I'm going to try

I’m sitting in Bucks, just as I do most other days, talking with Troy and depending on the internet for procrastination, when a middle-aged man asks us where we go to school.

“Nowhere. I’ve graduated, and so has he.” says Troy, with a nod in my direction.

“Shit”, I think, just as I think every time that a stranger who’s not a girl approaches me.

“Where from?”

“Auburn”

“Oh really? How come Auburn?”

“How come not? How come you’re losing your hair? How come you say, “How come”? What does that actually mean?

“My Dad, sister, aunts, and grandparents went there, I loved the people…You know of Auburn?”

The guy appears to be one of the millions of New Yorker’s who’ve moved down to our retirement county. And generally, after hearing that I went to “Auburn”, a cloud shades their face and they mutter something like “that’s great”, and they know that I know that they don’t know where or what Auburn is.

“Oh yeah, Auburn, that’s right, you guys are the one’s having that nut electrocuted for killing your trees!” 

He smiles self-appreciatively, and though I immediately realize that this guy is from New York in every way, including the worst ways, I’m compelled to play along. He is, after all, an adult, and I did, after all, read some A.W. Tozer only a few moments ago. So I can’t exactly interrupt my, “Be Thou exalted” prayer, with a snide congratulations for managing to belittle something important to my school, and therefore me, plants, and humans, with such a “witty” comment.  

“Yeah, they’re pretty upset up there, those trees are kind of a big deal” I say.

Somehow Troy has now excused himself from the conversation. I’m not sure when he managed it, but both of his headphones are in. He seems to be working on something important, which he obviously is not, and to have somehow forgotten that a man is talking to us. Troy also seems to have forgotten that we are friends, and that he should be walking outside to call me so that I can walk outside importantly as if I’ve just received a call from NASA. I start to get nervous, and the dark wrinkles and deep set eyes of the face standing above me suggest that he’s feeling like talking. A lot.

“So what are you doing now? Now that you’re graduated? Just slacking in Starbucks?”

“Oh god, again he’s smiling, so I can’t tell him that it’s better to be young and slacking than old and slacking, and that’s a big question he has asked, and how long until I can start getting away with rude subtleties just by being old?”

I sneak a grudging glance at Troy. Troy wins, and his computer screen blinks first.

I thinly slide a confident smile across my lips, liven my eyes, and say that I’m, “unemployed”, in the sort of way that is supposed to show this man that being unemployed is merely a novelty, and that I’m not concerned in the least. And I’m really not. I have a job in that fall. I’m not even looking for work. But I’d rather say that I’m “unemployed”, than say, “I’m mooching off of my parents generosity”, or that, “I’m just hanging out.” First of all, because I do some of the dishes sometimes, and second of all, despite my chief concern being the playoffs of my basketball video-game, (In the third round. Up 2 games to 1 on the Pacers), because I take myself way to seriously to ever describe the thing that I am doing with my life in the same way that one may subtly admit that one is currently stoned.

His face moves to its’ natural position, an amused frown, and he says, “Whadya go to college for?” and it seems that he means to ask me which major I chose, not to question the value of a college education.

I answer with a combination of, “English” and “nothing”, in a way that they jump out of my mouth in a sort of circle, unclear which is said first, which second, where one ends and the other begins. I do this because the self-abashment is supposed to quell a smart response.

“So you’ve got as much sense as a squirrel’s nut, uh?”

At first I wonder if he’s referring to the nut that a squirrel stores for the winter, or the one on the guy squirrel’s body, or the seed of the one on that on the guy squirrel’s body. Then I realize that I’ve been insulted. He’s smiling with his mouth, unable to rouse himself to a full expression of friendly jesting.

And then I do something that I hate about myself:

“Yeah, there definitely aren’t any Englishers.”

I hate myself because I’ve used this same “joke”, about a million times, and despite actually thinking highly of an English degree, I submit to the peacefulness of bullshit. (I realize that the degree is mocked because our increasingly mathematical and scientific culture finds little value in it, but I’m not exactly embarrassed to have chosen something that our culture doesn’t highly esteem.)

“Well I’ve got something for you”, he says. “I’m a sports photographer. You know those pictures you took when you were little, the tee-ball ones where you hold a bat like a moron? Well the mark-up on those is about 500%. I take those pictures.”

“Does that make you a “sports photographer”? And how many of the little morons have you touched just a little too long when you were “positioning” them?”

“Wow”, I say, realizing that this is going to be one of those conversation where I don’t need to listen, because he’ll never care to hear what I think about what he’s saying, and that my greatest struggle is now to contort my face in a cycle of movements so as to appear dynamically affected by his speech. Throughout what he’s saying I sometimes say, “umm hmm”, and then other times I say, “right”, and at one point, when I notice that I’ve used, “I see”, five responses in a row, note it, and correct the mistake by supplying an ultra-satisfying, “Oh, wow, that’s amazing, I understand what you’re saying.”

Here’s some of what he’s saying:

“…so this guy is refusing to leave the parking lot, this big boss who’s in charge of two leagues, and then the other boss is telling him that he is only the “1” away from completing the 911 phone call. And there’s all this drama, and you could be there, man could I sell you, and you probably drive everyone crazy, but you can shake hands, yeah I could sell you, and so you’d be wearing a hat you know, and a collared shirt, and on the hat it would say, “James TV”, and you would, yeah, James is my name, and even though you couldn’t sell a five dollar bill for three dollars, I could teach you, and you would go up to these guy who run the league, all John Madden wannabees, and you’d have your hat that says, “James TV”, or maybe, “JTV”, and you’d go up to a coach or player or something, and what you need to know, what you don’t have that I could give you, the reason that I’d make the biggest bucks is because I’m calling the shots, and I could teach you to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and once you’re a wolf, then I’d send you to Jacksonville, say, and you’d go up there in your outfit and you’d pitch our stuff, I mean even you can read a script, and boom, we’d be rolling in dough…”

And he says plenty more, and I only hear parts of it all, and a couple of times I make small remarks that he can’t hear, such as asking if he has a daughter in response to his saying that unless he teaches me, there’s no way I could be a wolf.  Troy’s body shudders as if he’s holding a sneeze in. He gets up and walks to the coffee bar. He, Eric, (who’s working), and Eric’s girlfriend all glance at me, then at JTV, then mutter, then laugh. I wonder why no one is helping. Troy reaches in his pocket, pulls out his phone, hope rises in my heart, Troy puts the phone away, and I decide to set Troy up on a blind date with the big girl from the movie, Bridesmaids.    

