Never Mind Where You Died, Elisha Pate

Hello Everybody,

Smokey Mountain Sunshine

“Say, are you related to Barry Pate?” asked the clerk at the car rental establishment in Asheville, North Carolina.

“I don’t know,” I told him. “But there’s a pretty good chance. My family used to live here, way back.”

It was true. In 1703, a Thoroughgood Pate ventured into the North Carolina territory. He’d been run out of Virginia for skipping out on various debts, ran to the hills and was probably the first Pate to enter North Carolina. Years later – in 1782 – another Thoroughgood Pate (my 7th great-grandfather, and probably the earlier Thoroughgood Pate’s grandson, though there is no direct record of the relation) stood trial in North Carolina for treason after the American Revolutionary War. Although he publicly supported revolution, he was suspected of having secret loyalist sympathies and of aiding the The Crown. He was found “not guilty” but forced to take a public oath to the newly birthed United States. So, the Pate’s do have a long history in North Carolina. However, not long after Thoroughgood took the oath, my direct bloodline moved out west, evolving into modest farmers in Alabama.

I would be driving from Asheville to San Antonio – through the Deep South. I loaded up the rental car with my belongings, and with my greatest ally and most dangerous enemy looking at me from the rearview mirror, I started the engine and steered toward the Smokey Mountains.

A crumbling street in the South.

I drove the rental car up and down and through the ancient mountains that morning. I avoided the interstates – stuck to the highways to get closer to the beauty and grandure around me. The haunted ancients hills were quiet and fog loosely clung to them, barely hiding their nakedness. The rivers raced down the ancient grooves carved in the mountains, creating frothing white rapids. I turned the radio off, I wanted to hear the silence of everything around me. It rained off and on, and the dark skies brought about a natural gloom that I can’t even recreate in my mind because what I saw was only meant to be seen then, in that moment. Then the view was to be longed for, forever. Hallowed, haunted longing. That is the Smokey Mountains.

That afternoon, I squiggled out of the Appalacian birth canal and was delivered into the northern Georgia foothills. There, I passed billboards advertising guns, billboards advertising God, billboards warning about teenage pregnancy. Over and over. I kept my eyes peeled for a billboard advertising all three at once, as Georgia passed me by. But nope, didn’t see one. Before I knew it, I was in Alabama.

Broke Down American Pacemaker

“Man, there’s all kinds a Pates in Alabama,” said my friend back in New York, Alabama Patrick – called so for obvious reasons. “Shit, where I lived, you couldn’t walk ten feet without bumping into a Pate.”

I kept watch as I drove, should a Pate run out of the woods and scurry across the road. But none did, and I didn’t ask anybody at the gas stations if any Pate’s were around. I had a limited time with the rental car, so I couldn’t do any deep investigating. Besides, I was content to know they were out there, bumping into all kinds of people.

There is a truth that is easy to understand when driving through the South. It is that Led Zeppelin really is the greatest rock and roll band. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones are lofted into their own mythic categories, they are institutions – but Led Zeppelin hovers just below heaven, in view of Man and their sound falls from the sky and runs like lightening through mortals’ bodies. Drive through the Deep South and keep the dial tuned to the two or three classic rock stations that are available. You will hear plenty of Zeppelin and experience their music in ways beyond the 6 senses. I am not f%$#ing kidding, they are the greatest rock and roll band. Plant, Bonzo, Jones and Page blend into some kind of many armed and footed creature – something like a sugared up cymbal pounding monkey crossed with a Druid priest then bred with an alien who crash landed in the Mississippi Delta – that plays the secret chords only heard in a morphine dream. I love the Stones, but Zeppelin pushed their sound through our dimension’s barriers. One more time, Led Zeppelin is THE greatest rock and roll band. South radio also decrees the Allman Brothers, Creedence Clearwater Revival and ZZ Top were true originals, too, and tells us that we should never forget Aerosmith, who rightfully deserves its place in rock legendom, for they flat out boogied in thier own nasty, sweaty way, at least until 1993. Listening to classic rock while driving through America is like earning a Masters Degree in Rock Criticism, but you’ll earn a Doctorate in it while driving through the Deep South.

