Steinbeck

A Body For A Soul

 

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All I wanted was to be understood, to once again lose myself in someone’s eyes, rather than being sucker punched in the heart. She said it’s hard to be understood when you don’t even understand yourself.   I thought to myself “Yeah right, you never even took the time to try and know me, you were too busy trying to prove how you were right——-and how I was wrong.”  One thing for certain, I was right about her being wrong for me. Love with all its inherent bad descions makes fools of us all. The more I tried to reach out the harder she pulled away. Maybe blindness is what love is. Maybe it’s tracing with my fingers what I can’t see with my eyes. She shoved my hand away, “Stop, you’re gonna smudge my make up”. Damn, she had all the romance of a cactus.

I’m a fool for girls with sexy eyes in lose fitting see through sundresses. I’ve bumped into a lot of people, but we collided and burst into an awkward erratic orbit—-pulling together then pulling apart. When I peered closer, I realize that I was never really in her eyes. But god, I remember how the sun shown through her cotton dress and how I mistook a body for a soul.

During the day it’s easy to believe in god, clocks and getting to work on time.  When the sun is up I can find purpose in simple walks down by the river.  I’m not shaken by the absurdity of remaining stopped at stale deserted red lights.  But at night, the enormity and emptiness of the universe fills me with an uneasy feeling of insignificance.  I toss and turn in my bed and then get up and stumble into the kitchen for my fourth glass of water.  I’m stuck in a midnight cycle of drinking water to ease my dry mouth and then having to get back up and take a piss.  She hollers from the bedroom.  “What’s wrong with you? Why are you up.”  I reply, “I can’t sleep, I’m worried about stuff.”  Her voice is tired and cracks as she speaks, “Worried?  Worried about what?”

“I’m worried about life and the inevitability of death and what’s it all for.  I’m worried about things I should’ve said and done.  I’m worried about pretending to be something or someone I’m not. I’m worried about my insecurities, my false intentions and my need to be validated——–by people I don’t give a shit about.  I’m worried about our sun and how someday it’ll become a super nova and explode vaporizing our solar system and turn our planet into ash along with all it’s history, paintings, music, books and everything that makes up me and you.  I’m worried about sick kids lying in hospital beds, scared and praying under their starched and stiff hospital sheets.  I’m worried about lonely old people in rest-homes with nothing to do but watch gameshows and play bingo. I’m worried about never being able to write with the truthfulness and rawness as Bukowski, Steinbeck or Kerouac.  I’m worried about roads not taken. I’m worried about why I no longer have friends who I can trust with my secrets.  I worry about being misunderstood.  I’m a hypochondriac so I worry about every phantom ache and pain. I’m worried and wonder where’s god in all this mess?” She gasps,”What the hell’s wrong with you?  You make Woody Allen seem normal.  Come back to bed.”  I gulp down another huge swig of water and head to the bathroom to relieve myself——I swear, how is it possible to pee more liquid than I drink? I’ve grown weary of waiting on another tardy sun.

When I go back to my hometown I drive down my old street and park near my childhood house with it’s yellow nightlight burning on the porch.  It’s just me and a moonless sky dipped in ink.  Tonight I’m filled with melancholy as I creep along in the shadows of haunted streets. Maybe we all leave little pieces of ourselves in the places we once called home. I’ve come snooping for clues that will put “then and now” back together.

When I grew up I was in a hurry to get out of my hometown and escape this puny street that once comprised my world.  But now I’m ironically drawn back to this tired old house on a dead end street. After everyone has gone to bed I buy myself a tallboy and park by the field that’s adjacent to the Catholic church and my childhood house. The cold air with its silent stars brings back the loneliness I knew as a child.  Even then under that misty Milky Way galaxy I’d lose myself in the majesty and unreal-ness of it all.  I think about my old friends and my family, I listen for voices and keep an eye out for falling stars or maybe a UFO. I haven’t come here to repeat the past nor exhume old ghosts, I’m in search of a lost innocence. Right now, all over town it’s autumn and the wind is creating mini tornados of yellow, red and purple leaves. The air is filled with the scent of burning wood streaming from brick chimneys. November is breathing its chill into the coming night.

