My reoccurring, on again-off again, ache is returned today to trouble me. A familiar ache, I feel it in my head. I feel it in my nervous stomach.
The pressure of the air, the wind in my face, the noise of trains, and lawnmower engines, and barking dogs, and ambulance sirens. Every step another thud of the hammer. Every step another spike through the eye.
But I’m not crying for the way things are - as bad as they are. If there are tears they are for the never was and the might have beens. I’m hurting now, but it will pass. Some Tylenol, some water, some rest. Till then I keep moving.
Somewhere, elsewhere in one of those capital capitals, one of those centers of power and wealth and influence, someone is brokering another deal, trading information, buying and selling the world. What little it means to me. They can buy and sell it all and they still won’t have me.
Home is where I want to be.
My head hurts and my stomach rolls, but I am cheered by dandelions and purple flowers that I cannot identify. I am on my way home.
“Laborers who’d only blow it on drugs or alcohol or teenage mistresses? No… we can’t pay fair wages. Not to them.”
“Your continued defiance, your past mistakes. Those forgotten crimes - kidnappings, and extra judicial beatings, harassments and frauds - you betrayed your country, gave aid and material comfort to our enemies.”
“Eh… Call it a shield and use the sword and leave it be.”
“You’ve tried to say that it wasn’t a crime, but listen to the public complaints. All the celebrity glamour magazines and White House propaganda…”
“We committed no crime! It’s only… it’s only…”
“What? Tell me.”
[awkward silence]
“What is it?”
“It’s only heartbreak. Just greed. No crime. No crime. Greed is good. You know this.”
The Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof - all the godless scientists and funky professors can say nothing against it - the world and they that dwell within - the atheist and agnostic notwithstanding.
The trouble has only just begun and the malcontents are already laughing - it is the natural display of their patriotism. Ha! F your feelings; we’re not guilty. Obviously. All the dead Arabs. All the deaf Jews. Call it history and forget it. Forget them all. Founder it in the sea. Drown it in the flood.
Raise a glass and raise a song. Somebody had to die. Somebody always has to die. It’s punishment without crime, extradition without cause. Show us the money - cash or coin - and the offense is yours.
Who shall ascend? Who shall stand? The one with clean hands. The one with a pure heart. The one without swearing his soul unto vanity. There is no vision. No health. No knowledge. No salvation.
A nation led by talk show hosts is a generation inciting fires for ratings. Stochastic terrorists. Lift up your head - it was just a joke. Lift up your head - but yeah, the vermin should be exterminated.
Who is the king of glory? We’re already dead but the malcontents are laughing at the show. Who is this king of glory?
I have little, and will lose more in these days of Gogmagog, when the air is thick with smoke and purple light, and the blind musicians play after midnight. Still those who can sing must sing.
Stretch out your icy hand and touch, and touch my face. Fire, I'm on fire, light a candle the sparks fly higher and shadows tremble on the wall.
First we dance the mad dance and then, then comes the death. We're slaughtered and martyred, dressed in a shroud, we're calling your name out loud. Protect us, Lord to see you soon.
I have, for the past several nights, had dreams that I could
not quite recall when I woke in the morning. This is not, in itself, unusual.
Most dreams are forgotten the moment the sleeper awakens. They disappear like a
breeze, stirring the mind for a moment and then gone. But I have practiced
trying to recall them, and frequently find material in them that can be used in
my writing. I appreciate my dreams and have worked at trying to hold on to the
fleeting fragments that remain as I awaken. Still – these recent dreams have
not stuck with me after I lifted my head from the pillow.
Except that there has been a nagging suspicion that these
forgotten dreams have had something to do with my ex-wife – my first ex-wife to
be more precise. But that’s where the precision ends. I cannot recall the
situations, events, or characters of the dreams. I don’t know what happened. I
only suspect, or perhaps fear, that she was there.
And this causes me some concern. Not so much that she was
there – I know that even now these several years later I am still recovering
from her departure and putting my life back together. Things in my life are
much improved and I’m happy in my work, my hobbies, and my relationships. But –
and here’s the real question: What is my brain doing while I’m asleep? What’s
going on up there? I don’t trust my mind – even when I’m awake it must be
carefully monitored to keep it under control. When I’m asleep I can’t control
it. What is going through my brain when I’m asleep?
