When We Was Kids

When did we first listen to the Universe? What did it tell us to do or not to do? And when did we decide we knew better? And when did we learn to trust our own voice instead? And when did we begin to doubt? And when was the first time we realized we were deaf?

When did we begin to  say "We" when we meant "I?"

When did our lives get really exciting? When did we find surprises around every corner? Remember summer nights of crossing busy streets and not waiting for lights and dodging cars and having a moment with ten people at once? Remember singing in taverns, and sitting on car hoods and leaning comfortably on someone's shoulder? Remember the snap shots that would show up later? Of you in profile laughing and listening?

Remember the first time you realized that those buddies were not your friends?

When did spontaneity become rote? When did we color wash the bad memories for good? Or did the universe do that for us? When did we choose our circle? And when did our circle break off, arc by arc?

And when did we move on?

Remember being alone in the fallout? Remember the things you did? Tiny concerts and free online college courses on Greek Mythology and organizing closets and picking up CDs by bands you never heard of. And getting dressed for work? And greeting the gardeners? And laying on your bed face down at dusk on a Saturday when everyone else was out and about. And voice lessons. And auditions. And exercising constantly. And writing songs or pieces of songs. And writing plays and poems and stories. And eating homemade soup alone by candlelight as the rain poured outside?

And going out alone and making temporary friends just for the night. And accessorizing your wardrobe with belts and boots and bracelets and berets and black eyeliner? And how it felt to be noticed by someone way out of your league? And being friendly when you wanted to flirt? Remember why? Remember broken dates and disappointments? Remember surviving and bitterness? Remember putting up walls?

Remember calling home on Sunday afternoons? And recounting your life and realizing it didn't sound lonely. And going to bed alone, snug, and secure. And lying awake wondering? Wondering, "When?" And knowing exactly what you were waiting for?

Remember sunny solo mornings full of promise? Remember crisp fall days and pony tails and tennis shoes? Remember when the trendy village of Broad Ripple knew your dog's name, and called his name from across the canal, but didn't know yours? Remember sitting alone cozy with a lamp and a French movie whose meaning you missed?  Remember checking your phone even when it didn't ring?

Remember the first time you heard Jeff Buckley's voice?

Remember parties and the promise of connection and feeling unnoticed or being used? Remember the promises you'd make to yourself, promises usually steeped in some sort of protection plan, insurance for the heart.

Remember riding your bike over the Fall Creek bridge on an early June day, and stopping to read a text? And the text was someone breaking a date? Remember the cottonwoods shedding, and white wisps sailing through the sun beams and time standing still? Remember telling yourself not to feel, and mixing your mortar for another wall? Remember the black man in the pork pie hat smoking a cigarette and the basket on his bicycle? Remember when he stopped to watch the river with you?  Remember the way the wispies floated and sailed across the turbulent brown waters, and he said, "When we was kids, we called that 'summer snow.'" Remember loving him for putting you at peace and in the moment? Remember wishing to while the hours waxing wisdom with him? Remember forgetting the name of the guy who broke your date, which caused you to get off your bike, and notice something beautiful?

When did we realize that life had changed for the better? When did we realize that better had past? And when did we question if better was actually worse?

When did we first love ourselves? And when did we realize we didn't. And then realize we did again?

Remember when that someone knocked on your door? And you were afraid to answer? And you did anyway? Remember how long you made him stand in the foyer before inviting him to your formal living room?

Remember the moment the first wall came down?

And the last?

Remember the first quiet night walk hand in hand and the fireflies and the stars? And realizing it was Saturday and you were not out and about, racing cars and slamming beers and outdoing your friends? And remember what it reminded you of?

It reminded you of firefly summers and deep green forests and the moonlit fields you played in and the headlights of the third shift workers at the foundry over the hill, and your mother calling from the front porch?

When you was just a kid.

