice. "The time you remain down is important."
Job, my guru...mon ami, you have fallen, and ain't that about interesting?
How long will you remain down?
I was twenty-one. A young, impressionable, philosophy and theology student who was probably far too impressed with my own intelligence. I kept talking about writing a book. Being published someday was my rockstar fantasy back then.
You were eleven years my senior. Already, you had worked a molybdenum mine outside of Leadville and been involved in the constabulary. You had a vocabulary that made my other philosopher friend seem like a monosyllabic hick. When I told you I was starting to dig on far eastern philosophy, you implored me to check out Sun Tzu.
Some of the others may not have liked you as much as I did. Thinking back, you might be right about that. No subject was taboo to you. At all. You stood your ground in a dialogue and refused to mollycoddle. It could be that made some others, weaker in their constitutions and convictions, uncomfortable. Perhaps it was that shocking, violent honesty that fascinated me. Maybe it was because you were willing to hang out with me until night became another day whilst we drank coffee and discussed the whichnesses and wherefores.
You taught me the concept of the alligator mouth and the hummingbird ass. Something both of us still have a problem with-although, I like to say I have come to a place of acceptance and the rest of the world needs to catch up. During those dark days of my divorce, you offered unflinching advice, much like you did the time I quired you about a restraining order against an x-girlfriend. Some of what you said hurt my feelings, but I desperately needed to hear it anyway. I was perhaps the second person in the whole of creation you told you were going to marry your second x-wife the night you met her.
Over the years and lifetimes we've known each other, I've called you one of my gurus. A guru, after all, aids one in finding enlightenment. Whilst I'll not be pretentious and say enlightenment is something I'm even close to achieving, you have helped me pull away some of the cobwebs of ignorance.
When you told me you were born again, I flippantly wanted to ask what was wrong with the first time. You may have laughed. You might have entreated me to go fuck myself. Either response would've been appropriate. I did tell you I am pretty happy with my beliefs and we'd just have to agree to disagree.
"Robbie Grey, I didn't call you to convert you," you said. "I called because you're my friend and I wanted to talk to you."
Just like that, everything was zen...
And the shit you've been through in the last few years; divorce, bad health, loss of home, hearth, and income, you describe as your living perdition. Meanwhile, I am so very happy in my existence here in paradise. The dichotomy is enough to get me to believe that blasphemous rumor that god has a sick sense of humor. That, the Problem of Evil, is why I cannot even pretend to believe in an anthropomorphic deity that even remotely cares. Yet, to your credit, you've kept your faith.
And I name thee Job...
So, naturally, when you phone me up sounding all but broken beneath the blade, I catch myself worrying. Not that you'll go and do something utterly stupid and rash; I do believe you that you'll not go quietly. I worry that the man I've spent the last nearly twenty years admiring for calling it as it's seen and going where the angels fear tread for a laugh and intellectual curiosity, is considering bearing his jugular.
I understand; it's been a long time in this downward spiral. Kafka, Milton, and Dante would cross their legs and blush. But I've heard your stories, Sir. Those ones from further back. Back from before that night in a diner with a set of Chinese medicine balls and a volley of crass humor. You've gone toe-to-toe with worse infernals than this and they were the ones who limped away with scars.
There was that night during the bardo after my x-wife left and when my divorce became official. I was scribbling manic poetry to a soundtrack of Nine Inch Nails. Words fail in describing the psychic devastation and Shakespearian betrayal of it all. It, to this day, was one time in my life that I was closest to being heartbroken, which is queer, given my heart has no bones. You sat down with me and told me how sick to death you were with my wallowing.
"The fact you have fallen is interesting," you said in a steady, yet harsh voice. "The time you remain down is important."
Job, my guru...mon ami, you have fallen, and ain't that about interesting?
How long will you remain down?
20 October 2013
Ghost Call
I have not spoken to you in almost ten years. There are distances I cannot cross and places my voice cannot carry. Yet there we were, speaking on the telephone as though it was just yesterday. You started the conversation the way you always did;
"Tell me what's new and interesting."
I was standing outside, across the street from my house, gazing down at the river. Warm sunlight danced upon the water, caressed my face, whilst gentle breezes played with my hair. I told you about wild mushrooms and our community garden plot. Walkabouts and the hounds.
I didn't have to tell you I'd moved to the mountains; because apparently you already knew. Sabina, someone you never met and never will, was a familiar name in our conversation. The book I published and the fact my mother, your daughter, died nearly four years ago were all givens. We spoke of getting together for dinner and I was grateful you didn't ask me for my opinions about the politics of the day. I doubt you'd have wanted my company for dinner then.
"I think the dogs want to go out," Sabina's half-asleep voice was jarring in my ear.
It was all gone in a flash; your voice, the gentle sun upon the river, the breeze in my hair. I was fumbling through the dark of early morning to let out the hounds. Bittersweet melancholy swept through my thin frame as I opened the front door to a crisp autumn day. It'd been almost ten years since I heard your voice and it was just as crisp and clear as yesterday.
"I got to talk to my grandmother," I whispered into the empty air. There might have been a smile on my face. It might have been one of gratitude.
"Tell me what's new and interesting."
I was standing outside, across the street from my house, gazing down at the river. Warm sunlight danced upon the water, caressed my face, whilst gentle breezes played with my hair. I told you about wild mushrooms and our community garden plot. Walkabouts and the hounds.
I didn't have to tell you I'd moved to the mountains; because apparently you already knew. Sabina, someone you never met and never will, was a familiar name in our conversation. The book I published and the fact my mother, your daughter, died nearly four years ago were all givens. We spoke of getting together for dinner and I was grateful you didn't ask me for my opinions about the politics of the day. I doubt you'd have wanted my company for dinner then.
"I think the dogs want to go out," Sabina's half-asleep voice was jarring in my ear.
It was all gone in a flash; your voice, the gentle sun upon the river, the breeze in my hair. I was fumbling through the dark of early morning to let out the hounds. Bittersweet melancholy swept through my thin frame as I opened the front door to a crisp autumn day. It'd been almost ten years since I heard your voice and it was just as crisp and clear as yesterday.
"I got to talk to my grandmother," I whispered into the empty air. There might have been a smile on my face. It might have been one of gratitude.
16 July 2013
With Sympathy
It is a horrible thing to watch someone die. Even and especially by slow degrees; chronic illness, terminal disease-one and the same?-mechanical pantomimes. It is a slow torture for all the parties involved, and anyone who would say different is either daft or selling something.
She's gone now, and, as the worst kind of bastard with the morals-ha!-of an alley cat, as your friend, I can only speak in truths...
