February 2006 Archives

I don't know why, but possibly out of restlessness, I strike out after midnight tonight and I see the blooms of the dogwood tree gleaming in the light of the sodium halide street lamp. It is February still, but Spring is already coming to this town. Outside of my house, the singular daffodil is starting its bloom as well, and the smell of burning wood has subsided on this end of the street. Soon there will be weeding to be done. Our hands could be turned bright green before we could even snap our sweaty fingers.

My car, during this early warming, has lost one of its front lights. In high school we used to call it popeye, and upon seeing one you either had to kiss or punch the person you were with. Amongst dudes it usually was a punch; amongst mixed company, the kiss was more popular. I spent the better part of one Spring evening sitting on a stone wall when I was 18 with a woman kissing at the sight of every popeye. One would have thought that every car in town had one headlight extinguished by the passion that we felt for each other that night. Later she would ask me to her prom and I would weasel out. Then she would become a nurse in Minnesota. She would marry and have a child. She would live near the headwaters of the Mississippi. She would see it fed by the meltwaters of spring. I doubt she ever thinks about me, or these things now.

I guess this time of the year brings hope to my heart. Hope springs eternal, or rather, in Spring, hope is eternal. Maybe I am too hopeful. Forever the romantic. It seems like the stars are slowly coming back into alignment. It seems that the world might just slow down to that pace that I can understand. Tomorrow I think I will spend an hour walking around this city, letting my feet get to know it like they never have. They will feel the promise of pollen, pollution and circumstance.

But tonight... oh tonight, I wish I were in cold and windy Chicago, at the Horseshoe or Bierstube with JT. We spent the hour or two talking, or rather me talking, and it would have been better over a beer together, in that city where they truly appreciate the change of the seasons. Where Spring means something so much more. Where it means the snow will melt. The world will turn green. The Mississippi will fill its banks again, and the world, and you and I, stretched out over this great country, will be one again.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...

There is a juggler just down the boardwalk there and he has been doing it for six months or so now. Every day. Every day adding a new item: bowling ball, helium balloon, toaster, ping pong ball.

How he keeps these things in motion. Always just one in the hand, the others in the air. How he keeps the birds above entertained, and the sandal-and-sock-wearing drunk old men, coming out of the casinos, so very enthralled.

At night, when the juggler is home alone, in his attic appartment overlooking the alley where they filmed those fight scenes in Barfly, he sometimes dreams in an Irish accent of drunken perambulations around another city, another time.

His hands finally rest. His arms can luxuriate in cotton, and springs, and sleep.

He dreams of a girl distant and lost now, that once meant something to him, but he can't remember what, can't fully remember her. Not a mother, or a lover, just a girl, and a footprint, and a gale blowing up the face of a cliff.

He dreams Hollywood car crash scenes on the rocks below. Or Holden standing there catching VW Squarebacks full of grade-school children.

You would think his muscle memory would be such that even in his sleep he would juggle, but every day it is like learning it all over again. Learning the tricks, how to work the stilts, where to hide the canary. What is the sound of one hand clapping? Where do the ducks go when the lake freezes over? What if instead of keeping them all in the air, he lets them all fall to the ground?

The crowd will disband. There will be no tip. Rent will be hard this month. Things will be broken.

What if all fall to the ground but that weathered baseball from childhood? What if that's the one he catches as the bowling balls, and beanbags, and World Book Encyclopedias, and diamond rings all fall and shatter or thud? What if, better yet, he throws all of these into the ocean, except the baseball? Never the baseball.

Would the center then hold?

He could sleep for days with it under his pillow, as the drunks and hookers and lights take over the night.

It's his last time in the church,
having had sullied his faith
in a scandal as big as the lectern
standing erect at that end of the nave.
This is the last time he will kneel,
the last time he will pray,
the last time he will put it all
in another's hands.
He spends awhile saying his goodbye,
and rises to his feet
with the squeak of shoe leather,
he pivots militarily and
descends from the heights of the apse
to the depths of the exit,
where he will turn once again,
and cross himself one last time,
before descending fully,
and then he will just live,
without worship or prayer,
never to set foot or knee
in that church,
or any other,
until the end of his days.

