and I need something to believe in
maybe this year will be better than the last.”
Think of light and how far it falls to us. To fall, some say, is naming a fundamental way of going through the world – falling.
We rarely ever remember our past. Certain images are forgotten. Blurry. The most discernible images come to use later, in our dreams, like eccentric fiction. It doesn’t matter how we try putting them together everything neatly into shape; the context wanders until finally the past isn’t visible anymore. What we are left with is a pile of kittens lolling all over one another; warm with life, yet hopelessly unstable.
I woke up this morning with last night’s dream dangling at the back of psyche. The world in my dream was beginning to accumulate an irresistible momentum:
Cut to:
“I was in a hospital room with stone, white walls. I was recovering from some dis-ease. Black men in white gowns said I had almost died; I wanted to know why it was better to be alive. They said nothing. Then I cried.”
Cut to:
We grasp at human existence in terms of some absurd activities, resting on relatively straightforward motives, and soon questions about right and wrong pretty much drop out of the picture. Me, I just go back to gathering those kittens and piling them up again. Exhausted kittens, all limp and played out. I’ll explain.
Philosophers argue that we cannot be aware of ourselves without language. They say we are created by our language, that we live immersed in language and cannot escape; they say language stands as a scrim between us and what we think of as real and that we have to name things before we can know them. As a result we can never know what is actual. All we can know is names and stories. What I am looking for, at least I tell myself this, is a set of stories to inhabit, all I can know, and a place to care to about.
Cut to:
“I’ll never be lonely. I want to be a lion. Everybody wants to pass as kats. We all want to be big, big stars, yeah but we got reasons for that. Believe in me, because I don’t believe in anything, and I want to be someone to believe, to believe, to believe in. Mr. Jones and me stumbling through the barrio. Yeah we stare at the beautiful women, “She’s perfect for you, Man, there’s got to be somebody for me.” I want to be Bob Dylan. Mr. Jones wishes he was just a little more funky. When everybody loves you, son that’s just about as funky as you can be. Mr. Jones and me staring at the video. When I look at the television, I want to me staring right back at me. We all want to be big stars, but don’t know why and we don’t know how. But when everybody loves me, I’m going to be just about as happy as can be Mr. Jones and me, we’re gonna be big stars . . .
(words by Adam Duritz)
Cut to:
The one thing I absorbed while growing up where and how I did, was the intimacy of writing. I found in writing what some might call ‘self,’ some even call it destiny. So I proceeded from an early age to write myself out Charlotte, NC. To where I would write myself I didn’t know and didn’t really care. To where I have written myself now remains to be seen; remains to written. Maybe these next few paragraphs will lead me that much closer to where I need to be. Maybe in some small way I am trying to write myself back into NC. One question remains. Can I?
A letter of this nature allows me to truly express with sincerity what I am feeling. Taking the time to sit down and write this I find Zen. Sometimes there is solace in writing, reading for that matter contains a morsel of peace. Have you found it here? For sure spoken words heard – the sender/receiver theory – like if a tree falls in the forest, and there is no one there to hear it crash down – does it make a sound? – Does it even fall for that matter? Truth be known – maybe; sure there is a feeling found in listening. I know this. I’ve been listening my whole life. So hear you go, read these words at a distance from me, but don’t forget to listen – the big tree that comes crashing down may be the old oak in your backyard. I don’t know. I guess that’s why writing as always intrigued me. Being able to conjure an emotion absent of a conversation, even if there isn’t a tree falling, or for that matter, a forest anywhere is sight. There’s power, hear.
My life has always been about movement. Constant movement. Dynamic. Anti-stasis. Like “Papa was a rolling stone . . . wherever he laid his hat, that was his home.” That kind of idealism. My memories have been comprised of fragments – some I’ve chosen to forget – some I’ve chosen to keep, reconstruct to better suit me – others I can’t seem to shake. Haunted I feel. Something in the ephemeral – floating. Not grounded. My life has never seemed linear in any way shape or form. What you represent is order to that chaos, however disconcerted I say I am about you now in my life. You surfaced in my life at a time when I felt those fragmented memories become frail. They were beginning to drift further out to sea – as I try hard to create new ones to take their place. And believe me I have, and will.
Cut to:
“I got bones beneath my skin. Mister. There is a skeleton in every man’s house.”
It’s like I am driving and you are now that rear-a-view mirror. I don’t think I have ever had one before. I think I have been accustomed, lately, just glancing over my shoulder whenever I needed to change lanes. Lately it has been more like that Jackson Brown song:
“Running on empty – running on - running on high – running on – running into the sun, but I am running behind.