You are not going to get over this. Ever. Sure, after a while you reach a point where the void where that person was is not so cold and bottomless, but it'll always be there. Something, anything, will reach out of the nowhere and remind you of what you've lost. What was once there and can never be recovered.
There will be regrets. All the memories and stories and little moments. Gone now. You will wish you listened more. Took more note. Relished those small times. Shown more gratitude for what was soft and warm and unspoken.
You might not sleep much at first. Your dreams will be haunted by that phantasm. Then, one day, you will just crash; entering into a dreamless sleep that seems to last for days. That may just be the day the psychic scab starts to form.
Cry. Be angry. Shout and scream and punch something. Purge the ire, do not let it fester and poison you. Mourn. Allow yourself that.
Watch the sun rise. Watch it set. Snuggle with your daughter and your boyfriend, perhaps at the same time. Tell stories and smile. Walk. Breathe. Live. Allow yourself that.
It's not going to be easy. How the fuck could it be? This is Hell and cobwebs and gravedust and razorblades and maggots. It'd be an outright lie to say otherwise.
But, you're a fighter. You will survive this. If for no other reason than it is not in your nature to just up and quit.
It's a horrible thing to watch someone die. I know this. You know this. We've both been here before and we'll be here again. That's just the way of it. Just know, I can only speak to you in truths and I've got your shadow.
My sympathies...
She's gone now, and, as the worst kind of bastard with the morals-ha!-of an alley cat, as your friend, I can only speak in truths...
You are not going to get over this. Ever. Sure, after a while you reach a point where the void where that person was is not so cold and bottomless, but it'll always be there. Something, anything, will reach out of the nowhere and remind you of what you've lost. What was once there and can never be recovered.
There will be regrets. All the memories and stories and little moments. Gone now. You will wish you listened more. Took more note. Relished those small times. Shown more gratitude for what was soft and warm and unspoken.
You might not sleep much at first. Your dreams will be haunted by that phantasm. Then, one day, you will just crash; entering into a dreamless sleep that seems to last for days. That may just be the day the psychic scab starts to form.
Cry. Be angry. Shout and scream and punch something. Purge the ire, do not let it fester and poison you. Mourn. Allow yourself that.
Watch the sun rise. Watch it set. Snuggle with your daughter and your boyfriend, perhaps at the same time. Tell stories and smile. Walk. Breathe. Live. Allow yourself that.
It's not going to be easy. How the fuck could it be? This is Hell and cobwebs and gravedust and razorblades and maggots. It'd be an outright lie to say otherwise.
But, you're a fighter. You will survive this. If for no other reason than it is not in your nature to just up and quit.
It's a horrible thing to watch someone die. I know this. You know this. We've both been here before and we'll be here again. That's just the way of it. Just know, I can only speak to you in truths and I've got your shadow.
My sympathies...
19 May 2013
Letters to the Void
When I realize it's been a little over two years since we've seen, let alone spoken, to one another, I catch myself shocked by the elasticity and abstractness of time, and saddened by the fact it's been so long. I'm sorry, how about you?
It was back when we put the bruja in ground. Did we, by unintended inaction, bury our friendship as well? It is a question I ask myself sometimes, late at night, when the demons come for tea. The answer illudes me.
My daughter graduates high school in a few short days hence. Yeh, daddy's little girl has gone and gotten all grown up behind our backs, but right before our eyes. As a celebration of this circumstance, there is the matter of a free show being put on by Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers, which we mean to attend.
I send you correspondences, using the ways and means to reach you I have on hand. Due diligence. The likelihood of those ways and means being valid? Perhaps I should rather go and get myself good and drunk, go out back, and shoot rubber bands at the stars, because I might actually hit one.
Even through the dismissal that you'll not respond, that I'll not see you, I hold out a modicum of hope. Perhaps you'll prove me wrong. You've done it before and we can get back up and we can do it all over again. Maybe I'll run into you at the show, and I'd even help you up. We could share then a tequila to Mekong as we always used to.
"And if your bottle's empty
then help yourself to mine,
Thank you for your time-
And here's to life..."
It was back when we put the bruja in ground. Did we, by unintended inaction, bury our friendship as well? It is a question I ask myself sometimes, late at night, when the demons come for tea. The answer illudes me.
My daughter graduates high school in a few short days hence. Yeh, daddy's little girl has gone and gotten all grown up behind our backs, but right before our eyes. As a celebration of this circumstance, there is the matter of a free show being put on by Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers, which we mean to attend.
I send you correspondences, using the ways and means to reach you I have on hand. Due diligence. The likelihood of those ways and means being valid? Perhaps I should rather go and get myself good and drunk, go out back, and shoot rubber bands at the stars, because I might actually hit one.
Even through the dismissal that you'll not respond, that I'll not see you, I hold out a modicum of hope. Perhaps you'll prove me wrong. You've done it before and we can get back up and we can do it all over again. Maybe I'll run into you at the show, and I'd even help you up. We could share then a tequila to Mekong as we always used to.
"And if your bottle's empty
then help yourself to mine,
Thank you for your time-
And here's to life..."
13 May 2013
The Realization of Vision
I still remember the dream as though I just had it; we were in a house out on the badlands of eastern Colorado. The place bore a striking resemblance to my parents' farmstead out on Road Twenty-One, the one my father said could house myself, my brother, sister, daughter, mother, grandmother, and him and we'd never be tripping over one another. Despite its location in such a flat expanse of khaki, craft fairs, ranchers, and tractor pulls I always kind of dug that house if for no other reason than that kitchen.
You were standing in the great room, looking out a window, dressed in a simple black skirt, boots, and your Mansfields t-shirt. I did not have to announce my presence, you turned as I walked up. There was thin smile on your lips and a sparkle in your big doe eyes, which shine like abalone shells.
"You want to go out tonight?" I asked, meaning one of the juke joints we would frequent back in those down below past lives. "Reckon the whole Hee-Haw Gang will be there."
"I don't know," you replied. "Let me think about it."
"Okay," I said. "I'll go make dinner. Vindaloo?"
"Sounds lovely," you said, giving me a kiss on the cheek.
The day of that dream, I'd come across a loft in the historical district, where I lived in the greater metroplex, that was for sale. You and your x were looking for a weekend place, closer to the monoliths of downtown, to crash when out gallivanting. Funny. Back then I figured a weekend place was away from the borders of a city, but I was younger and impetuous.
You were over in Grand Junction, helping your parents pack up to make the transition to full-time Arizona residents. I was thanked for my armature efforts at reality and told of a photograph of you in a sombrero. When I saw it later, I almost laughed myself sick. On your way home that night, you swung by my place to give me a paper wasp's nest because you said it made you think of me.
