Other Side

Image Source: Elaine Mayes

I have spent my life driven to find out what else is out there. What am I looking for? What do I think I’ll find if I ever get to that mythical “somewhere else”?

I’m always looking for the other side. Other side of those mountains, other side of the river, other side of the tracks. What makes life so much better over there? Who knows and who cares?

Still, I’m driven on to find out. You can’t go if you don’t know, and you can’t know if you don’t go. The Great American Unknown is out there somewhere.

Hit the gas and hit the road. Spin the wheel and spin up some dust, see what’s out there. Maybe it’ll be better.

Maybe I’ll find a memory. Something to recontextualize my life and give it fresh perspective. Another highway, another sunset. 2 AM mist and haze pouring in through the car windows. Beach instead of snowstorm. Toes in the ocean, toes in the lake. Rocky Mountain high, Death Valley low. Embarcadero skies, plains of the Badlands. A slice on the Coney boardwalk, or fresh San Diego tortillas. Chicago dogs, St. Louis ribs. America, American, Americana. I want it all.

I want something else. Somewhere else. And I want to take it all home…

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Time In A Bottle

Image Source: MaineHomes.com

Summer, 1984: we are at the lake and time is immaterial. Or so it seems.

Since 1978 our family friends the Moreau’s have lived on Tacoma Lake, and we are frequent visitors. The Moreau’s have lake access, a dock and a nifty little power boat, a mustard yellow six-seater. They are often at the farm for cookouts, and we are often at the lake for aquatic downtime.

On this night, myself, my brother Eric and our friend Rick Moreau, both two years older than I, are drifting on Tacoma, outboard motor cut off, with patriarch and Skipper Leonard Moreau. After a late afternoon of water-skiing, fishing and testing the upper limits of the speedometer, we are now just drifting.

The sun is starting to go down in summer pastels. A low mist of smoke from campfires and charcoal hangs over Tacoma. Surrounding the lake are perfectly manicured lawns, cabins and houses, deep dark woods and gentle hills, one with an antennae that I always focus on: I love watching the aerial light blink. A wood-paneled cruiser passes us slowly, its engine making a gentle put-put noise that is perfectly befitting.

We had been cruising and playing. Now we are just being, slowing down to take in the lake and the light and this gloriously perfect summer night in Maine. Jim Croce’s “Time In A Bottle” runs through my head, and at eleven years old, I have a revelation: I feel that I get it. I understand the feeling of wanting to lock these important memories in a box and hold on to them forever. Time in a bottle, snapshots to pull out much later.

With this understanding, I also feel that I get the importance of holding on to these things, and keeping them until the time is right, until the words to describe the scene can come naturally, empirically, perfectly.

This one night, this one sunset, has not existed outside of my memory bank in the twenty-seven years since it happened, and I’m a little breathless at the thought of letting it go, released to the world like a new car or a new flavor of soda. And on the surface, it’s not much: a sunset, water, a little smoke.

But in terms of what that scene meant to an emerging eleven-year-old mind, and the lessons I’ve taken from the experience, it’s incalculable. Time is never immaterial. All we have is right now. Hold on to it. You’ll need it later.

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Room To Let

Image Source: Vivian Maier

I guess it ain’t too nice to say, but there’s already talk goin’ round Mulroney’s about how long The Grunt gonna be able to keep this one. Like say the last time I mentioned him, he ain’t exactly the most respectable or reliable type. But I’m holdin’ out hope.

I heard about this room to let ‘round the bar. Sven The Scrub – we call him that because he’s just over from Oslo an’ he’s scrubbin’ the floors of Mulroney’s – was gonna take it, but I talked him into lettin’ The Grunt have it, out of seniority and all like that. It was perfect for the old guy: a basement level job, meanin’ he only had to worry ‘bout climbin’ down three steps, not up five flights of steps. An’ the rent was enough that even The Grunt, who does nuthin’ but grunt work around a bar for drink money, could make it. Maybe with a little help, but he could make it.

An’ I – an’ I think I speak for everyone that ever sat ‘round that bar – was willin’ to help. A presence at the bar like The Grunt, you take care of him. Sure, he come back from the Great War all shell-shocked, an’ he aint’ been the same since. But we all know him, an’ we know he’s got a heart of gold.

In fact, because of all the talk – an’ The Grunt he don’t know this, so don’t go sayin’ nothin’ – we got a collection goin’ round for a few months rent. So maybe nuthin’ happens but The Grunt come into Mulroney’s an’ does odd jobs an’ sings for his supper. An’ maybe he blows a race or two at Saratoga. Well, if that’s all that happens, he’s got it nice in his new apartment for a while, an’ we got stories for the whole time, so it’s worth it to us, see? A guy like The Grunt, you wanna keep him ‘round, an’ you wanna take care of him much as you can.

