Moon Shot

First attempt at capturing the moon with a decent camera I picked up off of Ebay. Going to have fun once I finish reading the manual.

Slice of Life

Author’s note: This is Chapter Three of my memoir “Two Days at the Office” that I have been working on for the last few months. The death two weeks ago of my beloved grandmother brings to an end a long period of mourning for a series of events that took place in my life between October 1981 and the winter of 1983. I attempt to describe the period 1981 to 1982 in the words that follow.

Shakespeare wrote in Julius Caesar “the evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.” In rattling the catacombs of memory to piece together this image of my foundations it is often the negative that stands out in sharp contrast to the daily events that transpired.
These events colored my view of existence to the point that the daily actions of love and compassion and care given to me disappear beneath a thick layer of negativity. I’ve already hinted at what’s to come in our story and we are about to reach the point of departure between the innocent, if pockmarked with torment, period of my childhood and the angst ridden decade plus of my path to adulthood.
There was happiness in my childhood. There was wonder and discovery. I had ample opportunity to be a simple child, with simple needs and to take in the simple beauty of a middle-class childhood in simple piedmont triad North Carolina. Some of the most peaceful and wonderful moments of my life were nothing more than stopping to take in the simplicity of the pure, clean air on a crisp late fall morning. Or the sharper still air amidst the silence of a winter dawn. Mornings and afternoons spent roaming a neighborhood street and watching the rustle of the leaves high up in the tallest trees as they are stirred by the wind are among my fondest memories.
Warmer still evenings and nights with my Mema Lawson and Roy and perhaps even my extended family at their modest house on Baux Mountain Road are among the most joy filled images in my heart. Board games, card games, walks in the forest, light work in the garden, eating the radishes as fast as Roy cold pick them, visits from the neighbors, steak and potato with an ice cold bottle of Coca Cola – these are the wonders of my child hood.
I did not need batteries and movies and bells and whistles. My grandmother filled my mind with the wonders of history even at a small age, beginning with cowboys and Indians and moving on to toy soldiers and then Civil War magazines and Time Life books of the Old West and the Civil War. Great big picture books on the shelves of nature and American landscapes gave a sense of escape and experience, so much so that I feel I know the great American west without having ever travelled past Knoxville, Tennessee.
That sense of the west and the American spirit was strong in me. I’m not talking about the nauseating red, white and blue post World War II solider worship American spirit. Nay, I refer to the original, independent and unrestrained American spirit that the Europeans tried to take on as they pushed the native Americans across the woodlands of the original northwest, across the Mississippi and the great plains, and finally through the deserts and vistas of the southwest.
By the time I finished Mrs. Brown’s fifth grade I had become passionate about the Old West, about our rustic Appalachian mountains and about the history of our once great nation. That thirst had begun earlier I believe during trips to the school library. Some of the first real books I checked out were about the Secret Service, about the Monitor and the Merrimac, about Jack tales and grandfather tales and great American myths such as Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill and Native American folklore. A class project found a black female from my class and I working together at the city library downtown. We had some assignment related to Native Americans and I believe we were researching Apaches because I remember clearly finding books about their marvelous horsemanship amidst images of them utilizing their skills while fending off the masses of blue coats with repeater rifles. It seemed to me otherworldly at the time, like it happened in some far off place like Greek mythology or Atlantis. I was drawn deeply to the many splendid colors of southwestern Native American culture. So much so that it almost seemed as if I had some connection, some deep rooted and unspoken spiritual kinship to these things I read about.
But I was a simple white child from Winston-Salem. I had an English name and fair skin that burned a rich but pinkish red at the most average exposure to summer sun. And what else was there besides black and white in 1970s North Carolina and I was surely as white as anyone.
##
Events would begin to overtake my childhood in short order beginning in the fall on 1981. I entered Mr. Grub’s sixth grade class that year. We were a close-knit group of kids in the school’s GT program. We read many books, we took many field trips, we put on one play each year and this year we did “A Christmas Carol.” I played Scrooge’s nephew and because I had a minor role I also worked on the script adaptation and some of the sets.
But something big happened in October. My Papa Ransom, my mother’s father, died suddenly of a heart attack. Having just turned 11, and with my brother and sister a mere seven years old, death was very foreign to us. A year earlier my dad had suffered a collapsed lung and was hospitalized. I remember going to the hospital with my aunt Julia to see him and my mother but I don’t recall it being considered a life and death situation. I think it may have been more critical than I knew. So when papa Ransom was hospitalized, I do think that he was there for a day or so and then had a heart attack while undergoing a procedure. In his last few years he had slowed, or so I was told, due to poor circulation. He could not walk very much because his feet went numb and he sat a lot in his chair. I thought at the time that he was much older than he was but he was but 59 when he died.
I’ve done the best I can do to prevent this from being one long lament. True, there is ample sadness in my life and at any given moment I am but an instant from tears, but I really don’t want the reader to get bogged down here. I was only a child. I had a child’s outlook and a child’s understanding. To this time in my life happiness had been bountiful. Now that will change.
Looking back several decades later, and having suffered the grievous and sudden death of my own mother less than two years ago, I perhaps can begin to make sense of the weight of suffering my parents bore beginning with this death of my Papa Ransom. Losing a parent at any time has to be a life altering event. I remember when my Grandmother Sykes died in 2007 and my dad called me on the phone he was in tears and could barely speak. She had lived to the age of 90, an age that by any standard has to be considered a blessing and a long, long life, and still it shook him at his foundation. A friend of mine who lost his father to cancer in the 1980s when his dad was in his 50s told me after my mother’s death that his loss was devastating and made him quite angry, but since he had the long goodbye it was less shocking and not as primal as the sudden loss of a mother.
And so knowing the depths of sorrow and the many ways that sorrow has taken hold of me and gripped with an undeniable firmness so many different aspects of my being, I can only imagine the changes and the pressures that my Papa Ransom’s death put on my mother. In the immediate aftermath I recall the many flowers and the kitchen and dining room filled with food and I remember my mother at some point standing by the sink after they had told us of his death and screaming at us “none of you even care!” I’m not certain the details of this outburst but I assume that she was not satisfied with our response to the news. Up to that point I was not a crier. I can’t remember crying. I can’t recall having a need to cry.
When the teenage boys in the pool bath house tormented me my instinct was to endure, finish my business and move on. When Kevin and Barry pushed me in the hole and pelted my body and my covered head with rocks my instinct was to endure. I instinctively knew I was strong enough to withstand and that if I only protected myself long enough it would be over and I could continue as before. I do remember crying when Mrs. Gillespie paddled me in the third grade. That may have been the only instance of true suffering I had experienced. When I got lost at the Dixie Classic Fair after my uncle took me out of my second grade class to take my cousin and I to the fair I don’t remember crying. I forget what distracted me away from them. We were on one of the main walkways of the fair. We had been there for a while because I remember having taking a couple of the rides. We were so excited. I was distracted by something and turned away, or walked away, and before I knew it I was lost amidst the throngs. Most of that incident is a blur, but I somehow made it to the front entrance and told a clerk or someone that I was lost and before long we were reunited.
It could have been more complicated than that, but I don’t have any recollection. The point being that I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t cry. I instinctively looked for a solution to the problem, found my way to safety and took the steps necessary to be put back where I belonged.
So when my mother stood in the kitchen and screamed at us with tears running down her face “none of you even care!” I was as confused as I had ever been. What was I doing wrong? What was I supposed to say? What was I supposed to feel that I was not experiencing? My brother and sister were sitting near me at the small kitchen table and they both looked as sad as anything I can remember, but there were no words or tears. Perhaps the outburst was aimed at my father, or her mother, or the chasm that existed between her parents since their divorce 16 years earlier, or deeper still perhaps it was a cry to the world, a lament at the indifference of existence and the ice cold realization that life is brief, death is final, and nature could care less.
There would be a lot that took place that year in sixth grade, but none of it revelatory or unique as compared to what I have heretofore covered. Football became a bigger part of my life. There were more televised games and more opportunity to see great players and great teams. I still admired Ellen but the pangs of my first crush had long since subsided and there was really not interest on my part in developing more emotional connections to young girls in my age group. Sports had likely displaced that initial flirtation with emotion and in addition to being an avid fan of televised sports, my parents and grandmother fed the fire with trivia books and sports magazines and I read constantly when I was not in the street or a neighbor’s driveway playing ball with the older boys in my neighborhood.
And thus life marched forward a year. in the spring of 1982 Michael Jordan hit a flawless jump shot to deliver a national championship to my beloved North Carolina Tarheel basketball team, making up for the most part that heartbreak from a year earlier when a young guard named Isaiah Thomas devastated Carolina in the national championship in Philadelphia on the same day that President Reagan had been shot in Washington, D.C. I spent the summer at Polo Park pool as I had each summer since moving to Philpark Drive, went to my grandparents on the weekends and church on Sunday.
Seventh grade came and I tried out for the football team. I had tried to play Pop Warner football a year or so earlier since most of my friends played, but they said I would have to lose 100 pounds or so to meet their weight requirements and to prevent me from hurting some other kid and so I walked away from the application booth at Speas School knowing I would have to wait until middle school, or as we called it then, junior high school.
I made the team, of course, and was a starting left tackle. Practice was hard. I wasn’t used to having to put out so much effort. In fact, the only kid my age in my neighborhood was a kid named Jamie who was a year older than me. We didn’t get along at all for some reason and he loved to insult me and my family. Right after I started not taking the afternoon bus home he told me at the bus stop one morning that his mother busted out laughing at the thought of me doing calestinics. That didn’t help our relationship much, and I think it helped to put an extra zip on the punch I landed to his eye socket a few weeks later when we had our one and only fist fight which ended with him crumpled on the street after I landed a single punch to his face. For years after that when I got off the school bus I could still follow the blood trail he left while running home with a bloody nose yelling “kiss my ass Jeff!” to which I replied “no I kicked your ass.” Yes, boys will be boys and if Kevin and Barry Cole taught me anything it was to be ready to fend off an attack.
And so it was as well at football practice. The only exposure I had to blacks up until that point was having one or two in my elementary class. Of course since I was in the advanced programs, those black children that were in my classroom were as intelligent, creative and well mannered as anyone I knew, if not more so. While this would always give me a positive impression of blacks, comparatively speaking in terms of the lingering racism of the time and the growing bigotry I would experience in college and beyond, it did not serve me well in terms of preparing me for those blacks I would meet on the football team. These boys were tough. And mean.
One of my first experiences was with the guy who would line up across from me in practice and in trying to rush past me would hit me as hard as he could in my stomach. I lined up at left tackle and was by far the biggest player on the team. There was one other white boy close to my size, he may have been six foot, but I was six-four, and one black boy who, while nowhere near six feet tall, was easily twice as wide as me. His name was Tito Lane and his father, so I was told, was Nightrain Lane who had played in the NFL. I feared Tito. He was the only person in the whole school I feared, because he was bigger than me and obviously stronger and tougher than anyone I had ever known. This other kid who lined up across from me at defensive end didn’t scare me. I laughed at him when he would come off the ball and try to rush passed me and wind up to hit me in the stomach with his right arm. After about the second time, I prepared for it, fended off his punch with my left hand and planted his ass in the ground with all my might by getting under him and shoving him right in the chest. He did not like that one bit. I’m not sure if the coaches saw what was going on but he went over and over and he got madder and madder and I got more and more defensive but was still able to take his best shot and plant him on the turf.
I excelled at left tackle and since there was no other kid in all of Forsyth County who could line up at defensive tackle and get passed me, or prevent me from knocking him on his butt, coaches had me start and ran plays behind me often. Lining up beside me at guard was my alpha male friend Steve from fifth and sixth grade. We had a good friendship and so we were able to work well together and run the trap play where I stepped back, Steve came across to his left and I followed behind him to my right to open up gaping holes in opposing defenses. My good friend Tom Muse from third and fourth grade, who comes from a coaching family, was our quarterback. One of my Kevin friends from third grade, Kevin Upson, played fullback, and a boy I had never met and probably never spoke two words to played half-back. His name was Anthony Ingram. Anthony was terribly athletic for a 12 year old boy and could run very fast. Kevin Upson was powerful and fast, with a thick frame and muscles that any 12 year old would envy.
My guess is that all of these boys had played many years of Pop Warner football and knew what they were doing. My role was to knock people out of the way and I could do that with ease. In our first game against Hanes School we won 28-0 and Anthony scored two touchdowns running in my hole. I will never forget the second one. I came off the ball and planted the boy in front of me on his ass. I stepped over him and saw a linebacker coming. He was much smaller than me but very aggressive. I went right for him at full speed and knocked him out of the way without flinching a muscle. By this time Anthony was on my left going up the sideline. There was one other kid coming from across the field toward us from the right. As Anthony passed me I hit that kid in stride and knocked him over and trotted to a halt as Anthony darted the rest of the way to the end zone.
The next week we played Southwest and much the same occurred, with Anthony Ingram blasting through holes our offensive line opened up, galloping long distances for touchdowns because no one could touch him and once he was through the line no one could catch him. We won that game 63-6.
Somewhere around this time is when my family went to the 1982 World’s Fair. Suffice it to say that this was the high-water mark of my youth, but unfortunately things were about to abruptly change. For now though, we came back from Knoxville and Mema Lawson and Roy went on to travel to Salt Lake City to visit her family. One of the lasting memories of the world’s fair was Roy taking me up on the gigantic Ferris wheel next to Neyland Stadium. Tennessee was playing Duke that night and though he could not take me to the game, he said he could take me up on the Ferris wheel and maybe we could see down into the stadium. He was right, as always, and as we ascended into the dark night sky, higher and higher, I could see just the slightest glimpse of the field, brightly lit, with one team in vibrant orange and another in dull blue and white, amidst an endless sea of people. We paused only for a moment at the highest point on the wheel and I felt like I was the king of the world at that point.
Roy would be dead in a month, my family forever changed. I would return to Gatlinburg in January on a youth trip with my church. In the emotional void created by Roy’s death I would chose to act out my grief by shoplifting all over town. I would not be caught. But another kid in our group would get in trouble for asking the pastor’s youngest child to lie to a clerk at the hotel and say the drink machine took his quarters. The pastor’s kid told on Todd. As Todd was busy confessing and crying he would tell on me.
One thing that has always bothered me, even more so than the decision to steal, was wondering why I did not try out for the school basketball team. I loved basketball. I was six-four (did I mention that yet?) and the biggest kid in my grade. I was good at basketball because Tom Muse and I had spent many days on the blacktop at elementary school recess. He would shoot and I would rebound. We played any kids that dared to challenge us. And we beat them. I played basketball with guys five and six years older than me in my neighborhood. There was Courtney Carlton, tall and trim and easily 16 or 17. There was Frank Hurst, the golden boy as my mother called him because of his blond hair, tan skin and natural good looks. He was probably Courtney’s age. And then there as Frank’s younger brother David, probably four years older than me and the kid who would be my best friend until I went away to college. Naturally, to play basketball, you need an even number of players on each team and I made the fourth for this threesome and learned a lot hanging out with them. And not just about basketball.
But it has always nagged at my mind. Why did I not play basketball in seventh grade instead of going on that stupid trip with my church group? The answer has always escaped me, but I only can come back to the fact that Roy had died that October and perhaps somewhere I missed the announcement about tryouts. It was a major mistake on my part and one that I regret to this day. Is it wrong to say that? Perhaps not. Perhaps it is the mistake that trumps all others. Basketball would have entailed more running. Running would have entailed losing weight. Losing weight would have meant I was not the butt of fat boy jokes for the next five years and beyond.
But we came back from Knoxville the week after Labor Day 1982 and I returned to seventh grade. I returned to my classmates and my football practice. Mema and Roy set out in the Yellow Jacket from the motor court in Gatlinburg and I rejoined my family after a blissful weekend with my grandparents. I think they made the decision for me to travel with Mema and Roy, stay in their hotel room, and spend my time at the fair with them so that my parents could focus on my brother and sister. Of course, this was rightly acceptable to me.
Back at Northwest Junior High my time on the football field was all that mattered to me until a couple weeks later when my mother got a frantic call from Salt Lake City. Roy, who had previously had a heart attack, was struck down with a massive one in Salt Lake City. He was in the hospital. Things did not look well.
Roy was trim and active, but heart disease ran rampant in his family. I knew from early on that he had health concerns, primarily because he got up every morning and went for a long walk and when we were at the beach he would go for a run. Even as an 8 or 9 year old kid I tried to run with him on the beach, but I could not keep up and would instead walk slowly behind him until he turned around and came back. I’ve written many poems about how much I loved Roy Lawson of Stokes County and so I don’t feel the need to go too deeply into it here. He was a loving person. I know he loved me. He was 49 years old when he died when I was 12. If he had lived, I think I would have made it through the next few years in better shape to become an adult, but as it was my family was further overwhelmed by sorrow and loss and as I watched my grandmother come off the plane and collapse into the arms of my Aunt Julia after Roy died I knew my life would never be the same.
We could have dealt with it in a much healthier manner if my happiness to that point had not been based on lies and deceit and selfish decisions made over the course of thirty years by both my Mema Lawson and my parents. These things would become clear to me as an adult, and ultimately achieve a sharpness and exposure of detail that would make so many things understandable only after the death of my own mother 27 years down the road.
But for now Roy was dead. My grandmother slipped into self-imposed isolation for a few months and as October passed with the sorrow of Roy’s funeral my football team continued to decimate opponents. We travelled to Walkertown and beat those kids 56-0. We tore a hole in Wiley and Kernersville by similar scores, both wins coming on shutouts. In fact, the tipped around touchdown pass that the lanky quarterback from Southwest put on us in the second quarter of our 63-6 win would be the only score we allowed in six games.
By the time we travelled to Mineral Springs School for the last game of the year and beat them 48-0 we were gaining attention all across the city. Our coaches, Mr. Flood and some of his friends or contacts from Winston-Salem State University, were amazed at our progress. After the first victory over Hanes when we were walking off the field I got near one of my coaches to ask him how we did and before I could I heard Coach Flood say to him “28-0? I’ll take that every time.” When some of the defensive players complained about being tired at half-time of our game against Southwest in week two, Coach Flood decided to make us run more at each practice. This kind of did not set well with me because as an offensive lineman I was not tired. Hell all I did was line up and knock the kid in front of me down and look for another kid to knock down. It was fun. How could anybody be tired? Hell, Anthony Ingram ran for what seemed like miles to me down the sideline untouched play, after play, after play for who knows how many touchdowns that year and I never heard him complain about being tired.
But somebody did complain and so it was off on several turns around the practice fields and the small stadium at the school. And whoever comes in last has to run again. It’s me and Tito at the back. I am so tired. I do not want to run again. I am in last. Tito is a good 20 yards ahead of me as we round the backstop on the baseball field and head to where the coaches are waiting at the finish line. I am thinking I am going to pass out if he makes me run again for coming in last. I round the backstop and decide to push myself and if I show some effort maybe he will have sympathy on me. Tito pulls up short and bends over, hands on his knees gasping for air maybe 30 feet from where the coaches are standing. I’m in full stride as I see him stop and bend over and I am about to fall out as I run by him and he sees me and looks up and tries to grab me as I pass him and cross the line near Coach Flood and he yells “Tito, run again.” I don’t stop running until I get to the locker room and change my clothes as fast as I can because everyone is saying “Tito gonna kick your ass for making him run again.”
Luckily my mother is waiting for me this time when I come out of the locker room and I get in the car and we go home.
But boys will be boys and I know Tito didn’t forget. In fact, I can see him eyeing me for weeks as I try to avoid him. Luckily he plays nose guard and I play left tackle so we never have to practice against each other. But during one of the last weeks of the season we get on a bus to go see Mt. Tabor play a game. We are on the bus with the eighth grade team, a group of tough looking kids whom I stay far away from because I’ve heard the stories of race fights in the stairwell and don’t want any part of that. I’m lucky to avoid getting struck in the head when one of the older boys throws his round hand-brush like a throwing star at a kid behind me. I saw him rise up and spin around and get ready to throw something and I ducked. Was he throwing it at me? I don’t know. Several weeks earlier when my parents were in Utah with my grandmother as Roy lay dying, I had to stay with my aunt and ride the bus from their house to the school. I guess no one else knew, but it was an all-black bus for some reason and I got tormented mercilessly. I responded by calling one kid a nigger and that didn’t go over well at all. I had never used that word in anger and I never did again. I think if my most loved person had not lay dying in a hospital on my birthday, the birthday when I was going to my first UNC-Wake Forest football game, and had not missed my birthday for the first time in my life, if those sorrowful things had not lay on my heart and if I had not found myself that very week on a bus full of angry black kids, not at all like the soft spoken, intelligent and kind blacks I knew from my classes, or if I had room to move around and find a way to defend myself without being restricted to a small school bus seat surrounded by noise and taunts, I would have never used that word.
But I did. And so was this eighth grader throwing his thick plastic brush at me? Was I marked now? I had no way of knowing. Luckily the coaches got on the bus and we went to the game. After the game we got back on the bus and I am sitting about two-thirds of the way back near the aisles when Tito comes along. I had all but forgotten about beating him in the footrace and the angry look on his face as I passed him. He grabs my head with both hands and shoves my face into his crotch. He holds me there as the bus erupts in laughter. It stinks, worse than the worst smell I’ve ever smelled in the stench of the locker room after practice. I can’t breathe. It seems like forever. Again I am saved as the coaches get on the bus and tell everyone to pipe down.
I was no worse for the wear, other than being disgusted by the smell. I don’t know anything about sex. I had no way of knowing he was delivering an insult by simulating oral sex by shoving my face in his crotch. At least he didn’t hit me because that’s all I really feared was one of these guys punching me and having to defend myself. But it’s over now and I’m still here.
The football season ended on a high note. We were undefeated at 6-0 and only one team scored on us. By all accounts it was a masterful season and I’m now in love with football. We have a season ending banquet at the Coronet Seafood on Country Club Road. We get trophies that read “Northwest Junior High Falcons” “Undefeated Champions 1982″ “6-0″. At the banquet there is a special guest who hands me my trophy. I’ve read about him in the paper for a few years. He is the basketball coach at Winston-Salem State. He is a huge man with a gentle smile and peaceful, kind eyes. As I approach him he says “You’re a big one. Congratulations son.” He hands me my trophy and as I take it from his gigantic hands I think “there’s a reason they call him Bighouse Gaines”.