When you was a kid, you didn't have walls. You didn't expect surprises. You followed dirt paths and found muddy short cuts. You hoped the old lady everyone called Grandma would invite you in for fried chicken dinner. And she did. You loved your favorite set of play clothes, the feel of your banana bike seat, and the smell of clean sheets. 

Remember when the love that finally knocked on your door got big? Bigger than you? And took over everything in your life?

Remember letting it?

Remember a few years later wondering if you gave up too much freedom?
Remember counting dozens of eggs and only one basket?

Remember losing a friend and then another and losing a job and losing a dream and losing your way? Remember with each loss wanting to feel those arms around you and counting the days until you could?

Remember feeling everything would be okay?

And realizing it's okay to love? And to be loved? And to let that be everything?
And enough?

There's a trick to life. And a trick to love. And the trick is simple.

You have to remember how you felt when you was a kid. You have to look for snow in the summer.

Brandi Carlile: "Just Kids"



Jeff Buckley: Edgar Allan Poe's "Ulalume"



The Essence at the Bottom of a Bottle of Mateus

Part of my journey is over and or nearly over, I can feel it. And it's making me sad. I guess it's just one leg of it, but I know I'll never be here again.

Allow me to describe this particular day.

It's September, second week. It's Sunday. It's hot. It's 5 pm. Nobody is barbecuing I guess because it's the season of worship, you know Football, so everyone stays inside. The nice thing is that no one is mowing a lawn or edging a sidewalk or blowing any leaves.

The thing that is unsettling is how quiet it is. This is a neighborhood. I hear a few cars out on the main street but nothing else making a sound. Maybe an air conditioner motor kicks on, because god forbid people open their windows and let in real air. It's unsettling because I don't really like the silence, and yet, if someone were making noise somehow, I know I would think that is interrupting my peace.

I am unsettled because summer is ending, but I have not yet begun, and I don't know what it is that I am supposed to have begun. I have a sense of responsibility to living that sometimes does not share with me what exactly its expectations are. All I know is that I'm feeling like I'm losing something important that I never really held, and I'm thinking it was a feeling.

Feelings, not emotions, but those things that give unspecified context to fleeting moments, are the things that I believe ultimately give us memory ghosts. A memory ghost is a type of nostalgia.  You remember a certain event or evening or afternoon or morning, but not necessarily the details. You remember who you were with but not what you talked about or what you ate or what exactly the moment revealed that made you remember it in the first place. You just remember that you felt good.

Seems like a lot of ingredients go in to a memory ghost that is ultimately boiled down to just one ingredient or one descriptor: "sweet." I guess this is what you call the essence. It's interesting that there are no bad memory ghosts. Seems when bad things happen, the details are embroidered on your brain.

I put a lot of pressure on summer to bring me essence, dew drops of sweetness I can savor for years to come. Dew drops that just bounce in my head one moment when I'm driving through a school zone or looking at a vase from the Ming dynasty in a museum in the dead of winter or when I hear a few measures of a should-be-rarely heard but isn't because of pervasive Oldies radio stations. Songs like that should be nostalgic, and they can't be nostalgic because they're always playing! But say I hear just a few beats of it, maybe on a car radio in a movie, say a song like "Jazz Man," or "My Little Town," and the next thing I know, I've got these dew drops of ghost memories, and I block out everything in my immediate realm to behold it.

But what I'm wondering now is if I have put too much importance on commemorating moments to actually appreciate them anymore. or if I just need to give it a few months or a year or so.

So let me continue describing what is around me. It's not a year for the seventeen year locust, but they are the loudest I've ever heard them, and what's really interesting is that their songs are more complex this year. What is perhaps even more interesting or odd, depending on who you are, is that either I recognize certain cicadas by their particular song or I imagine that I do. I've got a big honey locust tree in my yard, and that is where they congregate at the hour of the traditional evening meal and get into arguments with the cicadas in the neighbor's cottonwood.