The Greatest Rock and Roll Band

All the other radio stations seem to come in a little fuzzy in Dixie. So there’s really no other choice but to jam. Well, there is one more choice, and that’s to listen to the dozen or so religious stations. I took a break from The School of Rock to listen to one such station, as I wound my way through a secluded part of ‘Bama, off the interstate. The dj-preacher man said that the Bible’s New Testament is our proof that we’re supposed to work for a living. Hmm, well I don’t disagree, I believe in working for a living, let’s listen some more. “Let no man steal who can work with his own two hands.” Hmm, I agree with that too. “Our founding fathers lived by that testament” and it was their main focus to “create a nation of workers” and that “it is the Protestant ideals that our founding fathers brought to this country that has made USA number one.” He never mentioned anything about inherently wealthy landowners – like most of the founding fathers – not wanting to pay the high taxes or anything like that. Nope. “This country, this Protestant country was begat to be a nation of wage earners, and any help is welfare and welfare is anti-American.” By this point I’d forgotten I was listening to a religious channel.

I left Alabama without noticing. I was on a deeply secluded county road in Mississippi. The Deep South bestows another truth to the driver – the springtime there is completetly, utterly beautiful. Winding paths through lush green woods on easy rolling hills. The peace came in through the air-conditioner vents. My shoulders relaxed as I breathed in deep all that the city kills. The sun never hits you head on, just sneaks up to you and before you know it, there’s a bead of sweat on your brow. But so what, the cool shade will dry it right up.

Burned Out

Every now and then I would come to a little town, and see another truth – the Deep South is home to extreme poverty. On the outskirts of the towns, the poor – mostly black, but many whites – sat out on the porches of their crumbling homes that were little more than shanties. Then, the nicer houses came into view as you drove further into the town. Then, as I would drive out of a town, the shanties would appear again. A curious fact was that it was these crumbling houses that had “no tresspassing” signs posted on them, not the modern “plantation-deco” homes of the wealthier people. The poor people on the porches were either skinny or obese, with loose jaws and tangled eyes. The pale skin of the whites poked out of their shorts and shirts. Black or white, these poor people weren’t working. I guess they weren’t Protestant. I didn’t know how they could be Catholic, because there were no Catholic churches to be seen and needless to say, no synagogues either. And, though their blank stares could be mistaken for meditative gazes, I’d bet my firstborn they weren’t Buddhists. Maybe they were closer to Jesus than that dj-preacher – carpenters in a land where nobody’s building.

All throughout the South, I saw the white drifter. There he’d be, out in the middle of nowhere, two or three bags at his feet, waiting for Gadot. I tried hard to feel what that may be like. What if nobody went for it and picked me up? What then? There’s twenty miles of nowhere in both directions. How’d things end up this way for me? I’m sure that’s a hard question to answer, but if no one picks you up I guess you got the time to find answers to questions like that. I stopped trying to stand in the drifter’s footsteps when I realized I was just another driver in a car passing him by.

Mississippi River

In Vicksburg, Mississippi, I parked the car and walked around. Vicksburg is a pretty town on many rolling hills along the Mississippi River. 13 Pates where holed up there during the Siege of Vicksburg during the Civil War. They were all members of the Confederate Army, including my great-great-great-uncle Richmond Pate. The siege lasted from May to July of 1863, with the city ultimately falling to the Union Army. One Pate soldier, Elisha Pate, was killed during the siege. As I walked, I wondered where, exactly, Elisha took his last breath, wondered how he died. Did he die on the banks of the Mississippi, catching a bullet in the chest? Did he die instantly, or was his death slow and agonizing? I continued such thinking even after I was back in the car and driving out of town. Was he blown away during the shelling? Was it disease? At every red light, I tried to see back in time to find Elisha – watch him take his final breath and slump down. I wanted to be there the moment the ghost left his body, to see it float higher and higher until it joins that place the living can’t reach. On his dead face would be the expression of his last thought. How did things end up this way for me? Maybe that was the look. At a red light, I looked in the rearview mirror and saw three black men in an old dented work truck. They were laughing, sharing a carefree moment until the light turned green.

