The man sat in the dark and thought of the pictures on the wall and the eyes that looked out from their frozen images of faces and whatnot in the chemicals that held them in such places from their making until they left in some manner or other, moved to another wall, moved to another house, passed among the things that leave when he would leave on that unknown date and then. The eyes that could bore through their selved-images into the eyes of the man who sat in the chair with heavy lids and pondered those things as night wound into itself and him and the sounds of day’s passing had become the creaking and yawning of the presence of its neighbor and twin, the one who exists on the other side of the thoughts of himself. Picture frames glowing or reflecting the light that sneaks in through the windows from the posted light in the yard, that one thing that illuminates the darkened corners where what was present in the day has crawled into itself and themselves and exist only in shadow form or memory, but not sight, as they are hidden in the black and gray of their shadowed selves. Those eyes accuse and remember in their fixed gazes and the man stares at the blank middles of the frames at what he knows is there but cannot see for the passed and past day and the dark inside the four edges covers but doesn’t hide the faces he knows. Night doesn’t cover his heart and his wandering soul and it doesn’t relieve the ghosts that walk in his mind and in the fibers of the carpet and lay like a film inside the paint and wooded textures of stair railings and benches, those things that capture sounds and emotions as they are fleeing in their shouted births and deaths of echoes and remain. Hollowed eyes and grins and thoughts and cheekbones and lips that lie in a stuck rictus, like painted and dead clowns and he doesn’t know who is inside, who is behind those portals of life and then, and he turns away and closes his eyes and hears the ringing in his ears as the cat talks not walks down the hall and a hidden beam somewhere in the wall creaks or sighs as the house wonders at the man in the chair in the dark, wonders at his thoughts and sitting there while others sleep and dream and think of nothing in the passing of the stars and moon in their circuits as the heater kicks on and whines through the vents and blows in its blowing and warmth of breath and stops with a shudder and how, as the man’s foot twitches as sleep tries to pull him deeper into the chair as his heart beats and beats and his eyes open at the cat’s passing and scratching on and of the one corner of the rug that has its frayed spot and spot as the eyes on the walls sleep in their openness and hide their thoughts in front of him as he looks away and remembers a younger self that fled a smile in furrowed brows and pursed lips of anger and rot, his eyes scorned and shaken and cast away and aside and down and away from any who would look. He remembered the thick hand that smacked his mouth when his eyes were closed and thought the Divine was blind as the prayer was stuck in the swirl of ceiling paint as the black eyes bored into the smaller one’s eyes as his mouth throbbed and his heart ached and his mom sat at arm’s length away as her man’s hand smacked her child’s mouth and she kept her eyes closed as the sound echoed in her ears and she squeezed her eyes closed as she smelled the dinner cooling on the table in front of them and wondered how the paint could keep the prayer inside the ceiling as it rolled about and thinned against the summer air and finally withered and faded and was gone in the tears that rolled down his cheeks as hate breathes by itself in blank picture frames and white rocks cast along the way, tripping the travelers who dare not watch where they are walking, who are blind to the path and stumble in the dark footsteps that lumber ahead of them.
What takes you there?