I never told you, but that was one of the sweetest gifts I ever got from a girl. I didn't mention the dream I'd had with you. At the time, it would've been awkward, at best, and wrong action, at worst.
Although, I did eventually tell you about that dream. It was that night you got me drunk. Yes, you. I wanted to drink lemonade and read the bible. I wanted to walk with the lord. You weren't having that, oh no. You kept pouring wine down my throat, and what was I supposed to do? There are children-children!-who go to bed sober in India. I had to think of the children.
Don't look at me like that...
That was the night I tried to warn you about me. Oh, sure, we were fine friends, but anything else could be a bad scene. I am, at best, misanthropic, and you've always been far too extroverted for that. There are those who would say-quite baselessly, I might add-that I'm paradoxical. A girl of your regal bearing didn't need to be getting beyond platonic with a quirky bastard such as I.
Not that you listened, oh no. Instead, you took advantage of me. Yes, you. I tried to end the evening with me discreetly going to bed. To sleep. You were there, naked, jabbing your tongue down my throat, and what was I supposed to do?
I said don't look at me like that...
There have been times when I've questioned the sanctity of my dreams. That one about me and you in that badlands house. There were those dreams I had during my roaring twenties with the Buddhist motif, which I postulated to a street preacher were not unlike what the apostle formerly known as Saul, who changed his name to Paul, went through on the road to Damascus. I would dream of nowhere never-nevers with interesting geographies that operated in a wholly different manner than what some might call the real world. There are thousands of little omens over the years and lifetimes I've never mentioned to anyone.
Although, I should've known with you that night I saw you in the gin joint in the cowboy hat, but that's another story. Then again, I've never claimed to be psychic. The cats I've encountered who say that they are most assuredly are not.
And perhaps it's that; the questioning. It is not within my nature to take things without question and on blind faith. Remember, heretic. I get curious, I dissect. When it comes to finding the satisfactory answer, I can be relentless.
I wonder if those dreams and omens are nothing more than my own confirmation bias. Looking for patterns within the Tao of Chaos. False facts to fit my perception of reality.
Then I wonder how much it really matters. We are where we are now. That's not a dream. It is so spit-shiny real sometimes it borders upon surreal.
It has been quite some years since I had dream and you gave me the paper wasp's nest because it made you think of me. That house, which was based on one my parents lived in, is long gone. The badlands of eastern Colorado all but ceased to exist for me when my father moved from the Rub 'al Khali after my mother died. Much like North Carolina got buried with my father's mother. Other than memory and stories, neither of those places are truly real anymore. Dreams to be forgotten upon waking.
The house we live in is in a place you jump off the end of the world to reach-and here, there be dragons. I still make us dinner because that's what I do. I don't bother to ask you about going to those juke joints, instead about roadtrips and walkabouts.
It has nothing to do with visions, but I already know your answer...
You were standing in the great room, looking out a window, dressed in a simple black skirt, boots, and your Mansfields t-shirt. I did not have to announce my presence, you turned as I walked up. There was thin smile on your lips and a sparkle in your big doe eyes, which shine like abalone shells.
"You want to go out tonight?" I asked, meaning one of the juke joints we would frequent back in those down below past lives. "Reckon the whole Hee-Haw Gang will be there."
"I don't know," you replied. "Let me think about it."
"Okay," I said. "I'll go make dinner. Vindaloo?"
"Sounds lovely," you said, giving me a kiss on the cheek.
The day of that dream, I'd come across a loft in the historical district, where I lived in the greater metroplex, that was for sale. You and your x were looking for a weekend place, closer to the monoliths of downtown, to crash when out gallivanting. Funny. Back then I figured a weekend place was away from the borders of a city, but I was younger and impetuous.
You were over in Grand Junction, helping your parents pack up to make the transition to full-time Arizona residents. I was thanked for my armature efforts at reality and told of a photograph of you in a sombrero. When I saw it later, I almost laughed myself sick. On your way home that night, you swung by my place to give me a paper wasp's nest because you said it made you think of me.
I never told you, but that was one of the sweetest gifts I ever got from a girl. I didn't mention the dream I'd had with you. At the time, it would've been awkward, at best, and wrong action, at worst.
Although, I did eventually tell you about that dream. It was that night you got me drunk. Yes, you. I wanted to drink lemonade and read the bible. I wanted to walk with the lord. You weren't having that, oh no. You kept pouring wine down my throat, and what was I supposed to do? There are children-children!-who go to bed sober in India. I had to think of the children.
Don't look at me like that...
That was the night I tried to warn you about me. Oh, sure, we were fine friends, but anything else could be a bad scene. I am, at best, misanthropic, and you've always been far too extroverted for that. There are those who would say-quite baselessly, I might add-that I'm paradoxical. A girl of your regal bearing didn't need to be getting beyond platonic with a quirky bastard such as I.
Not that you listened, oh no. Instead, you took advantage of me. Yes, you. I tried to end the evening with me discreetly going to bed. To sleep. You were there, naked, jabbing your tongue down my throat, and what was I supposed to do?
I said don't look at me like that...
There have been times when I've questioned the sanctity of my dreams. That one about me and you in that badlands house. There were those dreams I had during my roaring twenties with the Buddhist motif, which I postulated to a street preacher were not unlike what the apostle formerly known as Saul, who changed his name to Paul, went through on the road to Damascus. I would dream of nowhere never-nevers with interesting geographies that operated in a wholly different manner than what some might call the real world. There are thousands of little omens over the years and lifetimes I've never mentioned to anyone.
Although, I should've known with you that night I saw you in the gin joint in the cowboy hat, but that's another story. Then again, I've never claimed to be psychic. The cats I've encountered who say that they are most assuredly are not.
And perhaps it's that; the questioning. It is not within my nature to take things without question and on blind faith. Remember, heretic. I get curious, I dissect. When it comes to finding the satisfactory answer, I can be relentless.
I wonder if those dreams and omens are nothing more than my own confirmation bias. Looking for patterns within the Tao of Chaos. False facts to fit my perception of reality.
Then I wonder how much it really matters. We are where we are now. That's not a dream. It is so spit-shiny real sometimes it borders upon surreal.
It has been quite some years since I had dream and you gave me the paper wasp's nest because it made you think of me. That house, which was based on one my parents lived in, is long gone. The badlands of eastern Colorado all but ceased to exist for me when my father moved from the Rub 'al Khali after my mother died. Much like North Carolina got buried with my father's mother. Other than memory and stories, neither of those places are truly real anymore. Dreams to be forgotten upon waking.
The house we live in is in a place you jump off the end of the world to reach-and here, there be dragons. I still make us dinner because that's what I do. I don't bother to ask you about going to those juke joints, instead about roadtrips and walkabouts.