Another thing is that we're in the midst of a drought, and just a little while ago, through the blazing hazy sun, it started to rain. I'm not sure but I think the rain was trying to get away it without letting the sun know, because it was so quiet and gentle that unless you were wearing sunglasses on which the drops could splash, you would not know it was raining. It was like rain had the final say in this drought, or at least tried to. Sun found out and sent rain packing.

And suddenly the hue of the rays changed, and that's when it hit me. The raindrops ushered in the last drops of summer, and for some reason, I feel as if I haven't had a summer.

I think it's because I have been in some kind of means of deliberate thought all summer. Whether it be about finding a job, working on my yard, thinking about all the wonderful things I could do, or rehearsing for the play I was in. Even when I was having fun, I was feeling like I was making investments.

I know I am wrong. I could not have done more with this summer. I spent a wonderful week in Michigan, riding bikes, going to the beach, sampling wines, making dinner for my family, reading, having sundowners with Larry. I went to a drive-in movie. I went camping. I went to cookout. I drank beer at brewpubs in the middle of long bike rides. I planted trees and flowers and watched hummingbirds. I hiked up hills and through rivers. I swam in Lake Michigan. I climbed dunes. Flew kites. Busted some clouds. Read some fantastic books. Had a barbecue. Performed in the IndyFringe festival. Walked my dog. Talked to neighbors. Listened to music. Drank iced green tea by the gallon. Dreamed good dreams. Went boating and tubing and drinking. Went on road trips. Took photos. Admired wild flowers reaching to the sky to to kiss the sun.  Laughed at frogs ribeting. Watched sunsets. Celebrated Labor Day weekend in my favorite place on earth. Rode a carousel. Walked the pier. Watched an outdoor movie. Ate fried chicken on the beach. Roasted weenies and marshmallows. I didn't see any music shows. That is a first. And it should be a last. Last night I watched/listened to a mbira player in my house. I witnessed the Super Moon.

I have proof in my photos that I had a wonderful summer.

And I had rain drops outsmarting the sun, and cicadas singing together in a discordant yet mesmerizing symphony in my back yard.

If that isn't summer, I don't know what is.

There are things I didn't do. I thought I'd glamp, for one thing. I thought I'd have more quiet times of secret delight.

I think that's what it is.

See, I have days or moments or nights that I spend in solitude, meaning not with other people, but I entertain oceans of notions, and feel the most incredible sense of love of life. 

I came close. Maybe I was so busy that I didn't have time for one of those nights, but I did have an evening.   I was rehearsing for a Shakespeare play and having trouble feeling the spirit. I packed up my script, a sheet, and a bottle of rose, and walked to an undeveloped part of my neighborhood, where twenty walnuts stand beside a bubbling creek. I would have gone to a park but didn't feel like driving, and I wanted to make something of immediate environs, see it in some new way. It's called a common area, yet I have never seen anyone in there. It's an acre or two, lined on one side by pine trees and the other by walnut trees. In the summer, the trees are so thick that it's like nature has walls. I spread out my sheet, let Primo wander to his heart's content, and I stood and I delivered my lines to trees, birds, and skies, slightly under the influence of cheap (Mateus) chilled rose, and I caught it. The deep down secret. I whirled and I reeled and I felt like a wood sprite commanding nature and beckoning that deep self that I'm pretty sure exists outside of my jurisdiction...like the clandestine raindrops of today's sneaky shower.

I think that deep self is a place I should visit more often, because it is full of so many surprises, like a river at night under a full moon. I don't actually like that analogy, but every time I say "so full of surprises," I remember that soft rock song of 1980 by Poco: "And the river she rises, like she used to do. She's so full of surprises. She reminds me of you."

That was a moment of essence.

Now I've had summer.

You just can't plan for essence, you know.

Mateus and script for "Something Wicked This Way Comes"

 

 

Late July Late Sun Streaming through Walnut Branches

 

 

Poco. Heart of the Night. Corrected: 1979.

Glass artist and musician Sayed Ahmed played mbira in my home last night!