The old man sat in his chair, waiting for his grandson and the boy’s new wife to show up. They were supposed to be coming down so he and his wife, the boy’s grandmother, could meet the new relation. They said they’d be here around ten or so, but it was pressing eleven and the old man’s patience was wearing thin. He’d been to the doctor again yesterday and was made to sit for hours and there was nothing he could do about it. The doctor had been called out shortly before the old man got there and he had to wait till the doctor returned because he, and only he, could give the older man his test results. At any rate, the young upstart doctor, when he finally got to the office and had taken care of the two patients ahead of the old man, had told him that all the tests were looking good, but that he still had to take it easy and to make sure that he came back for the follow up tests in three months. So, the old guy was still tired of waiting from yesterday, and now he had to wait for the kid and his new wife to get there today. At least he was home, he told himself, and not waiting in a small, plastic waiting room with a bunch of old people who could do nothing but talk about the weather and the treatments they were receiving. The old man reached up and removed his U of A baseball cap to scratch his head. The cap was an odd adornment that he’d taken to wearing since they’d put him on chemo and his hair started falling out. The only times he’d worn a ball cap in the past was when he was in the service, and that was only so he’d be in uniform. When the decision came to buy a cap for everyday use, he didn’t know which one to choose because he didn’t give a damn about anything, and knowing this about himself, he didn’t want to appear as such, so he chose a cap that showed he supported the local university, the alma mater of people who were a bit more initiated than himself, the innovative ones, or the ones whose parents were footing the bill for their advance. “What the hell,” he thought; it was a sharp looking hat, clean and crisp white with the red and blue logo. It almost even looked patriotic. He pulled the hat off his thinning pate and rubbed his scalp with the old, chubby fingers whose nails were thick and hard and yellow with many years of cigarette smoke. Their jaundiced hue matched the yellow stripe under his nostrils where he still sported a thick white moustache. For some reason, the chemo had only affected the hair on top of his head and his beard and moustache were untouched. Go figure. He had been sitting in his recliner for going on an hour and a half and the reflected heat from his body into and back out of the Styrofoam cushion was beginning to make his scalp sweat. His fingers were glistening as he removed them from his hair and looked at them, noticing the little scab that had come loose from his scratching and was caught under his index finger’s nail. Unconsciously he wiped his hand and fingertips against the slate blue, crushed-velvet upholstery, and after that, against his crisp, dark denim pants when he discerned that the velvet didn’t absorb the sweat from his fingertips. He looked into the kitchen where his wife was sitting at the little desk making calls to citizens from her list, checking to see if they had anything to donate to the Lighthouse Foundation. The local charity sponsored an elementary school of the same name that was exclusively for developmentally disabled kids and ran a couple thrift stores that were located in strip-malls in the poorer sections of town. He didn’t mind her being on the phone for several hours a day. “It keeps her off my ass,” he thought. Since he retired and she stopped taking her anxiety medicine, she’d been riding him to do something more constructive with his time. Putt-ing around in the garage and spending ten and fifteen minutes walking around the yard trying to kick the weeds loose from the rocks while he picked up the dog turds just wasn’t cutting it for her. He would go outside and smoke on the patio while reading a book, but that would get tiresome quickly as the days were still warm and the humidity still up a bit too high. He didn’t need to go get his hair cut since he’d started the chemo and he couldn’t go to the commissary at the base nearby as he’d just gone last Friday. And besides, the kids are on the way down. “Maybe they won’t stay too long,” he thought, “I’m ready for a nap.”
While driving to work the other day, I thought about having skeletons in our closets, those sins from the past, forgiven or not, and thought about the things and experiences that inform us and our lives, the baggage that we carry, the wounds and scars that have created us as we are. I thought about these things, somehow, in the context of the book by Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried, a collection of war-stories from his time in Vietnam that told of the things the soldiers carried in their bags and in their hearts, the things they saw that they couldn’t forget or get out of their minds and ended-up causing them to be different people, or people who thought about things in a different way. Again, I wondered at the things that we carry…our constituted parts and pieces…the luggage of our lives. Our childhoods inform our present, the way we deal with things and people. Relationships with those in our past cause us to be careful or heedless with the people in our present. Former bosses, friends, lovers, co-workers, children, even books or articles that we read or hear about can impact our lives or the way we conduct ourselves…from novels to scriptures and myths and horror stories. They become part of our load, part of our burden and the expectations that we have of ourselves and others. Those skeletons in the closet cause us to suspect or doubt others and their intentions. We wonder at what they have in their own secreted places that touch their thoughts, words, actions, etc, as they deal with us and others in their or our realms of life and the everyday. Our successes and failures also color our thought processes and behavior. And the guilt of our sins, likewise, molds our words and their expression, shapes them into the things that they’re going to be, or used to be, or are. So too, does the forgiveness and love from the offended and others. It heals our broken spirit and helps us do better, to think differently, and to behave in other ways. The love and kindness from expected and unexpected sources can and do open our hearts and minds, allowing us to accept ourselves, to love ourselves and others when we would be inclined to do otherwise because of the guilt and other things we carried and carry. The forgiven sins and assuaged guilt are still inside of us and still inform our beings, but hopefully in positive expressions and not as anchors that keep us tied to our past miseries…the forgiveness can be turned as keys opening doors to new things, possibilities, loves, and wonder, providing new opportunities to add other things, good things and then, to our life luggage and the things we carry.