Jefferson Davis and his wife, looking on from the losing side of history.

I kept my eyes on the three black men as I rolled into the intersection. I, of course, didn’t know the fellows, but I’m willing to bet they were descended from slaves. They followed me up a hill then down the hill, these distant sons of men and women who were thought of as – and treated as – property. Their relatives were bought and sold, like the car I was driving, like the computer on which I wrote this blog. This computer is going to wear out someday, and I’m going to go to the store and get a new one, and never give this computer a second thought. I will not mourn it, bury it, or tell anyone I saw the ghost leave its body. Up a hill, down the hill. Property, just property. Up another hill. Property.

The three black men were no longer behind me when I reached the edge of town. There, I stopped wondering what the hell Elisha Pate might’ve thought when he died, and I decided to end this blog then. I’d planned to end this post by writing about Leon County in East Texas, where the Pates had nestled in for the last several generations. But nope. The blog would end just outside of Vicksburg. I crossed the Mississippi River into flat, flat Louisiana, my traveling companion right there in the rearview mirror, with a look of compassionate castigation. There we were, suspended over the Big Muddy – the culmination of patriots and traitors, loyalists and rebels, and of all the gods and devils. But none of that made me special, I was just a guy driving further into Louisiana. Poor, flat Louisiana was gazing across the river, wondering why Mississippi kept all those hills to herself.

A Crying Window in the South.

Be well…

It Doesn’t Stop Until It Stops For Good

Hello Everybody,

Dan and Januario…my traveling buddies.

Thursday morning, I hauled my backpack, laptop, guitar and toolbox to the sidewalk outside my apartment building and waited for my friend, Dan, and his son, Januario, to pick me up. My belongings were lined up on the curb like the poor targets of a firing squad and all I could think was That’s it? 37 years old and that’s what I own? There was a slight urge during my wait to ponder the decisions I’ve made in life – to ask a million “what ifs” – but the urge was replaced by a graceful and sudden peace as a new thought came in through an earhole, which was, Yeah, that’s it, and I’m totally fine with it.

When Dan and Januario drove up, I loaded my life into the rental car and we split town, bound for Asheville, North Carolina. Dan and his wife, Wren, owned a house in the mountains about 30 minutes outside of Asheville, which they rented. Old tenants were moving out and Dan and I were headed down to fix the place up for the new tenants who were moving in a couple of weeks hence. I’d been to the house several times, but the last time was five years ago. I was looking forward to seeing the place, seeing what’s changed, or stayed the same. Dan’s brother, Mikey, and his family lived in Asheville, too. I was looking forward to seeing them again.

We followed the 18-wheelers through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, crossed the Mason-Dixon line into Maryland, West Virginia flew by, and as we cruised into Virginia that heathen-littered Godless North was shrinking quick in the rear-view mirrow. We followed I-81 into the South, a Godful country should one take into account the giant white crosses that towered along the road – in front of giant Baptist churches. And the crosses kept comin’, a giant cross and giant Baptist church greeted us as we cruised into Bristol, Tennessee. We passed an even larger cathedrel – the Bristol Speedway, the NASCAR racetrack. It’s, of course, an open air establishment, so the exhaust won’t poison the fans, and so God can see all of his children watch the cars go round and round, singing in praise of the holy drivers.

Stone marking the Mason-Dixon line.

In just a few moments we were out of Tennessee and in North Carolina. Darkness had fallen. I-26 into Asheville is one heck of a piece of interstate that – when viewed from a helicopter – may look like a giant snake afflicted with palsey. We wound up, down and left to right, through the mountains that are most beautiful to gaze upon – in the daytime. At night, it may be compared to stumbling through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. I was driving, but I feared no evil. I was too tired. I steered the wheel as needed and we twisted and turned on the abrupt curbs and through Spacetime. I leaned like a race driver with each turn – sometimes believing it helped.