“I’ll run and get you some stuff; I’ve got some stuff for you, just one second.” And he heads out to his car. A yellow mustang. Duh.

Troy comes back and sits down next to me smiling.

“Oh my god I am so sorry”, he says. “What all was he saying?”

“Dude, he’s coming back, and if he starts talking to me, you have got to call me.”

“Deal”

JTV walks in and hands me two, paper-sized, tee-ball picture collages.  There are little kids in baseball uniforms, little kids in football uniforms, and little kids holding big trophies. Not bad work, but in no way different work that any other little league pictures than anyone has ever seen.

“Send me an email if you’re smart, and I’m sure, like all kids like you, you’re not, but send me an email, and you’ll be rolling. See these two?” he says pointing to two pro cheerleaders. “Have you ever met a pro cheerleader? Well not an ounce of fat, lemme tell you not one ounce. And this one here on the left, she’s not a Hooters girl, none of em are, she’s an accountant. How about that?”

“Wow”, I say.

My phone rings. I tell him it’s important, step outside, and talk to myself on the phone for five minutes. I come back in. He’s still standing next to my chair.

“Yeah I could definitely sell a good looking kid like you. You’re not imposing and you can shake hands. You just need to know how not to be a moron, kid. E-mail me.”

And he walks over to his seat, sits down, and puts his headphones in.

While he’s sitting I’m thinking about how this wacko doesn’t know me, how I could definitely sell 5 dollars for three dollars, because duh, that’s a profit for the buyer, (Yeah I’d figured that out), and that my Dad could probably convince JTV to buy pink underpants and then wear them as a helmet. I think about how dumb some of the stuff he said was, and how, to my agitation, I have probably assumed that I knew as much about some strangers as he assumed that he knew about me.

As he was walking out I notice that he walks with a stiff back, stiff with age, and that he’s probably not the happiest guy, and that stuff has probably been hard for him at some point, and that he most likely doesn’t relish being old, and that he’s probably terrified; Terrified that he’s beginning something, terrified that he’s taking a risk at his age, terrified that his constructs will fail, and terrified, just as we all are, about everything.

I make jokes about JTV to Eric, his girlfriend, and Troy. They’re mean jokes and I feel nauseous.

He’s gone now. I remember him walking through the drizzle of an afternoon storm; stiffly gaiting to his car. The sports-car, that instead of making him appear to be, or feel younger, confirms that he’s getting older.

I acknowledge that my arrogance springs from some false belief that being young is an excuse for not having really done anything. My self-assured stature shrinks as I understand that he is really trying something, that he is being brave; brave enough to begin, despite being nearer his end, brave enough to approach a sure-to-be-egotistical, and to give him an opportunity to be a part of something other than the community of the “I’m okay because I’m too young and smart and healthy and good-looking to risk failing”, which he knows I belong.

Yeah, I’m probably over-romanticizing JTV.  I’m sure that I’m trying to somehow atone for the things that I thought and said. And yeah, he probably really did see nothing more than a face that he deemed useful.

I won’t work for JTV. Any job that requires a hat is a no-go, and honestly, I don’t think that he’ll have much success. But I’ll e-mail him. And I’ll thank him.

 JTV’s an ass, and not the best photographer, and he likely gets off to assuming power over people. But JTV is in it, and so am I.

Maybe JTV is more than the thief of forty minutes of my life. Maybe JTV’s one of the many waves that it takes to erode the firm shore of smug, false, self-aggrandizement that must crumble to nothing so that I may recognize the truth: That I am, and have done nothing; and that more than this being okay, it’s hope. Everything is potential.

A rejection slip would not make me more or less of a “writer”. In one way, as long as I type, I’m a writer. In another, until my writing is acknowledged by the judges that I’ve assigned significance to, I’m not. But the rejection wouldn’t take something from me that I had, just as to be published would allow me no more permission to write than I currently possess. Someone deciding not to pay me to write is not an additional person deciding to do so. There is only the possibility of one less indifference, never more.  

JTV is trying.

 And though I’m even scared to say, “I’m trying”, and though I spent  last night’s time, the time that I was trying to sleep but couldn’t, thinking about how dumb some of the stuff that I’ve written is, (what I just wrote about the waves and erosion is a good example), I say today, “I’m going to try”. 

If in two weeks I haven’t posted an official rejection: e-mail me a computer virus, leave a flaming bag of poop outside of my door, or tell my roommate from Spain that I took 3$ off of his desk to buy a chaser that I didn’t share with him. 

A Moment of Many in Fido

Why are her blue eyes looking into his circular face? She with her symmetry and tastefully freckled skin, confident posture, and steely eyes... I sit at the table behind him, and sometimes, as he gestures and wobbles to and fro, am in a plain of sight which, as she steals glances at his satellite dish, right ear, connects us in an instant of conversation; her ashamed blue pleading to my arrogant hazel.  His strait brown hair, combed from a typical leave-it-to-beaver, right forehead part, to the space about an inch above his left ear, quivers and bounces as he grows desperate for her nods and “um hms”, to become earnest interest. His acceptable size-to-height body, hunched over folded arms, grows terrifically still as she says something about work and the time and how great dinner was. His feet, covered in tall black socks, bounce down into his brown, lace shoes, then up into tubes of standard-fit, GAP blue jeans.

He’s drinking a coke. The menu explains the process from beginning to end, of how fairly and naturally the coffee comes to be sold, and he slurps a coke through puckered lips. His voice isn’t as high as his boyish appearance suggests, nor is it so deep as to require notation, but nonetheless, the sounds of his words seem stolen from someone else.

She says thanks again, and being the type that fancies herself not only desirable, but benevolent, grants him an “excessive” three sentences to communicate “goodbye”. Walking quickly and stern faced she passes by the window which meets the tables where he and I now sit alone. She shoots the steely blues across her right shoulder at the last moment possible.  