I passed around the block again today after dropping-off the little one at school, after I watched him walk over to where the morning line forms, place his backpack on the ground and then walk-wander out onto the playground obviously looking for someone to approach and greet for the day, offer something some comment or something and then begin his day with companionship or something…and there was nobody nearby so he ran further out into the playground with head and eyes up and still searching for a familiar face that would be welcoming of him and his morning presence…and he couldn’t find one…as he looked around and peered back at me across the way…looking for someone and finding none and looking at me or in my direction again…and there were no kids by me…and he walked about slowly, heading back to the line-up area and probably glad that the bell rang telling everyone to come in from the yard and get in their places on the concrete and line…and was it a relief? I don’t know. He’s alone inside himself and around others sometimes and a lot of times. It resonates with me, somehow. He was alone amidst dozens and more of kids, his peers, classmates, age-mates and then. I don’t know if he was lonely, though. I don’t know if he’ll be lonely for the three hours that he’s there today, as it’s early-release day…that thing that comes once a month and rescues him from the classroom and whatnot of being at school and around and among those that he doesn’t really relate to, somehow….he sees their faces but doesn’t entirely know what their expressions mean…he responds to their anecdotes by telling something of his own that may or may not have anything to do with what they were talking about…I have a helicopter. He’s in his gray-green hooded and furred parka with his Transformer’s backpack and his pocketed blue jeans and green and black Sketchers tennies that used to light-up when he walked or stamped his feet and his gray eyes search the bricks on the side of the school wall and I see his hooded self turn and talk to his teacher who is bending attentively to listen to him as she continues to look around, not like his teacher last year who would fix her eyes on and attend to only him or whomever when she was listening and talking to him or whomever, and I wondered what it meant this morning, did he start the exchange or did she? Is he telling her about “wouldn’t it be cool to find the sail-shaped spine bone thing from the back of a stegosaurus?” or something like that, or is it that today really is early-release so it’s ok that he doesn’t have a lunch today unlike last Thursday when I didn’t pack him one because the calendar from his teacher wrongly identified last Thursday as early-release and she had to call me on my cell as I was watching the time as I wandered through the book store so I could go get him and rescue him from the confines and duty of school when he really wanted to be home on his own computer or talking to his dog or asking for more taquitos and “Can I please watch Tom and Jerry and the Magic Ring because that’s what I always do when I’m eating taquitos.” He turned and looked for me again today as he was making that last round of a corner and into the school…and waved. He does that sometimes…not always…and I never know when he’s going to do it, so I always stay and watch until he’s inside and beyond my sight, or beyond where he can see me, just in case. It would be sad if he turned to wave goodbye and I wasn’t there. What would he think?
I like that hidden one-some who sneaks his face into the mirror and moves just a bit faster than my reflection should. Double-take. Then he moved slower than I. He is there, beyond the glass in recognition, just making that barely noticeable twitch, itch, move; awake and know. There. The frightened one stood imperceptible upon the edge.
Yellow flowers sway on the stems of bushes whose names I do not know in gardens of other flowers and shrubs of Rosemary and Mexican Fan-Palms and large chunks of purple, volcanic stone. The cement is gray like the January sky and the blue of the water is calm with no breeze ripples. The handle on the black and iron gate clinks with its signature sound as the rod slides back in the guide; the gate swings open and my oldest walks in. He stood without for several minutes calling my name, or Mommy’s name…. “Let me in!”
