August 2003 Archives

Jorge Luis Borges

"Your mother was unkind to me," I thought as we boarded the rollercosaster. It was Independence Day after all. I thought about the ways in which she had always cast dispersions on me and my family - a side of the tracks which she peceived in me, and which she did not desire for her daughter, although we lived blocks apart and on the same side of the tracks. There was an imaginary track in your mothers mind in which cotton and coal and automobile parts moved up and down the seaboard, and on the other side of it - the side that knew nothing of these tracks - lived those people.

It was strange that she was my mother's best friend in high school and that they had not spoken in 30 years. My mother attended your father's funeral when he was mangled in the mechanical looms at Burlington Industries, and your mother did not acknowledge her. Driving home, mom saw an albino deer cross the road and she was sure that it was the spirit of your father escaping to freedom.

I don't know what happens in these dreams. My upper teeth, gums and teeth, half rotting, become detachable. Easy answer is that I need a trip to the dentist. Hard answer is that I feel that I am losing a part of me.

I guess I have felt that for awhile. Like a phantom limb thing for the last 10 years or so. Like I need to become whole with the person that I used to be, and that I was comfortable with. I was going to change the world, I remember. I was going to be someone, and mom always thought the same.

I can't figure out what in the world making these little web sites has changed, or the occasional brochure for real estate, black angus steaks, a week in Las Vegas. I've settled, but I know in the back of my mind that more was what I wanted.

This is those most personal type of journals. Not as entertaining as the rest. Not as scary either. No one dies. Nothing is ambivalent. There is a noticeable lack of the Borgesian twist. My moonface wanes as the sunlight approaches. I want sleep as do you now. A week of bad vibes and discussion. We will make it better in the thing to come.

But my teeth seem to be falling out my head as I fall to sleep and this seems to exhibit a certain paranoia akin, but completely different from, the sinking pool of weeks before. If it's not one thing it's another, I suppose.

But what you do not realize is that my mother loved your mother when they were kids. She worshipped her to an extent. They were inseparable for a matter of 8 years coming through school. I guess there's the rub. There's nothing that she could have done but marry that guy and live in that place and be that person that was something that your mother lost the capability to love so long ago. Hell, she didn't even love you in the way in which you wanted to be loved.

I wish that I could make sense of all of it and I suppose that is what I am trying to do, but perhaps a few more hours of sleep are needed - a few more years between me and that. Perhaps, you and I can make it all better if we try.

Falls Lake at sundown.

Once upon a time, mama saw the giant with big green eyes and asked at the behest of her husband to at least spare the children. It was only later that the true drama happened and I walked into a snails' nest of heckuvalotuv trouble.

Michael and I dug the grave on the occasion of his thirteenth birthday, under the treefort 836 yds. in the woods behind my parent's house and roughly 416 yds. behind his. Roughly 8 ft. by 4 ft., we spent all late afternoon opening the ground and building the mound beside. I paused on the hour to vomit and Michael would berate me in the best way he knew how, with his limited language, speech impediment and drawl. I did the best I could to understand exactly what he was saying. At times, I even mistook his unkind words for the kindlier variety.

It was that afternoon while BMXing down by Falls Lake that we came across her. Fresh out of the water and on the rocks lying there, we hid in the fallen trees for over an hour before ever making an approach.

Mom called us at lunch and her voice rang through the valley and down to the lake, but since we were known to tarry outside of earshot regularly she did not worry at our absence that afternoon at the lunch table, Saranwrapped, the sandwiches were put in the frigidaire for our imminent arrival.

Cookie, Michael's mom and my mom's best friend, had relinquished custody of us boys,for the afternoon to my mother. We swam early and played our jump or swim, marco polo, sharks and minnows- the best we could with just the two of us after my brother left.

Later on the bikes we struck out down the path by the Allen house where Ricky was layed up with cancer at 35. (That man once helped us roof our garage, as he was a roofer - his whole family was - before he opened the vintage Ford truck parts store. He could drive the nail in one swipe, accosting it while it was still in the air and driving it right through the tarpaper and plywood.) Down to the lake we rode, bunnyhopping the new craters created by the three weeks of rain. Michael had taken his step-dad Scotty's 12 gauge and a half box of buck shot, three beer cans from the curb garbage, and two full ones stuffed into the cargo pockets of his surplus army fatigues.

Down to the lake we rode with cargo in tow, me in front, Michael in back. Arriving, we decided the 5 minute trip enough to merit consuming the beers, which we did in short order, throwing the empty cans, as well as the empties we brought with us into the lake. Michael loaded the shotgun with shells and we took turns shooting at the cans as they slowly drifted out toward the channel. Finally, by pure stroke of luck, I made the first hit and for the first time in my life I heard and understood (differently than I would later come to understand the term) "fallen soldier" - except Michael added "Yankee" in between the two words.