As her eyes meet mine, she all calculation, forecast, and cognition, I realize that Motley Satellite Ears has escaped, protected by the brave, unique heartbeat, whose lover will someday tell him that his socks don't match his shoes.    

"This matter of "salvation" is, when seen intuitively, a very simple thing. But when we analyze it, it turns into a complex tangle of paradoxes. We become ourselves by dying to ourselves. We gain only what we give up, and if we give up everything we gain everything. We cannot find ourselves within ourselves, but only in others; yet at the same time, before we can go out to others we must first find ourselves. We must forget ourselves in order to become truly conscious of who we are. The best way to love ourselves is to love others; yet we cannot love others unless we love ourselves, since it is written, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." But if we love ourselves in the wrong way, we become incapable of loving anybody else. And indeed when we love ourselves wrongly, we hate ourselves; if we hate ourselves we cannot help hating others. Yet there is a sense in which we must hate others and leave them in order to find God... As for this finding of God, we cannot even look for Him unless we have already found Him, and we cannot find Him unless He has first found us. We cannot begin to seek Him without a special gift of His grace; yet if we wait for grace to move us before beginning to seek Him, we will probably never begin. 

The only effective answer to the problem of salvation must therefore reach out and embrace both extremes of a contradiction at the same time. Hense the answer must be supernatural. This is why all the answers that are not supernatural are imperfect; for they only embrace one of the contradictory terms." -Thomas Merton

Part 2: Numbers and Boxes

Something Big:

Something Big, capitalizing on human miss-supposition, a greater fear of loss than desire for gain, and the complexities of some confusing thing called, “macroeconomics”, is on the attack. Something Big is happening. The Boss has become The Employee and The Employee has become The Unemployed. The past decisions of wisdom and fortune, the decisions of 2006, have become today’s decisions of disaster. In the coffee shops, where the masses of Big Something are headquartered, drawing circles in newspapers and joining Feel-better-about-yourself-because-you’re-trying-to-get-a-job.coms, people are saying:

“Once, my house could have been sold at this price, but it is now valued at that price, and so I’ll need to work at least twenty years longer than I’ll live.”

“I earned a degree in this, but I’m a part-time that, and I’m afraid that more school will only qualify me for a different this, and a similar that, and I just don’t know what to do.”

“I hired employees before Something Big began to happen. After the employees became people, they became friends, and because I couldn’t fire my friends, we are all unemployed; all troops of Big Something.”

“My daughter drives my car from my apartment that she lives in to the school that my money pays for. My great-aunt lives with my mother in a house that I own, my dad’s heart and wisdom are with the Lord, and I, the man who searches the eyes in the mirror for something remembered, the man who has no choice but to take his daughter’s car and school, evict his aunt and mother, and forget his father—I live in hell.”

Those statements, spoken intimately between strangers who share everything in common, are our battle cries. We are Big Something and we aren’t merely surviving Something Big, but we are living.  And that is our weapon—despite circumstance, to not merely survive, but to live; A group ethic. This weapon, or battle strategy, was not created in hidden laboratories, or suggested in the essays of Big Something’s philosophers, but in the collision of despair and humanity.

The Ethic of Living:

Ms. Amy’s skin, which is the leathery wrinkled sort, the type that proves many years of Florida’s sun, stretches across bones and muscles that have earned relaxation and reward; But Ms. Amy labors. Working the register is the attack of Something Big. There, Ms. Amy has no choice—it’s a fact of survival. But when Ms. Amy’s undaunted blue eyes begin a dance that her body follows, joyously flowing to the overhead music, it’s an act of revenge, a claim of hope, and the vivid execution of The Ethic of Living.

Jeremy, comfortably seated in a black, leather chair, spends his mornings scouring the net for an opportunity. He’s got kids and a wife and god knows how much other stuff to worry about. He, of course, is looking for a job. And since there aren’t jobs, this obviously means that he has seen pictures of Arnold’s mistress, follows the stocks that he no longer owns, writes letters that he’ll never send, and beats the heck out of a Sudoku book. I mean he absolutely, American X style, curb stomps that little yellow booklet—black coffee on the stand next to him, khaki-panted legs crossed, and brown eyes passionately fixed on the boxes so unlucky as to be empty—the once defeated Jeremy has victory over that book. He’s a man over that book. The numbers and boxes and ink are defenseless against him, and I know that Jeremy’s defeat of numbers and ink is an act of revenge, a claim of hope, and the vivid execution of The Ethic of Living.

I spent the first week of my new life, the “what now” life, scouring the internet for opportunities to write. There weren’t any. I got into a pyramid scheme that I soon got out of. I decided to go ahead and write a wildly popular novel. But the story was about me with a different name, and people would know that the screw-up in the book was me, so I didn’t. I resolved to walk to the offices of Florida Today, where I’d demand an opportunity to prove myself, but it’s hot, and so I didn’t. I did a lot of didn’t.

My despair met my humanity.

I graduated an English major who thought himself a writer, but yesterday, as an act of survival, I used a chainsaw to cut wood that I then stacked. The wood lost and I won. I, like Ms. Amy and Jeremy, had victory. Something Big has been happening, and it’s forced us to the coffee shops. And this herding, this galvanization, has created Big Something. I’m as stuck to you as I am to Big Something, and just as we people have always done when coalesced and desperate, we will have victory in the life of one another. We’ll see the morning and evening colors that Something Big cannot blot, buy coffees for the strangers that Something Big cannot keep from our love, dance with the bodies that Something Big cannot tire, and ultimately, through all of these vivid executions of The Ethic of Living, the numbers, boxes, and ink will submit to the new, hopeful, living nation of Big Something.   

Part 1: No resolution, and apparently about nothing—of course

I left the hotel at 7:15am, allotting an hour for transport to Madrid’s airport, and another hour and a half for check-in, security, and a casually sipped hazelnut latte. This, however, is not what happened. In reality I boarded the plane in a rush of sweat and panic. Of course I had waited at the wrong bus-stop, disembarked at terminal 1 when I needed to be in terminal 3, walked a mile to the Air France check-in, found out that I would need to leave a bag in Madrid, that the flight was closing in ten minutes, and enjoyed zero sips of the Coffee Giant’s latte.