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Loud In My Head

Image Source: Fred Herzog

I swear, sometimes I think I’m gonna lose my nut. It’s….it’s all too much sometimes. Always something telling ya where to park, where to not park, what kind soft drink to buy, what kind coffee, where to get jewelry, how to pay for the jewelry on credit installments…I can hardly take it sometimes.

I got a room at the Empire, an’ sometimes if I have to go out I feel like I ain’t gonna make it back in one piece. Like one of them billboards is gonna come to life and shove a Coca Cola down my throat, or a giant neon coffee cup is gonna tip over and spill scalding coffee all over my head.

Car horns honking all day an’ night, people yelling, sirens screaming…

If I do get back to my room, I jump under the covers an’ bury my head under the pillow an’ try to block it all out. But it gets so damn loud in my head that the noise never gets blocked out. An’ what I hear in my head…I, uh…well, I get some bad thoughts in there sometimes.

I just don’t understand this world, is all. I don’t get along so well with so many other people an’ so much noise an’ all the signs an’ the city hitting me over the head…I just…just…like, I wish I could move out an’…

I don’t even know anymore. I just want somewhere quiet, you know? Someplace quiet and sort of pretty, where I can hear myself think and I’m not tripping over piles of rotting garbage and smelling a cesspool every block. An’ someplace where I don’t have to be around too many people.

People hurt. People hurt me. Always laughing behind my back and trying to sell me dress shirts and cigarettes and Chevrolets and saying nasty things under their breath… Too much pain. Too much noise. Too much…too much, ya know?

I’m not made for this place. I just want to get out.

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Balance

Image Source: Lisa M. Robinson

I came here often after I kilt her. Maybe I was hopin’ the snow would purify my mind, or cleanse the blood. I don’t know that it did, but it sure was a pretty place to sit ’n think.

I don’t know why she done it to me. I always treated her decent, gave her money ’n took care of everything. An’ she done gone steppin’ out on me. Sure, maybe I deserved it, always drankin’ and steppin’ out myself. But I never laid a hand on her or nothin’. Besides, a woman is suppose’ to stand by her man, right?

This is a hard land, with hard people. Nothin’ but snow and nothin’ for miles around. Barren lands and barren minds. Takes a certain kind to be able to stand up to it. And maybe she want that kind.
But settin’ here, lookin’ at all that snow, it sure makes a man think. Ain’t nothin’ but pure, unbroken white. Undisturbed, like a man should be. One set of tracks in that snow, and the whole landscape is out of balance. Kind of like our relationship. She brought that other set of footprints in, and everything done went haywire.

Sure, I shouldn’t’a done it. But a man don’t like havin’ his balance thrown off.

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After the Gold Rush

Image Source: Stephen Shore

Ain’t nothin’ here on the outskirts. The gold rush done left, if it ever even got here. Times are hard, an’ the town is beat. I’m hopin’ for a comeback, but…

I’m hangin’ on here, chargin’ half a buck a cut. That new place next county over, the one that’s chargin’ two bucks for a razor cut, they’ve taken some of my business, but I got my loyal customers. They just want a good, honest trim and a good honest price. Don’t know where I’d be without them. I’m lucky enough to own my buildin’, so I don’t gotta worry about rent and all. And it’s just me, so I ain’t gotta pay any salary. But still, with maintenance an’ upkeep, it ain’t easy.

But we all help each other out around here, as much as we can. That’s the nice thing about this town. Got a real sense of community here. Course most of us is just as hard up as the other. It’s been bad since the factory shut down. Lot of good people got thrown out of work, and it’s been a hard go of it since. But we’re proud. We take care of each other.

I do what I can. Sometimes someone in town is a little hard up, I only charge two bits. Sometimes I don’t charge nothin’. It’s a little bit I can do, an’ it all comes out in the wash. Maybe one day I’m the one that’s a little hard up, an’ where would I be then? So it all evens out, an’ it makes me feel good and Christmas-like to be able to help a little.

Lot of outsiders stop in while passing through, an’ that helps. Sometimes it’s suits, an’ you think maybe, just maybe, they might be talkin’ about opening up the factory again. Gee, that would be a big thing. Mostly it ain’t, though. Mostly just folks passing through.

But again, I know all my neighbors, and we’ve got it nice ‘round here. It’s a good, nice community, an’ you just don’t get that in the big city. An’ I wouldn’t trade it. Times are hard, but we’re proud. We take care of each other.

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Moonbeams

Image Source: The Missourian

I feel the pull tonight
Tides to shores, astral plains to mortal coil
Obtuse and obdurate
the Perigree spreads unease
it is intrusive, all-seeing and all-knowing

The night carries a luminance
the beams wash across the floor
in shimmering patchwork
I sleep, fitfully, restlessly
knowing that the moon
has my number

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Blank Page

Image Source: New Buddha

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever connect with a thought (again).

The words escape, trickling away from my conscious, until they gather behind a wall, mocking me. Ideas swoop in and out, never staying long enough to present themselves. Flickers of notions, here and gone before I can get my pen out. Not to be.

