Tuesday, February 25, 2014

red.



my favorite color is red.

the semi-sour smell of black leather seats preempted our stifled exit from the volvo that afternoon. i must have gotten out of the back seat on the righthand side, edging my faded nikes between the crackling silver panels of the car, and the chafed latticework of the fence.

a silent sunlight roared through the slats.

and everything was sticky, and gold.

i was the last one through the gate, carrying something plastic and annoying against my skin. i started toward the back door, always eager to rush past the concrete pad i had watched my father pour to serve as a storage area for now-greying trash cans wilting in the sun. and maybe someone said, 'shhhh!', or maybe i stopped hearing, but in a moment, everything went quiet, and i looked up.

between my dad peering over the chipped sill of the back porch window and the shadow in which i stood, there, shiny and proud in all its bmx, kickstand, butterfly tread glory, was my first bike.

and it was red.

Sunday, February 16, 2014

pull away.



some time around this time, 16 years ago, my grandfather died in his sleep.

he had had a long bout with diabetes, and cancer, and cancer again, and then a heart attack. my dad was there. they had moved my grandfather's bed to the living room on the ground floor, had waited on him and laughed with him and tried to resuscitate him when he stopped breathing, but he had stopped breathing, and they remembered that he wanted it that way, when it was time.

i remember coming back to school after time down south for the funeral. it was cold and it was march and i was generally in a daze. i hugged my buddy zack in the hall, no words spoken, because his grandfather had died a few months earlier. and probably none of us got it. but then i got it. and then i pulled away, he looked at me funny, and i realized not everyone has the grandfather that i just lost.

on a very cold night a couple months earlier, i was on an accidental date with a beautiful girl with brown eyes and a quick smile. we had gone to look at stars. i had brought a sleeping bag. there were no plans to do any kissing. it was in my dumber days when i thought i could get away without euphemism, get out and look at stars on a freezing cold night on a lookout near a highway in a blue ford sedan. apparently not. i got home that night and was in enormous trouble for having completely forgotten to pick up my brother and my dad's sound equipment from my brother's elementary school dance. i went to bed in massive trouble with my dad, a disappointment to my brother, and completely confused by this beautiful girl who had just spent the last couple of hours kissing her way into my heart.

in the middle of the night, my dad got a call from his dad. it was time for my grandfather to die. my dad had to leave now.

my dad had to leave in the car i had just borrowed to go on a date with a girl who didn't know or love me while i forgot to take care of my little brother and, instead, drove the girl home to leave the gas tank at less than a quarter. in the middle of the night, when your father calls to tell you that he has decided to die and he wants you to be with him while he confronts this, there are no gas stations open between your oldest son's stupidity and the part of the country where things are open past 6pm.

somehow, my dad made it to a gas station.

this is all very important because somewhere in there there is a story about the way things seem to go, and how i will always manage to fuck it all up because i am smitten with some girl who doesn't even know me and won't love me back. there will always be a story about how everything means so much more to me than to anyone else and on this interface with the world, there is no telling how many other stories i've missed or gotten wrong. there are details, devils and otherwise, and i'm missing them because i think no one 'gets' what it's like to be me, with my heart, in the face of all of them. how gross.

i was walking toward a ridable street the other day after having spent some time in line at the flower shop with every other man hoping to flower up his own bitter truth on one cold day in february. i go to this flower shop regularly. i never spend this much money in one shot, on one bouquet. i didn't think twice. i found the red roses, strategically priced at a premium above all other roses, and any flower in the shop the day before, and i got in line, and i complimented other men on their choice of arrangement. i paid for my bouquet, left, unlocked my bike, and started home.

on the sidewalk, a lady with golden hair glanced at my bouquet and, with an under-the-breath scoff and condescending smile, marched on while starting a new statement of complaint, 'this cracks me up…' i could just imagine the rest of her sermon. something about men and convention and one day a year that they should, commercially- and societally- and maybe even sexually-driven, 'be nice' to their (normalized, hetero-) lady, buy her flowers, and measure up to some kind of proper. (i had just left the store where a rough-looking local had tried to glean the 'meaning' of blue roses from the mandarin-speaking proprietor of the shop. she had politely asked him to ask someone else. he was demanding. they're flowers, fucknut, assign the meaning yourself and pay the cash and get on with it.) or maybe all these guys carrying bouquets cracked her up because no one even likes roses. or maybe because it brought us all together, this brother/partnerhood of folks, from all walks/locomotions of life, in our quest to be a good person to our significant person. my grandmother starts calling out people's birthdays as 'significant birthday' when they get to be too old to be happy ___th. maybe i'm too old to buy flowers on vday.

and then i got home and put the bouquet in water and got the girls and some groceries and set to work making an awesome tasty dinner. i wasn't expecting romance. i wasn't expecting sex or love or whatever else is supposed to happen on vday with a dozen long stem roses on the table. i was just expecting to not be in trouble for not meeting some unwritten and unspoken expectations. i was expecting to feed happy children and send them to bed with dreams of being winter olympians. i was expecting to be able to relax. and i guess i did.

when zack pulled out of my hug and when that blonde lady scoffed at my bouquet i figured it was all just the same old story of me: no one gets it. and that's fine and that's good and there's a lot of safety in that, but somewhere, some time, this solo effort will end. will there ever be enough gas or flowers to get us through?

Friday, February 7, 2014

the very sunlight that washes over everything in that impossibly-golden hue, the glow that spills in and sets alight anything that might possibly even be thinking about reflecting, the stuff that pours through window panes and hair against the wind, even this just feels like guilt when someone has cancer.

i stood in someone's shower, memorizing the droplets before they left my skin, each hitting the mat to trickle into the deep unknown, and i thought about what i had just done. it wasn't anything major; an easy pace, a long run, some time spent with the woman who fell in love with me a few lifetimes ago, and every step was away from, and then back to, someone with cancer.

the other night at running practice, the mailman and i churned around rykert crescent, trying to keep our double loops under four minutes, egging each other on and driving the pace to spit and cough through our ninety-second recovery. on the fourth double loop set of six, i started up the straight and thought about someone with cancer. i thought about how he might not ever be able to run. i thought about his granddaughters who love to run. i ran faster. i used to think i could run myself away from any kind of heredity. i thought i could run myself away from the diabetes that killed my grandfather. i thought i could run myself away from the heart disease that has taken all but one bitter sibling of my stoic grandmother. i thought i could run myself out of a hangover that is nothing compared to the alcoholic stain in both blood lines. if only i could run the cancer out of everyone.

an important notion in endurance sports is the arrogance of capability. this is important because we're capable of doing what most others are not. we identify ourselves by determining what we are not. and yet, confronted with the most basic human truth, that we are mortal, there is no capability to overcome or run beyond or just push through. cancer wins, and far too often. 


i reached toward my face to brush off a maddening drip. in the fury of movement dexterity became paw. i could only be described as animal.

the major evolution for people and prey was the separation between breathing and eating. all of a sudden, we could run. i ponder this to avoid choking on oversized bites of energy bar, chunks between chattering teeth, wrapper clamped between handlebar and wet, numb fingers. my hands look like those of a corpse, bloodlet and clean. my jaw grinds food. i go.

snippets.



in order to tell truths about things, especially ourselves, it is often easiest and least disturbing if we dress them up in blatant, shocking horrors, something better buried than whispered or wept over.

but if you've never pulled a child from rubble or watched bullets push life out of your best friend's chest, you might get hung up on those truths, whoever's they are, and skip over the most important part being told.

we lie fantastically so you don't hear what we whisper in our sleep.