A recurring gift

I read a novel last year about this time that changed my mind’s eye forever. It gave me a hope amidst despair. It showed me a way to look at the world that I had never thought of. It opened my mind to many technical aspects of fiction and challenged me to become what I have always wanted to be.

In reading some literary analysis of the work in question as I ponder the details of a task I have set upon I was pointed to this poem by Wordsworth and immediately set to thinking about another event that took place in my life recently.

The ending of the novel takes place after a funeral where the main character notices the sprig of a tiny flower trying to break through the grass along the edge of the path as he is leaving. I finished the work at sunset on a late spring evening with a rich hue pulsating between the verdant horizon that lies below my house. I felt a sense of peace and fullness.

I took away a hint of that feeling again as I read the ending of these lines:

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

“A Boulder side of Venus”

This most excellent video was linked to on Facebook via Joel Roupe. Such a wonderful display.

Creator.

Lessons from Ze Frank

Ed posted the video of Ze Frank announcing his return to video blogging. Like many things over the last few years I learned of Ze Frank via Word Up and would enjoy the posts whenever they were linked to. There is so much content on the web, and much of it so good, that it is hard for me to keep up with the volume. Local bloggers like Ed and Spag and Fec and Smith Jr. and Lowder and Ribar and Keith and George and Joe for the most part have pointed me to articles and ideas and pictures of far away places over the years.

Ze Frank’s videos were often hilarious (duckies?) and incisively acerbic at times and I hope he recaptures some of that quickly.

The folks at CopyBlogger analyzed Ze Frank’s first post for its message on harnessing creativity and I think the points are something any writer or artist struggling to get “from zero to one” should take note of.

I think I am somewhere between zero and .001 but I have some time to focus on a project that is in front of me and I plan to make the most of it in the coming weeks.

A long, full life

This is my grandmother, Mary P. Lawson (nee Salazar) who passed away Sunday night at the age of 89. She followed a US Army soldier from Utah to High Point in the 1940s after the war. She worked as a housekeeper before being able to get on at RJ Reynolds Tobacco Co. from which she retired in 1982. She lived almost 30 years as a widow but led an active and fun filled life until the last few years when friends, family and energy all became too few and far between. She was a 20 year breast cancer survivor and resisted three or four mini-strokes, known as TIAs, until one finally got the best of her on Easter Sunday. She left a legacy of equal parts love and pain in the path she travelled, but much like the Trail of Tears of a by-gone age she was tough enough to face her lot with as much dignity as she could muster. I took this picture of her, the last I would capture, in September 2011 at her home near Bethania in Forsyth County.

Stacks

I’ve been through Bellow and DeLillo and Auster and Baker and the French Revolution in the last year. Trying to avoid the banality of American politics at all cost and the predictable divisions we impose on ourselves. And in the background, poking me on the shoulder is the name David Foster Wallace. So much to do so little time. I will get to Bataille next after I finish The Oxford History of the French Revolution and there is still the rest of Jameson’s Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism to digest, but I do believe Infinite Jest will be on my plate this summer.

Here is an insightful interview with Wallace from 1997 with Charlie Rose. Sad that I missed him while he was here.

In media res …

Author’s note: In trying to stay focused on my drive to write fiction it is hard not to get discouraged by articles like this. Although a great read, it really puts downward pressure on the motivation. But my friend says I have to do it because I have to do it. Or in case someone else comes looking. And so in the spirit of seeking feedback here is a brief section of the current project I am working on, which I hope morphs into my first novel. Thoughts good, bad and indifferent are welcome.

I pull into the small lot in front of the piercing shop run by Jason’s friend Chris. We’re at the very bottom of Liberty Street now heading into one of a row of small buildings with brick fronts, a set of four small shops at the edge of downtown. The shop’s called Mystic Eye Piercing or some shit like that. I quit paying attention to the neo-hippie underground set after I had a bad experience with some people I thought I knew as good souls who went all gangsta’ a few years back when The Chronic came out and all of a sudden they went from Grateful Dead patchouli wearing freaks to scowling wannabes walking around with a g-lean talking about “hell yeah” in that deep pitch Dre does so well.
But I’ll feign interest in their beanie kick sacks and their twirling sticks, their elongated earlobe jewelry and nipple rings, even their pierced tongue studs – so long as they speak clear when they ask me a question. Jason is already in the shop standing at the counter talking to Chris when I walk in.
I’ve been around Chris a few times but I don’t think he’s ever said more than whassup to me so I look at him and nod and he does the same and he and Jason continue talking about some flyer they are looking at. Chris is the total package for the early 20s underground set. He’s medium height and fit. Rich skin, approaching olive, which gives him an exotic look despite his name being Jones. Stark, narrow facial features set beneath the obligatory lion’s mane dreadlocks that all the rave set is sporting these days. His girlfriend is a clear eyed blonde beauty, full in all the right places, curled up on a couch in the corner looking at a magazine.
-So yea bro if you can just pass some of these around the crew that would help me out a lot- Chris is saying as I make my way across the room from the door toward the counter.
-Let me check one- I say to him and he hands me a copy – runestone letters on purplish blue paper cry out “Rave, Rave with DJ Judah!” and I remember Chris, in addition to being all things possible in underground suave, is a fucking rave DJ as well. It’s then that I recall his mom died I think and left him some money that he spent on this building, some piercing equipment and some proper turntables and a PA. I haven’t been to a rave since late 93 when I ran into Mary and Wes at the club after we watched a black hard core band called Egypt that was made up of some of the dudes from 24-7 Spyz and we ran into the singer after the show and he said he wanted to check the town and we heard there was a rave across the street at the coliseum so we walked across Deacon Boulevard to check it out.
I guess to me like a lot of things the rave scene had some appeal when it seemed alien and strange and contained a sense of other-worldness that was fresh and curious. Now with every kid under 24 adopting the dim styling of the scene it comes across as just another lumpen cliché. And I am the anti-cliché, wed to the dogma of freshness with a violent Jacobin reaction against anything stale. But now was not the time to make a stand. It would be uncool given that we’re standing in dude’s own shop. So I had him the flier back and say “cool.”
Luckily we are saved as two teenage girls come through the shop door and begin to ask Chris about getting their lips pierced, or their tongue, and again I’m shaking my head on the inside and laughing but then I remember that they are probably looking for the same escape from the staleness of mid-90s white America that I am except that as an introvert I prefer to get twisted on the inside. Jason is talking to Chris’ girlfriend on the couch and I’m jealous again because he knows all of these females and can bounce from house to house in one endless stream of friendship. I wonder what that’s like – to have more than one or two people who actually know you and enjoy your company – not having to wait around for the phone to ring or someone to show up at your door to break the monotony of loneliness. I wonder how it is not to feel like you are forcing yourself on the crowd or to have to feel the need to prove yourself by talking constantly. Soon I’ll learn to ask more questions and actually listen to people’s answers instead of pouring my thoughts out of my mouth in a vain effort to fit in. But for now I haven’t gotten that far and I’m still stuck bouncing between silence and sibilant nervousness.
I chose the silent route now because Sharon, Chris’ girl, is so attractive I couldn’t talk around her if I wanted to. I content myself by standing across the room from them flipping through a stack of CDs by the bookshelf stereo next to a display of piercing studs. I position myself so I can look over at Sharon as she talks to Jason. She has the freshest almost glowing skin tight across her dimples, angular chin and high cheekbones and clear blue eyes. She can’t hide her figure under that loose tee shirt, probably her boyfriends, and I wonder how firm her breasts are and what they would feel like in my hands as I am kissing her pink lips or her white skin that has just a hint of color to make her golden threaded hair seem just a little brighter. I stare one second too long and she catches my eyes for one instant before she looks back to Jason and I back to the underground collection of local music that Chris has on the counter. After a moment I look back and my eyes linger across her waist and down the leg of her jeans that are curled up under her as she sits on the couch and across her exposed ankles and bare feet with one or two toes covered by a silver ring. Her thin sandals lie beneath her on the wooden floor. I glance down briefly at the cd and then back to her top shelf face that is full of laughter now as she smiles at Jason and he is smiling about something and then says to me – “You ready to roll dog?”
I pretend I was not paying them any attention and look up and nod. Sharon stands up with Jason and gives him a hug and he wraps his arm around that tight waist for just a moment. I’m about to head to the door but she comes across the room with Jason and sticks out her hand.
-I’m Sharon.- she says.
I stick out my hand and wish I knew her enough to get my arms around her, but I just say –Hey, I’m Thomas.-
-It’s nice to meet you Thomas. Jason has a lot of good things to say about you. Do you think you will make it to the rave?-
-It looks like it will be a blast. I’ll get some people to check it out-
-Chris would like that. Hope to see you again- and with that she moves to hug me and I am a bit stunned. I lean into her and feel the fullness of her breasts against my body and briefly grip her waist. She raises her palm to my chest and applies just a small bit of pressure to let me know it’s too much and so I let her go and though it was only a second at the most it makes me want to dance again.
##
Sharon holds the door as we step outside and she waves goodbye to Jason as we are walking up the sidewalk to where the cars are parked. It’s pushing five o’clock now and I know this is the point where he is either going to want to go home and chill for the night or we are going to walk up Liberty Street and get something to eat, find a place to smoke and then go drink beer. He got off work early today so that means sales at the plumbing supply place he works for were slow and he might be in a mood to get into something. It’s not yet fully spring and though it was warm an hour or so ago, the damp chill of March still lingers across the concrete of downtown and in between the small office towers and three or four story retail shops on this end of the city a crispness wafts from block to block. I feel the chill and wish I had a coat and gloves instead of this thin jacket I grabbed earlier.
We’ve worn out just about every bar in the old part of town searching for some grit and substance within the day to day and we’re not wheel heeled enough to go searching for the next big thing in the yuppie bars that some of our friends who joined the 9-5 right out of college are frequenting. Often over the last two years of our friendships it’s been his place or mine to get high, chill with some music, hit a diner or TJ’s Deli and then back to the house for TV. But I’ve grown bored with that and I can’t take it much more and he knows it so the strain between me placating him and him keeping me within the bounds of decency is beginning to wear on our friendship.
It’s been a great friendship. One that I never expected, and like is usually the case when you aren’t looking for something, the best of things happen. That’s another reason I wonder why I can’t be content to wait. Curious as to why I always feel the need to force a thing instead of kicking back and taking it in stride. I’m certain the answer is because as a guy who dreams about being a writer I feel like I am always in the story – like those alternate ending books I read as a kid where you jump to page 27 if you chose this or page 42 if you chose that. Each choice leads me somewhere. Where exactly I don’t know and that is the excitement of the choosing. And really, though, the choosing is all I have right now.
I chose to quit college again more than two years ago and had to come back home to Winston though I had vowed never to return. My parental units where in the last stages of a hateful divorce and it was probably one of the worst choices I could have made. I easily found work as a clerk in the basement of the courthouse, but it paid very little and so I had no choice but to take back up with my dad in my old place in the basement. But once the divorce was final, she got the house and that meant my sister came back with her. So she took the basement and I took the master bedroom since my mom wanted no part of it.
And so it was work, home, read, think about writing, smoke, play computer games and then repeat for a few months until one afternoon as I was leaving the courthouse I saw a familiar figure with a familiar swagger strutting down the sidewalk from Third Street.