Peach, white, and yellow paint chips were sealed in the garage floor and the smell of gear oil and fiberglass and tools hung in the air. The large, black wheel with its pedals still…I don’t know what color the ‘Big-Wheel’ was. The not tiny, but small form of my second son lay floating in the corner of the pool - beautiful, blue water, not moving. I was wearing my brown corduroy overalls and I consciously ran to the other side of the pool instead of jumping into its February chill. Did I grab his arm or his body? I don’t know. I clutched him to my body and yelled “Oh my God! Oh Shit!” I saw the gray sky and the garage in the rear of the neighbor’s yard. “Oh my god!” This can’t be happening…what would I do with only two sons? I pounded on his back then lay him on the gray, cement patio…blew into his mouth…turned him over again…why isn’t he holding his head still? His forehead banged on the cement as I turned him over.
His mom was hysterical…long, blonde hair, panic-stricken face, gray eyes, red face, screaming, hitting herself…starting her period as her soul clenched down upon itself inside…and the blank, gray eyes, wide open…I wondered what they saw. I wonder what they saw. What was his almost two-year-old mind thinking? What rush of terror-induced hormones were crashing through his body as he sank below the air into the beautiful, blue water? As he was floating when I found him, how much air was in his lungs? The water being so cold would have caused him to gasp-in the air as he fell into it. Maybe that’s what saved him. And how many minutes had passed?
And where was God? This is when I first began to doubt. All I wanted was to be closer to Him…and He ran away. He became less. Bad happens to the good and the bad alike. Then why pray…why pray if He isn’t going to listen anyway…?
It was a rich gray and thick that lay upon our morning with no sun in the east and slow and thoughtful drops that fell on the roof and slid in force and collusion and collision with each and every other drop as they ticked and ting-ed and splattered in a wet symphony into the puddles of their forbears and cousins and then. Rain for two days then none and again today and the ground and sand and dirt and clay are loose and saturated and floating in and among their separate selves and the plants are singing hosannas and praises as the dormant seeds are waking and cracking and spreading their softened shells and driving their single primary roots into the soaked and soggy substance of their surround.
Living in the desert as we do, and in the plains or valley of it at that, bodies of water and streams and creeks and rivers are usually sights that we must travel to in order to see and behold in marvel. It has rained off and on for most of two days, and then yesterday the sky was clear, with not a single wisp of cloudy vapor lingering anywhere in that vast horizon as I took my little one to school. After running a couple errands, I put some air in the tires of my faithful bike and headed-out for a journey through our neighborhood. I hadn’t planned on riding far, hadn’t planned on going where I did, but I ended-up on the bike and walking path that goes along either side of a natural waterway that someone years ago named ‘Skunk Creek.’ For probably ten months of the year, there is little to no water in this stream or creek bed. Only during the summer monsoons or winter storms and occasional gully-washer rains is there enough water to flow in any presentation as a stream or creek or river…as it did yesterday and continues to do today.
After riding the mile circuit through our neighborhood, I made another round of an adjacent neighborhood, then pedaled up and into the infamous ‘Dog-Town’ region of yet another nearby neighborhood, one that was named by a group of Hispanic hoodlums and gangster wannabes of yesterday’s lore, and found that it was very similar to neighborhoods populated by the same socioeconomic caste that we/you can find in the southern and western reaches of our larger city and metropole with the same sainted yard figurines and shrines, half-done or more ornamental iron fence-work, stucco and plywood patchwork on the houses, some with bougainvillea and rose-bush elegance amid the potted plants and cacti, and others with cars in the dirt or scantily-grassed yards, or with beautifully decked-out trucks that I could afford if I didn’t live in the house that I do, and Pitt-bull puppies and bitches with teats flopping as they ran down the chain-link barking and threatening my two-wheeled presence. I exited Dog-Town on Roosevelt Street and headed north on 83rd Avenue…three miles and beyond to the north side of the creek and alongside the backside of the sports complex and apartments and Arizona Broadway Theatre on the south side of Paradise Lane and around and back down the other side of the floodway on the sidewalk that skirts beautiful tile-roofed homes, an older stretch of farm plots with their own wet and wonderful smells of turned dirt and manure and workers covering or uncovering orderly rows of tender shoots of green and life and further along to the orchards of orange and grapefruit and tangelos and limes or other citrus with shorn grass between the rows and baby Mexican fan palms struggling and winning against nature and the landscapers where its germinal beginning was dropped in a dropping from a passing bird or carried on a summer storm gust from nearby or wherever relative trees.
