It’s been a few years since a sound began to well up inside
me. Six notes, the third stretched like dough from head to belly, the last
three drifting downward.
Ain’t no words for it, really. I’ve been doubled over
in the thick wheat field of its origins my whole life, but in 2012, Crescendo.
I’m not a musician but I understand the mass inside humanity that cannot be
expressed in our imperfect, hollow utterances and alphabet shells. As a writer,
I seek. I look for hands reaching back across this chasm between us. Through the unsteady fortress of time, tenuous prehensile memory, past
consciousness and into the hearts of all life forms.
Today, I walked beneath massive willow oaks, stripped bare
and dampened by winter. I wondered if the time ever comes when my mind goes
completely, will the bony fingers and wide spread of their hands bend down to
gobble up the houses, built by man, and pull them down into the sweet, red
earth?
You will say I speak in abstracts. In metaphors. Melvin
Udall, a favorite film character from As
Good As It Gets, (1997) would say, “People who talk in metaphors should
shampoo my crotch.” Maybe, he’s right.
Let’s get concrete as shit, then.
This past year has left me
wounded
beyond my capacity to understand.
Yet, it was also peppered with success and joy, oftentimes
back to back. Some will say that is the way of things. The sweet with the sour.
Darkness and light. Extremes birthed in fire.
Last winter I:
Could not
see the end of my
MFA program.
figure how I’d
ever survive thesis writing and defense.
find the ending
for my first novel.
cope with Ben
being on the road so much.
get
on the right medication.
Knew
time with some of the animals and
humans I loved most in this world grew thin.
Cooked
a shit ton of cornbread.
drunk resulting in
a round scar on my wrist.
Fell
on an icy street in Chicago running behind
people who didn’t care.
Skated
for
the first time since 1989.
Last spring I:
Planted
old
bean seeds I hoped would grow.
Finished
writing
my thesis.
my
MFA in fiction.
reading
so many books I lost count.
Continued
writing
a novel that scared the shit out of me.
feeling
lonesome and sorry for myself and drinking too much.
walking
dogs.
cooking,
baking, brewing.
Traveled
to
Pittsburgh on my own.
to
the farmers’ market.
to
coffee shops and Asian restaurants.
to
hospitals and nursing homes.
to
my office.
to
fictional worlds.
toward
something, anything but this.
Last summer I:
Wrote
the
ending of my first novel.
9
flash stories, one called Mama-Scent.
1
personal essay, grasping at artistic origin.
too
many status updates.
no
letters.
many
failed poems.
Longed
to
bicycle in Vietnam.
for
one barefoot day of my childhood.
to
save someone lost at the bottom of a bottle.
for
my ailing dog’s comfort.
to
be brave enough to hike the Appalachian Trail.
Read
an
excerpt from my thesis to a crowded, room.
Fought
with
my mother.
In autumn I:
Saw
the
deaths of Mia, Jade and Spooky.
their
final breaths as I held their paws.
the
world go blurry from drink.
the
bathroom floor, again and again.
people
withdraw, shrink.
my
face turn unrecognizable, gray and pocked and ringed.
Held
two-week
old kittens.
my
own freckled shoulders.
a heart-broken Papillon.
Punched
three
different walls, three different times.
Cried
Slept
Left
writing locked up in my desk.
Come winter I:
Felt
Self
slip and return.
Cold
air on my bare neck.
Solstice.
Twinkle
lights and evergreen.
My
brother’s arms.
Kitten
breath.
Paper.
Tape.
Agony.
Repose.
And so when I look over all these year-end list of
accomplishments, what I really wonder about are the failures. The sounds
rumbling away in us all that never pass our lips, reach our fingers or our
instruments. We cannot all be musicians. We cannot all be artists. But we are
all capable of these vast sweeps of emotion, the greater part of us all that
cannot expressed in words and in this, I find peace and comfort. Maybe I do talk
in metaphors, but maybe you and fictional Mr. Udall will think me less than
silly, just this once.
Six notes. The third stretched like dough from head to belly.