On Rich Brenner

Like many across the Triad I was very sad last night to hear Neil McNeil announce during a break away from the Daytona 500 broadcast Monday night that Rich Brenner had died suddenly while attending a community event in Greensboro. They said Rich came to Fox8 in 1987 but it seems like longer than that to me. He was among the best sportscasters ever and felt like a member of the family or a close friend.

Sports isn’t real important to a lot of people but competition is a unique part of the human fabric. Rich Brenner captured the spirit of competition and sportsmanship with his dedication to coverage of local and regional sports as a news man. You know you are at the top of your profession when people time their nightly routine to your segment at about 20 minutes after the hour. Being on top of your game means you can turn that six minute segment into the highlight of a person’s day with your energy and passion for the job at hand. Rich Brenner did that for me and who knows how many other people across the region for more than 20 years.

Neil and Rich are and were my favorite local broadcasters after the venerable Sandra Hughes of WFMY. I’ve pretty much tuned out of local tv news in recent years because of the flood of online news that is available and the freedom that web video brings to your daily life. Not having to be in front of the tv for 30 minutes each night became a habit as much as remembering to tune in at 6 and 11.

But the Friday night football shows remain a regular part of my viewing habits and I remember many a night listening to Rich describe the plays and highlights with a child like passion that brought excitement and energy to each and every segment.

Being young at heart and loving your job are among the things that help a person lead a full life. And in that aspect I can easily say well done Rich Brenner. Well done indeed. May you rest in peace.

“At two miles away it is like a constant hum”

I know fracking is the greatest thing since the creation of the bread slicer, and it is going to bring a ba-trillion jobs and lower the state’s unemployment rate below that of the Dakotas, and let’s not forget that anybody who doubts the glory of teh frack is a wackjob envirofreak, but this video shows raw unfiltered evidence of the “collateral damage” that comes with the fracky bliss.

Village of the Sun

Chris was one of those great friends you regret never having enough time to spend with. We used to skip class in junior and senior year and he would break into his parents house through a window in the back, open up the basement and we would hang out for a period or two smoking and listening to Steely Dan records.

This was in 1987 and 1988 and after we graduated I think Chris went to UNCG for a while before dropping out to pursue his passion for music. He played in several bands in the Greensboro area during that time and I generally lost touch with him. The last real time we spent together was when he showed up at my friend Brian’s house in Sherwood Forest about 5pm and asked if we wanted to go to Cat’s Cradle and see the Meat Puppets. Brian was working at RJR’s Tobaccoville Plant that summer and said no because he had to get up early the next morning and go wash tobacco before it went back on a conveyor belt to be resprayed with nicotine and licorish depending on the brand it was destined for. Being a leisurely youth I quickly hopped into Chris’s VW Bug and spent the next 12 hours being introduced to a deeper understanding of rock and roll.

After I dropped out of college for the second time I got back in with Chris running the streets of Winston-Salem in an aimless twentysomething paradigm while he worked at the CD store near the mall and played in a No Depression rock band that made a certain name for itself up and down the East Coast in the early 1990s.

Point being that Chris hooked me up with the good stuff and an employee discount that helped me grow my CD collection from zero to 300 in about 18 months. One night we were at my friend Matt’s house across the street from where Brian used to live and Chris showed up with a Frank Zappa cd and said he was about to lay on us “the greatest guitar solo ever.” We listened to a few tracks and then Inca Roads started. For several years I thought he was right on target with that description, but then last spring some 17 years later I came across this version of “Village of the Sun” from September of 1978. I’d never heard the song before and luckily this was my first version. I can’t think of anything that approaches the segment of this track that begins at about the three minute mark with a transition set off by Vinnie Colaiuta moving away from the 4/4 ride with a few slams on the toms and snare mixed with a few breaths on the open hi-hat before the band settles into an indescribable rhythm by Ed Mann on what has to be some percussion blocks, along with a deep octave riff colored by a rich envelope filter most likely played by Denny Walley that wanders for about 50 seconds while Napoleon Brock Murphy scats lyrics from the chorus before Frank drops in from above and takes off on about a three minute solo ride that fucking rocks eternity while the band keeps the grove wound as tight as a Republican tax accountant.

I wish I knew where Chris is now so I could tell him he was wrong. “I’m going back there my friend.”

Vote No to One on May 8

Here are all the dates you will need for registering to vote and getting in absentee ballots.

Tim who?

At times during his career Eli Manning has looked timid and befuddled, but a knack for steady improvement has trumped it all. To wit:

Sunday’s rally was Manning’s seventh fourth-quarter comeback of the season and his eighth game-winning drive — staggering numbers that are emblematic of the Giants’ penchant for playing close games. Earlier in the year, especially, it seemed the Giants went down to the final series every week; several players even joked about the “cardiac” nature of the team’s play.

Again

By Jeffrey Sykes

She smiles and puts her hand on my chest ever so gentle and says “calm down” when I’m having my worst moments of fear. The feel of her delicate fingertips radiates electricity across my upper torso and though the feeling is redolent of the bliss of our early passion it doesn’t do much to quell the stress of my racing heart. It’s been six years now. Six long years of nothingness for me since I was laid off from my mid-level management job at the textile plant outside of town. Luckily for us we got her through her graduate course work three months before the plant closed and sent 435 jobs to the Far East.

Like countless other men approaching or passed their middle age I’ve stood in ceaseless lines at job fairs, sent out dozens of resumes and cover letters with the compliant “to whom it may concern” and “please accept my resume for the advertised position”, spent day after day listening to the seconds tick off on the clock on the wall that was a gift from her grandmother while I waited for a call or for the mail to come as I counted the spaces in between the minutes when I would log into my email hoping for a message from someone real to give me a glimmer of vocational hope as opposed to the endless stream of autogenerated form mail that clutters my inbox.

And so again we’re standing here in the middle of the den, holding each other a little tighter at least than we did a few months ago when I felt we were seriously drifting, and her hand is on my chest and she is whispering to me that it’s ok and that she’s not going away from me. I’m lucky to have such a woman. She’s filled with the strength of her south Georgia ancestors who hewed subsistence farms and cash crops from the flat, unbroken dirt before the Depression came and who went off to war if they were sons and off to the city to build armaments if they were daughters, hoping all the while that after Mars became satiated yet again there would be someone left to love and share gentleness with as life moved beyond youth and toward a pious responsibility.

After she tells me she loves me and kisses me with those pink, youthful lips that still stand out against the rich powder white stillness of her skin I know it’s time to let her go, to loosen the grip I have with my hands clasped around her back or planted firmly on her hourglass hips but I don’t want the moment to end. Live in the moment they say and this is one instance where I think I understand. But she’s got responsibilities, matters demanding her time – the kids, the mound of paperwork she brought home from the office that the dean expects processed by Thursday, Facebook statuses to update, newsfeeds to check again because it’s been 10 minutes since she last logged on – and standing in the den with a husband who’s outlived his commercial vibrancy doesn’t stand much of a chance amidst the matrix.

So I have a choice to make. Do I push deeper into sentimentality – gushing with my best Elizabethan effort like Marlow to tell her how much I love her and want nothing more than to make this moment eternal – or do I beg her to stay in her mind as my 20 year old lover, which she remains in my heart and soul, and not let the low brow demands of the mundane sap any more of her time than it already has? Or should I simply pull away and thank her yet again, telling her I am here for her no matter what she needs – the dishes, the laundry, give the kids their bath, shop for the groceries – and move on to my next set of choices?

If I push the poetic line too much she smiles and thanks me and gently begins to move away because she knows full well that I am mad for her, even more so now than I was the night under a dark and moonless sky when she turned her face away from me as I went in for the first kiss, leaving her delightful cheek wide open for me to pause, exhale a small laugh and then kiss with the gentleness of eternal devotion. Things would be different if our duties were not reversed and she was not pressed into the role of breadwinner and sustainer for half the day while I bounced between paperback books from the library, slow walks around the neighborhood and meticulously grooming the azaleas and small trees surrounding our modest home while I whiled the hours away in between fruitless trips to the employment agency across town.

Reassured again by her gentle caress and filled with the sentiment of remembering the reasons we fell in love in the first place more than 10 years ago I am confident enough for the moment to let her go and watch her walk away, across the living room invariably to the computer desk where she logs on  to her social net and is transported for the moment away from my problems and back to a circle of friends just as if she were still that 20 year old in the dorm who could sit with the girls and talk of boys and hopes and dreams of fulfillment to come. I don’t blame her or hold a grudge. The computer has served us well over the last few years, giving me an opportunity to take online classes, explore small business opportunities, and look, look, look for a job – but with the months having turned into years and approaching a sense of permanence, a creeping resentment is building and it is hard to fight the fear of loneliness, even if it has only been three minutes since I last held her in my arms.

The day I lost my job I knew things would be bad. I’m smart enough to understand demographics and the basics of globalization. With tens of thousands of baby boomers having never recovered meaningful employment after the era of corporate downsizing in the early 1990s and stock bubbles, dot com booms and housing as cash cow all having come and gone leaving us on the precipice of economic meltdown by the middle of the first decade of the 21^st century I knew that my narrow skill set combined with my age and my dark history would make it likely impossible to regain what I lost that afternoon at the office. I called her on the phone after lunch because I knew it was coming – the rumors had been circulating for months and grew increasingly real with the impending visit of Carl from the corporate office – and she told me she loved me and that we would get through it together. I thanked her and I think it was that whisper of love that steeled my spine and kept me from falling apart as I was told to hand over my keys, handed my bag and told to come back in two days to pick up a box that my personal belongings would be placed in and left for me at the security desk downstairs. The vice-president was kind enough to grant my request that she take the framed picture of my wife and place it in my bag and take from the cork board above my desk the black and white printouts of photos of my newborn son crawling on the floor on a play mat beneath an upholstered mobile with tiny stuffed birds and puppies and monkeys floating over his head. She cried as she handed me the black leather bag I carried with me each day and Carl told me he was sorry, that I was a good man and that they wished me luck.

I refrained from collapsing in the parking lot and made it home and in the door before I rushed past my wife in tears telling her “I’m sorry babe” and into the bedroom where I sat on the edge of the bed and cried for a few minutes to get it out of my system. So much lost in that moment. Not only a sense of male pride in being able to provide for your family and be seen as king of your castle – no that was nothing, typical really of what any man might lose – but a decade almost of a changed life, a life reclaimed from the gutter of American failure, transformed from a weak will of failure through personal growth into an average success. Now I knew even average means would be out of my reach.

But she has sustained me. And I know it can’t have been easy. It’s not easy for me to bear the hours of nothingness as my midlife wastes away and as I fight bitterness and anger borne of sadness the way a junkie fights off the urge for a fix. I owe her so much yet I can give her nothing tangible.

But you can never really ever touch the things that are important in this life. You can’t ever really feel the things of this world that sustain a person beyond loss.

In the last year I have tried to wean myself off of the tangible things I felt had come to dominate my life. The bottle, Facebook, green plant like material, politics, the news and holding on to earlier dreams of hope that have long since faded with the fancies of a young man’s heart. In their place I have tried to put devotion to the ones I love, devotion to a latent thirst for literature and a dream about a bitter man who fights through it to become a sage. But that’s not easy in a small town where I am an alien to the habits and intricacies of local knowledge, such as it is, in a region where the economy has left stress and collapsed lives and families strewn in the wake of a decade of transformation.

At her church alone no less than five marriages have collapsed due to financial pain, infidelity or just plain sorryness. It’s a sad place when the buzzards circle over the sky above your town and even the church can’t provide sustenance for the last vestiges of the American family.

Maybe it is Facebook. Maybe the constant access to your past is a limiter of your future. Maybe trolling the web living vicariously through status updates and shared memories is as much of a tear against real intimacy as a short temper or a hurtful word let loose from a bitter tongue. And what kind of demons lurk just around the next bend of time when all that separates a spouse from a dalliance is to click on “send message” to a former lover an old flame or a new beau du jour?

Last fall a young woman was shot in her bed as she slept, her husband standing over her with a handgun that he next turned on himself while their two daughters slept in the next room. When I read the story on the newspaper website I was mortified, but when she came home and told me the woman had gone to her church and that her husband sometimes came and that everyone was distraught about it I went to Facebook to see if the woman had a profile.

And there she was, smiling, posing in running shorts with a number on her shirt, a hat and dark sunglasses, or in a row of three at a night club in a shinny blouse that had room for a view. Sarah was her name, not much older than my wife. Educated. A dental assistant. Healthy. Happy. Now in ICU in Durham with a gunshot wound to the abdomen – and if she survived – a shattered life with traumatized children and a dead husband.

I shook my head as I clicked off of her profile. I Googled their address and zoomed in to street view to look at their home, a nice brick ranch in the country in a nice part of the county. A nearby home on a realtors website listed for $175,000. I paused to consider, as my mind is want to do, what could have possibly taken place to crack a hole in logic and rationality and cause a man with a healthy, attractive wife and two kids and a mortgage to shoot her in bed and blow his brains across the wall?

I couldn’t find a profile for the husband. A Google search of his name turned up nothing. As the days turned to weeks there was little discussion among the locals about the incident. A friend organized a charity event for Sarah, even contacted my wife to participate, but details of the man’s motivation remain scarce.

Joblessness or infidelity, I decided. Too much pressure on one, the other or both and so the sky cracked, death rained and one more family falls by the wayside, cast off by pressures few could have imagined just a few short years ago.

A few weeks later I spent a few hours deleting my Facebook pictures and then deactivated my account. It wasn’t a direct reaction to thoughts about the shooting, but it played a small part. I think it just freaked me out that I could learn so much – get such a view into a person’s life in one or two or three clicks at the most. Sitting with my wife watching financial television one night there was a special about social networking and Facebook’s push to become the Internet. A walled garden as one writer so deftly put it. And on the show a young programmer, former head of such and such at Facebook, talking about how addicted people are. “Some people deactivate their accounts” he said assuredly “but our data show they come back. Again. And again.”