The cycle path had been upgraded from rocks and dirt at this point and was now a two-laned and striped thoroughfare from one side to the next, going beneath the overpass that spanned the waterway preserve of rocks and plants and life in miniature and climbing an upward grade to the city park and complex and another footbridge span that crossed the creek yet again and took me south to places I had never been. I’ve passed them times innumerable on the western freeway that travels nearby and have looked into and onto their expanse of bush and brush and things covered and undone in the rains and winds of our seasons, but never have I ridden so closely or walked among the grains of sand and leaves and washings of the mighty rains and streams as I did today. The fresh water scent and heavy air and wet vegetation of weeds and wildflowers and scattered pieces of tree and grass and crumbled and crumbling masses of horse droppings from the pathway and pieces of Cholla cacti that were brought here by some other force for there were none growing here or nearby…and out in the middle of the watered wash where the water had passed and lessened into another stream was a little baby palm tree struggling against the other stuff that wasn’t of his kith and kin…and laying nearby and amid the tumbled rocks and bushes and scrub were a handful of perfect and bright oranges, one here one there and some in the beyond of that purview…oranges glowing in their orange-ness and wonder in the waterway passed and past, having come from afar.
I took the sidewalk pathway to the middle of the plain and stood at water’s edge as it streamed and rumbled and washed into itself from rivulets and splashing and had a mini-roar to itself as it moved along its way…the sidewalk was there somewhere underneath the brown and frothy churning and I thought for a hazardous moment of running across and through that mess of water and wonder and had flashes from my childhood where I tried to cross a neighborhood stream on my bicycle with my brand-new shoes and got bogged-down in the middle of that oh-so-clear stream in the mud and whatever as I tried to balance myself with feet on the unmoving pedals and suck of mud as I fought against gravity and what I knew would be an ass-beating when I got home with one muddied brand-new shoe…so I said in my child’s mind the child’s equivalent of ‘fuck-it-I’m-getting-my-ass-beat-anyway’ and put both feet down and walked my bike through the mud and crystal water and stood there sweating with heart pounding at what I knew was coming with monster-fucking-butterflies in my stomach…and those memories are so far away and so near as the raindrops fall and stream off of my roof and the neighbor’s as I look out my living room window, right now, with the piano music on the stereo and the never-satisfied cat on the counter behind me…literally saying ‘meow,’ as cats do….
And I stood there yesterday and knelt-down to smell the water and touch the mud and look at the other footprints that stopped earlier where mine were now…hiking boot tread and slip and I turned around and looked into the beyond and spied the path again that pointed south and made my way in following its lead. I rode to where the water completely covered the southward path in its filling and flooding of the river-plain and had no choice but to stop and head back. Before doing so, though, I got off the bike and studied the traveling water and marveled at its passing and roiling and moving into and over and under and beyond whatever was in its way as it went…wondering at the mini-habitat and consuming essence of ‘nature’ is it was here presented. I smelled the earth again and weeds and cleanness as the zoom and noisy fright of the passing cars on that western freeway and those city streets went on their collective and singular ways, making a background of gray noise that fought against the tunes and mystery of the water and I wondered, too, at what life was beginning in the flood, what brine shrimp or other desiccated and dormant somethings were stirring in their watery rebirths and hatchings as ducks rode-by, paddling against their mini currents with occasional heads tucked into the wash sucking and finding something to eat as bugs or other somethings came their way. The sun was bright in my eyes and glanced and danced off the moving and tossing water like millions of diamonds in their sparkling…tiny blasts of light and shine in cascading explosions and reflections and then.
And it was time to go now, as I had places to be and things to do that waited upon and depended upon the ticking of the clock and appointed imaginings of moments and then…and my shaky and tired legs pumped the pedals back along that pathway and passed the greening mesquite and cat-claw and palo-verde trees and creosote bushes and wild baby sunflower-ed plants of something or other as the chilled wind teared my eyes and brushed my cheeks with an ambulance siren behind me and the sparkle of an airplane passing overhead…the water flowed into and beyond itself thick and thin and brown and roiling…moving on its way downstream to other flood-beds and plains, carrying life and the lived with it and then….