This was the place where my father would come home wearing his weary work-face.  I think back on all the sacrifices my folks made for me and my sisters. For my dad, everyday must’ve felt the same except for paydays.  On paydays he’d come home late for dinner with beer on his breath and the smell of tobacco clinging to his work shirt. I remember how he’d wrap mom up in his arms and foxtrot her around the living room singing “I don’t get around much anymore”.  Is that what life is, brief moments of joy surrounded by days of nihilistic sleepwalking? In spite of all the hardships we were a family fortified by love who found ways to share our tears and exploit life’s humor. Our house was filled with loud voices and much laughter. My folks did a good job making us a home and they were always there for me. There is still something calming about this funny little house with it’s sagging fence and unkempt gardens——it still defines home.  Memories are my eternal path back home.

This is where my mother cooked our dinners and neatly ironed our clothes. Maybe I’m guided back here to try find pieces of me that I’d forgotten, or that I’d left behind. I can hear the voices and see the ghosts as I sit in my car with the heater on and the radio tuned to jazz. I sip off my beer and let the smell of fresh laundry and pot roast cooking in the oven bring me back to a simpler time.  

I know now, that you can’t go back in time and fix things or make good on delinquent thank you’s.  Things break, mistakes are made, we all say things we regret.  And then there are those missed opportunities where kindness and patience would have played better than selfishness and unrealistic demands.  I watch as we all age.  There’s a feeling of solace that’s found in marching together through the passage of time.  I search for myself with the eyes of days gone by. Buddha would say that attachments to the past is the cause of suffering, but for me there is such a sweet sorrow in these nocturnal sojourns. I feel a sense of belonging under these frigid autumn skies. We may all just be passing through, but my life is held together by the continuum of shared memories. 

Freaks Of Nature And Poets

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Soundtrack “Everglow” by Coldplay.

This life is a shallow grave I’ve been digging with a dull shovel and a shot glass. Slowly burying myself beneath December snows, camouflaged smiles and broken pledges. Time doesn’t stand still, it’s a freight train carrying away everything and everyone; it leaves me with these stillborn dreams——— tattered memories, fleeting victories and mounting troubles. This life doesn’t easily fill in an inside straight. One day you’re gonna lose someone too———it’s a matter of time and how the cards fall…….

They say that time marches on, but when my mother became ill and bedridden, I saw the parade become a stumble, a fall and then a crawl. And yet she held on by her fingernails, she held on for us. Love wrestles with time. Neither of the two compromise nor offers up apologies or excuses, they sever the strings on the most beautiful bouquet of balloons.

This life is a shallow dug grave. I lie sleepless, entombed In the emptiness that fills this darkest of nights. I’ve been fooled by counterfeit kisses and the charade of wilted romance. I never knew love until I found you.——-I should’ve never let you go or told you that I’d given up on us. This regret keeps me awake at night, it’s a blunt dagger plunged into destinies back.

It’s always cold here. I can feel winter creeping in, chilling me to the bone with its impassive wind. You once gave me a perfume scented photo. On the backside was the lipstick imprint of a scarlet colored kiss. I’d close my eyes and put my lips to it. I couldn’t stand to look at it any longer, so I tore it up. I lit the scraps of paper on fire and watched them burn yellow and red.

For the first time in my life I’d felt understood——-I’d always been a social catastrophe, saying the wrong thing, at the wrong time, to the wrong person.  And things were no different when we first met. In a feeble attempt to impress you I mumbled “I’m a writer”. —-You mockingly asked me to write you a poem—- so I did. As you read my words there flashed a nakedness in your eyes—I could see a quiver in your lip.  Everything before and after that moment has been nullified. Vulnerability is a free fall few loves endure.

Our bodies naturally fit together——-we moved in perfect rhythm———like siamese twins, we shared a common heartbeat. I miss that inseparable closeness, like the finale pieces of a puzzle miraculously finding their intended resting place.

You and I were drawn to one another like two awkward kids on the first day of school. One misfit can always recognize a fellow misfit, like how an addict recognizes a fellow addict. It’s in that hollow look the homeless street beggar carries in his eyes. Only the bullied know that helpless feeling of being singled out for the most grievous of reasons, for being different. You made it okay for me to be a renegade, to be unusual———to be what you once called me——“Your poet“. You understood these things, because you’ve hitchhiked that same lonely road only to be passed over by a world that wants nothing to do with freaks of nature and poets. And such banishment only brought us closer together.