It has nothing to do with visions, but I already know your answer...
06 January 2013
Dragon Dreams
"I know why you have come to me
Prince Charming my assassin,
But I am not the damsel in distress
I am the fucking dragon..."-Space Team Electra
When you appear in my dreams, you change form, tripping the light fantastic of memory snapshots I have of you within the walls of my skull. I see my monkey watching partner from the vampire dens, my adopted grandmother, my friend and confidant during that time of transition when the games of Machiavelli were played right before our eyes. I see the form I saw but a few times, and rarely under pleasant auspice; the friend, a few years older, at the sickhouse after the bruja's rollover, the one dressed in mourning at the memorial, the one I had tea with that one time, who bummed me a cigarette, though I've not smoked for years now, and helped my daughter harass the gypsy about being Canadian.
The shape-shifting does not bother me in the slightest. I know it's you. Dragons are, by their very nature, magic. And moving from one form to the next is a part of that. Even so, I know things; and like the old story goes; Everyone Knows what a Dragon Looks Like.
In the dreams we meet at a juke joint. I am, understandably, not happy about this; I left that world many years and lifetimes ago. I live in the mountains now, and have very little interest in the greater metroplex. You all know that, though some have a harder time accepting this fact than others. When I see you, you are upset, choking back tears when you see me. In one dream, I asked you why.
"My owl doesn't come here anymore," you said.
Ah, the monikers. You were the only that called me your owl, although the bruja once or thrice called me Mister Owl. A matter of perceived mojo and those unnaturally large eyes of mine, see? The penance price to be paid for being an aberration.
I once told someone I do not find the names of characters-whether in tall tales or the pointless skull-story I call my life-the monikers find them. It is up to the individual to decide what that moniker means. I just get to feature those cats in the stories I tell. Nothing special.
Over the years and lifetimes, I have met legions of tossers who have claimed to have something to do with dragons. Ones who have claimed its mojo to one or two delusional souls who went as far as to say they actually were dragons wearing the flesh of a half-bald monkey as a topcoat. How special.
But you, Madam Lung-the Mandarin term for dragon-were the dragon lady, and anyone who would argue the point was either daft or trying to sell something. I always knew; sardonic smiles and a language of riddles spoken in the tongues of liquid silver. That look in the eye that if you were fucked with, not only would you immolate your prey, but use their bones for chopsticks, toothpicks, and a host of other decorations.
I only see you now in my dreams, and it pains me. In that silent lucidity, neither of us are happy about it; I am somewhere I do not want to be, and you know it, and no amount of attempting to make a go of it for a friend makes it better. It may all be true, even and especially the lies, but we've never tolerated deception between the two of us. After everything, despite the years and lifetimes that have elapsed since, that would be disrespectful.
Once, I was told, you did not do the mountains. Oh, did that hurt my feelings. Much like how I was told you reacted when I first moved away and spoke of my time in the city like a nightmare best to be forgotten. I'm sorry, and I wonder if you are. Perhaps, so much later, it doesn't matter anymore.
How I'd love to see you once more, mon ami. Of course, the pulling it off is the demonology in the details. Getting me within the borders of the greater metroplex is most often a blood obligation, which involves many libations and free food. Trying to convince you to try the mountains may be a Herculean feet I shouldn't contemplate because I'd be forcing that upon you, just like going into a juke joint these days would be forcing me.
I joke to myself we could do Mexican and margaritas in the shadow of Red Rocks. You could lie, and say you went to the mountains. I could lie, and say I did not leave them. It would all be true; even and especially the lies, right?
But then there's that matter of deception. That demonology in the details. Out of all of us, I seemed to know quite a bit about demons. Yet, there're some infernals gumming up the works. A riddle I intend to solve.
It's not like we could do the badlands of eastern Colorado for a meet. Fuck, I moved to the metroplex to leave that place. There has to be another way.
Until then, dragon lady, I have the dreams, whereupon you shape-shift the light fantastic of the memory snapshots along the walls of my skull. Despite it all, I cherish those dreams, because I get to see such a dear friend once more. Though, I confess, I wish for a dream that I was not uncomfortable and you were not upset about it. I wish to see you again within the realms of the flesh.
Someday, mon ami, I'll figure it out. You can bet on it...
Prince Charming my assassin,
But I am not the damsel in distress
I am the fucking dragon..."-Space Team Electra
When you appear in my dreams, you change form, tripping the light fantastic of memory snapshots I have of you within the walls of my skull. I see my monkey watching partner from the vampire dens, my adopted grandmother, my friend and confidant during that time of transition when the games of Machiavelli were played right before our eyes. I see the form I saw but a few times, and rarely under pleasant auspice; the friend, a few years older, at the sickhouse after the bruja's rollover, the one dressed in mourning at the memorial, the one I had tea with that one time, who bummed me a cigarette, though I've not smoked for years now, and helped my daughter harass the gypsy about being Canadian.
The shape-shifting does not bother me in the slightest. I know it's you. Dragons are, by their very nature, magic. And moving from one form to the next is a part of that. Even so, I know things; and like the old story goes; Everyone Knows what a Dragon Looks Like.
In the dreams we meet at a juke joint. I am, understandably, not happy about this; I left that world many years and lifetimes ago. I live in the mountains now, and have very little interest in the greater metroplex. You all know that, though some have a harder time accepting this fact than others. When I see you, you are upset, choking back tears when you see me. In one dream, I asked you why.
"My owl doesn't come here anymore," you said.
Ah, the monikers. You were the only that called me your owl, although the bruja once or thrice called me Mister Owl. A matter of perceived mojo and those unnaturally large eyes of mine, see? The penance price to be paid for being an aberration.
I once told someone I do not find the names of characters-whether in tall tales or the pointless skull-story I call my life-the monikers find them. It is up to the individual to decide what that moniker means. I just get to feature those cats in the stories I tell. Nothing special.
Over the years and lifetimes, I have met legions of tossers who have claimed to have something to do with dragons. Ones who have claimed its mojo to one or two delusional souls who went as far as to say they actually were dragons wearing the flesh of a half-bald monkey as a topcoat. How special.
But you, Madam Lung-the Mandarin term for dragon-were the dragon lady, and anyone who would argue the point was either daft or trying to sell something. I always knew; sardonic smiles and a language of riddles spoken in the tongues of liquid silver. That look in the eye that if you were fucked with, not only would you immolate your prey, but use their bones for chopsticks, toothpicks, and a host of other decorations.
I only see you now in my dreams, and it pains me. In that silent lucidity, neither of us are happy about it; I am somewhere I do not want to be, and you know it, and no amount of attempting to make a go of it for a friend makes it better. It may all be true, even and especially the lies, but we've never tolerated deception between the two of us. After everything, despite the years and lifetimes that have elapsed since, that would be disrespectful.