I was struck by the smugness, the surety with which he gloated that we couldn’t stay away. And as I thought about my wife and the purity of our love as we sparked not 10 years ago and the pressure and drift we’ve endured in recent years I made a decision then and there to go dark. A social network has little value if it undermines the very fabric of your most intimate responsibilities.

And it had that for me. I could spend hours arguing local or national politics with people on Facebook. I could watch Egypt collapse on Al Jazeera’s page while arguing about radical Islam’s evil intent with an undertaker sitting in his office less than half a mile from the spot on my couch where I sat surfing the collective brain power of humanity in the living room of a bungalow built in a small industrial town in the south in 1936.

I could talk to my high school friends about our first girlfriends. I could relive the insanity of my first drug experiences with my buddies from freshman year at State. I was friends with two former girlfriends and the person who was my ideal of what a woman should be when I was 23 years old. While the woman who I swore to have and to hold, forsaking all others and clinging only unto, sat a few feet away with a remote clicking through the Kardashians to Sister Angelica and back to local cable access, with a few stops on home shopping and that crazy guy who sells home décor and cheap art to the lumpen each night from 9 to 11 pm.

So I deactivated.

A few days later I kissed my wife with a fresh passion. A simple kiss of love with no hidden agenda. She was a bit apprehensive. I’ve not done the best job of being a lover or a friend in recent months because life at the bottom of a pity party is not an attractive position. And it was nearing the end of the semester. Crunch time for her to get reports done for the vice-president in case the auditors come during exam week. Piles of spreadsheets on class attendance, grade curves, and retention reports to be sorted and filtered and organized into manageable data that could be massaged by the administration at the snap of a finger.

And so I picked up a few novels at the book store and sat beside her. In between pages I would stop and look over at her and remember the freshness and the devotion and the gentleness she brought into my life. I remembered the passion and the great sex and the laughter and the fun we experienced together in the days when love hung in our home like mist across the hills of our beloved mountains after a quick rain shower in summer. Fresh and visible. Welcome and cool. A point of contentment between the scorching heat of a summer day and the bright dawn of mornings to come.

Before I knew it I had finished one novel, a post-modern text on the pressure of the crowd, and moved on to a second. And along the way we had conversation again. We made small talk about the television. Or our children. I made her laugh again and remembered how much her smile brought joy to my life.

Six weeks ago I would have brooded and wrote a bitter status update on my social network if I fell to my knees again, as I sometimes do, under the pressure of joblessness and the agitation brought on by the fear of an unfulfilled future.
But this afternoon when I felt like crying I was able to turn to her and pull her close to me and feel the reassurance of a loving touch that abnegates the stasis of my middle age.

-I’m right here and I’m not going away- she said.

And like a rider by a patch of woods gazing along the horizon past a clump of snowy trees I realize that there is still time for me.

-I’m thankful for you. And I cherish you as much as I ever have.- I said.

And as we kiss softly and move away from each other and on to the list of random events that after so many years begin to constitute the balance of a lifetime I feel up to the struggle again.

 

 

 

What we’ve lost among the crowds – Don DeLillo’s ‘Mao II’

Reading Don DeLillo’s acclaimed novel Mao II more than a decade after 9-11 and some 20 years since the book was written leaves one thankful that the projected literary apocalypse is yet to be realized, but still in awe of how DeLillo foretold the degree to which terrorism would subsume art in the collective mindset beneath a ceaseless stream of news.

The premise of the novel is that “the future belongs to crowds” and that the freestanding individual stands little chance of survival outside the safety of security in numbers. It’s a dangerous and deadly world DeLillo constructs, but an accurate reflection of our rapidly unified world, even more so in 2011 perhaps than in 1991 when the book was written. In the early 1990s the global dichotomy of the collective versus the market remained intact, with a cauldron of regional and religious fervor serving as the stew in which ideology sustained itself. DeLillo masterfully blends the flavor of the age, mixing a critical eye toward the totalitarian victory over socialism, the already decayed underbelly of the West and America in particular, the pandemonium of emerging Islamic extremism and the primacy of the Chinese monolith.

To capture this all in one slim 240 page novel is the accomplishment of a master.

The story is based on a reclusive writer, Bill Gray, his devoted friend Scott who attaches himself to Bill and his ideas after reading his early works, Scott’s girlfriend Karen and a talented photographer Brita who has come to capture Bill’s portrait for posterity.

In the vehicle of these four characters, aided by two secondary actors, DeLillo crisscrosses the postmodern mindset in dialogue, interior monologue, action and reflection.

Karen has slipped the grasp of the Moonie cult only to be picked up in a small Iowa town by Scott who is on his own journey to find the reclusive Bill, whose novels have lit an intellectual fire in his otherwise aimless post-college years as he wandered the globe an American of means without meaning.

The pair has settled down in Bill’s reclusive cabin somewhere within a day’s driving distance of New York City. Bill has accepted Scott as his secretary, freeing the artist from the daily demands of domestic life, which his two failed marriages and strained relationships with his adult children prove he is not cut out for. Brita, an artistic photographer who has devoted her life to capturing writers on film, comes to take a hand at diving into Bill’s reality with her camera, lenses and questions.

As the story unfolds, Brita has sparked a renewed desire to engage life within Bill and he embarks on a quest, at the behest of a publisher, to meet with the representative of a Lebanese terrorist group that has taken an unknown Swedish poet hostage. The layout of this plot twist is not at all contrived as it may seem at first glance and DeLillo effortlessly gets Bill moving toward his ultimate end somewhere on the road to Beirut.

The timing of all these moving parts is masterfully done. Somewhere in conversation in London with a representative of the terror group there is a wonderful conversation where Bill and the character, George, reveal DeLillo’s emphasis. The premise is that technology, communication and the ever shrinking distances between humans across the globe has given the terrorist new power to hold the masses transfixed by their acts, dominating their attention and molding the post-modern mind to their whim. Bill’s lament is that this was and should remain the job of the artist, the poet, the writer, and most of his motivation in the book is to arrive at the source of this terror power and confront it in his own way.

But just as so many individuals in both east and west try to hide their flaws and minimize attention paid to their failures by losing themselves within the crowd, so too is Bill running from his flaws and the failure of his own body.

Like many novels – Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons and Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift come to mind – in the end the wondering protagonist dies alone while the young and the chaser of beauty are left to carry on the human struggle.

DeLillo’s characters may be a bit too thinly cast for some readers, but the style and poetry of language easily carry the mind from page to page and across scenes and ideas. In the end of Mao II it is the photographer Brita, half dressed on an apartment balcony in the predawn hours waving at a marriage procession in the street below as it is escorted through the battle zone of Beirut by a tank and a jeep with a machine-gun mount that leaves us with the sense that humanity, while violent, irrational and overwhelmed by uncertainty, remains at its base about love and the gentleness of human interaction.

Everything that is concealed will be brought to light

When I was working as an award-winning reporter in Virginia before coming back to North Carolina nine years ago I first heard of the details of the eugenics movement in the American south. At the time I was flabbergasted. What a cruel, evil and hypocritical history we have as a nation in relationship to how we treat the powerless among us even as we project absolute power across the oceans and sands and mountains of foreign lands across the globe.

A quote from Bellow I recently came across sums it up quite well. Describing living in America as being:

“In a society that was no community and devalued the person. Owing to the multiplied power of numbers which made the self negligible. Which spent military billions against foreign enemies but would not pay for order at home.”

It’s stories like those told again today in a New York Times acrticle about how much the state will need to pay victims of our eugenics program in North Carolina that amplify that certain dead-on analysis that Bellow hit on more than 50 years ago.

This anecdote at the end of the article is just one small glimpse into our true nature and the legacy we leave truth once future generations scratch the surface beyond the thin layer of red, white and blue that we’ve long hidden behind:

For Nial Ramirez, 65, who was sterilized at 18 after she gave birth to her daughter, no amount could make it right.

A social worker from the Washington County Department of Public Welfare suggested that she get sterilized. Mrs. Ramirez said she did not understand that the procedure was permanent and thought she had no choice.

“They told me that my brothers and sisters were going to be in the streets all because of you,” she said. “It’s either sign the paper or mama’s checks get cut off.”

In 1973, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, she became the first person to file a lawsuit against the state eugenics board. It ended with a $7,000 settlement from the doctor, she said.

Now in a small apartment surrounded by the sound of the television and some of the 200 dolls she has collected through her lifetime, Ms. Ramirez remains angry. She does not want an apology, and she will not settle for the amounts being discussed.

“What would an apology do for me?” she said. “You don’t know what my kids were going to be. You don’t know what kids God was going to give me. Twenty thousand dollars ain’t gonna do it, honey.”

When I lastly believed

There is a magic to innocence, the type of quality that makes childhood at once powerful and fragile. Perhaps that is why those adults who don’t quite arrive at the place in life they envisioned for themselves often revert back to the simpler things in existence: pleasure, security, comfort.

Christmas time can be most difficult for those around us whose life is weighted by sorrow. Be it the devastation of a sudden loss, the redundant sting of humiliation or a mere vague uneasiness about the state of being – whether it is caused by financial constraints, isolation or an even worse character flaw that prevents one from identifying with the veneer of happiness so many shroud themselves in beginning the day after Thanksgiving and lasting until the dawn of a New Year’s Day when all chances are seen reborn.

But even the worst off among us cling to a memory – surely floating somewhere amidst the debris and flotsam of a wrecked life – that can kindle a spark of joy, a sense of noel, a warm feeling of wonder and excitement, the type of feeling that bridges the chasm between failure and hope.

For me that memory lies in the front yard and living room of a simple brick ranch house about one-quarter of the way down a residential street named Clifwood Drive in a working class suburb on the edge of Kernersville in 1975.

This is the Christmas memory that swells to the forefront each year. It’s the childhood innocence and wonder I recall – no matter how briefly – when that sense of magic hits me when I see the excitement of a child or even in the bountiful happiness of actors on television in holiday specials or commercial messages for Target or Zales.

The reality of that time seems ever so far away from present circumstances, but truly the wonder of it all is but a memory away.

I don’t know what made this Christmas stand out to me so. Was it a certain toy I was to receive or was it the emerging curiosity of a five year old child who just had to know if it was all really true? Did I ask my parents over and over for a month “Is Santa Claus really real?” Did I write a letter and place it in the mail in complete expectation that it would be received by a jolly old man somewhere far away in his snowbound home? Did I hear “Twas the Night Before Christmas” for the first time that year and lay in bed every night for two weeks wondering what the sound of reindeer hooves on my gabled roof would actually sound like?

I’m certain these many questions and images ran through my mind as I lay in my bed, warm in my pajamas, in the back bedroom on Christmas Eve that year. My parents knew I was an anxious child and even from the earliest days I remember they used music to calm me and to give them some breathing room. My dad had one of those stereos from the sixties that was like an old wooden trunk, with a lid that opened up and a record player and AM/FM radio on the inside.

As I lay in bed restless wondering where Santa was at that very moment, with my parents hoping I was asleep, or at least drifting off enough so that the music could cover the rustle and flurry going on in the front of the house, they somehow transformed our living room into a scene straight out of a Macy’s catalog. Boxes with bows and misshapen packages wrapped in colorful paper spread out across one wall beneath a broad and full six- foot Christmas tree laden with ornaments and tinsel and lights and topped with a star or an angel. Plastic white electric candles in the windows and on the mantle amidst large red stockings stuffed full with oranges and candy canes and nuts and chocolates. Still more packages in front of the hearth and beside the chair, each one with a name on a tag.

Before I had gone to bed I took one last look at that tree – a tree my father would plant in the yard the next week and one we would decorate the next two Christmases before moving back to Winston-Salem – and took a deep breath, breathing in the light, sweet evergreen smell and placed the glass of milk and plate of cookies in my hands on the brick hearth. I took one last look at the tree and the treats I laid out and wondered if he actually would bring presents down the chimney and if he would find the cookies and milk I left for him.

As I drifted off to sleep to the sounds of Christmas carols on the radio – a tradition we would keep until I was about 14 – I couldn’t know that so many decades later that memories of that very night could be so powerful. I had no way to predict the flood of emotions that would wash over me as I recalled that yes, even I was once innocent and had the right to dream of pleasure, security and comfort. I could not predict that a man so full of hopelessness and failure could look back on that small boy and wish for him to make different choices, to say no to this but yes to that. Or even just to simply continue to believe.

After my mother died so suddenly two years ago I cried every day for at least three months. Sometimes I would cry at my desk or in the middle of a business phone call. I would have to ask the customer to hold on and pretend I had a pressing office matter to attend to. Or I would take a break and walk outside the dirty warehouse I found myself working in. I would walk out to the edge of the parking lot and as the tears began to fall I would look at the large trucks passing by on the highway out front and think of the line from the Smith’s song “throw your white body down.”

But I survived that. I withstood it for 10 months until while finally cleaning out the last bit of stuff – junk really, plastic Chinese made possessions that amounted to the sum total of my mother’s throw away existence – my sister let slip the secrets of my mother’s heart. Secrets I can’t even repeat without sending other family members into a frenzy of rage that I would dare speak of them. Secrets that involve two lives I know nothing about and likely account for the emptiness of my mother’s brief life on earth – an emptiness she put into me with the expectation that I could account for three and succeed beyond the possibility of just one.

As the emptiness of my early adult life grew and grew I found myself at 20 writing poetry about abuse and abandonment and the isolation that many suffer in late capitalist consumer culture. Unable to connect and move with the flow I found myself refusing to succumb to the simple mindset that demands you stay focused on the price and just ignore the cost.

Soon after that my parents divorced when my father was downsized from a major corporation and lost all sense of meaning because all he ever knew was that company and he gave it 26 of his 45 years at that point and what else could he possibly do at that age besides mow grass or work as a courier when he wasn’t drowning his sorrows in juice or worse still looking for his own easy button. And my mother? My poor, suffering mother? I found some pictures of her recently from that time and the dazed look of sorrow on her face is as bad as anything I had ever seen until the day I saw her face contorted in a dozen directions and her eyes spinning around in her head as she lay there hooked up to the machines for a few hours until she finally found the peace she hoped for for so long.

I can’t think of any way to explain how much it hurts to learn your loved one’s secrets – the secrets that are the key to unlocking the mystery that separates you from understanding – and learning them just as you are beginning to process their death and move on with what’s left of your life. It’s a numbing feeling of guilt and shame that neither Jesus, drugs or exercise has been thus far successful in abating.

But that night, that blessed, holy and peaceful night 36 Christmas seasons ago I was a child. I had the weightless possibility of innocence as my guide and when I woke up in the middle of the night not sure what time it was I had a sense of wonder I’ll bet millions of people in this world would give anything to relive again.

I peeled back the covers and put my feet on the floor. I poked my head out of my bedroom door and heard silence but saw a warm glow of light from the living room. I walked slowly down the hall, creeping along the wall with a tip toe step my grandfather taught me while walking in the woods like the Indians did so many centuries ago trying to creep up on your prey. As I grew closer to the entryway to the living room I half expected to see a jolly fat man in a red suit with a white beard standing full bore in the middle of my living room with a giant sack of toys.

But what I saw was light and glitter and I stare in amazement at the scene before me. The soft glow of electric candles bounced from the reflective silver and green tinsel on the tree. Golden bells hanging from wreaths on the doorways and hanging from the walls sparkled with a type of magic light that lit my eyes as my mouth stood open. The room was filled with a sense of wonder and delight and if you asked me then I would have sworn up and down that Santa Claus had just left up the chimney.

As I gathered myself I thought to look at the plate of cookies. The glass of milk was half empty and only crumbs remained on the plate. I was filled with a joy of belief, buyout at the knowledge that Santa Claus was real and that he came to bring joy to children and warm their hearts with his saintly benevolence.

There are two things I took from my mother’s house that help me to cling to some sense of this childlike hope amidst the bitterness of my middle age. One is a rectangular wooden picture frame with three locket sized pictures of me as a child. One as a baby, one as a toddler and one as a preschooler. I hung it near my dresser so that each day and night I try to remember that even though I am lost and at times feel like the sound of my own breath is the last thing I have to hope for I was once a child. I had the innocence of expectation and no matter how bitter and hollow I feel now, somewhere deep inside that little boy remains.