Addendum:
Last night I dreamt that my friend, Rick, was diagnosed with
terminal brain cancer. Maybe dreams I can’t remember of my ex-wife are fine.
Let’s go back to that.
I remember the nights when sleep felt like death and I couldn't decide if that's what I wanted. Isolated from all that I wanted to love, those winter nights felt haunted.
Sleeping alone in bed next to her I could hear the wind outside. Or alone in my car in a hospital parking lot, I could feel the wind blow through me.
I was tired of life, but afraid to die; I loved, I hated, and I feared. I remember this well, look inside me and see I was surprised by my own fear.
But you are the dawn and you are my home.
I could go away, sail across the sea. I could live on an island far away. It's a strange place but I'm learning to live with the weight of bright sadness.
What is withered in me will flower again and all my illness be made well, and what is flowing and wasting away will regain its shape again.
For you are the dawn and you are my home.
This is a song I wrote recently for my friends J, T, and B - though it uses some of my own history and much of my own thought. The concept of "bright sadness" seems paradoxical, maybe. Is there such a thing as joyful mourning? Or bitter joy? Melancholic celebration? It's a truth that seems to defy logic. And it's a phrase found in the writings and prayers of many in the Orthodox church, especially during this season of Lent - a time of reflection on both suffering and death as well as hope and renewal.
I've also cribbed, somewhat, from the Confessions, of Saint Augustine - from IV. 6 and IV.11 in verses 3 and 5 respectively. For, as Augustine himself wrote, "often... while turning over haphazardly the pages of a book of poetry, one may come upon a line which is extraordinarily appropriate to some matter which is in one's own mind, though the poet himself had no thought of such a thing when he was writing..." (Confessions, IV. 3 - translated by Rex Warner 1963)
It was spring and he struggled
against the wind as he walked his route. A storm had blown through recently and
the lingering winds still buffeted. There was trash and debris in the streets,
empty pizza cartons tumbling across yards and fallen tree limbs across the
sidewalks. He stumbled occasionally over broken bricks and dislodged chunks of
concrete. These things, however, would not keep him from his appointed rounds.
It was spring and it was Lent and
somewhere overhead a hawk was screeching. Was it a warning? He thought about
the passion and the pain that waited in the next few weeks. “Not everyone can
carry the weight of the world,” he said to himself and was reminded of a song.
He thought of T. and of J. and C.,
his friend, his colleague, his brother, all of whom had reached out to him in
the past year to say something of their struggles with life and their wrestling
against death. “How can I carry that weight,” he thought to himself and he
remembered his own occasional suicidal contemplations. “I can barely handle my
own.”
He’d always felt like the family
failure – with no college degree and two failed marriages. “How can I carry
this?” He shifted the load he carried and stretched. His neck popped twice. He
stretched again and his back popped as well. He sighed and continued along his
path.
J. was there along his route, out
for his regular morning walk. “How are you, J?” he called out to him. “Not too good,” J answered in his
halting manner. “I’ve been thinking about God and it hurts.” Then he let out a
long and warbling wail. “It’s not been a good day.” He offered what solace and comfort he
could to J. and promised to see him again the next day. Perhaps things would be
better then…
Somewhere overhead the hawk was
still screeching. Was it a warning? Was it a comfort?
Later, as he neared the end of his
route, something triggered the memory of the way old Mrs. D. would play the
piano in the lounge area of the nursing home. She kept her foot constantly on
the sustain pedal so all the wrong notes – and there were many of them – continued
to ring. And he remembered her singing through the dissonance:
“Let peace begin with me; let this
be the moment now. With every step I take,
let this by my solemn vow: To take each moment and live each moment eternally Let there be peace on
earth and let it begin with me.”
It was
spring and it was Lent and he had miles to go before the end, but he would
walk. He would carry what weight could shoulder and he would talk about the
passion.
Let There Be Peace on Earth – words and music by Sy Miller
and Jill Jackson Talk About the Passion - words and music by REM
Today was one of those days when my feet felt heavy but my song was light. My hips ached a little maybe. My heart … my heart was somewhere in between, but what can you say with the world the way it is? I walked through glass, broken glass, following someone else’s memories. I tried new keys for unknown doors. This allowed me to improve my performance.
I ventured, unaccompanied, into questionable places , into the lair of untrustworthy forces. Ring the bell and a gun appears. I was insulted from a great distance. The words came clouded but I could hear them - mostly/ “That Jeff Carter is a … loser!”