But I did catch the flight, and easily transitioned in Charles de Galle airport from one Air France flight to another. And I ate a juicy, overpriced burger in terminal A of Detroit’s modern airport. And I slept soundly on the two hour flight into Orlando International. And I incessantly spoke of café’s and people during the familiar ride to our home.

When I was throwing the “necessaries” from one suitcase into another I noticed that the things I couldn’t leave behind had absolutely zero practical value. My passport from the Camino de Santiago made it, as well as some awful gifts I had gotten for family, but clothes and books were left behind. The check-in attendant laughed. While I was running to security I realized that getting rid of my extra bag, the one that I couldn’t take with me, would actually be very difficult. It was the day after the raid on OBL’s compound, security levels were high, and apparently the entire Spanish army, brandishing huge guns, was in Madrid’s airport. First I tried to stuff the suitcase into a trashcan. This, you can imagine, looked conspicuous. Me, sweating and panicked, shoving a suitcase into a trashcan. People actually stopped and looked, murmuring to one another. I looked around with saucer sized eyes, yanked the wedged bag out of the iron trashcan, and took off in the direction of security. I thought about leaving the bag next to the trashcan, but remembered the ominous warnings against leaving baggage unattended. I saw myself running away from an orphaned bag, trying to explain, in Spanish, to the guards who would be shooting at me, that I had only paid to check one bag and was forced to leave another. I was upon security before any reasonable solutions had come to mind. When I told the guard that I wished to leave a heavy suitcase in a trashcan, (I don’t speak Spanish), he was obviously alarmed.  More guards came over, tightly gripping the black stocks of their automatic rifles, and tried to understand what the young American nut was saying. Eventually one guard, holding my bag at arms’ length, walked it through the scanner, and allowed me to proceed. And I ran. Luckily, only five days earlier I had mistakenly sprinted through the same gates of the same airport, so the path was familiar. But the sprint was a long one. And since I had worn jeans and a long-sleeve shirt, thinking myself handsome, and that I would make every guapa Spanish chick wish she had met me while I was in her country, I, as I mentioned earlier, accumulated a great amount of sweat in all of the obvious areas, and arrived at my gate breathing as if I might had smoked three packs since security. Also, I’m sure that I had already been red-flagged and secretly followed.  I sat next to the creepiest people on the plane. A couple, the guy from Canada and the girl from the Netherlands, she matching his un-trimmed nails with her unshaven legs, flirted via some perverted computer-game lingo. The short flight was long.

Drinks of all kinds were complimentary on the flight from Paris to Detroit. This wonderful fact combined with a growing realization that my time abroad was indeed over, made me avert my eyes from average movies like, The  Company Men, and, Love and other Drugs, so that I’d remember the theater of it all, and keep my eyes dry. I was coming home to a loving family, a familiar bed, and a country slam full of English-speakers…But I was also coming home to unemployment, financial desolation, (I literally had zero dollars. No money), the storm of a legal cluster-fuck, the shameful residence of a college graduate in his parents’ home, and high school ghosts that still haunt. I had gained much, maybe even some of myself, but it seemed like everything that I had been sure of in Spain, all that I had accumulated, was as worthless as the euros in my pocket.

Two days after I returned from Spain my mom drove me to a mandatory meeting with my state appointed counselor. Brimming with confidence, and as much charisma as I could muster, I joked with the secretary, pet her dog, and smiled with my eyes while I told Sally, the sweet, elderly counselor, that yes, before being caught, I had driven under the influence. I told her about the night that I was arrested, that I wouldn’t trade the embarrassment and shame, and that I now know that no night, no extra drink, is worth the sacrifice of freedom and finances which the DUI has cost me. I told her about Missouri sending the wrong information, and how what was supposed to be 30 days without driving has turned into 6 months in the passenger seat. Sally said some really nice things about me, and that, “yes”, sometimes people like me, with good parents, a college diploma, and a vocabulary stocked with 4 syllable words, are caught. She assigned me as little counseling as possible, (3 thirty minute sessions in 12 weeks), and apologized for having no choice but to require, because the state requires it of her, that I attend weekly AA meetings. Even while I was still with her I was deflated. Three more months without driving, more shameful meetings, and an increased sense of the feeling that I had at some point transitioned from perpetrator to victim. Sally hugged me at the end and told me that one day I would laugh at “all of this”.

My mom and I went to lunch afterwards. She told me that she was sorry things had turned out as they had. I remembered that I created the situation which allowed the possibility of “all of this”. I had. But I’ve made things hard for myself before. I’ve never had cancer or lost a loved one, but I have, thanks to my own mistakes, endured hardship. And from those times, and those mistakes, from the loss of friendship and loss of self, learned that “this too shall pass”, applies to everything. I told my mom, as we walked from the car I couldn’t drive to the restaurant where I couldn’t order a beer, that, “this won’t stop me”. And even though I didn’t say what it wouldn’t stop me from doing, but earnestly meaning it nonetheless, my mom said, “I know”. And I believed her. And it won’t. And I know that it sounds like something Rudy or Andy Dufresne would say, but I wasn’t embarrassed to say it. Because sometimes the hardest things to get through are ourselves. And I knew that AA couldn’t be bad for anybody, and that I’ll spend more time with my little brother because I literally can’t go anywhere without him, and that one day I’ll be able to drive a friend home, because there were so many times that I couldn’t. And I also knew that August 1^st, when I can drive again, that I’ll probably drive the lonely Neon, at four dollars a gallon, to the goddam North Pole.   

“I know that It’ll pass. I know that things will change and that This will be a memory. I know that other people have gone through worse and I know that I deserve whatever comes to me. I know I’ve escaped many times, I know that It was stupid, I know.

But I’m so weary.

The strings from my shoulders to my toes are being tightened. My heart beats in my head and my brain thinks in my stomach. It’s late and tomorrow will be better because it’s forward. I only find peace in the memory that the eyes to see exactly how dark tonight is, will equally appreciate tomorrow’s light.”

I wrote that a long time ago. I was on the airplane looking through folders and files, and I couldn’t remember what “I know that it’ll pass”, came from. I’m not sure what night it was on, or what was happening, but it’s true, I mean the thing that I found peace in.