The other is a football sized ceramic Santa Claus my mother made that year. She took a ceramics class somewhere – I can remember the excitement with which she told friends and relatives about it – and painted it a vibrant red and white with black boots and gloves. It was one of her most prized possessions and the source of much joy each season as he came out of his box and was placed on the mantle. His hands are clasped across his belly, his cap askew to one side as he winks at you playfully.

I’ve tried to explain to my small child how important it is to me that he keeps this Santa forever. It’s one of the few earthly possessions I have that could be a family heirloom and I hope that one day he understands how important it is to me that he cherish it. It’s marked on the bottom with my mother’s initials in golden brown paint “MRS 12-75″. I’ll try my best not to give him any of the weighty things my mother gave me. But this one possession can connect us seamlessly across the generations.

Each year at some point between December 10 and December 25 I will have a very sad moment. Most often it comes at random, like it did in the coffee shop last year. I’ll hear Judy Garland or some other golden voiced singer crooning the soft lines of “Merry Little Christmas”. It will start so blissfully. So comforting. By the time she reaches “through the years we all will be together …” I will be in tears and hoping no one sees me. I’ll think of the many opportunities I had and the many times I failed to rise to the occasion and make a choice that led somewhere besides ruin.

But by the end of that song I will be filled again with hope and as I continue to focus on the sound of my breath each night as I try and quiet my mind and find a pathway into the peace that comes with slumber I will continue to long for that hope that bridges failure. I will keep searching for that child deep within me and cling to some sense of that magical night when I lastly believed.

To make straight – A review of ‘Lost Memory of Skin’

Lost Memory of Skin was my first exposure to Russell Banks and it definitely will not be my last. Banks is an elegant writer who dares to tackle subterranean subject matter centered on a 21 year old sex offender living under a bridge in a fictional Miami.

After reflecting for a few days upon finishing the book I get the impression that Banks was shooting for a mixture of one part teleology and two parts Mark Twain adventure.

The Kid is much like a John the Baptist figure living in the wilderness below a bridge among the lepers, reflecting on his transgressions and yearning for something beyond his usual urges. The fact that the Kid doesn’t even understand the consequences of his urges is one of the most salient points of the book. This Kid has been abandoned by a culture that has little to offer beyond consumerism and live for the moment bliss as exhibited by his only role model, his mother.

The mother reminds me a lot of Pappy in Huck Finn, and the Kids own version of escapism leads him on a Huck Finn like adventure among the lower classes of modern American society: decaying urban public schools, the military barracks, internet porn, jail and finally a life doomed to pointlessness as he lives below a highway bridge near a waterway with a government issue ankle bracelet monitoring his every move.

Once we get a sense of the place we are in, settings and characters begin to change rapidly, again much like Huck Finn’s river journey, as folks like Paco, The Rabbit, the Shyster, Trinidad Bob and others come and go with rapid pace.

There is even the loss of a ramshackle structure to the might of water to round out our Huck Finn analogy.

I agree with many of the criticism leveled at this book toward the poor development of the secondary characters the Professor and the Writer, but I give Banks a pass for attempting to remain focused on the thematic importance of the issues the Kid is dealing with. The descriptive writing really carries this book in the beginning (especially the scene setting at the beginning and end of a few early chapters) and once the hurricane hits the pace picks up. I struggled with the book for a week and then finished the second half in a day once the real action took off.

Banks does a great job of implying the thematic elements of the title throughout the work. The Kid has no sexual experiences in the real world to develop a memory of, instead a digital sex life of pixels on a screen. What memory of skin he does have is seeing his mother’s naked boyfriends when he was a small boy and interacting with a pet Iguana she brings him from a lost weekend in Mexico.

The Professor is looking to lose the memory of his family upbringing and his apparent service as a duplicitous government agent. He seems also to forget that his skin is his humanity and instead of abusing it with piles and piles of meatloaf and potatoes and pies he should treat himself with respect by taking care of his body.

Again, both the Kid and the Professor abuse their bodies amidst a culture that also seems to lack a memory of anything of value beyond a post World War II surfeit of temporary greatness.

Even the Writer character who makes a brief appearance at the end conveys a sense of this loss of value, at one point even telling the kid that magazine writers make up a lot of their stories based on cursory experiences with their subject matter.

Like John the Baptist living off locusts out in a ravine in the desert, the Kid shows us the frayed edges of the society we have created as he dumpster dives for day over the limit yuppie food to take back to his ramshackle abode beneath a freeway bridge on the outskirts of Calusa.

Stream of consciousness

A friend recently posted on some quite technical elements of the evolution of IT and the internet toward a potenitally closed system akin to a walled garden.

Or something like that.

I have to admit that at 41, information overload has set in and try as I might to keep up with the latest technological developments related to computers – or smartphones or tablets or whatever comes next – it mostly goes over my head.

But on my daily visit to the website of the New York Times – or less than daily now because I don’t want to run afoul of their free article limit and get the blacked out screen of death – I discovered a few things that opened my mind to some new paths to discover.

Link chasing, as I call it, has been one of my favorite past times since I became a heavy blog reader and web surfer in about late 2005. The process usually begins with reading an interesting headline that leads to an interesting article filled with interesting hyperlinks to other interesting articles with other interesting hyperlinks, and so on and so forth.

For a while I struggled to understand if I was ever actually learning something or just chasing links in a circle. I’ve yet to chase links from one article back to the original in this process. It quite normally leads deeper and deeper, to more and more information and yet still more links upon links.

A multitaskers dream!

So back to today’s experience.

I saw this interesting article about young literary wannabes in New York with their literary degrees from Columbia, their vibrant youthfulness and equally vibrant joblessness:

Tim Barker, a junior at Columbia, said he was drawn to the salons for the chance to “discuss ideas at an extremely high level, without worrying about status or material support of traditional institutions: publishing houses or universities.” He added, though, that while he aspires to be a history professor, he was “extremely conscious of the contraction of job opportunities” in publishing and academia.

Inside the bookstore, however, the turmoil of the outside world seemed far away. The lights were low, the conversation crackling.

“This is my fantasy: a room full of books, people talking about books — it smells like books,” explained Ms. Chapman, the journal’s literary editor. “It’s the literary community that I had read about when I was younger. It’s Moveable Feast-type stuff.”

Despite her upbeat take on the proceedings, Ms. Chapman admitted she wasn’t feeling chipper. It was her birthday. A happy occasion? For most, maybe — but not, she explained, when you are turning 25, having graduated summa from Cornell, with a master’s from Columbia, only to find yourself unemployed and back living at home with your parents.

It’s ok deary. You could be living in a dead post-industrial town in a bungalow you bought thinking you would be satisfied to edit a small town newspaper after waiting until 35 to have a kid and overcoming double near fatal life choices a decade earlier only to bounce back and graduate summa from university start a career and have sucess only to have it taken away when some jackass millenials decide the assignment is beneath them so they will make it up and then you find yourself the scandal du jour on the internet in the middle of a slow news week in July four months after your son is born and eight months after buying that small but afordable house in a working class neighborhood only to have somebody you crossed a few months earlier latch on to your big mistake 10 years before and make it the purpose of his life to tell everyone about it and then you go through psychological double jeapordy (much worse than the first time) and seven years later find yourself still pretty much at a stand still only now you are 41 and living in a depression with depression in the same dead post-industrial town where the thing to do is argue about a Confederate statue someone knocked down and now the rednecks ride through town in oversized Toyota trucks with extra large rebel flags flying out the back and the kind of people who ride by your house at 2:30 in the morning the day before Thanksgiving and twice shoot off a gun outside your now six year old son’s window or tailgate you and try to run you off the street on an unmarked residential road 200 yards from your own house because you are doing the speed limit of 30 instead of the normal 50 that people are want to drive down that hill.

(apologies to OSC for channeling Joyce there.)

So anyway, that article lead to discovering this interesting online literary publication, which in turn led to this interesting organization and this even more interesting literary event happening in New York this weekend.

If only.

Terrorists kill six

More senseless killing in Afghanistan.

Abdul Samad, an uncle of four of the children who were killed, disputed the government’s version of the attack. He said his relatives were working in fields near their village when they were attacked without warning by an aircraft.

His brother-in-law, Mohammad Rahim, 50, had his two sons and three daughters with him. They were between 4 and 12 years old and all were killed, except an 8-year-old daughter who was badly wounded, Mr. Samad said.

“There were no Taliban in the field; this is a baseless allegation that the Taliban were planting mines,” Mr. Samad said. “I have been to the scene and haven’t found a single bit of evidence of bombs or any other weapons. The Americans did a serious crime against innocent children, they will never ever be forgiven.”

Mariah

Author’s note: In my last post I actually lied. That was not my first real attempt to write a short story. I’ve been doing it for a long time. I attended a writing seminar earlier this month and the man said that the mind at times is like an attic, so full of stuff that you have to get some of it out in order to have room to work with the rest. Mariah is an homage to Dostoyevsky’s “Notes from the Underground” and is a composite sketch of a lot of people I knew in the year of our lord 1998.

One

I was on my back porch looking at the sky, the clear and distant winter sky full of thousands upon thousands of points of light, when a fowls figure crossed the beam of the moon. It was sort of like a cock block, if you know what I mean. Just when I was closing in on something fleeting this bird cut me off. Train of thought gone, try again my friend. Which is okay, because I was thinking about becoming one with the cosmos, finding out just how far one human can go on his own.
I like to push things, dance on the razor’s edge, dare the void to consume me, because selfishness is freedom, glamour and sparkling defiance of the details, like make up or sugar coated cereal tricking you into believing the nothing. So if you make more than thirty thousand a year I doubt you will want to continue, for if you do then surely anger, no certain fury, will fill your corn fed bosom to the point of, well, fear at most or a feeling of superiority at your prudence in succeeding. I was once like you, in love with the material, awash in the veneer of fashion, feeding off the feelings of uprightness that my conformity brought, or bought I should say, for since nothing comes from nothing you must have something in order to buy your way into conformity.
For me it was the classic English gentleman character that I set out to become ever since I discovered that you had to become something other than yourself. I remember those early days mostly because I still dream of them. Not a day dream, mind you, real dreams, the kind of dreams you dream about, the ones you pray for before you go to sleep at night. As a child I prayed for a dream. I called it the “Notre Dame dream”. I used to pray “dear God, please let me have the Notre Dame dream before I wake up.” It seems strange now for the dream consisted of me, an apparition of beauty that I chased, but never successfully caught up with, set in the midst of some sort of church grounds. I was no more than 10 and I called it the Notre Dame dream because I was football crazy and loved the Fighting Irish, so I assumed I was at the cathedral, since there was a huge tower as I recall that I chased her around. I still dream of her, but through the pollution of my own mind the dreams have changed.
I sleep a lot now. Nearing thirty I have sworn off the drugs and alcohol of the last ten years, so I am prone to twelve hour sleeping days. I dreamt of her again last night, but instead of chasing her around a cathedral I was chasing her in a huge crowd at a Jimi Hendrix concert at the still intact Berlin Wall. Jimi’s guitar was badly out of tune so he was trying to compensate, the frustration showing all the while on his face, until he was saved by the people on the other side of the wall who began throwing bottles full of liquid over the wall, thus breaking up the crowd. I searched for her frantically until nearing the edge of the wall near a precipice I heard a scream, looked up and saw evil men trying to drag her over the wall. I remember running full force and knocking both men off the wall, back to whatever was on the other side, causing them to drop her and me to fall to the ground. When I rose from the ground, of course she was gone.
When I awoke, of course, my entire being was effected by the feeling of this dream, a continuing existential battle, feeling lost and worthless, but still believing there is something I may one day catch up with and be worthy of. I chase knowledge because I believe knowledge is of much greater importance than the market, but since everyone’s facts are filed with the federal computers, the market is infallible, a position defended by the mindless adherence of the vast majority who lend credence to their beliefs with their own definitions.
I am alone mostly now. I board with an elderly woman who lets me stay here out of pity. That and that fact that her family doesn’t want the burden of caring for her or the responsibility of putting her away in a minimum security facility known as a rest home. She keeps a wonderfully beautiful baby girl who’s smile is next to the only faith left for me to believe in. The child is here because her family doesn’t want the burden of caring for her or the responsibility of sending her to a maximum security facility known as a day care. Both her parents chase that larger mental burden known as income which is supposed to alleviate the physical burden of this life. I am not complaining, for I am greatly satisfied by my living situation, though I am daily slashed by the sword of comparison, which is the last weapon of those who surround me: friends, family, acquaintances, anyone registered and caged through no fault of mine. I could combat their sword of comparison with the doctrine of Calvin, the religious philosopher not the young cartoon character, who is pals with Hobbes, who I doubt John Calvin ever heard of. I could say to them ‘look here, we are ruled by divine providence, ignorance of which leads to great misery. I am satisfied with my nine-tenths of nothing and it is you who gain happiness only through cutting others with comparison. Who do you compare yourselves to? Criminals? I hear them – “that scumbag killer! How could he? I’m so glad I’m better than that!” If you gauge yourself by the lowest what does that make you? A rapist? A thief? At least you are not a killer! God bless America!”

Two

Do you see the focus, the single problem affecting me? Have I shown you? Should I let you decide? Fuck no! You are too stupid to decide, what with us here behind the walls of Ft. Bliss with our military smart bombs and Tomahawk missiles (TM?)(c. 1970 or 1370 and by who?) and our unmatched ability to blow shit up. What champions we are, we won the race, obviously the greatest race in the history of the human race: an arms race. We rule the waves, the depths, the ground, the sky, space, we have compartmentalized everything, everyone has their place here in Ft. Bliss, all you gotta do is not ask why, just try Bud Dry. Forget the past, what can you do about it, don’t dwell on the negative, accentuate the positive, mold the mind to ignore that which doesn’t add to our blissful denial.
I won’t show you, I’ll tell you – my single problem is that I can’t forget the past because it is all I have ever known, and my past is like an eternally reincarnated Icarus flying too close to happiness only to burn out and fall. Falling through the air is not much of a problem, actually I dream about that often as well, feeling that the rushing air should be holding me up and not understanding the buoyant concept that makes for so much equality. No it is the contact that shakes the subjective, like a drunk who wakes up the next morning wanting to forget spaces in time colliding.
I can’t show you a story for there is not one. I just beg needs that you will hear my voice and feel my existence. Because even clean eyes can be deceived while they are restrained by the constancy of lusting for release. But I am free. So are you. Free to follow the chimera – free to believe that we are the alpha and the omega, infallible since god has chosen us to rule the world as no other empire has. Or as I have, you can see that we are the self-anointed chosen ones; man deciding what god’s will is. If you are happy, who needs self-respect? Who needs truth? Define it for yourself. Because there is a long fade between the promises of yesterday and the deception of reality, vaguely setting down its feet upon the Earth to show you how and leave you after a moment to ponder the pictures of memory.

