Journal

The Letters Project, Episode 7 Is up!

tater — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 22:02:14 +0000

Al, over at bluealto, has posted the latest episode in our fiction series, Episode 7: Serena-A Final Sprint. In this episode, Al introduces us to a new character and a new shift in plot. I highly recommend reading it, as it is excellent, and I will once again be under the gun to create an installment which measures up...

Long Walk Home

tater — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 21:08:41 +0000

It is 6:15 p.m. as the cattle car doors open, and spill their weary occupants onto the asphalt. I see the same tired faces every day, some tossing their empty king cans of Foster's Lager or Budweiser into the garbage as they file out, others studiously attending to last minute emails on their crackberries, some running hands through hair with an exhausted sigh, some withdrawing a fresh cigarette from their packs to light and savor the instant the first foot touches down in Glen Ellyn. I am in the middle of this tired bunch, and can feel the collective warm breath of impatience pushing me forward from behind. I am listening to angry music today, one of wailing rhythmic guitars, staccato drum beats, and angst ridden, growling vocals. The Pissed Playlist on my iphone, which contains artists and tracks I would be embarrassed to reveal to anyone I admire, is filled with songs from Metallica, Helmet, Tool, Rage Against The Machine, Black Flag, The Germs, Fugazi, Korn, etc. etc.etc. Music is a two way street, allowing me to exhale out with it, cleansing myself of what is hurting me, and when needed, filling me with what balances me out. Tonight is all about exhalation.

I step into the Metra train station parking lot, dodging the SUVs intent on blocking everyone else's right of way, while Trish picks up Robert in the shiny Escalade. Trish just dares you to register a complaint about her blocking your car or person, as she studies her manicure with one hand and jabbers into the cell phone clutched in the other. She tosses her sigh, hair, and extended middle finger to the woman in front of me who has just asked her to move her vehicle. I am expecting a call from a friend. One who has been living a life more cursed than mine recently, and there on my phone, is the little red dot with a one in it, that lets me know I have already missed his call.

Fucking hell.

I can't call him back, as he is in-between working phones, and calls me from a pay phone at a local mall. I feel like I have failed him, have let him down in a time of need. I have felt a lot of that lately, one of the reasons I have chosen to walk the five or six miles home again this evening, rather than call for a ride. I glance down at my Keen sandals, wondering to myself if the blister I was gifted yesterday would cause me problems again today, shrug my backpack into a comfortable position, and head out.

This hike is a stab at freedom, a feeble attempt to transition from the mild stress at work, to the stronger version awaiting me at home. The last few weeks there have cycled between open and loud hostility, to smouldering silence which waits for a breeze of conversation to ignite another conflagration. Hog tied together by history, friendship, and financial duct tape, I grimace at the thought of what may lie ahead. How exactly, will his stubbornness and temper wreak havoc upon me financially? I turn the volume up a little higher at the thought of paying a mortgage for a house I no longer want to live in, while trying to afford a new rent payment in the city. The music isn't working.

I watch the tidy abodes glide slowly by as I meander homeward, wondering what possessed me to move back here in the first place. Perhaps I sensed this eventual parting, and fought to suppress it via the creation of a cozy home ala Leave it to Beaver? Maybe I thought if I surrounded us with comfort, and animals to love, that the differences would somehow become muted and tolerable? That I could lose myself once and for all in this suburban landscape until the dreams and aspirations became faint whispers easier to ignore, or confuse with other sounds? Perhaps we would have so much to be grateful for, that the social and emotional needs that weren't being met, would pale in comparison to what had been accumulated here? Funny how hard it is to deceive yourself when you are anything but a fool.

A morning walk in Central Park awoke me to the certain knowledge that my life was off course, and another took me into this scary neighborhood of unknown perils and outcomes. I keep the hope that my current trek will allow me to stumble onto the breadcrumb trail back to a place that feels like home.

It is a wonder to me how other people can transition so smoothly from one relationship to the next, maintaining cool and pleasant friendship where love once burned so fiercely. I ask myself if there is some maturity I lack, some personality trait which is missing that prevents others from combustion into ash and rubble, like me? I long to disentangle without destruction, calmly and purposefully. I would love nothing more than to build a bridge of friendship that would carry us over the crevasse of change and transition onto a delta of forgiveness and acceptance. I am determined in my will to try, one step at a time.