It was past midnight when we made it to Mikey’s. It was good to see him, but we simply said hello and good night and went to sleep in the entertainment room in the basement. Dan and little Januario got the bed, I got the couch. And that was that. I remember commenting to Dan that Mikey’d done a real nice jobe converting the basement. Five years ago, it was little more than a dungeon, resembling a dark place where nocturnal bad people might plot bad happenings. But what a difference five years makes.

We drove out to Dan’s house the next day. We drove up, up and onto the Blue Ridge, always in the shadow of Mount Pisgah, one of the highest peaks east of the Mississippi. Though it’d been some time, the area looked familiar. But many of the houses looked much nicer. They’d either been fixed up, or painted, a yard had been planted, or a garage was being built. Nice, cozy log cabins nestled on the sides of the mountains would peek out to see who was driving down the road, then quickly – shyly – hide behind the tall green trees. Houses that I remember were being fixed up five years ago now looked complete, content to be lived in by their owners. Other houses were in various states of repair, and renovation, and the owners were fine living in them, the way they were.

Build-as-you-go-and-live-free-of-debt-garage in the mountains.

“I guess people around here fix up their place when they can, or when they got the money,” said Dan.

“That’s the way to do it,” said Mikey. “A little bit everynow and then when you can afford it. That way you own everything. It’s your home, afterall, you’re gonna be there a while. Might as well take your time and not get into $150,000 worth of debt right at the beginning.”

Dan’s house was in good shape. No holes in the walls, weird stains, or broken windows. The previous tenants did neglect maintenance of the lawn mower, however, and its engine was probably frozen up beyond repair. The pathetic machine looked like a metal creature that had lost confidence in itself and so voluntarily stepped off of the food-chain and waited patiently for the scrap-iron predators. Its brand name was printed on the hood – a brand stamped to its metal hide that roughly translated into English as Planned Obsolescence. The chainsaw we brought with us wouldn’t start, either. Real quickly, the million things we’d planned to do dwindled into about five. Dan grabbed an axe, I grabbed a shovel, and we set about tackling those five things.

Those kids and their untarnished joy.

During the chopping and pulling of many, many thorny things, I heard the sound of children from all around. Five years, ago, Dan and Wren were only thinking about having a baby. Now, that thought was a blurry streak of flesh as four year old Januario ran passed trying to catch up with Mikey’s two sons (ages 7 and 10) and his step daughter (age 8). The kids ran, got tired and played, ran again, got tired and played again – over and over – partaking in that happiness that adults have so much difficult partaking in – the sheer joy of being alive.

Dan chopped down a tree. I cleared brush behind the house. I looked over the property and soon I was thinking that we could make it look just like it did five years ago. There would be no difference. We could go back in time in those mountains – go back and be our younger, crazier selves and live only for our own hedonistic concernes. Trim a few tree limbs here and there, repaint the house, and we it’s done – only five years but we can go back there with today’s wisdom and reshape – even if very subtly – those five years. We’d just have to remove all the mirrors. And never look at each other. And find a babysitter. And temporary illusions always crumble so brutally and abruptly that they leave a person with one hell of a bad karma hangover that leads the sufferer to the certainty that it’s ultimately better to accept the here and now head on, and accept every gray hair and sore knee and idiotic mistake and it’s even better to accept the fact that eating at Sonic with tired hungry kids is just gonna get loud. Because for all the kids’ pining and manipulative tears, in their eyes is that damn joy to be alive. You feel it radiating off them and hope to god they don’t trade that joy for any of the temporary illsusions that you did, along the way.

That evening, Mike fired up the grill on the back yard deck of the house he’s making a home of, one step at a time. Below the deck was the hot tub he’d installed a while back. Down at the end of the back yard was the tree house he built for the kids, and the adults. None of it off was on a payment plan. He owned what he built with his hands.

He cooked up a beef heart for dinner. Man, a lot of meat comes from a beef heart. I’d never eaten beef heart, or any heart, that I could remember. I didn’t really want to, either. I’m not big on eating the innards of animals. But Mike reminded me that the heart was a muscle.