After the shells were expended, or the cans had drifted too far out for feasible aim and accuracy, Michael strapped the gun back around his shoulders and we headed down the makeshift path toward the north point where we liked to skip the rocks made smooth by the channel moving through. That is where we saw her first. First in the water and then coming onto the shore and lying down. we hid behind the dead trees that were exposed from the summer drought. She didn't know we were there. She thought she was alone. Naked, laying on the channel stone.

Michael had the idea to make a scare and I agreed. We could surely outrun on bikes. We could make it back to Dude Ranch Road before she could even fully arise and make a chase. He started and I hid my eyes and readied for the great escape - Huffy handlebars in hand. I watched as he approached, barefoot like a samurai, not making a sound. Once upon her I could not stand it anymore and I took off in a random direction. Knowing the woods like I did, I would make it back home and to fried bologna sandwiches in no time. Three hundred yards away I heard the impact , and then the bang, and I was stopped immediately. I turned to look back and Michael stood with the shotgun in one arm and his other in the air. I thought we were out of shells.

Shrieking he called me a 'pussy" and told me if I had any balls I would come back and help him take the body back with us. Of course, this is the moment in which I should have run - far from that place and back to sandwiches and pool and mom and garage and basketball goal and Huck Finn - but of course that is not the way it went down. I went back and we place the body across the two bikes and between the two of us and we pushed it out of the woods and to the treefort. I went home and got two shovels and a pickaxe from the leanto behind the garage. We dug until 6:30 and Michael went his way and I went mine.

I went to the pool and straight in with my cutoff courduroy Levis. I wanted to wash it all away. I knew her. I had secretly spied her on my own before. I had delicate fancies during prepubescence about her. I wanted to wash it all from my hands, and the blood drippings from my shorts. I wanted to deny all evil. Destroy all monsters. Make my mother proud. It would all come to be sooner or later anyway - and the opposite.

That was the summer before Michael was incarcerated at the Dillon school. The summer before Cookie died after hitting the split rail fence at 55 MPH, the wood coming through the engine block, firewall and her heart. The summer before I fell in love the first time. The summer before I first hailed a cab. The summer before my first guitar and the last summer of piano lessons. The summer in which Michael and I stopped being friends, his family moving away after the death of his mother. The summer I learned my first lesson.

If I could make it all different now, if it really did happen, I surely would. Michael is okay now the last I heard through the grapevine. I am not sure that I am. Though the dream won't stop, I am working on it. If the cure comes soon, maybe we can all live happily ever after.

Why not?

Okay, there was a party. A few thousand people in attendance. Much more than should be there for an ordinary party, before one has reached the ripe-ol-age of 70 years or so. I managed to stay around long after my welcome was severely worn. I pasted passionate kisses onto a sheet of 50lb. paper to make my way in the general direction of the protagonists involved - as they have aged at a rate quicker, not to mention being born earlier, than I have found myself.

Leaving there tonight I made it around a hook and a crook and an Atlanta police cruiser to the old sweet spot where I used to procure Staropramen, because I liked the name and the label. I would walk twice a day to acquire six nuggets of middle european delight. My neighbors loved me, and the walkers-by loved my inattention to my nicotine deficit.

Tonight I happened to be lonely upon departure from the lovely combined b-day party. Lakey had begun off to bed too early as a result of the too much booze. Wendi was awake and cognizant, and lovely, and all that. It was 3 AM and time to head back to the hood, as Sian informed me was the name of where I currently reside and pay rent. I cannot imagine a diffrerent way. So I scuuttlebutted away to points in Oakhurst, on the cusp of Kirkwood, past your dreams, or what any plan could make possible.

As a nicotine imperative seems to drive me to my grave, I made my way by the old corner shop, where I used to procure the aforementioned Staropramen, for a refill.

Remeber me when I lived in that place. Remember how I made mad faces to the moon on certain given nights. Remember that I was mad as a hatter, a matter, a smatter of kitchen utensils thrown randomly about the room.

Please accept my apologies for all that follows!

Tonight, I made my way to said corner shop and outside found the late-night attendant talking to a local, presumably cool-cat, homeless man. My arrival initiated the trip inside and the certain scan of the local costs and taxes.

Before I headed in, man outside of the store asked if I would take care of him upon departure. I said, " I will see what I can do."

Paragraphical errors mean so little to me these days. Just stay with me.

I went in, and cigarettes did procure. Dollars laid down I headed out the door and into the East Atlanta streets, a ten foot walk from my car, and on the way....

"Do you thing you can help me out?"

Maybe, I thought. But I am not sure.

"Can you help me out?"

Oh, sure, what do you have... can you sing?

"Of course I can!"

To my sorrow the first effort one was one of laying down poor versions of poor Eagles songs, that I presumed were for the benefit of my sorry-white-ass.

"Do you have anythng better?", I asked after shoving over $2.

And out of his mouth came, as sweetly as a giant, these words...

"It was just my imagination,
running away with me,
it was just my imagination.........."

In a different part of the city it would have not meant anything more. In a different part of the city we would not have made harmony. Two dollars made all the difference for this unemployed compadre.