Yesterday I was looking through my most recent journal and I found a line that I had written. It said, “what if the stars blotted out the streetlights”. It was scribbled apart from everything else, crossing the horizontal lines of my moleskin.

First of all, I actually like that line. I rarely feel successful with a sentence or a thought, and it’s probably that I had no idea what I was saying, but I think it’s pretty good. When I read it now I think of how we see each other—and how it’s sad that This Person’s or That Person’s streetlights often blot out their stars. The next thing I thought of was a mountain top in Hawaii, and how everything turned to stars after the sun had set beneath the clouds.

Neither the stars nor the streetlights had moved, but I had seen something different. 

blah

I just wrote for a little while. At first I thought that I was going to write something good about this one thing, and then it ended up being bad and about another thing. I kept it, but it was too boring to re-read myself.

I'm in one of the bedrooms of an apartment in San Sebastian. The city is comfortable and active, and last night we watched the sun set over islands and ocean. I stood at the foot of a monumental statue of Christ, which is on top of a small mountain, and debated the practice of carving Aryan-Christian-deities--awe inspiring, set atop a hill with His sun on the back of His Son...and also stone carved and shaped life gold, into a calf that looks like a man. Anyway, I grew weary of thinking and realized how much hope there is. And even though i may have thought of hope because of the statue, or because The Day (Easter), calls for it, I was aware of it. And I am hopeful.

It's rained upon our beach-town every day that we've been here. I sold my only jacket and I'm going to Ireland. I understand that it'll probably rain there as well, but that through the use of shabby pubs, the Irish have conquered the gloom of grey and wet. Cheers.

We were I and Me

We were not always We, but instead many I’s.  I am from Asheville and I am going to Spain. I am from South, North, East, West, and Central Florida and I am going to Spain. I am from The Quad Cities, Waterloo, Iowa City, and New Jersey and I am going to Spain. I am from Sorority, Fraternity, Friend Group, Church, Synagogue, Team, Lineage, This Job, That Job, and I am going to Spain.  I am from America and I am going to Spain. I am big and I am going to Spain. That’s what I said.

           

In the airport I said, “Hi Me, I am I”, and Me responded and said, “Hi I, I am Me”, and I wondered who Me is—and what Me’s parents are like, where Me is from, what music makes Me think, who Me’s friends are, what Me likes to eat, where Me finds solace, if Me feels lonely also, whether Me will be close to I, how Me’s face will change from meaning its structure to meaning who Me is, and I longed for Me to like I.  I hoped that Me and I would dance and sing together, and that maybe I would make jokes that made Me laugh, and that maybe Me would do the same for I. I wondered the same. And if I would tell Me things that few others new, and I wondered if Me would love I after I told Me the things I was ashamed of. Me wondered if I would hold Me’s secret’s and cares closely, and Me wondered if Me would tell I anything at all.  Both Me and I thought of each other, but each stayed themselves. Me thought about Me’s mom, and how she was probably making Me’s favorite meal. I thought about I’s dad, and how he was probably playing golf at I’s favorite course. Me remembered his dog, how he barked, how only shit on cement, and how Me loved him. I guessed that I’s friends were playing Halo or throwing the football or having a party. Me missed Me’s best friend and I missed I’s other. Me and I each wondered if they’d be forgotten, missed, remembered, and by whom. But despite the thoughts of known and familiar, Me and I were hopeful. Me and I drove and flew and rode separately, but both in a hope for adventure, and in an expectation of change, and in the knowledge that big was scary, small desirable, and the transformation illusive.

           

In the first days Me and I were apart, and La Plaza de Virgen, with its dark-tiled floor and ode to The River, a distant walk.  The Riverbed was a gutter, The City of Arts and Sciences--a spaceship, Spaniards—little people from a movie, The Staff--Faculty, Roommates--strangers, Lavin--a weird word, Café con Leche--lacking coffee, food portions--tiny, The Central Market—smelly, The Train Station—hectic, dinners—anxious, alcohol---a relief, and comfort—as lost as familiarity.  Me and I, outside of the things which they left at home, were no longer sure who they were. Me and I did, said, and thought things that were not characteristic—or they were, and Me and I realized that Me and I were different than Me and I had imagined ourselves to be. Maybe Me and I regretted the differences, maybe Me and I loved them, maybe they weren’t changes but instead admissions, and maybe Me and I were changing as Me and I thought of changing.

Me walked down Calle Caballeros, away from La Virgen and towards The Other Torres, passing tall buildings painted yellow, brown, faded pink, and crème. Me thought that the streets were narrow and the cars small. I ran down the riverbed, under a stone bridge groaning of the past, and then a white one shouting of the future. I ran in the walking path, and then the biking path, and then in mud, and then, finally in the running path. I thought that Spanish people’s running pants were underwear, and that Spaniards will kiss anywhere. In restaurants and bars Me heard whiny music and I chewed on the same bit of fishy gum for an hour. I wondered if the music was a joke and Me wondered if he would starve in Spain. I said something to me about the music, and Me laughed. Me said something about the food, still chewing, and still miserable. I laughed. Me and I played European Futbol. Me and I sucked at it. Me partied late at Bolseria, La Klocka, and Las Animas because Me found security there. I stayed in and watched movies and read because I found security there. Me thought I was on to something, and I thought Me was too.

Then Me and I travelled. Me went to Paris and saw Notre Dame, The Tower, and Versailles. I went to Portugal and walked through the gardens of Centra and by the graffiti of Lisbon.  Me drank red wine from baby bottles, I took close pictures of flowers, and Me and I realized that they loved where they were, but that home was in the shadow of the Serranos. I missed Me, Me missed I, and both looked forward to eating with one another below Negrtio’s chalk-board sign.  Me read the short powerful prose of For Whom the Bell Tolls, because I suggested it, and I took shots of caramel whiskey at New Orleans, because Me suggested it. Me cooked for I, and I cleaned for me, and in the ambiguous mix of emotion and experience Me and I and Valencia became We.