Sometimes the thought of trying to write another piece, no matter how short, leaves me paralyzed with fear. I try to start and can’t, and I convince myself that I will never finish another sentence again. I try to reach the words behind the wall, but they remain trapped, never to see daylight. The blank page screams in triumph, and I cower in defeat.

Often the exhaustion gets to me. Trying to form and finish a narrative against the backdrop of reality: extremely stressful day-job, long, soul-sucking commute, mortgage, bills, aches and pains, daily maintenance, feeding and watering. Some days it gets to me, and I give fleeting credence to the naysayers in my head, the voices screaming quit and rest.

But I can’t quit and rest, you see. Because I have no choice. Because I am so close to things happening and opportunities presenting themselves and my goal of self-sufficiency through the written word actually maybe, just maybe, becoming my reality.

I have no choice but to continue. So it starts with one word…one word interrupting the purity of the blank page…like a cheap run turning a 10-0 blowout into a 10-1 ballgame…one word leading to two…one thought connecting to another…

One thinker trying to connect with a thought (again)…

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The Rush of Empire

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All Images: Lewis Wick Hine via George Eastman House

I feel the rush.

I am securely on the ground, looking at the photography of Lewis W. Hine, but I feel it all: the rush of gravity at 1,000’, the rush of the wind at that inhuman height, the rush of America, reeling from depression but rising to unimaginable heights out of unprecedented lows. I feel the rush of greatness that comes from watching mere mortals doing extraordinary things, and I feel the rush of pride that says my people did this.

I see ordinary men, discounting their feats and fears. They mock gravity, traipsing untethered across 6” wide beams a quarter of a mile above the safety of the grounded Earth. They toss and catch glowing hot rivets in a dance for which they alone know the choreography. They pound, tighten, seal, hoist, pull, push and will the King of All Buildings into existence. And they think nothing of the heart-stopping danger, nor the exhilarating posterity of their work. It’s just a job. Just tryin’ to feed my family during hard times. The long-term impact of their work rushes past their short-term humility.

I see the building rise and I feel the shock of the times. 1930: The Great Depression, bread and soup lines, Hoovervilles in Central Park, no jobs, no hope. Hard times and hard, lean men desperate for work.

The building is financed by a shadowy, speculating CEO and chaired by the beloved former governor: John Jacob Raskob and Alfred E. Smith are the stuff of American biography themselves. 3,400 men find work at the nadir of American employment and spirit. The building rises to 102 floors, 1,250 feet, in 14 months. 4 ½ floors per week. It is ahead of schedule and under budget, with only five men lost during construction. This is our greatness. This is what my people – my fellow humans – can accomplish. This is the rush of Americanism.

And as the building rises it becomes an inextricable symbol of the zeitgeist. I hear Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and see Scott Fitzgerald lamenting his Lost City and the Babe still hitting 40+ homers in pinstripes, still larger than life. I hear Ellington and Langston Hughes and Woody Guthrie and see Alfred Stieglitz and Ansel Adams. I see Chaplin the tramp and Errol Flynn and Astaire and Busby Berkeley. I see the greatness of American art in 1930 and 1931, and it all becomes a pastiche around the rush to the sky in the middle of Manhattan in the middle of the depression. I feel the rush, not just to recover, but to conquer.

I feel this rush of American Exceptionalism, now nearly a century old, and realize that there is nothing greater in the world.

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Down The Middle

Lesson Number One: the metronome doesn’t care about you.

See that metronome there on the piano, class? It doesn’t give a crap about you! You could be having the worst day of your life, but the metronome doesn’t care. You could be swimming with herpes, but the metronome does not care. Flood, famine, pestilence? The metronome does! Not! Care! Set that thing to 120 beats per minute, and it IS 120 beats per minute. No wavering, no complaining: Just a ruthless, methodical 120 bpm straight down the middle.

Think about this, class! The metronome is one of the great levelers the world has ever known. It is democracy and justice. Balance and symmetry. That metronome doesn’t care if you’re black, white, green, whatever. All it cares about in this world is keeping tempo. It shows you what is and gives you the chance to succeed. And if you can’t keep up, well, that’s on you to keep trying. THAT’S democracy.

What’s great about the metronome is that it will LET you succeed. It will give you all the tools you need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and get ahead. If you’re struggling with a passage at 160 bpm, you can slow it down and work on that phrasing until you get it nailed, and then speed it up until you get that nailed, and then speed THAT up. Try asking if you can slow down the production line at the factory so you can catch up!

And here’s something really cool: the metronome takes you in between the lines. See, class, rhythm isn’t notes: it’s the spaces in between the notes. The metronome is set, and it offers you the same exact space in between notes, over and over and over again. You can fill and synchronize those spaces all you want, and you’ll have unlimited chances to get it right. Because that metronome isn’t stopping and it isn’t going anywhere.

You will never have a more honest, even-handed friend in your life, class. That metronome right there is pure loyalty. It’s there for you, precisely because it doesn’t care about you.

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