Once, I was told, you did not do the mountains. Oh, did that hurt my feelings. Much like how I was told you reacted when I first moved away and spoke of my time in the city like a nightmare best to be forgotten. I'm sorry, and I wonder if you are. Perhaps, so much later, it doesn't matter anymore.
How I'd love to see you once more, mon ami. Of course, the pulling it off is the demonology in the details. Getting me within the borders of the greater metroplex is most often a blood obligation, which involves many libations and free food. Trying to convince you to try the mountains may be a Herculean feet I shouldn't contemplate because I'd be forcing that upon you, just like going into a juke joint these days would be forcing me.
I joke to myself we could do Mexican and margaritas in the shadow of Red Rocks. You could lie, and say you went to the mountains. I could lie, and say I did not leave them. It would all be true; even and especially the lies, right?
But then there's that matter of deception. That demonology in the details. Out of all of us, I seemed to know quite a bit about demons. Yet, there're some infernals gumming up the works. A riddle I intend to solve.
It's not like we could do the badlands of eastern Colorado for a meet. Fuck, I moved to the metroplex to leave that place. There has to be another way.
Until then, dragon lady, I have the dreams, whereupon you shape-shift the light fantastic of the memory snapshots along the walls of my skull. Despite it all, I cherish those dreams, because I get to see such a dear friend once more. Though, I confess, I wish for a dream that I was not uncomfortable and you were not upset about it. I wish to see you again within the realms of the flesh.
Someday, mon ami, I'll figure it out. You can bet on it...
18 November 2012
Letter to a Phantasm
"And I miss you
like the deserts miss the rain..."-Everything but the Girl
The girl on the bench had long, thick flame-red dreadlocks. I could hear her laugh as she spoke into her phone. I had to double-take, then a triple. I knew the truth even as I scanned her features and listened closer to her voice, her laugh; it wasn't you, just a cruel trick of the light, memory, and a fool's hope.
I fucking swear, mon ami, your phantasm haunts me more than that one x of mine, visions of my mother, my grandmother, or even Jibril. Part of me considers disliking you-strongly-for it. But can I really blame you? You've been dead and gone two years now, and I cannot imagine you wanting to unintentionally torment me with your ghost at every other turn.
It's not like I've not dealt with death before. I grew up on a farm. I began to understand the First Nobel Truth, the realization of suffering, of death, by the time I was six. I danced with the dead for money once, hearing some horror stories of the reality of disease process-some of the drinking nights I had from those tales border upon mythic.
Jibril had four kidneys in his body, and not one of them worked, despite my efforts to help him get a new one transplanted. My grandmother tried an aces over eights bluff against mythical death gods with an experimental surgery instead of accepting the sentence delivered by the aneurysm slowly chocking her eighty-one year old heart. My mother was devoured by a rarer strain of cervical cancer by no other reason than bad things happen to good people, even if good and bad are constructs invented to make sense of the roll of the bones chaos.
All three of those deaths rattled me profoundly. You know that. Be that as it may, when it comes down to brass tacks and bedposts, I can say I saw them coming.
But, you, dearheart, were Hell and gravedust, and cobwebs, and razorblades, and maggots. You were the surprise. Right the fuck out of nowhere, wrong place, wrong time, surprise! you're dead! You know how much I loath surprises.
I suppose if you'd survived the experience, you'd probably had been far more upset about it and I'm just being selfish. After all, I only lost a friend. You lost your unborn son in the deal too.
The First Noble Truth is the realization of suffering...
It's taken me years to reconcile my heretical faith, it seems. That had started with my mother's death, the year before. We were just starting into corresponded discussions of our theological evolutions shortly before your rollover. Even though the first Noble Truth of Buddhism speaks to the chaos inherent in the universe, I confess, I was getting a little nihilistic right after we all put you in the ground. It took some time for Humpty-Dumpty to pull himself back together again.
I remember that tarot card oracle you cast for me, four months after my grandmother died, when you said I would find enlightenment. You once referred to me as your mountain bodhisattva. Both statements I found a bit ballsy, and giving me far more credit than I might want or deserve. Although, amusingly enough, Lee agreed with you about my enlightenment once, by virtue of how and where I choose to live and who I choose to share my life with.
Of course, I've often maintained that the cat who says they're enlightened clearly isn't. The only way I could really accept your mantel of being enlightened is if enlightenment means I don't know every fucking thing and content myself with the mysteries, knowing for every question answered, like weeds, ten more spring up in its place. Every time I think I know, that I've arrived, as the buzzword goes, I find more riddles and set off to solve those, because ignorance leads to suffering, which perpetuates samsara.
I'd say it's because we stand upon the date of your accident, and those five days your family kept your shell alive on machines after the fact that is why you've been within the mathematics of my thoughts as of late, why I saw your phantasm in the shape of a traveling girl in a set of dreads. That would be a lie. You're within the walls of my skull a lot. I think of you as the one friend who didn't think I'd completely lost my mind when I announced I was over and done with the city and moving to the mountains and if anyone got in my way I'd eat their fucking liver. Slowly.
"Ah so. And you find why I disappear into the mists of mountain tops and people who breath the word zen as deeply as they breathe the air," you said.
It endeared me to you. But there were so many tiny things you did to do that. I could get so angry with you I'd want to spit coffin nails-you fucking up and dying on me is a shinning example-and you'd go and do something and I'd remember why you were my friend. Why you've always meant so much to me.
You didn't wear your seatbelt, and I can never forgive you for that. But, you very well know I do not believe in forgiveness. Forgiveness implies that it never happened, when, oh, but it did. That is denial, and not in the context of the great African river.
I believe in acceptance. The understanding a thing happened and cannot be made to unhappen. So it goes.
I accept that you're gone. That we'll never finish those theological discussions we started. That we'll never have that teahouse date we always spoke of. That your son will never address me as Dirty Uncle Bob. That we'll never swap any more stories or I'll never get to skeptically harass you over the tarots. I accept that all I have are the memories and the stories.
And, although it rattles the fuck out of me every time it happens, I accept seeing your memory ghost superimposed upon the flesh overcoats of strangers. Were I to allow myself a moment of superstition, I would theorize it's your way of letting me know you're about, perhaps making sure I'm still reptile zen as ever. Even if that isn't the case, I find myself grateful for it, if, for no other reason, it keeps me from even trying to forget you.