Close your eyes and see me still inside you. I’ve been saving all my receipts because one day I’m gonna return all this shit I never needed. You and I burned it all down, until all that was left was snuffed candles and fine white ash. You left your blue flame smoldering inside me. I dreamt you walked through the fire, and once again I watched it burn yellow and red——-and it warmed me?

Immigrants, Migrants, Illegal, Aliens—-The Scourge of the World???

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Soundtrack “Alone” by Jesse Cook.

Immigrants, migrants, illegal aliens—-are they the life blood of the human specie, the pulsing life force that keeps the gene pool strong and indomitable, or are they as some politicians might ask you to believe, leaches and parasites?

These are the ones who choose to fight for a better future for themselves and their children——and willing to pay the price for this aspiration. They live in hope, walk by faith, they possess tenacity, they are the ones who refuse to accept things as they are and are willing to stake their life on this often dubious proposition. The weak give up and stay while strong get up and move on.

Ya see, I have a theory. When the weather changed and the crops failed, when wars raged bringing rape and death, when disease ravaged the young and the old, when home became inhospitable, there has always been a hybrid population in the human specie that would forsake all they once knew to seek a better life. Part dreamer, part head strong, part gambler, part self determining, part wild and crazy——these are the qualities that make up a surviver……no, a thriver!

They left the old country behind to seek their freedom. When the dust bowl blew in they packed up their jalopies and families and headed west to California, just like Tom Joad. When they couldn’t earn enough to support their family they swam the Rio Grand with only the shirt on their backs. They took their chances on death boats, trudged across burning desserts, they crowded into stuffy cattle cars and hid in hot trailers. They walked for hundreds of miles carrying their children and their meager belongings on their backs. They fled tyranny, wars, plagues, corrupt leaders, pestilence, droughts, floods, famine and persecution. And once they arrived they often found themselves unwelcome and mistreated.

From Moses to Neil Armstrong, we are a people of tough and courageous stock. Ever since we were kicked out of Eden, we have had to fight, kick and scratch to make a life in this turbulent and changing world. It is these dreamers, explores, adventures, and risk takers, who’s perseverance led them to peek over the horizon and search for a better tomorrow.

I further theorize, that the ones who lacked the vision, strength and fortitude to move on from an inhospitable environment, that these are the ones who’s genes died out. As natural selection has taught us, it is the strong who survive and propagate. Those that migrate aren’t looking for handouts, they are looking for a new start, a place to earn a decent living and a patch of land to call home.  These are the people who do some of the most labor intensive jobs.  They pick fruits and vegetables in the summer heat, they make beds and clean rooms, they wash dishes and buss tables, they sweep, mop and throw out the garbage, they toil and labor because they see the opportunities that we often take for granted.

Most people flee their home because they seek liberty, safety and a way to earn a living wage.  If politicians wanted to prevent individuals from entering their country all they need to do is financially fine the employers who hire these individuals.  That would not require the expense or symbolism of building a wall, but our dirty little secret is that this would leave many business in a financial bind.

“All those that wander are not lost.” We are all descendants of gypsies and once seeds in the wind. There is no “us and them”, no borders, no nations, no countries (can you imagine? Lennon reference). These human inventions were designed to create divisiveness. These arbitrary concepts are in flux, but it is the human irrepressible spirit that never changes and forges ever forward.

We are all more alike than different. We all want the same basic necessities. We are stronger by being inclusive rather than exclusive. Tolerance and acceptance breeds diversity. And, diversity is what keeps the human gene pool flexible and agile.

The next time you want to hate on someone who’s an immigrant, a migrant or someone “different” than you, remember that, “there but for fortune go you or I”. The person you are hating may be a father who’s seen his children die from lack of food, water or medicine, or a sister who’s seen her brother tortured and murdered, or a woman who had been raped and beaten. These individuals may be leaving everything behind to escape horrors that you and I can’t comprehend.  To be your brothers keeper is an inescapable responsibility we all share.

The universe abhors a vacuum. Lets fill that vacuum with cooperation, empathy and compassion.