Cut to:
I took a drive to day
Trying to emancipate . . .
I guess it was the beatings
Made me wise . . .
I’m not about to give
Thanks or apologize.
I couldn’t breathe
Holding me down
Hands on my face
Kissing the ground
I seemed to look away
Wounds in the mirror waved . . .
It wasn’t my surfaced
Most defiled . . . . .
Head @ your feet
Fool to your crown
Fist on my plate
Swallowed it down
Enmity gauged
Divided by fear
Tried to endure
What I could not forgive
Saw things … saw things
Saw things saw things
Clearer clearer
Once you were in my rear-a-view mirror
I gathered speed from you
Fucking with me . . .
Once and for all
I’m far away . . . I can hardly believe
Finally the shades are ( razed ).
Cut to:
I seem to recognize your face
Haunting familiar, yet I can’t seem to place it
I cannot find a candle of thought to light your name
Lifetimes are catching up with me . . .
All these changes taking place
Wished I’d seen the place
But no ones ever taken me
Hearts and thoughts they fade . . . fade away
Hearts and thoughts they fade . . . fade away
I swear I recognize your breath
Memories like fingerprints
Are slowly raising
But you wouldn’t recall
for I’m not my former
It’s hard when you’re stuck upon the shelf
I’ve changed by not changing at all
Small town predicts my fate
Perhaps that’s what no one wants to see
I just want to scream . . . Hello!
My God it has been so long
Never dreamed you return
But now here you are
And here I am
Hearts and thoughts they fade . . . away
(repeat three times). Lyrics by Eddie Vedder –
“I wanted to serve my country. My father was in the Navy, and so was his father. I needed money for college. I didn’t want to go to college. It was a joke. I was just drunk.”
Cut to:
“Round here we always stand up straight
Round her something radiates.
Round here we are carving out our name
Round here we all look the same
Round here we always talk lions
But we sacrifice like lambs
Round here she’s slipping through my hands
But the girl parking lot
Say’s man you should try to take a shot
Can’t you my walls are crumbing
Then she looks up at the building
Says she’s thinking of jumping
She says she is tried of life
She must be tried of something
Round here she’s always on my mind
Round here I got lots of time
Round here we are never sent to bed early
Nobody makes us wait
Round here we stay up very, very, very, very late.
Cut to:
I remember someone mentioned to me of passing, travel, trouble, and talk. He said we as humans do this. He said it is a ritual. Ten years ago I might have looked past such a statement. Now I wrestle with the idea. I remember a poet once said,
“All things move toward the light / except those that freely work down / to oceans’ black depth / In us an impulse tests the unknown.”
(words by unknown poet. Really.)
I know that impulse to test the unknown. I know to make it new. I think that human existence and the sense perceptions that accompany it, is at its deepest level a profoundly spiritual experiment. As I write this it occurs to me that it seems to be a paradox we as humans simply keep doing.
I guess I write all this to you, to deliver what you could never have known about me, what you still don’t know, to deliver my story to you, so pass it on. In turn I move a little closer towards feeling at home in this unrelenting world, in this Los Angeles, but I still can’t imagine where I would want my ashes scattered. If we want to be happy at all here on this planet, in this city of angels; whether they are fallen or still flying, I think we have to acknowledge that the circumstances which encourage us in our love and hate of this human existence are essential. We are part of what scared in Los Angeles, part of what is still sacred in the world for that matter. This is our main defense against craziness, our solace, the source of our best personal politics, and our only chance at regaining that lost paradise, if it is indeed worth regaining.
And let’s say this letter is premature and we soon find out that we have nothing in common and those memories of the past are as fragile and translucent as we are. Let’s say I am still not that kind of person you want or will let into your life – that I am something less than to be expected or that I’ve become something more, that my sum total doesn’t match your sum total, that we don’t fill each other’s fissures; that if it weren’t for NC – Charlotte – the south – Dogwoods – humid dog day afternoons; we might never have anything to do with one another. If that’s the case, well then I’ll always cherish that periodic glance in the rear-a-view mirror – and be ready for a little more movement down that road. We’ll always have Chaya Ven.
But let’s say this letter isn’t premature. Let’s say it is right on time – X marks the spot – destiny – fate – karma – or just a lucky co-winky dinky that we both capitalized on; then let this be an informal greeting, a red-carpeted precursor, preface, and prelude to . . .
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