“It’s like the strongest one, dude,” said Mikey. “You totally depend on it every minute of everyday. It never takes a break.”

The great rock-n-roller, Captain Beefheart. I bet he’d eat it.

It was enough to try a bite, at least. Turns out, beef heart has a lot of flavor, and I enjoyed it. I wouldn’t have if I didn’t put my fear of trying anything new aside. I guess that comes with age, because when the kids found out that it was heart meat they all shouted GROSS! and opted for hot dogs and chicken, instead. It’s funny how that works, it looked like regular meat. You’d never know it was the heart if no one told you.

Be well…

Yes, This World

Hello Everyone,

Portrait of the inside of Murakami’s brain…and of Friday.                            

Friday morning, I awoke to heavy rain drops. The morning light couldn’t seem to find its way into my room, therefore I couldn’t seem to find my way out of bed. But I was finally able to carpe the diem and arise, because I knew I couldn’t hide forever. The rain continued and the gray glow out the window accompanied me through the morning as I began work on a music project I’m involved in – after coffee, of course, and only a minimal amount of procrastination. So, I put on my headphones, recorded, cut, re-recorded, listened, recorded, re-recorded, cut, coffee, erased, gave-up, gave it another try, recorded, cut, re-recorded, etc.

I finished around lunch time. The rain had stopped. The day felt quiet after the rain, and the silence seemed to filter the life-force of the day as it traveled into my room – only a gray light came in, only the residue of real light. I felt isolated – in a warm and fluid womb in which I swayed rythmically, attached to the world only by an umbilical cord with a slight obstruction somewhere in it.

After finishing up the project, I had nothing to do until the evening. I ate, figured that was a good idea. After eating, I was still a bit creatively wired, but the rain came again and I could feel the cold air come into the room – going for a walk was not a good idea. So I sat down and opened up Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 – a gorilla of a novel about parallel worlds. I liked the book – so far, I was only 700 pages in – but I couldn’t concetrate. The radiator kicked on. Hearing the radiator knocking in April is a bit of a drag, like seeing the box of Christmas decorations in the attic in June. Knock, pop, knock, knock. I stared just over the top of the book. Knock, pop, knock. Then the refrigerator joined in. Click, click, click, click. By then I was holding the book in a reading position simply for posterity. Finally, the sink – drip, drip, drip – a metronome keeping time in this womb, with no crescendo, no birth. Drip, drip, drip. Underneath it all was the constant ringing in my ears due to the tinnitus that I’ve had all my life – so loud and palpable, millions of tiny screams poured into the ears. I looked out the window. So gray. Soundless. Nothing come through. A fish in a fishbowl.

The upstairs neighbors came home. Their heavy footsteps burrowed down, through the ceiling, to me. I could hear the wooden studs of the ceiling creek. I could hear voices, but no words. At 4pm, my neighbor, James, came home and started yelling. He was probably a few drinks into his loud and rageful descent into his alcohol weekend. I could hear him clearly. “Alright! Whoo! Yeah!” He doesn’t say much more than that on late Friday afternoons. He saves the speeches for the darker hours – when he desperately tries to convince himself about something of ultimate importance, but slurs too badly to understand what he’s telling himself.

See the other world?

1Q84 centers around two star-crossed lovers who are trying to find their way to each other but are in parallel worlds, so to speak. They’re so close, at times – they can hear each other, sometimes even see each other – both just on either side of the barrier that seperates them. The search becomes more about finding and understanding oneself, and, that only in finding oneself can one find their compliment. It’s a very good book, but reading about parallel universes and dreamscapes in the middle of a cloudy day made me feel more isolated. That gray light out the window. It didn’t feel like it came from a world I inhabited. There was the slightest membrane, seperating me from everything else – plyable, like elastic, but utterly impenetrable. I put the book away.

Later, I hopped over the threshold to my apartment door like Neil Armstrong, into the hallway, relieved to know I was – indeed – on Planet Earth. I locked the door and headed out into the dreary evening.