Do you ever feel like running away? You take a look at your life and the things that occupy your time and concerns and want to say ‘Fuck-it-I’m-out-a-here?’ After taking that long and hard look at your daily doings, thoughts, worries, checkbook, mortgage, bills, work, etc, have you ever wanted to pack the wife/husband/spouse/partner/mate/whatever and kids and pets and all the rest of your shit in the car and get the hell out of Dodge and never come back?
When I was eight or nine years-old, I ran from the house in a fury and found myself out beyond the housing area on the perimeter road of the airbase where we lived in South Carolina. Maybe it was a fight with one of my sisters or after an ass-beating by my father for some real or imagined infraction, I don’t remember, but I can still feel the churning in my soul as I pounded my black converses into the rutted dirt road as I went as fast and far as I could on my little legs and with whatever child’s stamina I had at the time, just wanting to get the fuck away from where I lived and the people who populated my existence. I had run to the concrete pipe that the playground architects had planted in our backyard common area and thrown myself to the ground, hiding and trying to sneak like G.I. Joe, peeking around the pipe, and then launching myself out onto the road without caring who might have seen me at that point. I was heading away…running away. The road went for probably half a mile or more before it reached a point where it curved and went in a perpendicular direction down another side of the housing area. Where the road existed right behind my house, there was a strip of trees between the road and the perimeter fence that kept the rest of the world out of the base. That strip of trees and growth of brush was about 20 yards wide or more, or not, in my memory, and was constant until reaching that bend or curve in the road where the road turned in that perpendicular direction, wherever it was. The stand or ribbon of trees and brush became forest as the road turned and remained thick woods all along the road running in that other direction. I remember oak trees and bushes and other wonderful things that changed colors in the fall and winter. This is where we found the cottonmouth snake that some of my friends and other unknown kids beat with the sissy-bar from a bike until it was approaching death. I went further down the road and found another place to hide, safely out of sight of whoever might come out from our house and look for me. I guess I was closer to the spot where there was a stream or little body of water where we found the snapping turtle on one of our other excursions into the wilderness…. Anyway, as I was sitting there, I realized that I had nowhere to go really, no means of buying food, no way of securing a place to live, and I understood that I would have to return home. The thought sucked, but even at eight or nine, I knew I had to…and did…and life went on.
A couple months ago, my wife and little one and I made the trek back up to Utah to look at the things that had become familiar to us and them as my wife, little one, and other kids lived there for a year as my wife finished her internship. My wife also had to meet with one of her former colleagues to receive training on one of her testing tools…so we took another trip…another nine or so hours north into the forested and mountainous beyond, that further region that sparks flames of recollection and comfort in my heart and stirs my physical being with a yearning to live again in parts so adorned with that particular brand or sort of nature’s splendor…massive white rocks and boulders and pine trees and oaks and other deciduous trees with their many and changing colors of bright and vibrant reds and purples and yellows and golden fading greens, spread and dappled in and among the coniferous evergreens and icy cold streams of clear and trickling, bubbling, and rumbling waters coming from their mountainous and craggy origins up beyond the thinning air, in and among the wispy and transient gray and white and comforting, threatening clouds that danced in and among themselves to cast eerie shadows and darkening corners into the fore and peripheries of our consuming and piercing eyes, mine and my bride’s and my little one’s as we drove the mountain highways and roads in and among that paradise…in and among…. And those thoughts of running away came again in and among our family gatherings with those adult children who lived there with my wife and little one and their grown siblings who were themselves on the threshold of changing life and lives, and I was absent when the conversation started and was there after solid and tentative and wishful dreaming decisions were made to pack and flee fast and far to that known region where nature’s god kisses and nurtures its inhabitants with a clean respect and calmness and ease of simpler life amid the beauty that consoles an aching heart. We talked and talked and searched our minds and rational places that considered jobs and money and insurance and opportunities and a weak housing market and upside-down mortgages and possibilities and a safer environment and better schools and a stream in the backyard with deer eating from the crab-apple trees and a ten minute drive into the wooded beyond where the quiet is touched by the burbling water and the whisking bicycle riders all strapped and decorated so we can see them and their striped bike-shorts and helmets and a work week was a steady thing and normal and quiet evenings of no rush and rest and all but one of the kids agreed…and there were tear-laden emails of broken hearts and he’s grown so old and independent and remains attached in a distant way and we considered family and what matters and peace and togetherness and looked again in our mind’s eye at that northern sky and thought it wouldn’t be as sweet if one couldn’t come with us…and he wouldn’t for all those reasons so detailed and clear and fuck-it we’re not going and other people’s milestones and deaths and comforts shared in their cases of what if and how, and a peace came at and with that decision and it’s ok now…really…I think.