Father's Day

tater — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 13:37:41 +0000

There was a steady wind sweeping the red dust in tiny eddies, like mini tornados, along the dirt road. A stalk of grass, a leaf, an insect blown slightly askew, whirling past me as I made my way onward. I dragged the toes of my Keds sneakers as I put each foot forward, liking the way the red dirt looked on the white toe caps. I could see the truck ahead, and beyond it the waters of Lake Eufaula.

We are near the Arrowhead area, hosted by the Choctaw Tribe. My father is friends with someone that lets us camp and fish here without payment or hassles of any kind. I know from listening to them talk, that Lake Eufaula (southeast Ok, near Muskogee, Henrietta, and other towns I vaguely remember) is a man made lake. A vast area of flooded land, used as a water control for flooding and water level for the Arkansas River Waterway. It was completed around the time I was born, and is one of the 15 largest such lakes in the U.S.

My father and I usually fish closer to home, but make it down here when my mom wants to visit her mother in Muskogee, or whenever she wants to visit my great aunts Lorelle and Audrey. My father doesn’t care much for my mom’s relatives, and he takes me with him as an excuse to play hooky from the repressive Baptist rules of my great aunts, or from the cigarette stained, cramped double wide which houses Frieda Cloud, known to me as Meme. Meme is mom’s mom, and doesn’t much care for my mother, her husband, or their offspring. The apple of her eye is her oldest daughter, my aunt Joe, thrice divorced mother of four, and her kids. Meme was the first person to introduce me to the willow switch. First she would have me cut it from the tree in her yard, and then she would show me with a disciple’s love, the power and pain it could induce when properly wielded. I wore Toughskin Jeans in those years, and they were pretty much indestructible ( I hated them and tried many times to destroy them, to no avail), but a switch could still find a way to sting me to tears through them, nonetheless. I never much knew her reason for punishment, but I figured it had something to do with bitterness that we were better off and better raised than our favored cousins.

She was nice enough when she wanted to be, I guess. She liked to make us Jimmy Dean sausage and scrambled eggs for breakfast, served with orange juice in jelly jars, and biscuits from a can that she always burned the bottoms of prior to serving. I thought them a treat at the time, cause mom always made hers from scratch, and I thought store bought was better back then.

I was always happy when my father announced that he and his fishin’ buddy (me) were going to hit the road and catch enough bass and crappie for a fish fry. Meme would always protest just enough to show she didn’t really care and still be polite, and we would head off down the road. My father was a scary man at times, but our fishing trips were always more fun than the alternative, and I enjoyed the chance to camp out. We had a Chevy pick up that had a camper top on it. A single bunk on either side, storage compartments, and a small (tiny) kitchen area.

My dad and I would leave before sun up, and get the boat in the water first thing, in order to catch a few fish before making camp. My father was an excellent fisherman, and a good teacher. I never went a day on the water with him without catching something. He made his own spinner lures, and they were highly sought after on Oklahoma and Texas lakes in the late 60’s and early 70’s. He once traded 6 of them for a brand new Abu Garcia rod and reel from a shop owner near Greenleaf State Park. He gave that rod and reel to me, and I have used it ever since.

Lake Eufaula was a beautiful but eery place. They flooded great tracks of land to make it, and there were areas we fished that had acres of trees rising out of the water like parched skeletons. The bass fishing was excellent back in those trees, but I was always a little scared. I kept peering in the water, thinking I would see the old houses buried in it’s green depths. I imagined I just might be able to see a crawdad eaten corpse floating behind a window in a flooded out home. What if they flooded it before everyone got out? I would pose these theoretical questions to my father from time to time, and he would lean over the boat, spit out a long brown glop of Red Man tobacco juice, and say:

“I suppose some little old man or lady coulda ignored the police and not got out in time. You see anything down there?”

“I think I see a roof down there” I would stammer.

“Well watch out for em and let me know if you see anything.”

