Insufficient

Joe and I sat at the table many years ago on the island and talked about cars. I took the words from reality into absolute science fiction. He called it out as worthless. I knew then that this type of daydream was futility. Why dream of something that is not even possible?

I understand today the uselessness of using brain power on something that cannot grow. Sure, daydreaming is nice, but it can be a tool for creativity, and it can be a tool for frustration when dwelling on equations that do not make sense.

 The daily puzzles that rise into view cannot be solved by always adding something that does not make sense. All I see is hurt, and damage. It says that all we have worked for is insufficient and insults the struggles made to be where we are. It is a lonely road to walk.

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Living on this side of what is real and what cannot be real can allow you to dream, see, and do. The other side is insanity. I have seen it in people; eventually, they are a shell of a person, empty and insufficient.

So if you say to me on the road we are traveling, "What if this" and "What if that," it only resonates as what we have is insufficient, and where we are going is not even that direction. It only feels low. It only feels down. Everything feels insufficient.

47 days

 In the season of insanity sanctioned by tradition and greed, the masters are allowed to talk grandiose things, and the subjects are allowed to shout, insult, and boast, pushing, gaslighting, and imposing ideas in what should have been a sprawling land of fertile soil.

It all seemed like a good plan in the beginning. But I have to wonder, with certain historical artifacts on the premises, is that only a romanticized version of the account that we tell ourselves? I already knew we turned around the stories of who did what to make ourselves look better. As the information age has grown to maturity, we browsed the books that we would never find over our morning coffee. Humanity suddenly looks different when you are a card-carrying member.

The burn of truth is persistent. That light that you can see even when you do not look at it can never go away unless you ignorantly deny it is there. Eventually, you find that you are actually living at 704 Hauser Street in Astoria.

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You look back on the glory days for solace. Close your eyes. Court Street, the day after Thanksgiving 1988, cutting glass in an era when finding a place to live almost happened involuntarily. At one hundred, and fifteen dollars a week, it all reads like a stupid little fairy tale. All of it. 

What is truth then? How is it that the hours of today are constantly unraveling the hours of yesterday? Did that happen to the generations before me, I dare say not. Who is better off. Is it them, sitting in a chair looking through their picture window into the past with a good dose of psychological valium? Is it better to be numb?

This brings me to the final thought about all of this: Last night, as with many nights in my life, I went to sleep wrapped in the Moody Blues Days of Future Passed album. I always wonder in my final moments, if would I want that playing as it has accompanied me in a molecular way all of my life. But then I think about that early Sunday morning room in the ICU at Bay Area Medical Center on SPID in Corpus Christie on March 31st, 1996. How would Dad have felt if I had put the Doors Crystal Ship on or Dave Brubeck Take 5?  Something inside me says all he wanted to hear was his children's voices one more time.  I think I understand this completely now.

I found a recording the other day from December of 2009. I was reading Are You My Mother to Noah. He was a month shy of turning 3. It is the most incredible thing to go back to a time like that. It is more than any song I could ever hear could give. I guess I needed that. Watching society become so fragmented and thinking back on what once was believed to be solid and true, it is nice to look back and simply see something so beautiful. When I look at those things that really matter, my blessings are too great to count. I guess I can deal with 47 more days of what is happening in the news. I guess.

40 clicks back

 The music was bouncing the house. Bogus Joe was jamming out Proud Mary with his guitar strap set high. There was smoke everywhere and the sound of clanking longnecks. This was it, the here and there now. Joe Man got up and asked a woman to dance. His hair was down, I had not realized it was so long! He glided around the floor in just his way. Life was perfect.

I looked down at the itching spot on my left thigh, realizing suddenly that my Levi’s were disintegrating! Battery acid from a road call today. Time to move. Yet, life was good. We will be home later. The lights of consciousness will start to dim no matter how hard I fight. That is when Mr. Thoroughgood will blast into the station in his locomotive blasting Move It On Over. I will marvel at my old man’s tenacity and wonder, how does he do it?

John Lennon will share his musical gift with the world one afternoon. It will set the new day's theme. There is a barrier to everything now. In 18 months one major part of the barrier will have a truck driven through it and of course, I would be the driver.

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I will see something that was given to someone else. I will see things that are not really there. And although I never had them, if I could go back in time, I would give them to him, so that he could have them like he should have.