I hopped the D-train. The D-train is always cold. It has metal walls, instead of insulated plastic walls like the other trains. Yet, I didn’t really feel the cold – more like I was simply aware of the cold. I sat amongst a large Mexican family, laughing and joking in Spanish. But they sounded so far away. Correction, I felt far away – like a peripheral character in a novel, who I can’t get interested in, and can’t figure out why he’s even in the book. As we crossed the bridge into Manhattan, I thought about all the tourist-y things I said I would do, here, in my last week in New York. I didn’t do any of them. Just like the last time I left New York. And the time before that.

Stagnant light.

I got off at the West 4th Street stop, then meandered about in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. The sky still offered light, but the streetlights were already on. They shined in the wet gray air, along with the traffic lights and headlights. But all electric light seemed to die just beyond its source, creating only isolated pockets of unatural color, as if the ingredients of the moment had failed to mix.

Steam rose throught the grates in the sidewalk, eagerly filling in the spaces between each light. People passed across my view of the world, in and out of the steam, from every direction, but I still felt seperate from everyone. The isolation had a rather narcotic effect. I floated through the steam, the park and people, possibly toward oblivion, when a rough looking fellow with a scowl reserved for mugshots called to me and demanded I play chess with him. He sat – shivering in his dirty clothes – at the outdoor chess table.

“Hey! Wanna play chess?” said the man. “I know you do.”

The peices were already set, he was ready to battle. He just needed another human to play. I was too cold.

“No thanks.”

He gazed at me as I walked away – baffled – like he was holding up a sign that said Free Gold. Further down from him another man whistled at me and asked if I wanted to buy some pot.

“No thanks.”

He shook his head, forgiving me as if I knew not what I did. I was grateful to him, however – and to the lonely chess player – their attention tethered me to the planet, satisfied my hunch that I was not yet a ghost.

Right there, but far away.

The night that ached to be was finally born. Around 8pm, I met up with my old friend, Ben, and we went to see the movie Evil Dead. The movie was awesome, everything I like in a horror movie – build up, copious moments of dreadful shock, and release laced with laughter. But what made it an experience – something more than just a movie – was seeing it in a crowded theatre. Normally, I hate noisy crowds, but with a horror movie, part of the fun is jumping at scary scenes in unison, then laughing together over the fact that you just got sissy-fied. Everybody was in it together, united for an hour and a half. I was watching the credits roll when I realized my ears weren’t ringing anymore.

Ben and I have been watching horror movies together for about 15 years – since we were college students in Texas – and it never gets old. After the movie, we went to a coffee shop to have one more cup of joe together, before I left town. Ben told me about a tenant that was found dead in an apartment on the floor of his building.

“She’d been dead for nearly three months. They found her in the doorway. I thought it was just a really bad garbage smell,” Ben said. “But nope, it was human. It’s sad, but it’s not even news in New York. So many people die alone in such a crowded place.”

That was as much of the past as Ben and I discussed. Instead, we talked about ideas that we’d like to create on stage or make into films – projects we wanted to do together. We didn’t need to talk about the past. Simply being with each other confirmed all that had happened in regards to our friendship was real. The past bolstered the moment we were in – and in that moment, we confirmed our existence.

It happened at the top of the steps.

It was well after midnight when I took the slow train back to Bay Ridge. The train rocked back and forth and time sloshed about like water in a bucket. The subway car was filled with the aroma of whiskey breath, marijuana and farts. Most passengers were laundry bags, bouncing at the mercy of the moving train, exuding a goofy, drowsy smile. But for a few others, the novelty of their drunk had worn off, and to take its place was the old familiar anger, contempt and longing over something so wonderful, so beautiful, that seemed just beyond reach only a few short hours earlier, but at the end of the night, was nowhere to be found.

Sometime after 1am, I was certain I belonged in this world. Then I went to bed.

Be well…

The Lensing of Truth

Hello Everybody,

The voices are like shadows – ephemeral, but there, nonetheless.