But the yearning is still there and strong to break away from the daily requirements of life and adulthood and responsibility and making ends meet and thoughts of the future and mine and hers and the little one’s and the other kids whom we love and adore and cannot imagine living without…until they choose to go away and be away and decide some aren’t welcome, so stay away, both you and me, he said…and that long northern highway beckons still and says ‘follow me,’ and it’s not a yellow-bricked road. So peace and paradise is and are sought in words and imaginings and pursuits that entertain and appease and settle and comfort in their sudden and sundry ways, in unexpected presentation in our lives and hidings and places tucked-away…as our minds and souls so desire to run, run, run-away…sometimes…still.
It seems that way, sometimes, like there’s nothing worth saying, and in those times, I usually don’t say anything. I’ve been accused or esteemed as not being involved or wishing I was somewhere else when everyone else around me was talking and chatting up a storm…but sometimes there’s simply nothing that needs to be said, or nothing that needs to be said by me…or anybody else, really. So it’s been a few days since I posted and I’ve felt kind of guilty about that, guilty because it seems that I should be here. I’ve hoped to have something of a regular readership and have hoped that I could maintain some type of stream of worthwhile material…and today it’s kind of dry…not much happening in the old noggin. When I’ve tried to measure my postings against those of my fellow bloggers, the ones that I read regularly, I see that they have several days or a week or more between some of their posts…and some show-up once a month…and they have no comments, nothing shared by their readers…maybe because the readers kept coming back to find nothing there more often than they did find something…and some folks start their blogs with a firestorm of wonderful stuff and then fizzle out and leave us hanging, hungering for what might have been…and there’s nothing there for some reason…and others started out wonderfully and poetically and covered their observations of the minutia of life and the beautiful happenstance or collision of events and thoughts and right-brained or youthful creativeness that was breath-taking and they have become daily rants on their discomfort in life with parents and school and their unhappiness and one even with combinations of words that would make a sailor or miner blush…no offense Noble Sailor…and from a youngster with all of their wonderful and exciting life ahead of them, living in a foreign country with ample opportunities…and my one blog-friend who started posting about a month or so before I did and filled her pages with absolutely wonderful, beautiful, ambiguously personal thoughts and sharings and then one day disappeared and went away…and we/I start to miss them when they’re gone and I check every other day to see if she’s brought it back again…and…anyway…so I didn’t have anything to say for a few days…my last post was about my grandson and what I imagined the thoughts that his dad, my son, had during the rather stressful process…and I’ve read that post so many times over the last few days that anything else almost seems like drivel, insubstantial empty hogwash that isn’t worth the time to type into this journal…so I’ve been dry…uncreative…and wondering.