Irony is indeed the shackles of youth.

In dire fear of time travel

 On a piece of iron ore, water, nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon hurtling through the expanse of space at thousands of miles an hour, the granular possibilities offer pathways spreading out infinitely like the webs of a spider weaving a complex expanse of highways reaching out for lightyears.

The night was thick, and I walked down the wooden steps to the sand; she called my name, and I turned back and walked up to her. She embraced me, and although it seemed like it was "come back," it later felt like "goodbye." I never found her again. I will never know why the people I was with would not leave me behind that night as I would have wanted them to. Had they done so, I would have ended up in very different places in the world.

A year later, on a Saturday night, the humid night air was so thick in the deep woods you could wear it. The fire outside crackled and sparked and smoked. I knew earlier that day the piano of awareness of what I could do with my life fell upon me from a great height. I am not sure what was responsible for the next step because I always thought it was me, but 40 years later, I discovered that I was caught in a web that could swallow up the sun's power. In that one moment, a portal opened. It was so impossible, so unlikely, and so destructive, and I tore off into it like I was rushing into war with rage.

26 months later, I watched my father's face as I told him that I was leaving. I have always said it; I felt like I watched him age 10 years as I said those words. So many times, I wish that I had not said it. So many times, I have wondered what my life would have been like had I not. 

During the years of the regime, I did not know many things, so all of my choices were made based on only the reality I knew. A familiar voice on the phone at midday was, in reality, the warden making the required checks. The more I think about it, the stranger it becomes. I know now that if you live in captivity but do not know it at the time, you still live in captivity. It is even worse.

When I broke free, the open road was ahead. That is where I was headed, and I should have taken it. I foolishly gambled one night on a lonely road, looking for someone I knew, who I never did find. In the daylight, I laid it all out for her, yet she maintained her cool. I was still headed for the road to never return. 

The invitation came, a great diversion, it too was carefully orchestrated. I carefully spoon-fed myself the truth of what I was doing next. A lifetime turned into months, and after careful manipulative words on the phone and in writing, months turned into days. This later became such a great regret for me. This was the last time I would see my father as a whole person. I traded it for commitment as my head was being forcibly pushed underwater.

One more big one that took me down a long, shadowy road. I walked along it for seconds into hours, adrenaline pumping through my veins the whole time, expecting to explode at any minute. Slowly, in my futility, I saw an obtainable life. In it, things got better all of the time.

This is the life I arrived at, and from it, I gained the most beautiful sons a person could have. When I look back on the moments in my life, those depicted above, in which my course in life completely changed on the head of a pin in one second, I shudder.

I am in awe that where I am today hangs on such tiny threads of events that were so unlikely. I often think about time travel and what I would do. On the lighter side, I would tell my Grandparents and Dad how much I love them one more time. On the heavy side, I would save myself and others from greater pains, or would I?

Seeing how my family happened by such a turn of a friendly card, I realize that even the slightest vibration change in the universe could change things so that I would never have ended up where I am. I have decided that, because of all of the burned bridges and landscape, manipulation, pain, and losses, I never want to see it when it comes to time travel. I would choose to die here now than to ever go back. I would never risk the beautiful gifts that I have been given. 

Three years later

 In the season of eternal status, where spring would always give way to summer in the most predictable ways, as it was in the 1920s, the 40s, the 60s, and here today in 78, it did not seem to change. I got off the bus that came down the hill every day, and I knew what to expect. 

The summer pressed on. Inside of me however an awakening was underway. I could tell that behind the summer music, things were never going to be the same. A bouncy and complex jazz run had laced the airwaves and it boasted sharpness. There were signs that time was moving, which also meant that changes were in the wind. 

The late summer movies gave way to the atmosphere of the fall background. The smell of new clothing, and paper, and the hum of fluorescent lights overhead in a building constructed in 1906 gave way to gravity that could never be denied. In a moment you can learn so much about yourself. 

As the leaves changed color, we were mobile again for the first time in two years. The freedom brought about uncertainty. As I look back on this, I realize that this was a small example of a phobia that could return to me in 1991 and in 2022. Sometimes it takes a long time to find the answers to your questions.