We walked inside the white soft walls of the Hamman, dirtied our feet in the irrigated fields, grazed our chests against bulls, and We saw the sunrise. We went to Lavin and sat in comfortable silence together, we raided Pon de Queso, we realized that The Staff was not Faculty, but We. We played soccer and capture the flag in the riverbed, and the riverbed was a playground, not a gutter. We shared pots and pans and We lost every one of the small colorful cups that came with the apartment. We replaced them with permanently borrowed glasses. We shared packs of cigarettes, bought each other drinks, and studied together--but partied together more. We yelled out song lyrics, We danced, and We kissed the people that other members of We had already kissed. We lay on one another’s beds in great heaps and joked about the night before. We lay on one another’s bed’s in great heaps and joked about the night to come. We untagged compromising photos of ourselves making drunk faces and we quietly looked at pictures of ourselves in front of historic structures. We learned the names of each other’s parents and siblings and friends. We realized that Virgen is close, the streets intimate, Arts and Sciences magnificent, and the running pants—still too tight. We talked about our passions and our hatreds and we travelled again. We saw the Vatican, Mediterranean, Eastern Europe, Morocco, UK, and Spain.

Fallas came and went and we learned about renewal, pacing ourselves, and paella. We danced in a big white tent with Spaniards who called us friends, We grew numb to the sound of popping fireworks, We walked alongside parades, We hated and love bullfights, We watched our faces, which now meant more than their structure, hold the fireworks’ poses, and knew life here, and forgot life there. We went to the symphony of Valencia and loved it, but We already knew that a collaborative noise of many different sounds, creates the most beautiful production. We learned that Lavin is where Andrea works, that Ali is the guy who sells “cerveza fria” on the streets, and that Ignacio’s preferential gin is Seagram’s. We know that Maria’s comforting smile means more than language can express, Catti keeps people dancing, Juan Carlos speaks no English except for “shhhh!”, Desk David cares, Dolo has a boyfriend, (dammit), DJ presses the button to the glass door, Hemma’s not as tough as she seems, Alicia’s an aficionado, the cleaning ladies laugh at EVERYTHING, the internet and printer are terrible, the toilet paper downstairs is free, always party in apartment 3 because they’ll be meeting with Ignacio anyway, the tiles in front of the Study Center are in fact a road, and Coop has never been wrong about anything except for once thinking that he might be wrong.    

We saw the end in sight and we imagined hugging those who are away, but we blocked thoughts of losing those who are here. We said: “Living in Valencia has been the craziest roller-coaster of our lives. We’ve made undoubtedly some of the most lasting friendships with some of the craziest, yet most exciting people We have ever had a chance to know. This town has transformed our idea of studying, traveling and learning a language, into the experience that people call "studying abroad”. Whether the others who are not here were unable to afford the price, unable to step out of the box, or unwilling to accept uncertainty, We feel sorry that they are not able to know what we do. Tallahassee, Orlando, Miami and Iowa City will be there when we return, just as we have left them, however our lives will not be the same.”

We knew that we would miss “the nights that ended with morning, meals fed more by stories than food”, and the silence of a train car looking outside, but thinking of the inside. We knew that We’d miss the “mullets, rat tails, Mohawks, and faux-hawks. We’d miss scanning the sidewalks for poop, and the smears of the unlucky. We’d miss fifteen minute class breaks that were thirty minute class breaks. We’d miss learning. We’d miss dryer-room drama, the chime of the elevator and ring of the door. We’d miss movie nights, family dinner nights, and trips on Fridays. We knew that we’d miss the echo from the staircase, the clicking of heels and the padding of bare-feet. We knew we would miss.”  

But We also remembered that someone said: “The rhythm of our hearts will change as we scatter and return to the familiar or find new faces to entertain. Fortunately for us, ours will always beat with Spanish undertones. We have that. Together. So walk in love the way you did here, no matter where you go, my lovely.”

We had, “Candle lit nights, full of energized conversation with a ukulele harmonizing to the beat of our hearts. Nights standing on the balcony, throwing cigarette butts down below to see who can make them into the iron gutter. Talk of first impressions, first conversations, first mistakes, and how so much has changed in the three short months that We have known each other. ‘Guys, we only have two months left…’ ‘Only one month left, ya’ll…’ Any utterance of this sort is always rebutted with ‘Shut up, I don’t want to think about it.’

“We never want to leave; for fear that We may lose what We have found. It’s impossible to imagine Our lives anywhere but here. We have become a source of life to ourselves. Gone are the days of sleep, routine, solitude, rigorous schoolwork, monotony and insignificant priorities. We’re finally living and We don’t want it to end. We are rich; beauty has found Us and wrapped Us in its cloak. It has come to Us in the form of people; people We would have never met before, and now can’t imagine living without. It has come to Us in the form of places. Places that were once only a passing thought or a figment of Our imagination, but our now places of home.”

“We came into Our lives, and just as the places we’ve gone, We’ll remember. Here has become Our home, and We our family. It seems like I’s and Me’s want We, but just as they find It, We says ‘goodbye’”.

We said this and learned this and spoke this and more. We each have stories of cathedrals, fields, moments, and people. We are different than We were---How could We not be? The life that comes from 3, the class from 4, the sass from 5, the art from 6, the selflessness from 7, and the diversity from Top Shelf—who would Me I and We be without each of those? The details and senses of Valencia are in the people who’ve joined Us in growing intimate with Her. We all know the Smell, emitted from people, food, and streets. The Sound, breathed of nature, man, and machine. The Touch, lent by sea breeze, stone, and iron. The Sight, reflected off of ancient, new, and Us. And We know Valencia; with legs of orange trees, a belly of paella, and eyes like fireworks.  

Fallas Dance

Fallas is the yearly Spring festival celebrated here in Valencia. A fiend who's been to both Mardi Gras and Fallas told me that there isn't a point in going to New Orleans after experiencing Fallas. Here's what I wrote about Fallas for a class assignment. It may be a little abstract, and thus confusing for those who haven't been to Fallas, but this is what I wrote.

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Fallas: A collision, Rain into water, Cohesion through explosion--So many perspectives, so many mirrors built of faces, that in only one, the view of all can be seen.

Fallas: Sizzling grills of late night venders, Spaniards shouting songs so old that word and instrument are one, tribal drums banging Africa’s beat off of Europe’s walls, firecrackers popping and hissing, hinting that the pressure is becoming too much, laughing, clapping, talking, and crying are all Sound.  And the Sound is scattered and separate, but it’s all one—It flows across fields and streets, gathering feet and wheels, gaining speed and strength, as its’ current, like water above a drain, circles around and around a place and a moment. 

