when i started writing, i attempted to force meaning into my words; to fill my story with heavy statements, and try and give depth to what, in the end was simple. and perhaps that’s where i realized that a story didn’t need to be significant, to have significance, so long as it was told on that side of redemption that makes us all the more beautiful in the end, helps us to stand up taller, stronger, and better than we truly are - were folks to see beneath all the forgiveness we're wearing. and i couldn’t be more convinced, that the beauty in a story is not in how well it seems to unfold, but in how one chooses to see and tell it after all; and at the difficult end of most days, i must try to believe that my story can be better than my worst mistakes, can amount to more than my failures, and end with the sun rising. remembering this trip with my brother, helps me to believe that it really can be.
- - - - -
the best trip i have ever taken, was up to pisgah national forest with my brother alan. it was 2006, and the second semester of my freshman year of college. him being a senior, we had one year of overlap together at the same university.
my oldest sister, janice, had given birth to our first nephew, Trey Alan the previous january, and our family had decided to spend the easter weekend up there in asheville where she and my brother in law were living. being stoked as ever to be back on the road, alan and i loaded backpacks into our mothers mini van, and took off that thursday morning, driving the 12 hours straight through until we hit asheville, where we met up with everyone else in our family, and hung out with our new nephew that night.
all of good friday was spent with family, taking turns getting spit up on, helping with projects around the house and competing in the ever present card and marble games my family is notorious for. but beneath it all, loomed something in my brothers eyes - something that longed for the outdoors, and as hard as it would be to set down our nephew and the card games, something in me knew he'd find it.
the weekend Trey was born, alan and i had driven up for a week to see him; and despite having been the first week of february, and the middle of winter, we had spent two nights in the surrounding hills, in a national forest they called pisgah. and already by that second night of easter weekend, i knew alan was ready to get back into the mountains as soon as a break presented itself in the family plans; and so, while he paraded and mapped out our anticipation, i performed my younger brother responsibilities of delicately explaining to everyone in the family why we needed to go, and that we would indeed return.
just one night we said, and we meant it, knowing that half of adventure is in the decision to set out; the other half in coming home. after all, we only wanted to remind ourselves of what those hills looked and felt like, and to be still for a moment. quantity of time has always been and always will be, an accessory.
saturday afternoon, alan and i loaded up the car, and with a few instructions from a neighbor headed in the direction of pisgah national forest. i can’t remember if it was in our excitement then or when we left south florida, but somehow we managed to leave the tent behind; but besides a short and passionate session of alan’s expletives yelled into the steering wheel of my brother in law’s car, we were relatively unfazed; and made it to the park about an hour before sundown.
our backpacks were light, holding only our sleeping bags, plus the food for dinner and breakfast the following morning. we told one another we’d hike long enough until we found a good spot, and call it a night. after a mile or two of walking, we came to john’s rock; a bare, rounded edged cliff that overlooked the valley. we dropped our packs. alan unloaded the camp stove and cooking supplies my family had gifted him the christmas prior, and starting warming a single can of soup we’d brought along for dinner. i withdrew a book and read a few pages by the fading sunlight, and built a fire. thirty minutes or so later, we sat by firelight and warmth, and spooned mouthfuls of sausage gumbo onto triscuit crackers, commenting that those crackers had been the purchase of the trip. never have a i eaten so little and never have i been so full.
and so the evening passed, and i couldn’t even tell you what we talked about, how well we slept, or even how beautiful the sunrise was; and never have details mattered less to how happy we were on that rock face, by a fire, sleeping under stars, and waking up knowing the brother we loved most wasn’t too far away. few things went right that night. in fact, a great many of the important things went wrong, but we awoke to easter morning, and never has a day past since then that would make me tell that story any less than the greatest trip i have ever taken.
when i was five years old i learned what a record player was. on a sunday, my brother, sisters and i crowded into the spare bedroom of my grandma's house, to turn on the old player she had stored there in a wooden dresser. alan was first to locate the beach boys 'endless summer' album, and within seconds, had the speakers crackling a moment of silence - as we four - made 1993 pause with our anticipation. the voices, surfin’ safari, resonating against pale, dried out wall paper and the mural of sunset in a tropical paradise against the south wall, stirring heavens inside each of our swelling hearts. my sole instincts were to follow, hypnotized, the circular lines of the vinyl, spinning out sounds from a decade beyond us, sounds beyond itself; like the twirling of my ten year old sisters.