This would always be followed by a belly laugh, letting me know that he could just be pulling my leg. Could be, but there was still the possibility pinging around my hyper-imaginative boy brain like a mexican jumping bean. Sometimes I would dream about the dead lake people swaying in dismay at the bottom of all that fetid green water, reaching to pull me under, to join in their lonely palaver, the fresh child in their horrific lairs.

We would fish all day, my father and I. We would take a break for lunch, and hit one of the diners on the lake for my favorite meal,” hamburgfrenchfry” and a milkshake. The ladies would flirt with my dad, and coo over my red hair and freckles. They called me Opie Taylor on more than one occasion, and I would just blush and find one of my dad’s legs to hide behind. My dad was a handsome man, and I meant that he wasn’t on the market, so they flirted with him but were merciless on me. I could always count on lot’s of “sugar, sweetie-pies, ain’t he the cutest thang, and kisses” before we were back out the door and down to the boat.

We would fish until dinner time, and knock off, set up camp and start a fire. My dad would cook for us over the fire, and he always managed to get it just right. Put that same man in a kitchen and it was sheer hell. After dinner we would take the camp dishes down to the lake and scrub them out with sand and water, getting them ready to use again for breakfast.

Darkness would start to fall, and I would roast marshmallows for s’mores, and dad would get his guitar from the truck and play. He had a great voice, and an amazing memory. He must have known over two hundred folk and bluegrass songs from memory, and never forgot a lyric. He taught me how to harmonize with him when I was four or so, and I figured out the harmony for every song he knew. The fondest memory I have of my father is singing together by the campfire, licking delicious chocolate and marshmallow from my fingers, as the fire threw shadows and light over our faces. My father would point out the stars to me on the way back to the camper, and he was the one who pointed out the big dipper and the north star. He told me how the slaves found freedom by following the drinking gourd, just like the folk song we sang described it, to the northern free states.

I would sometimes hear the coyotes start to sing their eerie night songs as I crawled under the covers.

“Dad? Are their any bobbycats round here?”

Having been an avid wild kingdom watcher, Bobcats were in my fear repertoire.

“Oh there might be a bobbycat or two around here son, you never know. Those bobbycats are scary, you feel like bunking over here to protect each other?”

“Okay.”

Love and hate is a delicate balance when you are trying to keep a chip on your shoulder. Memories can be selective and bitter at times, but the truth is always waiting for us to see it. Memories like these get through the armor and tilt the windmill of my childhood back in dad’s favor. He was a tough son of a bitch, but he fucking loved me. I would give anything for one more fishing trip, one more night of solitude and firelight. Happy father’s day dad, I love you.

Sunday Ramblings...

tater — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 10:53:25 +0000

"Life is a river, we go where it takes us."

I heard this line spoken in a new series I started watching entitled the Riches, starring Eddie Izzard, and Minnie Driver, about a family of grifters that have splintered off from the Travelers (a roving band of gypsies of Irish descent that have been in existence for almost 200 years). While the series is entertaining, it was that line which struck a chord with me, and has been running through my mind for the last few days.

I have been contemplating my past, looking at where I am now, and where I yearn to be, and I can see instances where conscious choice and decisions have taken me where I am, and would like to believe that I am the pilot of my own destiny. It gives me a sense of peace and accomplishment to assume that I control the path that I have taken in this life, yet who's to say that fate and circumstance haven't played a far larger role?

Alas, it is a mixture of both. I have been both fortunate and miserable as a result of where this river has taken me. Getting stuck on a sandbar of addiction for a time, drifting my way into the blessing of my current profession, being born white in a world which is made easier or more difficult by the color of one's pigment, born into a family well enough off to ensure my healthy upbringing and access to education, being lucky enough to meet a few people along the course of time that have provided me love and affection. I had no hand in these things, these events which then allowed me to react to them in a positive or negative way.

I suppose that life is a river we have no choice but to follow and react to, and that character is defined by how we engage with fate and circumstance. Being the captain of our own ships results from the decisions life forces us to make and live with, not the creation of the events themselves. Though our choices sometimes create offshoots or tributaries we can branch off and explore, to think we can rule the paths we take is a fallacy.