Not that I could, even on a bet...
like the deserts miss the rain..."-Everything but the Girl
The girl on the bench had long, thick flame-red dreadlocks. I could hear her laugh as she spoke into her phone. I had to double-take, then a triple. I knew the truth even as I scanned her features and listened closer to her voice, her laugh; it wasn't you, just a cruel trick of the light, memory, and a fool's hope.
I fucking swear, mon ami, your phantasm haunts me more than that one x of mine, visions of my mother, my grandmother, or even Jibril. Part of me considers disliking you-strongly-for it. But can I really blame you? You've been dead and gone two years now, and I cannot imagine you wanting to unintentionally torment me with your ghost at every other turn.
It's not like I've not dealt with death before. I grew up on a farm. I began to understand the First Nobel Truth, the realization of suffering, of death, by the time I was six. I danced with the dead for money once, hearing some horror stories of the reality of disease process-some of the drinking nights I had from those tales border upon mythic.
Jibril had four kidneys in his body, and not one of them worked, despite my efforts to help him get a new one transplanted. My grandmother tried an aces over eights bluff against mythical death gods with an experimental surgery instead of accepting the sentence delivered by the aneurysm slowly chocking her eighty-one year old heart. My mother was devoured by a rarer strain of cervical cancer by no other reason than bad things happen to good people, even if good and bad are constructs invented to make sense of the roll of the bones chaos.
All three of those deaths rattled me profoundly. You know that. Be that as it may, when it comes down to brass tacks and bedposts, I can say I saw them coming.
But, you, dearheart, were Hell and gravedust, and cobwebs, and razorblades, and maggots. You were the surprise. Right the fuck out of nowhere, wrong place, wrong time, surprise! you're dead! You know how much I loath surprises.
I suppose if you'd survived the experience, you'd probably had been far more upset about it and I'm just being selfish. After all, I only lost a friend. You lost your unborn son in the deal too.
The First Noble Truth is the realization of suffering...
It's taken me years to reconcile my heretical faith, it seems. That had started with my mother's death, the year before. We were just starting into corresponded discussions of our theological evolutions shortly before your rollover. Even though the first Noble Truth of Buddhism speaks to the chaos inherent in the universe, I confess, I was getting a little nihilistic right after we all put you in the ground. It took some time for Humpty-Dumpty to pull himself back together again.
I remember that tarot card oracle you cast for me, four months after my grandmother died, when you said I would find enlightenment. You once referred to me as your mountain bodhisattva. Both statements I found a bit ballsy, and giving me far more credit than I might want or deserve. Although, amusingly enough, Lee agreed with you about my enlightenment once, by virtue of how and where I choose to live and who I choose to share my life with.
Of course, I've often maintained that the cat who says they're enlightened clearly isn't. The only way I could really accept your mantel of being enlightened is if enlightenment means I don't know every fucking thing and content myself with the mysteries, knowing for every question answered, like weeds, ten more spring up in its place. Every time I think I know, that I've arrived, as the buzzword goes, I find more riddles and set off to solve those, because ignorance leads to suffering, which perpetuates samsara.
I'd say it's because we stand upon the date of your accident, and those five days your family kept your shell alive on machines after the fact that is why you've been within the mathematics of my thoughts as of late, why I saw your phantasm in the shape of a traveling girl in a set of dreads. That would be a lie. You're within the walls of my skull a lot. I think of you as the one friend who didn't think I'd completely lost my mind when I announced I was over and done with the city and moving to the mountains and if anyone got in my way I'd eat their fucking liver. Slowly.
"Ah so. And you find why I disappear into the mists of mountain tops and people who breath the word zen as deeply as they breathe the air," you said.
It endeared me to you. But there were so many tiny things you did to do that. I could get so angry with you I'd want to spit coffin nails-you fucking up and dying on me is a shinning example-and you'd go and do something and I'd remember why you were my friend. Why you've always meant so much to me.
You didn't wear your seatbelt, and I can never forgive you for that. But, you very well know I do not believe in forgiveness. Forgiveness implies that it never happened, when, oh, but it did. That is denial, and not in the context of the great African river.
I believe in acceptance. The understanding a thing happened and cannot be made to unhappen. So it goes.
I accept that you're gone. That we'll never finish those theological discussions we started. That we'll never have that teahouse date we always spoke of. That your son will never address me as Dirty Uncle Bob. That we'll never swap any more stories or I'll never get to skeptically harass you over the tarots. I accept that all I have are the memories and the stories.
And, although it rattles the fuck out of me every time it happens, I accept seeing your memory ghost superimposed upon the flesh overcoats of strangers. Were I to allow myself a moment of superstition, I would theorize it's your way of letting me know you're about, perhaps making sure I'm still reptile zen as ever. Even if that isn't the case, I find myself grateful for it, if, for no other reason, it keeps me from even trying to forget you.
Not that I could, even on a bet...
17 November 2012
Growed Up
"It's my jam!" You proclaim when I put this on...
Would you like to explain to me how this happened? Well, okay, there was the obvious; once upon a time, your mother and I were young and in love and when two people love each other very much they might do what the hip kids on the street call knocking boots. That's not what I mean.
You're eighteen now. Muthafuckingeighteen! An adult in the eyes of the law and the growth rate of the species. What?
Did I miss a meeting?
It took me a couple years to start seeing you past being ten. You were kind of stuck in the temporal loop of being fifteen in my mind's eye, despite the fact you've been driving to visit me for a bit. So, you must understand, this comes as a bit of a shock.
Of course, you know full how well how time is a dubious proposition for me, even though, paradoxically, I possess an innate sense of punctuality. Fuck, sempi is convinced I stopped aging at fifteen, not forty like I decided. Queer. Although, biologically, at fifteen I could've sired offspring, even if when around girls at that age I only wanted to drink lemonade and read the bible. Maybe play some Parcheesi or rummy.
And you better not be snickering to that statement, young lady. Just because you're all growed up now doesn't mean you're not still my little girl. I can still ground you or give you a beating or something, I just can no longer sell you off for a dowry. Not that I'd do that, the whole dating thing you've been doing for a bit is another subject I have a hard time approaching.
Despite my liner shell shock at the state of the chronological union, I am proud of you. I know you've got some big dreams, and I'm confident you'll pull it off. After all, look at your father when it comes to going after what he wants. It's in your blood. Blessing or curse is a matter of mood, aspect, and the day. As long as you're following your tao and not baring your jugular to anyone, you know I've got your shadow.
Happy birthday, little princess...
04 October 2012
Haunted
I had the nightmare again. You know the one. The sounds of break-in violation, shattering glass, disrespecting home and hearth. Your voice, slurred by alcohol, mania, and tears screams it cannot be over. You'll not allow it. My proclamation of done and over does not apply to you. I can almost hear Queensryche in the background;
"You're through with me?