on my seventeenth birthday, my first girlfriend and i decided to be honest with ourselves;
so we cried puddles into her front yard and washed our necks and cheeks of the hickeys and the lipstick. i drove home sad, and with more time on my hands, so i self proclaimed that i would listen to more music, but the only tunes beside the christian radio and punk band cd’s that my dad allowed in the house were ironically, his own collection of records, now aged and stored away below the fish tank on the brown, square book shelves framing our living room. i dug through them as my mother yelled about the mess i was making, records and 20 year old dust from between the covers showering the living room carpet and tile. i thumbed passed Johnny Cash, Crosby - Stills - and -Nash, and Wings albums, until Paul Simon struck me, with an upside down chair and mardi gras mask etched colorfully onto a white cover. the name appeared in my father’s collection more than any other, so i asked about it, and when he started with the stories of when and where he'd been while hearing those songs for the first time, i had no other thought than to listen to that album start to finish; but we had no record player in the house so, 'there goes rhymin simon' in hand, i ran down the street, to my grandmother’s house, to look for that old record player of my sunday afternoon childhood. a few minutes of searching, and i found and carefully lifted it out of that same wooden dresser, only by this point the speakers had well worn with age, and no longer played. i was so determined to hear the album, that i found a place on the kitchen floor to plug the record player into, and set the needle down on the first track. i held my cheek as close as i could, cupping my ear to catch a fraction of raw sound. for me, to love something, means knowing that a person i love, loves something. so it went with the songs of Paul Simon.
soon after, my mom bought me a record player as a christmas gift, (and my dad must be like me, because it didn’t take long for him, realizing my new interest in records, to rediscover his own; lecturing me often on how to handle and care for things with such delicacy). i started building a simple collection - buying old records wherever i could, plus claiming most of my dad’s and receiving gifts from friends on birthdays.
eight or so odd years later, Paul Simon is still a favorite, as are collections of old music and albums made of vinyl; and saying to love or enjoy something is one thing, but allowing more than three years to pass without setting a needle down on any of those old tracks is another. and i always blame the change of scenery, but secretly i wonder if i’ll ever discover the place of contentment, strong enough to really believe that simply loving something is enough to make me happy; enough to make me slow down, and stay in one place or experience long enough to truly enjoy it, or at least fight for it to be a part of my day to day. and maybe i'm too hard on myself, but the more i live the more i grow tired of promising that i’ll love things once i get there, goddammit - if you love something, love it - not at the start of the next chapter, or the end of this one. now.
i am twenty six years old,
and it’s been far too long since i played my old records;
but i still remember what a broken one sounds like,
so every time i feel
the needle skipping over my own scratches and scars,
i start to worry if i'll ever make it to the next track.
a heart is a strong and beautiful melody,
and it’s delicate,
so,
play me - turn me - hear me - change me -
and be, (as my dad always said)
careful when handling the surfaces.
i don’t have all the answers,
so only ask me if i love you,
because i do have that one.
i awoke;
to twenty-six year sunshine
rising up the valley
two pine trees
three empty beer cans,
six cigarettes,
both my dreams,
and all my insecurities
one - that i will never make it home
two - the dogs will bite
three - i spoke too soon
four - i said too much
five - you’d rather be somewhere else and
six - things would be different if only i had kissed her
these are my inhale,
swallowed (and today no exception) every morning
as casually as cereal;
like daily memorials
to the hope i'd have it all together,
to the wish to dream away or dream forever,
her -
lovely i could only start to pen unfinished words to,
soul alive to spark a window wide enough to peak through,
will so brave i soon became the one that needed rescue,
are you ready?
because when i start to speak
she will see
that the bridges in my love songs
have lost all the safety they once promised,
forever
looks more
like aged rope, tattered boards
and the canyons of an indiana jones film,
than a welcomed invitation to love me;
yes, i do believe in romance
i'm only frightened to admit it
to anyone that knows i'm much too cowardly to get it
but some days,
one must inch out onto the limbs of his hopeful
as if all things passed were now reflected off his fears into daylight,
as if the broken bones and the scars are again merely what’s to come;
only we can see them
only we can hear them, and feel them
like a thumping in our chest
and a voice out west
saying i dare you:
failure is an option,
but she is beautiful
and heartbreak is only my rough draft
to borrow a page from t.s. eliot
'i have measured my life
(better,
am measuring my minutes),
in mango trees'
in the rungs on the ladder,
the ups and downs
and the top;
both feet steady,
with a pool net reaching outward
and two hands ready below;
in catching,
in missing,
in picking up the pieces
and harvesting what remains whole;
in a sunday afternoon,
in the friend who stuck around,
in remembering
and the joy it gives
today
some nights are meant for being productive,
some are for doing perfectly nothing,
and others are for sitting
in the general proximity of old friends,
having a beer
with lime and again -
feeling the excitement to be alive.