Recently a good friend of mine has had life thrown at him like a series of impassable rapids and waterfalls. Has spent two years dealing with each new catastrophe he had no choice but to face and pilot through. Powerlessly watching him scramble and weave to adjust, while keeping his head above water, has been both excruciating, and inspirational. His cool headed approach, his ability to make wise and sound decisions in the toughest of times, have left me speechless in admiration, and anguished that I can't string out a safety line he can grab and reel himself to calmer waters. It is extremely frustrating to realize that all I can do is shout words of encouragement from the shore.

Each of us lead this lonely journey, left to our own devices to cope, learn, and get stronger in healing, or to perish and be engulfed by them. I am left to ponder whether or not I would be able to tap that same degree of strength so evident in my friend, given the same degree of grief and turmoil. I don't know. I am grateful that he has shown me a course to steer, and the profound lesson of perseverance and grace.

Oh, OK. One More...

tater — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 23:48:06 +0000

Text message breakup...

Hunger (episode 6 of the Letters Project)

tater — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:54:38 +0000

Sorry for the delay, but the newest episode of The Letters Project, a work of fiction between myself and BlueAlto is now posted, and awaiting those interested in reading it. Go to the side bar, click Letters Project, and you will find it there...

Or simply click here!

Shoes

tater — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 17:27:45 +0000

Most of you have probably already seen this, but I think it merits a third or fourth viewing whichever the case may be. Laughter is indeed the best medicine, and I thank Al of Bluealto, for reminding me of that with a recent post of his. I am set to return the favor to the rest of ya'll. Enjoy Betches and Decks!

Sunday Meme

tater — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 11:21:48 +0000

Despite the title of this entry, I am hoping this will not become a weekly serving. I dislike the Meme, but nonetheless I refuse to disappoint my virtual sister, and someone I find endlessly fascinating, beautiful, and kind; Doralong of "What would Jackie Wear?". So without further ado, Here is the meme:

1..Pick up the nearest book.
2.Open to page 123.
3.Locate the fifth sentence.
4.Post the next three sentences on your blog and in so doing...
5.Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged me.

My nearest book happened to be sitting on my lap at the time I was tagged for this, which made it all but impossible for me to be such an incredible lazy ass that I could refuse to participate. That book is entitled Mercy, by Alissa York (fabulous read thus far). Page 123, fifth sentence gives us the following:

"She gives him a glare, but not a real one, because a second later she whispers something back. His face splits wide open in a grin, and he turns and pulls her after him, like a boy leading his mother to a bullfrog in the grass. When they come alongside an empty boxcar, he lets go of her hand a moment, just long enough to vault himself up on deck."

"Post the next three sentences in your blog and in doing so...", what? Do a tap dance? A Jig? Discuss how this is a metaphor for your life? The point of this meme is not thoroughly explained as you can see, but since it required very little effort, I am prone to forgive my tagger. If there were any parallels to this passage in my life it would be the following:

I was fascinated with bullfrogs as a child, and caught a few to show my mother (in the grass in a jar, with air holes punched in the lid). I would also have followed that guy into the boxcar for some hanky panky, with a grin splitting my face.

There you have it.

I will tag the following people because I think some of you may not be familiar with their blogs, and some of them haven't been here in awhile, and won't ever know I tagged them anyway:

And now it is off to the gym with me, to continue one of the many changes I have decided to make for myself after my visit to NYC. This one is going quite well, as I have already dropped twelve pounds of excess fat, and have a six pack emerging from was was once aptly titled my snack pack. I have also gone down two belt holes, can wear jeans from two years ago, and have shoulders and tits one can chip ice on. Give me some more time, and I might just post one of those hideous before and after spreads that sell diet pills, and exercise equipment...

Friday Video

tater — Fri, 30 May 2008 11:07:38 +0000

This goes out to a friend, you know who you are.

Fiction Project Part 6

tater — Fri, 30 May 2008 00:33:09 +0000

The sixth installment of the Letters Project will be posted no later than Monday evening. My time has gotten away from me I fear, with no rest or down time since leaving for New York. Relatives visiting from out of town, shoots running overtime, and domestic bliss have all combined to sabotage any effort I would have made at writing a follow up to Al, had I attempted to overcome my inertia and try. This weekend promises some much needed down time to keep up with my buddy in Toronto, and post something interesting for all of you who are reading us (check's in the mail).