So I thought about contrasts and perspectives and the things we compare our lives to when we look around at those who inhabit our lives…I wondered about having and not having, the fickleness of fate or the gods who do and don’t do the things we want them to do in our lives…sitting and watching the divisional playoffs for the football season and noting quietly the commercials about donating $10 to the relief efforts in that island nation that was so devastated by the earthquake the other day…let’s give $10, all of us…as we sit in the comfort of our homes and sports bars watching millionaire gladiators or ‘warriors’ run up and down the field catching a ball or slamming themselves and others into each other trying to prevent the other from crossing a certain line…as they show pictures of the homes and neighborhoods that were/are crushed and fallen…and ruined…and I wondered about the woman who called today to complain that her two year-old daughter was pepper-sprayed by our police officers as she carried her while marching in a demonstration against how the local sheriff treats his immigrant prisoners…a demonstration where four people were arrested for assaulting police officers who were trying to physically control the unruly crowd with two police helicopters and dozens and dozens of cops and sheriff’s deputies trying to maintain order…and her baby got pepper-sprayed by a woman cop on a horse…of all the places I would take my two year-old child, I cannot imagine taking him or her to a demonstration march…but then maybe my life isn’t deprived enough where I feel I need to do that…or my family members aren’t in that sheriff’s jail…or something like that…couldn’t she have found someone else to watch her for a few hours? It must have been really important for her to be there, I’m hoping…it must have been really personal, must have really meant something to participate in that protest march…and good for her…good for her and the other thousands of people who were pissed-off enough about something that they spent their Saturday afternoon en masse showing that they were so moved…I’ve never participated in a protest march. What would it take for me to do that? I don’t know.
As I sat in the comfort of my own home and watched the home-team lose a sad contest, I kept track of the commercials that the network showed during the last quarter of the game. Noticing repeated commercials for the same show in the earlier quarters of the game compelled me to keep track toward the end…and the network and sponsors want us to purchase their home, auto, and life insurance, eat their subway sandwiches, drink their various beers, eat their brand of sour-cream, drink their soda because it’s the official soda of the football league so it must be good, use their package delivery company, buy their trucks, use their brand of medicine to fix our erectile-dysfunction so “you can be ready” the same day or every other day or something…which made me think about the beer and condom theft today at work…the guys stole their suds and prophylactics in a stolen car…wonderful…and Burger King tells us that even a grown-man sized baby who was born yesterday knows that their quarter-pound double cheese-burgers are bigger and better than McDonalds’ burgers of the same style…and we were encouraged to watch a show that claims to bring us our nation’s idol…one painful episode and week at a time…and one car company told us that they’ve been environmentally sound and concerned since way back when peace-signs and tie-dyed shirts and long hair were in vogue and another car company told us that the economy sucks so badly that they’ll accept the car back that they just sold us if we lose our jobs…because while the news and politicians tell us the nation is recovering, it isn’t really recovering until every last goddamned one of us is financially recovered…and the dead Michael Jackson’s song about needing someone to trust and “I’ll be there” was used as a marketing ploy by State Farm to tell us that we should trust them and buy their insurance…and the network wants us to laugh tonight with the Wanda Sykes show…and Tuesday night we’re supposed to be in suspense with them as we watch “The Human Target” show which appears to be a rich-guy’s version of the drive-by shootings we encounter in our western and southern city neighborhoods on a near-nightly basis…or we can use a certain broadband 3G or 4G network to talk on the phone and check our email simultaneously or find the capital of Peru while talking to our friend who’s a contestant in a game-show…and we can trust that the particular ‘chubby’ lady really did lose 54 pounds by eating the light menu…the “Drive-thru Diet,” from Taco Bell and so should or can we…and there were 26 commercials in the last quarter of play…and that’s more than enough for me.
Maybe I should have stuck with the first thought…sometimes there’s nothing to say.
How beats my heart, until this night is over?
My child struggles in the portal of his dawn while nature and time fight against him.
I have yet to meet him and my heart aches at what must not be.
As time and pressure bring forth diamonds and gems,
I wait for them to bring my son.
As angels roar and demons quake,
I stand on the edge of time and yell through the heavens and beyond the fiery dust of our beginnings and demand what is mine and hers to be ours and then.
Three times gone and here at last,
a life coveted and desired and hoped for in dreams and waking and plans and.
Our hearts beat in our bedroom chamber when love joined flesh and might.
And now mine beats in my chest and head and hands…
as his echoes between these walls…strong and solid and fading and gone…
and back.
Fast hands and quick and yawning door, her pulse rips live in mine,
From flesh comes flesh and beating blood, I yell and scream;
In tears and raging life comes dawn in pulse and pounding show.
In crushing force and ragged breath
Tiny ribs and lungs and arms and hands
Grasping wildly at light and cold and what.
And now beats my heart, and hers, in his.