Fallas: Cartoonish statues of sarcasm marking centers of community, Mary, the People’s flower of the People’s flowers, golden beer sweating in the cool wind, cotton candy eating ninos’ faces, strollers guiding families, Falleros in high socks and vests, Falleras with knobbed hair and swinging earrings, and lights in the sky, defying the closing curtain of darkness. The outfits, constructions, uniforms, sun, blue-sky, moon, black sky, buildings, tents, foods, drinks, and streets are all Sight. And the Sight is scattered and separate, but it’s all one—It flies from glance to glance, bouncing off of souls and objects, gaining speed and strength, as its’ current, like dust in a tornado, circles around and around a place and a moment. 

Fallas: Human waste, alcohol, smoke from fire, smoke from explosions, smoke from cigarettes, food, flesh, and breath, are all Smell. And Smell is scattered and separate, but it’s all one—It wafts from cause to affect, enticing and repulsing, gaining speed and strength, as its’ current, like mist around a fan, circles around and around a place and a moment. It is too much.

Fallas: Smooth and glossy statues against fingertips, streets of stone underfoot, cool liquid and warm sustenance inside, community in soul, fatigue on top of bones, and joy on lips are all Feeling. And Feeling is scattered and separate, but it’s all one—it creeps across the skin, straightening hair and bumping pores, gaining speed and strength, as its’ current, like the moment before a kiss, circles around and around a place and a moment. 

Fallas is this end. Joy’s mother is sorrow. Hope, pleasure, hot, cold, food, drink, rest, and life are known only because of the comparative relief of their contrary. They are relief as in, “behind”, or supplying perspective, not necessarily in the sense of rest or ease. This end, or this relief, is unjustly repulsed and reviled in all but Fallas; it’s an unloved step-child, an enemy, an obstacle, and even an evil. But Fallas is a celebration and example of Understanding. Knowing that heat is at its’ greatest sensation just before it burns; Shower. Cold a beautiful respite, until it chills; Ice Cream. Drink a teacher of freedom until all is forgotten; Blackout. Rest a relief in the sense of ease until it overcomes; Death.

Fallas is too much. The flowing Sound, flying Sight, wafting Smell, and creeping Feeling are all beautiful in their circling and mounting. Fallas is a marathon, paced at a sprint, along a cliff bordering a tragic fall to overindulgence. Slipping just past the edge, allowing the pressure of the forces to mount so greatly as to steer Us over the edge, would mean a fall into a place where Mother Joy and Daughter Sorrow are no longer separate, but united in death.

So there is fire. It heats, kills, and clears. Like humanity it is capable of all that is across the spectrum. It is neither good nor bad, tangible or imaginary. Each night of Fallas the pyrotechnic is responsible for keeping Us on the cliff and not over it. The Sound, Feeling, Sight, and Smell are too much, too close to numbness, and too large for Us. And so, the pressure must be relieved and the Too Much must go somewhere. And so, as a boy sinks on a trampoline before he flies, and as a droplet torpedoes below the surface before it jumps back towards the sky, the pyro presses the red button, and into the black the Too Much explodes and explodes. Red hearts, cyclones of blue, sporadic wafting white, and showering silver. Some may think that the fireworks dance across our faces and into our souls through our awe stretched mouths. But what the Old Ones know, because they more than any have learned the need of End, is that it is our souls that are flowing, flying, wafting, and creeping out of our awe-stretched mouths—to celebrate their relief with a dance across the sky. The dance ends. There is silence while the souls return. And then we sprint the marathon along the cliff, trusting that tomorrow, there will again be a dance across the nighttime.

Something I Found in a Lost Jacket

Today I went looking and I found something.

Last night some friends and I listened to boring music with voices as instruments and we talked about the people who were stolen from us, and the songs that they had taken with them. “I want to play this song or that song”, we said, “but I can’t because of her or him or this time or that”, we said. But it wasn’t sad. There are new songs, and for us in the room, songs that we now have together, and our heartbeats’ are still the same as our mothers’ and someone said, “summer follows spring follows winter follows fall. And not because the world is stuck on a track, but because each day God decides what day He will delight in.”

This morning I was able to take the comforter off, but last night’s conversations were still draped around me. But this wasn’t sad because “rich” and “sad” are not the same, and thinking is rich. I walked down the stairs so that I could go outside and find something.

I didn’t find it in the first place that I looked, or the second, but on the third try I found a jacket that someone had lost. The jacket looked warm, comfortable, and familiar. It looked warmer than any of the jackets that I've owned, and  It looked like a jacket that loved and was loved. I slid my arms down its' sleeves and buttoned it tightly around my waist, hoping to feel as its' owner had---but the jacket wasn't for me. It fit who it loved.  And as I took it off, the seams ripped and tore. I immediately hated my lust, cursed my selfishness, and wished very badly that I could put it back on the shoulders that it surely missed. I felt like a thief and a killer and all of my grief couldn't repair. But out of the ripping and tearing fell a note. 


The note is short and magical, but written in Times New Roman font and on a sheet of computer-paper. At the bottom, after the part where it says “love”, was my name. But when I handed the letter to a friend, her name was written where mine had been, and then as it was passed around it showed the name of he/she who held the letter. Some of us said, “This isn’t from me, it couldn’t be…could it?” and others of us said, “From me? Yes. By me? No”. And here’s what the note said:

Dear, I Am

            I’m sorry. Help. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Help. Thank You. I love. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I love. I’m sorry. I’m loved. Thank You.

                                                                                      Love,

It took one guy ten seconds to read the note, a girl fifteen minutes, her sister an hour, and so on. The words, other than the signature, don’t change—but extending invisibly from the lines that say, “I’m sorry”, “Help”, “Thank You”, and “I love”, are words like “for”, “with”, and places like “Lamb Mountain”, “the lake”, “the dump”, and names like _____, and _______, and_____________, and ___, and___, and ________, and____, and______, and_____, and____, and_____, and _____, and_____, and_____, and________,_____, and _______, and__________, and ___, and___, and ________, and____, and______, and_____, and____, and_____, and _____, and_____, and_____, and______,_____, and _______, and_______, and______, and ___, and___, and ________, and____, and______, and_____, and____, and_____, and _____, and_____, and_____, and________.