Some of you will know where this comes from, others maybe not. This may be th height of laziness for me though.

Restless eyes close, maybe it'll go away
Please rest tomorrow, bring a satisfying day
The restless urge of love that's worth the burning for
Surely it's that one true thing, love to give you more
Any thought could be the beginning of the brand new tangled web you're spinning
Anyone could be a brand new love
Any tie that holds can be broken, it can tear your bitter world totally open
Anyone could be the brand new love
You won't be the first, your twisted change is normal
Gossip, dirt, whispered to the nodding head
Thrilled you fell apart, instead of them
But they will
Any hope for love can be killed
If you need a different face, it's definite time to destroy this place
Any thought could be the beginning of the brand new tangled web you're spinning
Anyone could be a brand new love
Follow what you feel, you alone decide what's real
Anyone can be a brand new love

There are few things as tiring and satisfying as what I've gotten to do at work the past few days. As you can imagine, we have been covering the Coretta Scott King funeral stuff a lot. I have been sent on assignments to record audio of the horse-drawn carriage procession taking her to the state capitol, and to record audio for the musical celebration the included performances by Gladys Knight and an address by Oprah Winfrey. I guess one of the things I am proud of this city for is that it is steeped in the MLK legacy. I have been to the King Center before, but these assignments allowed me to touch that world in a completely different way. Doing these the recording and putting together the consequent multimedia pieces has moved me tremendously, despite the long hours it has taken to put everything together. Anyway, ultimately I am so satisfied with the products and the experience. I have been moved to tears many times during all of it and have been completely emotionally wiped. If you would like to take a look at the pieces (on was mentioned previously) here are the links:

Coretta Scott King: Lying In State

Coretta Scott King: A life remembered

I was asked late in the day Friday to go and do some audio recording of ambeint sounds for the transfer of Coretta Scott King's body to the state capitol this morning. She will lie there in state until Monday. The burial is on Tuesday. I have teared up a few times since her death this past Tuesday. The King legacy is one of the things that makes me happy to live in this city, I love driving past the MLK artwork at the corner of Boulevard and Freedom, even though it is not the best example of public art. Today I woke up later than I should have, expeceted to go to the Old Fourth Ward to the funeral home, which turned out to be on the West End, so I headed to the capitol and waited and waited and watched people and recording helicopters and people talking and leaves and finally the motorbikes and horses and then she came along. I almost lost it right then, but kept my journalistic distance and integrity together long enough to join the masses on the capitol lawn, and still kept it together, until the bagpiper played 'Amazing Grace' and my eyes moistened, and then her body was taken in and the people spntaneously started into 'We Shall Overcome' and I sang and burst and had to walk away.

Here's the product of the day, the recorder stopped working before the bagpipes and singing, I guess it will be just a memory, with no evidence, for me now.

Coretta Scott King: Lying In State

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What do you do when all of your devices have given up on you? When you decide to kick the sauce again, to dream a sober dream, to make this writing thing a go again? What do you do when Faulkner will no longer lull you to sleep? When his demons, and his characters' demons, continue to strike too close to home? And no bubble bath will take you away? And no phone call is on its way? And there are dead felines that you once loved to hate to love to live with etc? And when there is a woman singing directly into your ear who has always made you cry? And a woman singing indirectly into your ear who even the thought of the voice still makes you cry? And then there are the voices that just set you back, and the ones that push you forward. And out there fathers are dying, and love is dying. The fact is, that tonight someone is breaking up. Someone is announcing to the other that they cannot go on like this - that by the end of the week they will be gone. They both live inside me now. What happens when what you have done won't let you sleep? What happens when Mrs. King is gone? What happens when the dreams won't come anymore? What happens when the last question is asked?

I guess you just learn to do it all differently, recreate a life, or finally create one, and stop this tidal ritual.