I woke up, and things were new. I was new. I was in control now. I was viable and it was great and weird at the same time. In only 4 seasons such as this one, things would be more different than anyone, anywhere could ever imagine.

Three years later, we are on the 36-month merry-go-round. Everything always looks the same. But somewhere on the piano keys in the smoke-filled VFW hall, the player makes a fatal slip of the hand, and a wrong note echoes off into the night. With that, there is a shockwave promising change we did not see coming or even could have imagined. It will look like freedom for sure. It will write books and songs and people will be born. But it is not freedom, it is worse than death, and we will live to regret it.

Three years after this, on a subzero morning, reality is stifled for a moment and my brain even paints what I think I should see. Suddenly, the parachute opens and tears me back from my manufactured vision, forcing me to see how unfair the world is. Innocence notwithstanding, crushed you will be whether you deserve it or not. There it is, my ride is here.

The bridges of the Intercoastal Waterway slap the tires in rhythm with the music and the hot summer breeze. Everything is different. There is sand in my bed and sand in my dreams. There will never be a feeling like the one I feel now. Never. Here there will be nothing but bridges and they are everywhere. I would never trade this for anything. 

And then three years later, the sun rises over the severity of the Adirondacks and I see it as if it were my first time ever. I start the days slowly, resuming what the bitter cold day took from me back in 84, but soon, my impulse takes over and I am living nothing short of an action thriller, that sometimes I lose minutes or even hours of understanding about where I am or what I am doing.

Raw survival instinct kicks in and coupled with the life I have lived the last three years, I know I have something rarely ever imparted to anyone. The ride gets faster and more wild; that is when we jump and succeed. It is a new day and that is good, but things turn dark the following year and I find myself out on the fringe again, more than ever now.

It has been three years since I journeyed north, and it was time to go south again. The things you do when you have completely lost yourself and your mind. It was here that I was destroyed at the wall of creation in a violent blast! Rage coursed through me and revenge was all I could think of. But as the hours passed, I knew it was all me. The ride had to stop here and now, and somehow, it did. Big painful changes had to be made. There were so many of them. Some still hurt today.

What happened next defies who I am and yet defines who I am too. The one thing that I feared the most, the one thing I never did, denounced, and would never be a part of, I accepted, embraced, and watched it unfold like a novel that I was reading and not actually living in.

Three years later, Neil Young's Harvest Moon came out and in the notes of the music, I could feel that everything up and around the bend, was about to change. It changed in a very big way, forever. 

It was a very dark day three years later, standing at the bedside of my father learning that time was up, this was all we would have. It wasn’t right but it was happening anyway. The days that followed were even darker, I was sure I would never see the light of day.

Three years passed and I found myself in a whole new life despite not moving from where I stood. It was timeless and daring. Voices came in over the stratosphere warning that the end of everything was coming. We could never make it back. Suddenly I woke up in a dark parking lot, music was playing and change was in the air. As soon as I heard the music, I knew.

Three years later, Warren was gone, Johnny was gone too and I had a beautiful son. Everything was new and it made everything else that came before seem like it had all been a movie that I had been watching in a dark theater on a sunny afternoon. 

Three years later, there were two beautiful boys in my life. It kept getting better. Late in the year, affliction came knocking. Undiscovered country to navigate, to fight, and to survive.

Three years later, I sat in the hospital reading Are You My Mother to Noah hundreds of times, praying that he would be able to read it too someday. I walked the basement of the hospital with Liam exploring, spending time with him, hoping that soon we could be together again.

Three years later everything changed in the war. Where we were stationed, and how we were equipped. New normal. 

Three years later I am still climbing out of the mire of a life lived in a defensive posture. Never figured it out but I knew where to go.

Three years later I got perspective on the trails. I was starting to learn that discomfort is a diploma and one we should not deny. The biggest trial was coming. 

Three years later I fell on the dying grass that was recently only lush and green. I could not get up and I could not move. Everything that I was got turned upside down and spilled all over the ground. I did not know how to put everything together. A spaceship descended from the sky, and a woman got out and lifted me to my feet. She looked at me and asked, what would you do if you were not afraid?

Three years later I am sitting here writing this. I never noticed this unique rhythm that has played out here. Some days, I feel like I have come a long way. Other days I feel like I have not moved in 30 years.