The page is empty now. We wrote this note and we're writing again. Look for the love notes in the things that we've lost. Breath, look, find.

The Wolves Wrestled at Night and It was Beautiful

The rain fell a little more lightly on my way back to our apartment. Trudging to the store each drop was thick and heavy, exploding onto my shoulders, hands, hair, and face.

In my head I was bitching.

“Why does it have to cold-rain on me the one time I go to the store to get the ingredients for our apartment’s dinner?  Are the Euro’s trying to drive their G.D clown cars in the gutter?  My feet hurt. My shoes are getting wet. I don’t have enough shoes. My roommate is sleeping and I’m walking in the rain to get food that he’ll eat. “

And as I bitched my anger went from soft orange to violent violet as I realized that:

“I’ve only gotten the groceries once, and yet I’ve eaten at least twenty meals. Europe rules. I didn’t even buy the shoes that I have.  And it’s probably a little unfair to categorize sleeping as selfish. “

But it wasn’t raining in the store, and I looked so dumb trying to execute the list that I’d been given that the security guard all but held my hand as he led me to each of the items on my list.

All but one.

The ice-cream goes with the lava cakes which are a fan favorite and a bad thing to screw up. I forgot the ice-cream because the security guard had to check the security of the parking deck, so I didn’t have a dad, and because:

A curly blonde with watercolor-blue eyes asked me if I speak English. In my head I knew to answer “yes”, but my when my mouth dropped 4 sentences in one exhale, and the watercolors seemed confused by my gargling, I tried again: “Yyyeeesss”. We then small talked about where we’re living, how she’s from Germany, and how lucky I am to have ladies to cook for me. (During the conversation I realized that in situations of small talk I am literally the most generic person. If my name was Gary no one would ever remember me). We shook hands, said “goodbye”, and then awkwardly ran into each other next to the chocolates, then the butter, and lastly at the beer. I was out of things to say by the butter. No phone number, no facebook, nothing but gratitude that the security guard didn’t know enough English to be embarrassed by me. The hero working at the check-out line said that I needed my passport to pay, which has never happened anywhere, and so I said, “Lo siento”, which means “I’m sorry”. So he said, “ Spanish Spanish Spanish Spanish no Spanish Spanish Spanish passport Spanish Spanish”. So I thought, gestured artfully, and said, “lo siento”. He let me pay and go. (I wish I were as dumb in English as I am in Spanish. I bet “I’m sorry” has a higher success rate than “your occupation is silly.”)

This is going somewhere.

The rain fell a little more lightly on my way back to our apartment. Halfway through the half-mile walk I “took a knee”. I sat against a green wooden door, gaining some refuge from the doorframe, and lit one of my precious cloves. (If you feel convicted I can give you an address to send some to.) Of course the quiet, as it always seems to be, was a miracle. I don’t want to basterdize what I saw, but the rain was waving like sheets in the wind, most visible in the tunnels of the car lights and in front of the ancient towers in front of our apartment.

The rain reminded me of the four-day walk some friends and I went on for the first part of Spring Break. The walk is called The Camino de Santiago .  I’ll leave describing the walk for another day, or I won’t, but the brief of it is that we walked 110 kilometers across northwest Spain—stopping to eat apples and nuts, and resting at cheap communal hostels. On the way to the bus station, which is located a mile from our apartment, my back was already hurting, my shoe broke (Nike Shocks generally have 4 shocks, mine had 3), and I realized that I didn’t know anyone that I’d be spending 5 days of misery with.  My mood remained similar through the first day of walking: It rained all day, as it would each of the next three, unless of course it was haling. My feet swelled into marsh-mellows, and then my left ankle, and because I couldn’t help but limp to spare the left, my right knee ached. Again, I bitched in my head. And I really was a touch miserable. And the oppression of knowing that the next day would be almost twice as long as the current one, was mentally crippling. So I was limping in all senses.

But just as quiet is often a miracle, so too is everything else. And that’s what I learned.

The pain we all felt was galvanizing. And now I know about the old loves, parents, dreams, favorite movies, mistakes, and authenticities of a few who can say, “We walked together”.  And I love them for seeing me.  Thomas Merton says, “The Desert Fathers believed that the wilderness had been created as supremely valuable in the eyes of God precisely because it had no value to men. The wasteland was the land that could never be wasted by men because it offered them nothing. There was nothing to attract them. There was nothing to exploit…God’s plan was that they should learn to love Him in the wilderness and that they should always look back upon the time in the desert as the idyllic time of their life with Him alone.” And it is. The People could have gotten to what was promised in only a few days, just as a car could have gone to Santiago in an hour, keeping us free of pain, rain, and smelliness, but both We and The People may have in exchange lost everything. 

And that’s what I remembered when my back was against the green door. And that’s when I reconsidered The Beauty. And I realized that I could walk in the rain because I’ve walked in the rain. I’ve had the rain in my socks, under my shirts, and falling from my hair to my nose to my chest. I’ve known the rain so intimately that my skin changed and the invisible strings from my shoulders to my boots were tight, and I’ve become heavy. But the rain isn’t against me. The rain is the rain and in life we have rain and what I’ve learned is that I thank God for the rain because the rain falls on my face and I feel it. I thank God because—even though it makes things slippery, and messes up hair, and makes me use my wipers (which make awful noises)—it is part of what we’ve been given. And the rain is sometimes loneliness, and sometimes fear, and sometimes anxiety, and sometimes cancer, and sometimes a lie, and sometimes distance, and sometimes memory, and sometimes it’s water droplets; but I know it.

So when it rains, I’ll dance.  

And if I can’t dance, then I’ll watch.

And if I can’t watch, then I’ll feel each drop that lands on my shoulders, hands, hair, and face.  

And if you get too heavy, or the strings get too tight, then I’ll say, “I know the rain and I love you.” And I’ll remind you that it’s rained before, but that it’s always stopped.

I walked home in the rain. Dinner was great.

After The Camino we went to the Canary Islands and drank colorful drinks on the black-sand beaches.