Three

Which is why I am here now so full of memory that I must scream at you ‘I don’t understand!’ as I stare at the beauty of the heavens full of silent bliss, light which has no time or place for it is already dead before it reaches my eye. This reminds me of my recent lover, gone now, moved on to dominate her next victim, for she is the insatiable huntress. It sprang so torridly from a minor friendship. I had known her for some time, had not really liked her for I could not respect her ways.
I’d met Mariah through and old friend of mine, Carmen. Actually, Carmen was my last friend as I had succeeded in pissing off all my other conformist friends, but not Carmen, she respected me as no other, and though she was beautiful we were able to maintain a pure friendship, one that could withstand the storms of my passion for besmirching myself with that which I knew was wrong for me.
Shortly after New Years I ran into Carmen at a bar in town. I noticed her as she walked through the door in a long black coat covering her party dress, her radiant smile set against pale skin and dark hair, impossible not to notice. I walked over to say hello.
“Matthew! So good to see you. How have you been” as she kisses my cheek and we embrace.
“Fine”
“Where have you been for so long? I haven’t heard from you” as we remain face to face and hand in hand momentarily.
“I’ve been away, haven’t you heard?”
“No! What happened?”
“I landed myself in trouble again.”
“Matthew, no! Did you get busted like Troy?”
“No, it wasn’t for drugs. It was worse. But I’m over it now. I paid my debt.”
“You don’t want to talk about it?”
“Not here, later I will tell you. How have you been? Let’s have a drink.”
As I ordered myself another beer and Carmen a vodka and cranberry, she told me of her life during the past eight months while I was away.
-I still work at the bistro, still hate school and still love to party. I mean, Matthew, I am only 22 and life can be so dreary and long I figure I will put it off as long as I can- she says with furtive glance at her drink and a sip on the straw – or until Mr. Right comes along.
-Good point. I said.
-I just moved in with an old friend from Charleston, she just moved her from Greenville.
-South or North, I asked her.
- South Carolina. She graduated from Furman and is looking to go to grad school here. She is a few years older than me and a little more disciplined, you know, with school and all. You might like her, Matthew, her name is Mariah, she might be here later.
-I’d like to meet her.
-She’s out with her latest thing, you know, she runs through them like they won’t make any more tomorrow.”
I felt I knew what she meant.

Four

A week later I found myself at Carmen’s apartment on the south side of downtown in the midafternoon. It was a Thursday, I believe, and Mariah was out.
-Well show me the tour.- I said after a brief greeting.
Carmen led me through the apartment, three rooms downstairs with a kitchen and three bedrooms upstairs.
-We use the middle room for storage and Mariah’s study. This is her room. – she said as we walked down the hall.
The room was centered by a large wooden bed, sturdy wooden dressers and chests and pictures everywhere. Without asking I walked through her room and gazed at the daintiness of a girl’s room. It seemed so foreign to me with all the frills and lace and floral impressions. Especially when compared to my recent surroundings before I came back to town. I picked up a picture, one of a wedding party, six maids all in a row.
-Which one is Mariah?- I asked handing Carmen the frame.
-This one.- She said pointing to an attractive blond of medium build with an aura of happiness. I wondered whether it was the appearance or the constitution. Gazing around at various pictures I noticed lots of different young men posed with her.
-She is not in demand is she?- I asked looking at one picture of her surrounded by a cadre of private school looking chums.
-She keeps herself in demand- Carmen said with a wave of the hand, and hearing something she turned and walked down the hall. I set the picture down and just as I exited the room I heard footsteps coming up and Carmen said –Well here she is now!
I looked to see a vibrant young woman trudging up the stairs with a loaded laundry basket, a heavy bag slung over her shoulder and a pocketbook. Sunglasses perched on the top of her head. She looked to be exhausted and so I took the laundry from her.
-Thanks. – She said and Carmen set about introducing us as I carted the laundry back into her room. She sort of knew I was in her room snooping just prior to her arrival, but she didn’t seem to mind.
Carmen and I went downstairs and sat in the living room. She put on a Bob Marley cd and offered me a beer.
-I’d love a beer. Dr. Ellis wouldn’t like it , but he’s not here is he?- I said and followed her into the kitchen.
-I’m so glad to have a day off. Two days, actually. That place gets me sometimes. – Carmen said referring to the small upscale restaurant she worked in. As she closed the refrigerator door I noticed it was covered in more pictures of Mariah and her minions.
-She loves pictures, huh?- I asked as Carmen handed me a beer bottle.
-It looks that way, doesn’t it. I’m not that vain.- She said and I noticed a hint of sarcasm. We went back to the living room and sat down and soon Mariah came down and we all sat and talked and laughed and I remembered how good it was to be free and young and chasing a buzz. We smoked some pot and listened to music and I listened to them talk of their recent male conquests as if it were a game, and it seemed they were both good at it. I knew Carmen to be a flirt, but not a hussy, she was too full of self-respect and happiness for that, but as Mariah talked I sensed she was different.

Five

Over the next few months I fell back into my place again, a petty job to pay the bills, a seat on the train to the garden in the darkness, the spot in life where those of us with memory attempt to hide from it, juggling work and play in the mirror and reflecting balance to the world, a thin screen between what we want and what we need. It was hard for me to find a good job, what with my recent history hanging over me like a cloud, especially in such a small city where I was once a star rising over the horizon, shinning my light to others only though the power of my raging internal atmosphere.
I would see Carmen and Mariah out and about, I would go over on the weekends and grill out and drink and eat and talk and go home as their nights were just beginning. Carmen was still after Prince Mr. Charming Right, but over time I began to notice a pattern in Mariah. She did run through them like they were not going to make anymore tomorrow. Other mutual friends I had with Carmen would come by their house and sure as sugar Mariah would hunt them, conquer them and send them away. I would listen to her complain of loneliness and a desire for stability, but the only man stable in her life was Jack from Tennessee. He was an old friend of hers, I noticed. Jack Daniels, old No. 7 Tennessee sour mash. Slowly I began to meet some of Mariah’s friends and they all seemed to tell the same story. One night I met a friend of her’s named Faith, and I guess Faith took to me because we ended up on the floor in their spare bedroom in the darkness naked and passionate for about two hours. Afterwards as we lie in the light of the moon that fell across the floor beside us Faith told me she was worried about Mariah.
-Have you noticed anything strange about her?- she asked me.
-Well I have only known her for about five months.-
-Have you noticed anything?-
-Other than the obvious, no.-
Perching up and propping her head on her hand she asked me what the obvious was.
-I think that for such a lovely girl, she drinks way too much of that shit.- I said.
-I know and she is putting on weight too, she used to be so thin, but that’s when she was partying a lot.-
-Yeah- I said as I reached for a cigarette, which I lit, and then handed one to Faith. As we lie smoking in the darkness she told me many sordid details of Mariah’s life since college. I learned she was the only daughter of a wealthy South Carolina family and was the toast of Greenville during her years at Furman. She had met her Prince Mr. Charming Right her last year and was supposed to marry. But he cheated on her one night at a frat party with a younger student and Mariah took to Jack on a permanent basis as a result of a binge and a one-night stand she had shortly after her breakup. Faith began to make sense of the pattern I had noticed in Mariah’s life: short –lived flame outs of passion, falling in love today and fucking somebody else in a drunken stupor tomorrow. I felt greatly sorry for her.
Faith and I dated for a few weeks and all seemed to be going well. I too have a propensity to fall in love easily, and as such I think I am more in love with being in love than with the woman I fall in love with. I never said these words to Faith. I never got the chance. Five weeks after I had met Faith I was at Carmen’s place hanging out on a weeknight. She was not in a good mood because she was upset with Mariah.
-She brought home some complete stranger home from a club last night, and left him here when she went to work.-Carmen said with near fury. –I got up this morning and found a note under my door saying he was asleep and she would pick him up at lunch, but damnit Matthew I was scared as hell to leave my own room. In my own house! I don’t know this person.-
I could tell she was upset. We were preparing a meal. Both of us liked to cook, and she was really good at it. I tried to change the subject but she kept on about Mariah and her different man every week.
-It’s getting old, and I am tired of it Matthew. I don’t know what to do.-
-The best thing is to tell her, I guess.-
-What, tell my best friend that she is a slut?- she said incredulously.
-If the shoe fits …-
-Oh it definitely fits- she said, cutting me off.
We changed the subject and went on to eat and then we went out drinking. The next night I had a date with Faith, but when it came time for me to call her she was not at home, so I called her cell phone and she answered.
-Hello- She sounded drunk.
-Faith where are you? I thought we had plans?-
-We did but not anymore.-
I was stunned. –What happened?- I asked her.
-I can’t go out with a coke head.- was her reply- Goodbye Matthew.-
I knew what that was about. Weeks earlier while I was out with Carmen and Mariah and Mariah’s flavor of the moment that notion crossed my mind and before I knew it I was in a stall in the men’s room with a straw in my nose and power running through my body. Carmen knew what was up and she asked could I get her some, which I did. We partied well into the morning and I drove home like an idiot at about 530 in the morning. For a couple of weeks we fell into a pattern of me, Carmen and Mariah getting blitzed before we went out. See I also have a propensity to be in love with bliss, my own version of it of course, not the bliss you find in Webster’s, but a twisted happiness that is born of despair. Carmen told me later that Mariah, in a spiteful tone, told Faith I was a crack head, which Carmen couldn’t believe since we had all done it together many times.
-She seemed to be purposefully undermining you.- Carmen said.
I was very angry and did not come around for a while.

Six

Inside the enigma there is always change and so over the next few weeks I found myself reeling from the bitterness imposed on me by the self-righteous animosity another person suffers from. Once again shedding skin like a reptile, cold blooded and always moving out of the old and into an uncertain future, I moved from group to group looking for a comfortable place to unwind. I had been working a steady job, even promoted to a management position, until the owner of the company asked me to lie to a coworker about a job order and when I refused he fired me. Fuck him.
Registered with unemployment I was guaranteed a few hundred dollars a month, enough to have a good time and not worry about things. Some new friends of mine, specifically a tall athletic brunette named Dana, began frequenting a Mexican restaurant on Mondays to take advantage of their beer specials. Mexican draft for 99 cents and Newcastle, the king of all beers, for an unbelievable buck seventy five. A few weeks after my affair with Faith a group of about nine of us were hanging, laughing and generally getting drunk at Ernesto’s when an old friend of mine, Lucas, showed up with another of Dana’s friends. I had known him briefly in college through another friend (strange what a small world it really is!) but had not seen him for a few years. He was an aspiring jazz trumpeter, lost in the wavering world of Miles, Coltrane and Dizzy, and he was pretty good at it all.
-Lucas, hermano, que pasa!- I said trying to be funny.
-Seenyour, eet tis gut to see you, no?- he replied with a laugh, and as we shook hands he sat down. There were eleven of us now and we began to raise quite a ruckus. The wait staff was ever so friendly, especially Frankie, a slender Mexican from Acapulco. He was about my age and of the most pleasant temperament. The other waiter, Ignacio, somewhat smaller and more round, not fat but healthy, was just as friendly but quieter. Whereas Frankie would joke back with us and answer questions (will you take us to Acapulco next time you go?), Ignacio would just smile and walk away and return time after time with pitchers of beer and frozen mugs, until we had dried their keg and drank their stock or run them clean out of mugs. They loved us to death. As the rest of the group merrily interacted, Lucas and I began to catch up.
-Man, I have not seen you in what, four years- I said.
-At least that. I think since that house party on the south side right after I graduated and came back here. And here I am once again stuck in this town. –
A common complaint of those who grew up here, went away to school or travel and returned was how boring our town was compared to larger cities. I understood this complaint, but to me it was inherent to the nature of the thing in itself to be a small, industrial, quasireligious southern mill town, forget the faux pas southern congenial crap, that was all b.s. to me, it was about small people in a small town living small lives. In other words, I felt like a king among men at times and reveled in it. Or was I too scared or complacent to dread in deeper waters? Who knew? Who really cared?
-What have you been doing- I asked him before he could ask me.
-I just came back from Europe three weeks ago. I spent nine months with a quartet led by Bill Rhodes, the piano player. –
I had heard of the guy. He was no Red Garland, but who was?
Lucas continued. –I been to Denmark, England, France, Germany and Austria.-
Which blew me away because the most interesting place I had ever been, besides New York City, was prison, unless you count the state hospital I visited for five days earlier in the spring. I could see why he was unhappy to be back here. This place compared to Copenhagen in the late 20th century must really suck, but compared to Yanceyville, Salisbury or Butner, I was quite content. He had heard of my troubles, and being less than discreet tried to get me to talk about it, but luckily Dana came to my rescue.
-Are we drinking another pitcher of beer guys?- She asked with a slyness inherent to a 21 year old sultress.
-I’m game.- I said.
-We know this much man, you always game. You so game you broke the frame.-
-True dat, true.- I said and anyone listening would have thought we were crazy, which Lucas did.
-What are you talking about?- he asked, obviously perplexed.
Dana jumped in first. –Ebonics, man, it is all the rage. Matthew is making a dictionary and even spreading it to I.E.-
Still confused Lucas said – Dare I ask what I.E. is?-
-Initialized Ebonics- I said- but let’s not got there. Are you still drinking with us Lucas, seenyour?-
-See, seenyour, I steal drink wit yoo- he replied and we laughed and drank until closing time, our group thinning slightly to five of us when Frankie brought Dana and I our tab.
-Thank you- Frankie said-We see you next Monday, ok- with his last syllable rising.
-Yes, definitely- it was Dana, always flirtatious- We’ll bring more next week.-
-Ok, Ok. We see you.- Frankie laughed as he and Ignacio and chip boy began to clear our cluttered table. They loved us because unlike most asshole rednecks in this town we were not condescending toward Mexicans and tipped them well above the obligatory minimum.
As we walked out Lucas and I exchanged digits and he went on – Man you have to come to In The Sky, this little bistro downtown, on Thursday, they have jazz open mic and a bunch of us jam from seven till eleven. Matt Kendrick is the host and leader. It’s smoking.-
I told him I might come, and he was without doubt elated. We retired to the parking lot and said our goodbyes and me, Dana and J.C., one of her other friends, went on downtown to raise some more hell. I still had my pager from work and it was about this time that it went off. Instinctively all three of us checked our pagers.
-It’s me- I said as Dana was still searching rummaging through her pocketbook – You could lose an army in there. You can stop searching D.-
-Thank god. I don’t think I’d ever have found mine anyway.-
I looked at the number on the display, not recognizing it, I called it anyway with Dana’s car phone. A man’s voice yelled into the receiver amidst a loud noise in the background.
-This is Matthew, somebody from there paged me.-
The voice yelled –Anyone page a Matthew- and I heard a familiar voice say –yo, it was me!-
In a few seconds I was talking to my friend Moody.
-M-dog, what’s up?- he said.
-No muy mucho- I said, drunk and still in Mexican mode. –Where you at, Mood?-
-The Bear, waiting on your drunk ass to get here. Y’all still at Ernesto’s?-
-We’re just leaving to come down there. You got what I want?-
-True dat.- he said.
-True dat, true. We’ll be there in twenty.- I told him.
-What, then?- he said.
-What, then hell. I was waiting on you. Peace!-
-Peace out- he replied in our new found language of the street. As we hung up I laughed to myself about how my professors at school would be so perplexed at the humor we found in talking Ebonics. We thought it was a riot.
Downtown from Ernesto’s on the north side was a 10 minute drive through town, which is just enough time to get cheesed. The older I grew the harder, or should I say, less enjoyable I found getting stoned after I was drunk, so I only hit the bowl twice, which was enough since J.C. had a small piece of some of that funky stuff. It was proper.
-Man where on Earth did you get this shit- I asked him.
-I could tell you but then I would have to kill you.-
-I don’t want that for sure though- I said, passing him the pipe as I almost choked my brain out of my eyes and my lungs out of my throat.
Dana laughed at me. –Getting old M, you are becoming a light weight.-
-No sweat- I said – Nothing Barry can’t fix.-
-Oh, so you talking to Barry tonight- she asked me with a raised eyebrow in the driver’s mirror.
-Yeah, I might speak later at the Bear. Why, you wanna talk too?-
-You know this man- she said and drive us through town as J.C. puffed the pipe. The car stunk like fried ham by the time we passed the library on Fifth Street and soon we were on the two block area of town where the city fathers in their benevolence allowed us a small red light district. The cops were pretty lenient here, what with all the taxes they collected from the drinkers in this town, and did not really mess with anybody until closing time, around two thirty. We parked in a gravel lot behind an antique shop and crossed the street to the Bear. The door man Chris opened up as he saw us coming and soon we were in the netherworld of pitchers, smoke, trips to the head and all the young twentysomething girls who’s goal in life was to get fucked up and roll with the flow. Gotta love being twentysomething sometimes.
I had been in and out of the scene a few times, and nearing thirty was somewhat of an expert on who was who and who was new. Still young enough to pass for twenty three and old enough to talk with the thirties who were still lost on bar stools, as always I first had to vacillate my way around and speak to all my different cadres. I often hated having to select between this group and that, but since we all just can’t get along, for they haven’t imagined all the people yet, I was forced to cut short a visit here to make an appearance there.
Finally I found Moody.
-What up dawg- he extended his hand to mine.
-Jus’ chillin like Bob Dylan cause I ain’t robbing or stealin’- I replied as we did our handshake and he looked at me funny, but didn’t they all, a tall, intellectual white boy who was in love with the idea of having soul.
-Man, you just ain’t right sometimes.- he said with a smile.
-I know, dog, I know.-
Dana came around with our pitcher of Newcastle, still the undisputed king of all that is beer, and I just cannot explain how good that stuff is on tap. She handed me the glasses and I poured us a round. I had known her for a while, a year or so and we had become very close since I came back home. We were both Libras and we had a lot in common except that she was a blooming flower and I was a fading incandescent light bulb, or so I thought. We raised our glasses for a toast and I said to her –Libra twin powers activate … form of beer … shape of pitcher.- And we clinked glasses and drank, she almost blowing it out of her nose due to the incessant laughter. I was good at making people think I was ‘twacked out.
-You are not right, dude.- she said as she searched again in her pocketbook for a smoke.
-I know. I know all too well since you are like the third person to tell me that in the last hour.- And as I handed her a cigarette and lit it for her she smiled and said –But you know we love you anyway.-
-True dat, true- I said as I lit my own smoke and puffed away at the vessel constricting fire stick of death as the American Heart Association calls it for the sake of the children. Halfway through the smoke, Moody tugged on the back of my shirt and with a nod of the head I knew it was my turn to transact.
The men’s room at the Bear was small, a sink across from the doorway, three urinals across on the far wall to the right and one stall with a door, good for taking a dump or a bump. It was in this stall that a good deal of the street level transactions took place, were processed and stuck in a matchbook for distribution, or the product was put to use. Mood did all three at the same time, with feeling. As we closed the stall door I caught a strange glance from an older biker type who smirked and said – Y’all don’t piss on each other in there.- He knew the deal and I said –We never cross streams – as I pulled the door to and held it shut since there was no latch.
-Watcha want a g?- he asked me as he pulled out a golf ball in a sandwich baggie, with other smaller cousins secured with bread ties. We don’t eat that many sandwiches.
-Make it two dog.-I said- I better be prepared for what lies ahead.-
-What lies ahead?- he asked me as he used a matchbook corner to scoop the flavescent contents of the baggie into a smaller one.
-Who knows, but I know I’ll feel good about it.-
-That’s for damn sure, because this here is the butter. Acetone based.-
-It looks like the butter-
-Yellow mellow, baby, so gimmie your money if the butter is what you want.- he said with a boogie and a transaction and a blast to get us started.
-Damn, Mood, that is the shit- I said as I tied to clear my nose and power began to make me feel like Freud in Vienna circa 1890.
-I told you- he said in song- It’s the buh-tear-
-What, then?- I said
-What then, hell, mothafucka I am waiting on you – and with that we went out one at a time, me lingering to actually use the bathroom for its intended purpose, although getting high seemed like a perfectly normal bodily function to me by now.
When I went out to the bar the crowd had grown in size or so it seemed and I was feeling fine, eight miles high as Roger once said, or was that David, I can’t remember. Looking for Dana was not hard because she was taller than most men and when I found her lo and behold there was Carmen and a female friend of her’s named Tracy talking to Miss Dana. I had not seen Carmen in a few weeks, had talked to her on the telephone, and this first thing she said to me was –Mariah’s over there with her new flavor and Faith is with her.-
-I don’t give a fuck- I said – I really don’t, because me and Barry are like that- and I demonstrated by wrapping my middle finger around my index and holding them up.
Dana laughed and said –I can tell by the funk on your nose.-
-Oh shit, I forgot to get nostril clearance before takeoff.-
They all laughed and Dana said it was not really noticeable unless you were looking for other signs, of which she was, so I handed Barry to her and the three of them put a big dent in him before they came out of the ladies room full of its four private stalls and a shelf in each one, supposedly for a purse or something but ultimately convenient for having a small conversation with Mr. Barry White.
Apparently while so engaged in the ladies room Carmen took the opportunity to tell Dana about my experience with Faith. Further she went on to tell her how Mariah was jealous of my friendship with Dana and had told Faith that Dana and I were crackheads.
This all came to my attention when Dana returned, handed me the matchbook and smiled and said –I’ll be right back.- I watched as she proceeded over to where Mariah, Faith and Mariah’s new flavor were and you could clearly hear her over the entire bar yelling about a goddamned fat ass drunk slut bitch you better never call me a crackhead or I’ll bust your fat ass bitch slut face in and I don’t care who your daddy is and let me tell you something else … until Andy the barkeep, who was friends with us, went over and told Dana to pipe down, which she did after telling them all to kiss her beautiful round ass, in so many words, and sauntered back over to us for a round of high fives from all but Carmen who was disgusted because she would have to deal with it all later.
We didn’t care for now and we had a swell time for a Monday in a quaint, sleepy, quasireligious mill town, never mind all that southern gentility crap.
We were alive!