There were infrasonic wind chimes too low to hear; the vibrations were felt, not heard. I paused for cats and played with dogs. I spotted owls. I walked in and against the wind.
It is time again for screaming into the void -that vast, unknown, and frightening darkness that engulf us - a darkness for whichwe are completely unprepared. Whoever screams into the void should see to it that in the process he does not become a void himself. For if you scream long enough into the void, the void will scream back at you.
The echoes of paradise still ring memories of a place I've never been from the garden they were thrown still trying to find my way back home again, again, again.
You went missing years and years ago and where you've gone I could never know I've seen your face a thousand times but never in the New York Times, oh no, oh no, oh no.
The mountains loomed so large out there when I was breathing in the desert air I would call to apologize and to forgive your lies but you don't care, don't care, don't care.
I'm happier than I was before since she walked through my front door but here's a great mystery that the shape of you is still in me, oh, oh, oh.
She is sleeping now so whisper but when she wakes I will kiss her in the noon and twilight times I will sing in broken rhymes for her, for her, for her.
I wrote this song as I was delivering packages yesterday afternoon - on Forgiveness Sunday (also known as Cheesefare Sunday in the Orthodox Church) - the last Sunday before lent.
As I was out and about with the mail today I wondered what it would sound like if country musicians wrote horror stories. This was what I came up with:
I’m scrounging for change, picking up quarters in the parking lot of an abandoned video store in this town where the air smells like a smoldering cigar.
I’m at the airport with no shoes.
I’m attending a birthday party for dreadlocked children I don’t know. I’m greeted by a woman I never knew.
You spray me in the face with a can of mace after I apologize. You embrace me and kiss me on the lips, but I know that this, even this, is another of your lies.
I’m making mistakes- simple mistakes- so I’m retracing my steps to correct what I’ve done.
It’s that time again - it’s time to scream into the void. It won’t respond. It won’t change. The void doesn’t care. The void will not be held accountable. But we are compelled to scream because the void is there.
I wrote the words for this song back in 2015 for a book project that didn’t ultimately come together. I have revisited them again over the last several years. They can also be sung to the hymn tune - St. Columba
When the waking world makes no sense try thinking about it as if it were a dream …
I think I went wrong somewhere- in both time and space. This is the wrong hour. This is the wrong place. A strange neighborhood, this, though I’m sure I’ve been here before. The porches are frozen and the doorbells have been ripped out with all the wires left dangling.
There was a cat here once, I think. Maybe. A pale and faded fellow, a friendly follower. There are other cats here now - frightened feral things that scamper away as I approach. Unapproachable. Unlovable.
Cats are everywhere, of course, hiding in our houses and under our cars. Who eats the food left on our porches? Who waits to trip us on the stairs?
There are squirrels leaping from branch to bare branch to yell at me. There are vines without grapes. There are empty milkweed pods and instructions from my supervisor- “make a you-turn at the next intersection.”
The circle has no beginning. The circle has no end. Here I am again and again and again. Make the waking life as irregular as the dream.
It was crowded and noisy inside my mind today, like a daycare on fire. It wasn’t a stream of consciousness; it was a gush, a mudslide, a broken sewer line of consciousness. No symmetry. No reason. Only nonsense nursery rhymes. Two radios played simultaneously. The first played “Stacy’s mom has got it going on” on repeat. Not the whole song, just “Stacy’s mom has got it going on. Stacy’s mom has got it going on. Stacy’s mom has got it going on…” the other played Melissa Etheridge - first “come to my window,” then “I’m the only who’ll walk across the fire for you” back and forth. Sometimes together. I tried to focus. Stacy’s mom. I tried to breathe. Stacy’s mom. I tried to find the mystic selah at the center of the sacred om. But Stacy’s mom has got it going on. - Peel the chicken. Lick the chicken. Peel the chicken. What does that even mean? I don’t know but it wouldn’t stop. Look at me in my old man sweater. Walk across the fire with Stacy’s mom. Are you buying or selling t used cocaine oil? What? Discarded shoes and gloves found after the snows have melted. Come to my window. Eternity is the flame after the candle has been blown out. Who said that?
The noise in my head settled to levels slightly louder than normal around noon. It was almost tolerable. Stacy’s mom had got it going on. Actually - Stacy’s mom is probably age appropriate for me. Is she still available?