Tonight I sang a song from the depths. I sang a song with a heart that he chose. I made a mighty bow toward the sweet, and we danced a bit without dancing. We believed a little in each other, just for the asking. I waited two full minutes before encumbering myself in the car and off to home.

Or was it just my imagination... running away with mee. Possibly!

I hate Paris - arrogant and syphilitic arsehole of Europe. Its pavement cafes and broad shopping streets will one day crumble, the Seine will run dry and Notre Dame will burn. The witty young artists in paint-spattered garrets will all reach for their sleeping pills and whisky at the same pathetic moment, and the chain-smoking fashion models will cough up their lungs, but not before the politician slips on the shit-streaked pavement, breaking his neck. I cannot wait.

I hate Paris, but that is where she sleeps tonight. And maybe an unborn child.

Coward of the county.

You were there when the Red Sea parted... and into my lap came a flood of whole and half-whole salt-water. I gurgled for the first fifteen minutes or so, just waiting for your lovely head to rise from the brine.

My fingers do not make such great things as my mind does. I hope it will all go down in the the analogues as a sweet and disturbing chore.

Beach winds blow on your back tonight, and if you could not tell, I am not asleep, or asunder... but rather dashing homeless dreams of incredible numbers, less seen, less noticed, only once in a half moon...

I walk signigficant juntas by my pillow. I await substantial paradigms. You thought summer was easy. I realized it was hard, and hot, and me and you. I bowed to catholicoprotestant prayers. I made a haven to you and me. You will be back here sooner or later you see. C. Columbus says the star are in aligment. (Wrap around the world once for good measure,,, it all comes back to you,) I make moons out of your left eye.

Mascara smudges my pillow. You are so far away. A Pawley's Island getaway, I felt a heartbeat. A heartsmudge. An inclination before awakening.

If I asked you there, would the answer be, " Pie Glue!" ? Or something of the sort? We have it all, and to us all is figured out.

Make it and keep it like a secret. I saw you 78 days before I knew you, and knew that I was in love.

Your strained lip, your beach ass, your whole thing sends me running.

I hope that all of them will keep me writing, after the dealing's done.

Stand still... and it will all come back to you.

In lieu of writing each of you individually I have chosen to post it all here in a way that everything may be told as plainly as possible. My father once was a lineman for the county, in a manner of speaking. He was, at the first clap of thunder, erased from the family for hours, and to your houses to make sure your televisions, dishwashers, back massagers could continue to operate, as soon as possible - after the old oak tree severed the mainline coming into the suburban neighborhood.

Since this is an "everything story" I will put it all out there. I realize that it has been eternities since I have caught up, so I will write it all here, word by word. Video is forthcoming. My mother is opening a new business. I have become a changed man. I relish and agonize over my brother's... unchangeability. What if the world really is flat? Would it make a difference to the crows watching 747 jet planes landing on the runway at RDU?

I am sorry to wield such a rusty sword. I pulled it from a stone years ago and submerged it in salt water. Did the same with a Craftsman screwdriver, but could at least take it back to Sears for a renewal.

For those of you who knew me during that time, I have moved once again. Ten times in ten years. Two weeks since I moved out of the house where Kathy and I lived for a while - and then me after Kathy left for the North. Yesterday I was there as they moved the last of K's stuff out of the house and into an 18-wheeler bound for more temperate climates this time of the year.

I watched the table where I served my burgers, or Mark Dale's to be more exact, be moved. I watched as the yellow umbrella, where Lisa Kemp hocked a loogie that dangled for hours, was moved. I watched as the shelf where K put antique postcards of the places where she had lived went out the door. I read F. Scott Fitzgerald as they took a bedframe, mattress (always last), spices, half-full wine bottles, the bar with the duckpin bowling balls encased, the bathroom cabinet with risque ceramics. I remember it all, and in a matter of 9 hours it was all gone.

I'm sorry to write it just like this, but I have to. Someone has been telling me lately that I have to emotionally deal with this at some point so I guess that is what I am currently doing. Don't worry, all, I am okay. I know you bastards aren't really worried afterall, anyway.

I know that ultimately a personal note to each of you would be better. These form things do not generally provide the personalization that my needy cohorts seem to desire. Understand that this is the only way I could do it.

Barnacles grow on my eyes, a stiff calcification up the length of my spine. I 've taken too much time off, yet I want more. A beach breeze, love, walks on sand, a maniacal man descending a ski slope... in Colorado, in August.

My father's previous profession has nothing to do with this, to be honest... nor does my mother's new business. Whereas I did not make it up, I leveraged it. To be honest, I could not figure out any way to get into all of this, and that was the first thing that came to mind. Please forgive me if it reads like a mid-century French film.

And I guess ultimately I should give all of you the new contact information... after all that is what this was to be about in the first place, so here goes:

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Please none of the letters with your normal platitudes. Only letters with vitriol, scathing, cutting to the bone etc. Those of you with conservative leaning should not even bother to write.

Take care all.

bryan

PS- I should be addressed as "President" George W. Bush if written to at the above address.