The Other Side of the Window

Author’s note: The Other Side of the Window is my first real attempt to write a short story. It is about two-thirds complete and I’d like to offer it here in lieu of being able to join any writer’s group. Constructive feedback on style, content and meaning is appreciated.

As the officer brought the next customer through the heavy steel doors leading from the vehicle portico into the holding area, Sanders didn’t really want to get up from his newspaper.
“Fucking incessant,” he thought to himself as the officer led the heavy-set man across the shiny-waxed floor interspersed with eight cold gray benches and outlined with holding cells across the way from the large glass windows separating Sanders from the prisoner holding area.
It had been a relatively normal Saturday at the magistrate’s office. A few walk-ins in the morning looking to charge somebody with a petty misdemeanor like harassing phone calls or trespassing. The clerk from the large grocery chain brought her weekly stack of summons for bad checks. A deputy brought a haggard mother in to finally get commitment papers for her out of control son who was too long on the crystal.
Now, just a little before lunch time, Stewart was the first officer of the day to bring in a customer. Sanders guessed DUI. Still hung from the previous night the man probably made an erratic turn, or crossed the center line, or weaved in and out of his lane of travel, thus catching the watchful gaze of senior patrol officer Stewart, who was itchy for a collar to get his day going in the right direction.
Stewart was a stalwart veteran of the city’s east side. As square jawed and flat topped as they come, he had seen his share of the drugs and violence that infested that part of the city. Since the department began tracking arrest stats a couple of years back, veteran patrol men like Stewart fought like tomcats to get assigned to one of the 12 beats in the inner east or south side of the city. That’s where the action was, and if an SPO was ever going to make sergeant, he could get his numbers in that fertile field.
Sanders put the sports section down and got up from his chair to move into position. Stewart led the man into one of the four holding cells. The man was dressed pretty well for an arrestee, wearing a button down shirt that hung over his belt line, a pair of dark, designer jeans and mandatory Lugz. A subtle leather jacket topped off the ensemble. But it was something about the man’s countenance that caught Sanders’ attention. The man looked down as he walked slowly, a forlorn look on his wrinkled brow, resigned to something, and not at all like the aggressive, defiant types that officers from the busy part of town normally carried in tow.
Gathering his pen and notepad, Sanders moved to his window and waited for the officer. Stewart was a little taller than most officers, military trim, and no nonsense. He moved with confidence, posture erect and certain of his actions. After shutting the holding cell door, he turned to gather his clip board from a bench, taking off his black leather gloves and adjusting his belt.
As he approached the window, he looked at Sanders. “Can you buzz me in for a minute?”
Since moving to the new glamour slammer from the dingy office in the basement of the courthouse, the senior magistrate had instituted several new rules. No smoking at your desk, no eating at your desk and no buzzing in every officer on the force into the nice new office. Sanders liked the cops and didn’t really fall into the power play between the magistrates, who were really no more than glorified clerks, and the patrolmen. Sanders buzzed Stewart in without hesitating.
“Officer Stewart, how’s it going?”
“Good. Listen,” Stewart said as he hitched his thumb up over his shoulder aiming back to the holding area. “I came across this guy over in the circle holding a gun on another guy down on his knees. When he saw me he took off. He’s going to give you some sob story, but he needs to get locked up.”
“I hear you,” Sanders said.
As officer Stewart went back out the door into the holding area, Sanders looked back toward the man in the cell. He was still looking downward, listless as if in thought. Kind of an odd time for a robbery, Sanders thought. Kind of an odd perp for an armed robbery too. But after three years as a magistrate, Sanders wasn’t really surprised by much anymore.
His first day on the job, 22 and fresh from dropping out of college again, his knees got a little wobbly when he said “bail is set at $50,000 secured” to the large black man on the other side of the thin Plexiglas in the old office. That guy was charged with rape and it was only the heinous thought of the violence of the act that gave Sanders the mettle to look the man in the eye as he sent him packing. After a few months, he had developed a reputation for firmness that most of the officers appreciated. As the scourge of crack and violence among otherwise hapless young men spread across the city, the police department had responded with a zero tolerance policy for petty crimes such as trespassing, loitering and littering along with a strategy of stacking charges where perps ended up with several charges for one instance of drug possession.
Sanders played along by being tough on the petty crimes, routinely locking up every thuglet that stood before him charged with trespassing with a $500 bail.
Stewart moved into position in front of Sanders’ window, placing his left hand on the Bible and raising his right hand.
“Do you swear?” Sanders said coyly.
“I do,” Stewart replied. “Your honor, this morning I was on routine patrol in Piedmont Circle and as I came past the 1300 block I observed a black male on his knees at the edge of the sidewalk with another black male standing over him holding a pistol to his head. When the man holding the gun saw my patrol vehicle, he turned and ran between a row of homes. I activated blue lights and siren and proceeded around the far side of the row and saw the man toss his gun onto the ground and run along the sidewalk. As my vehicle approached the suspect, he stopped and turned around and put his hands in the air. I exited my vehicle and drew my weapon and ordered the suspect onto the ground. He complied with my commands and I placed him under arrest for robbery with a dangerous weapon.”
The story was familiar but the perp was out of place, Sanders thought as he took the officer’s notes back to his desk to type up the arrest warrant. Pounding the letters on the typewriter into the preformatted fields on the warrant Sanders’ mind continued to mull over the details of the story. The man’s demeanor just didn’t fit with the normal circumstances.
More often than not if an officer brought in a perp whose actions outlined the circumstances Stewart just described he would be bucked up and cocky, rapping a lyric from a gangsta rap song, staring coldly into his new surroundings as if all too familiar with what comes next.
Sanders ripped the finished warrant from the type writer and made his way back to the window. He signed the warrant and separated the triplicate forms into their necessary segments: one for the officer to execute, one for the perp and one for the court file.
He was just finishing the personal information on the blue release form when Stewart brought the man to the other side of the window.
Sanders looked up.
This guy was soft and domestic, you could tell by his plump face and drooping eyes that he was no more streetwise than Theo Hucskstable.
“Mr. Gilmer,” Sanders said, “You are being charged with armed robbery …”
At those words the man collapsed his upper body on the counter across from Sanders, raising his cuffed hands to his round face in sorrow.
“Naw, sir, please, please, oh lord,” the man cried. “I’m sorry, sir, please, I never done nothing like this … oh lord, please …”
Stewart jerked at the man’s upper arm.
“Stand up there and listen to the judge,” he said as he pointed to Sanders through the window.
The man raised his face to Sanders as tears filled the corners of both eyes. As Sanders continued, those tears fell in great drops along his cheeks.
“You are being charged with armed robbery,” Sanders said. The man’s lips quivered.
“Sir, I’m begging you sir. I just needed some money to get milk and diapers for my baby. I don’t know what I was thinking. Sir, I’m sorry, sir,” he said, raising the back of his wrist to wipe the tears from his right cheek.
For once Sanders believed. The facts all added up. He looked at the man. He looked at Stewart, who paused to look up from his half-completed arrest sheet to see that there was an uncertain look in Sanders eyes.
Sanders fidgeted with his pen in his right hand. All he had to do was fill in the bubble with a bond amount and send the man on to the jail. But other thoughts filled Sanders head.
He thought about the hardened pricks that came before him with their scornful smirks and disinterested looks. He thought about the times he had been spit at in the other office, as the perps stooped down to put their mouths up to the small, waist-level hole and spit across the counter as Sanders moved to one side. He thought about the time the man said “fuck your gramma” to Sanders and how he almost lost it, coming around the counter and out the office door toward the man until another officer put his hand on Sanders chest.
This man wasn’t like that.
“Please sir, I never been in no trouble,” the man continued.
Sanders looked at Stewart who was furiously scribbling something. Sanders looked down and saw that Stewart was writing on the back of the arrest sheet tablet.
Suddenly, Stewart slapped the back of the tablet up against the window.
“NO MERCY!!”
“DRUG DEALER”
Sanders knew what the officer wanted. He wanted a felony collar with a stiff bond so he could walk the man 20 feet over to the jail intake door, where two jailers in all black stood ready to take the man in.
Stewart wanted to dump the man off with the jailer, hand him the arrest sheet and get back in his vehicle and back to the circle so he could find another perp and get another arrest.
Sanders knew what the man wanted. Or rather what he didn’t want. And Sanders didn’t think the man deserved it either. In the bottom of his stomach Sanders felt a swell of empathy. But there was Stewart, still holding the tablet up to the window and staring a hole right through the glass.
The man collapsed again on the counter and Stewart had to use both hands to hold him up as Sanders said “Bail is set at $5,000” and ripped the top form from the perforated tab and handed it to Stewart.
Stewart nodded to Sanders as he propped the man up and began to lead him across the holding area.
“Oh lord. My baby,” the man continued to cry as he walked away.
Sanders placed the second copy of the release form into the white file and placed it in the basket for the clerk to pick up Monday morning. It would be just one of hundreds from that weekend.
Stewart was diligently straightening his arrests sheets as Sanders turned away from the clerk’s basket. Their eyes briefly met and Stewart nodded before taking the arrestee by the arm and leading him across the holding area floor toward the heavy doors that led into the jail itself.
The man shuffled as Stewart guided him toward the gatekeeper, who was already putting on his Latex gloves and instructing the operator in the control room to pop the lock. The man continued to wipe his cheek on his shoulder as if drying those tears would somehow make a difference in what lay ahead for him.
By the time Sanders straightened his area near the window and readied it for the next episode in his day, the gatekeeper was probing the man’s mouth with his Latex covered fingers, checking his ears, patting him down and emptying his pockets probably for the fifth time that day. After the gatekeeper was convinced the well dressed perp wasn’t hiding anything Stewart handed the man and some papers off much like a baton in a relay and headed back out across the holding area toward the exit door. Eagerly he gave a hands up to Sanders and said “Be back soon!”
Sanders watched as Stewart entered the vestibule between the holding area and the main exit to the sally port. Stewart unlocked his gun from the box in the wall, holstered the pistol and replaced the key. Ready to resume his patrol he asked master control for permission to exit. Safe in the assurance of the video camera on the wall, control opened the lock and Stewart disappeared into the bright sun of the late morning.
Sanders merely wanted to return to his newspaper, but arriving back at his desk he took one look at the stack of worthless check summons he needed to process and resigned himself to the fate of the rest of the afternoon. Though the state dutifully provided forms with neat boxes to be filled in, other boxes to be checked and yet more boxes to be signed and dated the interaction of Sanders fingers and the typewriter keys, the process of positioning the paperwork, removing the finished product, signing it in triplicate, tearing this perforation here, folding along this line there, placing the copies in order neatly in the specially designed white sleeves and stamping the envelope across the single black line at the top added much misery to Sanders day. Neatness was not his forte. As a child he did not like to color within the lines and ever since that time he searched for still more lines to be crossed.
Crossing lines was to Sanders as natural as the rich blue sunlit sky that cast an amber glow across the tops of the city skyscrapers that September morning as he made his way to the office from his parking lot several blocks away. Strange it was then that Sanders, just a few weeks past his 23rd birthday, had found himself in a white-carpeted office across from a diminutively frail woman sitting behind an incredible oak desk being interviewed for a job as a warrant clerk. A few hours earlier he had been at the employment office at his father’s urging, taking the typing test, searching the computer system, entering codes for the career field he might have interest in. At least it wasn’t the Army, Sanders thought at the time, and when he found an entry for “deputy clerk of court” he thought that might be an interesting way to spend 40 hours a week in return for a monetary consideration.
After a phone call from the job placement counselor, and a return home for a shirt and tie, Sanders found himself sitting across from Mrs. Francis, the clerk of court for the county, as she looked his test results and application sheet over.
“My, but things are happening fast for you today young man,” she said as she offered him a job working in the basement of the courthouse processing paperwork, as she put it. After a few months of training Sanders was placed on the second shift, 4 to midnight, and spent two years listening to every type of neighborhood complaint, domestic dispute and otherwise general disagreement imaginable among men (and women!) when he was not otherwise processing mounds of paperwork or signing arrest sheets for the officers.
To be sure the collars, as the cops called it, were the most interesting part of the job for Sanders and he never ceased in delighting to hear the officer’s stories. Not all of them were as dramatic as Stewart’s well-dressed robber but many of them were nearly as entertaining.
The great majority of them where mundane rehashes of the same testimony, well coached by the brass at the police department in conjunction with the district attorney, with a goal of minimizing appealable error by the officer in the performance of his duty.
“Your honor on this date I was on routine patrol in the blah blah blah block of yadda yadda yadda street when I observed (fill in the blank here with unimaginable nonsense on the part of other humans beings) … and proceeded to exercise my lawfully sworn duty to serve and protect …” was the basic mantra repeated over and over. At times the fill in the blank may be interesting along the lines of “saw a man with flesh hanging from his arm approaching my patrol vehicle in the 700 block of East 19th St. Upon exiting my patrol unit the victim advised he had been slashed at with a butcher knife by his girlfriend Towanda Hairston (that’s her in the curlers and housecoat he says with a thumb over the shoulder) because he spent the $8 dollars she gave him for milk and bread and a pack of hot dogs on a six pack of beer, one pack of Kools and a bag of pork rinds.”
Or something uglier still such as “responded to a call in the 1400 block of Sherwood Road to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Van Story and their daughter Melanie. While there I was advised that Melanie is being harassed by a young man, Trey Epperson (yes that Trey Epperson’s son) by means of telephonic communication. Mr. Van Story, tiring of the phone calls and his daughter’s tears, decided to record the last phone call from the younger Epperson. Yes I do have it here on tape your honor and I would like to play this for you as evidence.” The tape crackles as the voice reminds Sanders of the many times he endured similar taunting at the hands of the youth of that well to do section of town. “Yeah, uh, Melanie, I don’t know why you won’t go out with me. I tell you what. You think you are so great. You’re ready. Yeah, you know you want it, I got a dick as big as a Louisville slugger for you. You know you want it. I’ll talk to you after second period.”
Sanders took the fair and impartial aspect of his job seriously. Probably a little too seriously at times, but you can rest assured that he much enjoyed looking at the younger Epperson, with his ruddy cheeks and nice Polo shirt tucked in to neatly ironed khaki pants, as he stood beside his family lawyer on the other side of the window and said “Bond is set at $15,000″ to which the lawyer recoiled “Your honor, this young man is from one of the finest families in the city. His parents are right outside. Surely you can release him to their custody.”
“Then they should have no problem raising the money or hiring a bail bondsman for a fee of 15 percent,” Sanders shot back. Powerless, the attorney angrily gathered his papers and placed his ink pen back in the inside pocket of his dark blue suit coat as the police officer smiled at Sanders before leading the young man across the floor to the gatekeeper.
That was probably as much punishment as the young man would endure for such a vulgar display of arrogance toward the Van Story girl, Sanders thought, and he was going to make sure he spent at least a half hour in the jail processing area while the bail paperwork was being arranged and cash paid upstairs in the clerk’s main office.
Sanders knew he could expect a complaint to be filed by the lawyer with Mrs. Francis, they always did when they did not get their way, but so too did the police commanders.
These thoughts toiled around in Sanders head as he drifted through the rest of the afternoon. In the back of his mind, tough, somewhere deep in the recess of gray matter, neurons and chemical interactions, Sanders kept wondering if he served justice when he put Stewart’s well dressed robber in jail that morning. When Stewart slapped the back of the writing pad up against the other side of the window and Sanders read the words “NO MERCY” he knew a visit from the patrol captain would take place later the next week if he did not accede to Stewart’s demand.
But something about that case bothered Sanders. And it grew inside of him as the day progressed. When it was his turn to be relieved at the end of his shift, Sanders was still thinking about the man, and his choice, as he retraced his steps back down Third Street from the new 10 story jail, passed the local and federal court houses on the right, across Church Street, passed the glass bank tower on the left with its nauseating seawater green reflective windows and up the hill toward the corner gravel lot where he paid $35 a month to park his small Honda …