I'm not through with you!
We've had what others
might call love..."
This time, I'm able to grab your arm before you grab the glass shard. This time, my father is there instead of the constabulary placing me in manacles, demanding to know what the fuck is going on. I tell him and he scowls. He tells you if he ever sees you again he'll shoot you. Twice. Three times would be excessive.
You scream obscenities at me. Saying things about my daughter and the memories of my mother and grandmother. Things meant to hurt. Things spoken from a sewer water tongue when one is not getting their way.
***
My eyes open to darkness. The small hours. I'm soaked in sweat. It takes me a bit to realize I'm years and miles away from that night, which still haunts me so. I look over at the clock and chuckle ruefully that it's closing time at the juke joints. About the same time you'd try phoning repeatedly after the incident, begging for my forgiveness, hoping I'd forget that I've never believed in such a thing. After all, if to forgive is Divine, there'd be no Hell. I never answered those calls, and the voicemails went from pleas of forgiveness to gin and tonic and anti-psychotics laced rants of venomous hate. I curse my memory when those words once more enter the mathematics of my thoughts.
I try to close my eyes and sleep again, I have obligations in a few hours and I could use the rest. It's a futile effort; the image of your feral contorted face and the things you said-both remembered and dreamt-strobe through my skull. I know the truth; I'm not sleeping again.
I had the nightmare again. You know the one. You fucking gave it to me.
"You're through with me?
I'm not through with you!
We've had what others
might call love..."
This time, I'm able to grab your arm before you grab the glass shard. This time, my father is there instead of the constabulary placing me in manacles, demanding to know what the fuck is going on. I tell him and he scowls. He tells you if he ever sees you again he'll shoot you. Twice. Three times would be excessive.
You scream obscenities at me. Saying things about my daughter and the memories of my mother and grandmother. Things meant to hurt. Things spoken from a sewer water tongue when one is not getting their way.
***
My eyes open to darkness. The small hours. I'm soaked in sweat. It takes me a bit to realize I'm years and miles away from that night, which still haunts me so. I look over at the clock and chuckle ruefully that it's closing time at the juke joints. About the same time you'd try phoning repeatedly after the incident, begging for my forgiveness, hoping I'd forget that I've never believed in such a thing. After all, if to forgive is Divine, there'd be no Hell. I never answered those calls, and the voicemails went from pleas of forgiveness to gin and tonic and anti-psychotics laced rants of venomous hate. I curse my memory when those words once more enter the mathematics of my thoughts.
I try to close my eyes and sleep again, I have obligations in a few hours and I could use the rest. It's a futile effort; the image of your feral contorted face and the things you said-both remembered and dreamt-strobe through my skull. I know the truth; I'm not sleeping again.
I had the nightmare again. You know the one. You fucking gave it to me.
26 August 2012
Baobab Bones
It'd been two years since I'd come here, just above the ruins of Waldorf. Since I gave your requiem. That tree, the one we would picnic under years and lifetimes ago, the one you requested your immolated bones be left at, the one that reminds me of an African baobab, was no longer. Dead. A skeleton of wood reaching into the alpine sky. The magistrate had warned me of this, but the full implication didn't hit me between the eyes until I was standing right there.
It was vaguely disturbing, but I have learned and re-learned how nothing remains static. Trees might live longer than us, but, they too pass on. Even the stars die eventually. Forever is a myth at best, and a cruel joke at worst.
We strung a set of prayer flags through those gnarled old branches. Left a nod to your favorite beer. I bowed respectively to what could be considered your gravestone. Whistler, one of your champion show dogs, one of my monkey's paws inheritance from you, stood passively at my side, offering unspoken comfort. I whispered a hello to your memory, and that day we left you there.
Getting to the Baobab bones was something of a dysfunctional early birthday present to me. It is weeks still before what would've been your birthday, and months to go from what was your death-day. So it goes. Even though I can see the far ridge of the mountain where we left you, I was bitter sweetly gladdened that I got to stand in the shade of that tree once more.
But I'd give anything to see you once more; healthy, happy, and breathing. Being there reminds me how terribly I miss you. That dead tree, Whistler, Chevy, and my memories are all I have of you now, and I have to work on accepting that, even if I do not like it a bit.
It was vaguely disturbing, but I have learned and re-learned how nothing remains static. Trees might live longer than us, but, they too pass on. Even the stars die eventually. Forever is a myth at best, and a cruel joke at worst.
We strung a set of prayer flags through those gnarled old branches. Left a nod to your favorite beer. I bowed respectively to what could be considered your gravestone. Whistler, one of your champion show dogs, one of my monkey's paws inheritance from you, stood passively at my side, offering unspoken comfort. I whispered a hello to your memory, and that day we left you there.
Getting to the Baobab bones was something of a dysfunctional early birthday present to me. It is weeks still before what would've been your birthday, and months to go from what was your death-day. So it goes. Even though I can see the far ridge of the mountain where we left you, I was bitter sweetly gladdened that I got to stand in the shade of that tree once more.
But I'd give anything to see you once more; healthy, happy, and breathing. Being there reminds me how terribly I miss you. That dead tree, Whistler, Chevy, and my memories are all I have of you now, and I have to work on accepting that, even if I do not like it a bit.
23 August 2012
Broken Rosary
I had just reached the edge of the tent village when the mala you gave me finally broke. You know the one; that Buddhist rosary you hoped I'd wear if and when I'd go on pilgrimage to India with you. I felt a small twinge of sadness watching the beads scatter across the sand. After all, you gave it to me.
"Nothing lasts forever," I whispered to myself. "Mei fei tsu."
At the offering place, in the shadow of the Great Stupa, I fished those beads from my pocket. I found it remarkably easy to set them down, placing them atop a skull a previous pilgrim had left. I recited the mantra silently to myself, turning my attention to the Stupa itself.
It was a good day for my yearly bit of getting holy in the Buddhist context. It was a good day to be amongst friends and loved ones. It was a good day to let go.
Depending upon mood and superstition dictates how the breaking of that rosary can be interrupted; my fetters to you being broken, or perhaps that if we ever see one another again, we can start afresh. Maybe it's just that after so many years the string became fatigued and finally gave way, scattering beads across the sand. I do not pretend to know. Perhaps it doesn't matter anymore.
So it goes...
"Nothing lasts forever," I whispered to myself. "Mei fei tsu."
At the offering place, in the shadow of the Great Stupa, I fished those beads from my pocket. I found it remarkably easy to set them down, placing them atop a skull a previous pilgrim had left. I recited the mantra silently to myself, turning my attention to the Stupa itself.
It was a good day for my yearly bit of getting holy in the Buddhist context. It was a good day to be amongst friends and loved ones. It was a good day to let go.