Power Fails

I hear they preach compassion
I see people passed out on the street
I try to smile courageous
But I don’t know what it means
To make you feel the way I feel

So I take the slow train
So I can spend more time off my feet
Power fails
But some are satisfied and complete
With answers so surreal (just watch the kill)

Feel free to wake me when the bombings done
For the camera’s reel
The Fertile Crescent is where two rivers run
The desert feels alone
Why can’t the flowers come back home and grow?

It’s been forever
But I finally felt your face inside a dream
Fingertips tingled
As I caressed lucidity
The mind’s a field (sculpt with skill)

The torture abated
So we ride the ridge to see
Glean our profits
While they cleanse the refugees
But the cue cards a real
They help close the deal

Feel free to wake me when your pretension’s done
For the camera’s reel
The Fertile Crescent is where two rivers run
The desert feels alone
Why can’t the flowers come back home and grow?

c. 1998

Golden LEAF invests $350,000 in Project BizFuel in Rockingham County

Wentworth, N.C. (September 13, 2011) – The Rockingham County Business & Technology Center today announces it has received a $350,000 grant from the Golden LEAF Foundation to help purchase an electricity generator for Project BizFuel. With these funds, the Center continues its push to develop a renewable energy model for Rockingham County and what hopes to be the first stage of a renewable energy park.

Total funds secured for Project BizFuel now totals almost $1.4 million. Construction on the methane collection system commenced in May, and it is scheduled to be completed by the end of October. A flare unit that will burn unused methane gas is currently being built and is scheduled to be installed by the end of November. Electric interconnect upgrades necessary to feed BizFuel’s electricity to the grid are scheduled to begin in January 2012 and be completed by the end of June 2012.

“Everything is on track to have this project completely installed and operating by July 2012,” said Mark Wells, executive director of the Rockingham County Business & Technology Center. “The final piece for which we need to complete funding is the electric generator, and Golden LEAF just gave us a great boost to make that a reality,” added Wells. $600,000 is the remaining balance needed to complete Project BizFuel, and other grant sources are being sought to fulfill that gap.

“Project BizFuel was highly ranked by the Rockingham County community during the Golden LEAF Community Assistance Initiative process,” said Dan Gerlach, President of Golden LEAF. “The project will continue to benefit the county by reinvesting the revenue from the landfill gas collection into job-creating economic development projects.”

This funding for BizFuel closes out the Community Assistance Initiative Golden LEAF started in Rockingham County a year ago through which Golden LEAF invested $3.3 million to various job-creating projects in the county.

About the Rockingham County Business & Technology Center:

The RCBTC is an e-NC Authority Business and Technology Center designed to create an entrepreneur-friendly, technology-enabled environment in Rockingham County. The Center helps entrepreneurs learn how to plan, start and grow businesses, while making sure they understand how to use technology to be competitive in today’s global marketplace. For more information call (336) 342-7853 or visit their web site at www.rockinghambusiness.org.

About Golden LEAF Foundation:

The Golden LEAF Foundation is a nonprofit organization established in 1999 to help transform North Carolina’s economy. The foundation receives one-half of North Carolina’s funds from the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement with cigarette manufacturers and places special emphasis on assisting tobacco-dependent, economically distressed and/or rural communities across the state. The Golden LEAF Foundation works in partnership with governmental entities, educational institutions, economic development organizations and nonprofits to achieve its mission. The foundation has awarded 1,110 grants worth over $511 million since its inception. To learn more about applying for a grant, visit www.goldenleaf.org or call (888) 684-8404.

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The voice of one (Crying in the wilderness)

If you checked in with me a decade ago and asked me if I ever thought I could defend the right of two persons of the same sex to pursue their idea of happiness in the form of a marriage I would have said “When hell freezes over.”
As a child of the New South I may have been raised in racially integrated schools but there were proper limits to my understanding of equality. Raised in an all white suburb on the outskirts of Winston-Salem in the late 1970s and 80s you can imagine the foundations of my moral and political philosophy.
Jesse and Jerry. Helms and Falwell. Twin pillars of my understanding of what it meant to be American, moral and free. No one pointed me in their direction. My home was relatively free of politics and focused more so on family, football and free-time. All that changed when my grandfathers died suddenly, one after the other (I was blessed with three!) in a three-year period from 1981 to 1984.
Stunned by the loss of what I felt was my connection to the wisdom of the past, and having had my thirst for knowledge whetted by teachers and grandmothers alike, I looked around and settled on Republicanism and the certainty of Christianity, which my mother went running to after her father died, as the paths to set my feet upon.
Like many human beings I was uncomfortable with the uncertainty of the monad. I sought a place to fit in. A group to belong to.
Problem was I never felt completely comfortable under the shelter of either set of beliefs. Almost 30 years later, I’ve benefited in the last full season of my life with the knowledge of the full truth of my family history. I have a more complete understanding of who I am, who my ancestors were, what choices they made. And most painfully what lies and deceit they have covered up.
And it is that knowledge, which current lives give me pause to discuss in full at this time, that demands I speak up and combat the current move afoot in North Carolina’s General Assembly to continue into the early days of a third American century the uniquely American tradition of selecting a minority group, isolating it and subjecting it to abuses in the name of the greater good.
Truth be told, there is no greater good. There is the market. There is profit. There is the mirage of an idea called “liberty” that is limited to participating in the market process and not one step further.
These ideas could consume a lifetime of reflection. I’ll leave that to the reader to decide if he desires to pursue that end.
But for me it is increasingly and abundantly clear that across the history of our nation we have long abused the rights of the minorities in our midst. Singling out homosexuals in the year 2011 in North Carolina as a group not worthy of the full blessings of liberty has its roots in the murder and robbery of this land itself from its original inhabitants. The idea that because of one personal trait an individual or group can be singled out for the betterment of the majority was sustained for centuries on the backs of human beings from Africa who were brought to this land as slaves and treated worse than livestock.
The very notion that there is some exceptional raison d’être for which in the name of God and prosperity and America we can strike down the hopes and dreams of a certain class of human came into full bloom across the western half of this land in the second half of the 19th century as soldiers and citizens alike murdered en masse indigenous peoples from the Dakotas to the Rio Grande, from the fertile lands where the Missouri meets the mighty Mississippi to the luscious plains and mountains of Arizona and California. Their dreams of liberty haunt the plains and Rocky Mountains alike unto this day.
This same rationale was then turned upon the impoverished working class of America shortly thereafter. Even amidst some of the exact same states and counties where Native Americans had been murdered a mere 20 years before, immigrant laborers and citizen workers alike were gunned down in the streets or in the work camps for daring to demand a better quality of life as a fruit of their sweat and toil. Was this then their dream of liberty?
As the last century dawned and technology began to mold our society in its very image, unimagined prosperity and wealth accumulated in our midst. But even as the slaves were freed, the natives corralled and the evil forces of collectivism cut down by the armed forces of the state, still some dared to dream of a full flowering of individual liberty.
As our machines and explosive power combined to save the world from the logical extremes of imperialism and capitalism alike during the last “Good War” we still found ways to isolate a minority group, round them up and herd them to a place in which they could be controlled and denied an equal taste of the blessings of liberty.
Since that time we have engaged in a worldwide ideological standoff between state sponsored capital economy and state sponsored collectivism. I do believe the wisdom of the ages will reflect at some point in the future and thank us for enduring such a standoff, but now some 20 years after the collapse of the last great worldwide threat to unfettered market economics we face a crisis of confidence in our own economic system.
Is liberty again trying to be heard amidst the streamlined processes and automated calculation of the current global economic paradigm?
Perhaps that answer is beyond the bounds of this effort. Again, let the reader decide if that concept is a worthy pursuit.
But as we stand in the midst of the greatest economic crisis in almost a century, as untold numbers of children are raised amidst suffering and poverty in single-parent homes, as countless men and women alike are falling by the wayside of an economy uncertain of itself, do we really believe that now is the time to yet again single out a minority group and say “You are not like us! You are not fit for the refreshing water of liberty!”?
For many years I bought into the notion that homosexuals were perverted and disgusting and that only because of their own weakness and moral failure did they chose to engage feelings and commit acts that were beyond my poor power to understand. And to this day perhaps I do not understand.
But as I watched the undeniable suffering on the faces of those in California who fought to secure the blessings of liberty for their gay friends and failed at the polls in 2008 I was struck with the type of moment of clarity that perhaps an inventor feels when he finally sees the full picture.
I personally cannot deny that I have lived a life of failure and deceit for most of my 41 years on this planet. I will not deign to pretend that I have not fallen prey to the bitterness of suffering that comes with the realization that my own cold heart has its roots in generations beyond my control. I will not refuse to claim that I as much as anyone have longed forever to be admired by the chosen few who are lucky enough to be happy and content in this life. That place is not for me to know. It never was meant to be and only in the last two years have I begun to understand the roots of my discontent.
But that combustible mixture can be defeated when I pour out my heart and seek to rise to the defense of those who are in the eye of the storm. Full well do I understand that these very words will be printed and passed around in future years as the group chooses to yet again judge this writer as “unworthy.”
But it is the weight of that very judgment that made that moment of clarity in 2008 so vivid. It was the sudden death of a loved one a short year later that opened the floodgates of compassion that I had never before experienced. It is the knowledge that even the most stoic and religious person arrived at that affect more times than not after experiencing failure and defeat and searching for a place of comfort and rest.
And it is the knowledge that I failed even the ones closest to me in their time of need by turning my back on them because I felt them “unworthy” that drives me to say the following.
Human beings are not meant to live in isolation. They are not meant to be ignored and maligned because of a single trait amidst the countless essences that make us human.
Experience is to be shared. Love is to be cultivated, not defined by one person for another.
Human beings across the planet want to be included. They want to share commonality. They want in their weakest moments to be comforted by those they know and admire.
Pointing to one group in 2011 and saying “You are not like us” or “We judge you to be unworthy” has its roots in a Christianity that has previously rationalized slavery, genocide and other forms of human rights abuses. These things did not happen in some far off land of fantasy. They happened in the United States of America. They took place in the name of God, country and the flag.
Before there was a United States of America, a man named Thomas Jefferson wrote these words about the King of England:
“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
In the context of civil rights for minority groups of whatever trait that a majority might single them out for, these words could easily be spoken of our nation over the course of its history since 1787.
But Jefferson perhaps knew that they could be applied not only to King George III but to any group of power brokers who would come together to deny freedom to subgroups within their midst.
Standing together with love and compassion for those who would be singled out by a majority wielding once again its own subjective notions of concepts such as morality, family, prosperity is perhaps what Jefferson had in mind when he penned those words.
Because freedom is the essence of humanity. Humanity is the essence of liberty itself.