Depending upon mood and superstition dictates how the breaking of that rosary can be interrupted; my fetters to you being broken, or perhaps that if we ever see one another again, we can start afresh. Maybe it's just that after so many years the string became fatigued and finally gave way, scattering beads across the sand. I do not pretend to know. Perhaps it doesn't matter anymore.
So it goes...
27 June 2012
An Afternoon of Walking Ghosts
Bruja,
It was a cruel trick of the light that she looked so much like you. My heart leap and sank all within a beat. The brutality I wanted to inflict at her unintentional deception bordered upon sociopathic. The type of stuff that would make witch-hunters, Spanish inquisitors, Jack the Ripper, and Nazi death-doctors cross their legs and blush.
But it wasn't her fault. There are only so many ways a bipedal body can be put together. Similarities are bound to exist. Some hapless half-bald monkey cannot be blamed for bearing a passing resemblance to a dead woman. It would be wrong action to make her the focus of my ire over the fact you're gone.
For half a heartbeat, I was elated. A year and half can feel like forever in context of the dead, and, in may ways, it is. There would've been so much to tell you in playing ketchup. And, of course, the one question I've wanted so dearly for you to answer;
Why didn't you wear your fucking seatbelt?
***
Fucking indian,
I haven't seen or spoken to you in almost twenty-two years, not since back in North Carolina. But there was who-you-would-be-here-and-now from those phantasms of memory; the long black hair, the obligatory Kiss t-shirt, and that swagger, which some girls would throw themselves at you for and some boys wanted kill you for. I could even see the anger in the eyes; equal parts that abusive childhood of yours and growing up as one of what you called a conquered people.
I don't think about you as much as I used to. The stories I tell don't feature you as often as they once did. Perhaps that is unfortunate. Maybe that's what nearly twenty-two years without a glance or word will eventually do. I'm not sure I care enough to find out the difference.
I always swore if I saw you again I'd punch you, though I struggle to remember exactly why anymore. The motivation for malice at seventeen seems trivial at the precipice of forty. The effigy I saw swaggering across my field of vision would not have appreciated my fist in his throat.
Besides, punching anything hurts! I could never understand how you did it without the slightest wince, but you were always cooler than I. Or at least that's what I believed all those years ago.
What I saw took me back to those last days in North Carolina. Me and you were born in the same state, and, after three and half years of misery, my father saw fit to move us back. Part of me wonders if you resented me for my escape from that stifling wasteland of white supremacists and kudzu. There are a lot of things I wonder about you when you arrive within the mathematics of my thoughts. But after nearly twenty-two years, neither those questions, or the answers you'd perhaps give, really matter.
It was a cruel trick of the light that she looked so much like you. My heart leap and sank all within a beat. The brutality I wanted to inflict at her unintentional deception bordered upon sociopathic. The type of stuff that would make witch-hunters, Spanish inquisitors, Jack the Ripper, and Nazi death-doctors cross their legs and blush.
But it wasn't her fault. There are only so many ways a bipedal body can be put together. Similarities are bound to exist. Some hapless half-bald monkey cannot be blamed for bearing a passing resemblance to a dead woman. It would be wrong action to make her the focus of my ire over the fact you're gone.
For half a heartbeat, I was elated. A year and half can feel like forever in context of the dead, and, in may ways, it is. There would've been so much to tell you in playing ketchup. And, of course, the one question I've wanted so dearly for you to answer;
Why didn't you wear your fucking seatbelt?
***
Fucking indian,
I haven't seen or spoken to you in almost twenty-two years, not since back in North Carolina. But there was who-you-would-be-here-and-now from those phantasms of memory; the long black hair, the obligatory Kiss t-shirt, and that swagger, which some girls would throw themselves at you for and some boys wanted kill you for. I could even see the anger in the eyes; equal parts that abusive childhood of yours and growing up as one of what you called a conquered people.
I don't think about you as much as I used to. The stories I tell don't feature you as often as they once did. Perhaps that is unfortunate. Maybe that's what nearly twenty-two years without a glance or word will eventually do. I'm not sure I care enough to find out the difference.
I always swore if I saw you again I'd punch you, though I struggle to remember exactly why anymore. The motivation for malice at seventeen seems trivial at the precipice of forty. The effigy I saw swaggering across my field of vision would not have appreciated my fist in his throat.
Besides, punching anything hurts! I could never understand how you did it without the slightest wince, but you were always cooler than I. Or at least that's what I believed all those years ago.
What I saw took me back to those last days in North Carolina. Me and you were born in the same state, and, after three and half years of misery, my father saw fit to move us back. Part of me wonders if you resented me for my escape from that stifling wasteland of white supremacists and kudzu. There are a lot of things I wonder about you when you arrive within the mathematics of my thoughts. But after nearly twenty-two years, neither those questions, or the answers you'd perhaps give, really matter.
27 May 2012
Mekong
The last time I saw you, we were burying a mutual friend by virtue of metaphor. You had apparently walked out of a closing shoppe with a borrowed jacket so hopped up on pain pills from a previous night's motorcycle accident that you didn't notice until later. I was torn between being elated to see you and disappointed in your theft, no matter how unintentional.
You were the one who feared for my sanity, what with my anti-social tendencies. You tried to change me outwardly time and again. I fought back. A thousand tiny victories. A thousand tiny defeats. There were things I did just to shut you up. I wear marks of your passing upon my flesh, making no effort to hide them.
As time drifts by, I question whether our orbits will transect ever again. I'd like to think we've both made our efforts. It is said the road goes both ways.
The band played one of those songs that gets me to think of you. You know the one; you'd see to it we had tequila at the time. Hearing it, the memories come back. I wonder how you are. If you're even still alive. I miss you. When the band played the song, I held up my bottle and smiled ever so bittersweetly, thinking of you.
"And if your bottle's empty
then help yourself to mine,
Thank you for your time
and here's to life..."
You were the one who feared for my sanity, what with my anti-social tendencies. You tried to change me outwardly time and again. I fought back. A thousand tiny victories. A thousand tiny defeats. There were things I did just to shut you up. I wear marks of your passing upon my flesh, making no effort to hide them.
As time drifts by, I question whether our orbits will transect ever again. I'd like to think we've both made our efforts. It is said the road goes both ways.
The band played one of those songs that gets me to think of you. You know the one; you'd see to it we had tequila at the time. Hearing it, the memories come back. I wonder how you are. If you're even still alive. I miss you. When the band played the song, I held up my bottle and smiled ever so bittersweetly, thinking of you.
"And if your bottle's empty
then help yourself to mine,
Thank you for your time
and here's to life..."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)