Thursday, it became clear to me that I needed to sift through my belongings. I will be leaving New York City in less than two weeks, and I need to get rid of or give away anything I won’t need. I didn’t have to work and I had nowhere to be, so Thursday was a perfect day to get it done, or at least set aside any clothing I wouldn’t be taking with me. But shortly after realizing it was a good day to do so, I glanced over at the dresser, thought about going through it, then resumed what I’d been doing before I had the realization – staring dumbly into the computer, drinking coffee. After enough of that, I glanced over at the dresser again, then played my guitar. The dresser stood in front of me, like a hulking, wooden audience who looked unimpressed, in fact, looked as if it had died as a direct result of listening to me. With an encore obviously not needed, I put up my guitar, looked at the dresser again, then thought about eating. Finally – after not eating – I went to the wooden cadaver, opened the drawer that was home to all my t-shirts.

Most of the t-shirts were old, frayed at the neck and arms. Many sported little tiny holes, and some I could easily pull apart with my hands. Most of them could be thrown away, I only needed two or three at most to work in or wear at bar-b-ques. However, as I went through them, I noticed that deep within the fibers of each worn garment was a memory, and the shirts, together, created an image representing much of the ten years I’ve lived in New York. One shirt was given to me by a friend, another I recieved by volunteering for a park clean-up, and ah, this one I wore in a play. I was wearing this shirt when this happened, that shirt when I did that…etc. The memories started out fondly enough, but soon took a dramatic and dark turn, when I heard a voice way back in the back of my head shout FAILURE! several times. Then I heard another voice behind that voice screaming something inaudible, but based on the intonation, I determined it to be something like self-pity. I decided it was a good idea to shut the drawer and take a walk along the bay.

I walked out the door and into a straight-up, bona fide, sunny spring day. It was so bright, I ran back inside and grabbed my sunglasses. I rarely wear sunglasses, but the sun bouncing off the water of the bay would make a thorough, slow and internal voice-quieting walk a bit tough. So I put on the shades and headed to the water. Two blocks from the bay, I could smell the salt air. The sun felt good, though pockets of shade were a bit chilly. It was such a grand day. I felt as if I’d finally crawled out of that thick, blue-gray, melancholic blanket of winter.

Can you see Lady Liberty?

At the pier at the end of 69th Street in Bay Ridge, a few clusters of Chinese or Mexican fisherman were trying their luck. It was a weekday, so there wasn’t a lot of people around. I meandered about the pier, finally making it to the edge, where I caught a clear view of the Statue of Liberty. Lady Lib’s oxidized green skin was a vibrant, otherworldly color on an otherwise complimentary pallete of earth tones. I took a picture to capture this symbol of our nation’s freedom, liberty and all round ability to do our own happy thing without fear of persecution or oppression, and to record her brilliant color that popped out from the landscape as if she wore that green dress just for me. Just to her right was lower Manhattan – a crowded forest of old and new giant steel and glass buildings – all pointing up, up, up. The highest, of course, was the still incomplete, new World Trade Center. The monolith and monument to global economic power towered behind Lady Liberty. Just wait, whispered the almost completed shiny giant to the little green lady, when they finish up my top floors, you and me gonna dance, sugar.

I took a picture of lower Manhattan and thought about the first time I came to New York, ten years ago – when World Trade Center was still called Ground Zero, a gaping hole in the ground surrounded by a chainlink fence. I was 28 and I thought I was old, a veteran worn down from the battle of Life. But as I stood on the pier Thursday, I saw that 28 year version of me clearly – a clueless, scared, pink-skinned baby who mistook his empty pockets for wisdom. I heard yelling, just behind me. I turned around and was relieved to find it was not another voice in my head, but some angry kid running around with a stick. Frowning as he ran about, he hit all the benches and rails with the stick, yelling every now and then. He made it all the way to the end, then turned and ran back to land, hitting, yelling all the way.

Lower Manhattan

I decided to walk along the bay’s edge to check out the driftwood. Like the pier, the path along the bay was populated only by clusters of fishermen speaking softly in foreign tongues, their eyes glued to their lines as they twitched in the windy afternoon. Further on, I saw a jogger, but the lack of people made the place feel not just unpopulated, but deserted, and gave the foghorns of the ships a much lonelier sound. Underneath the giant Verrazano Bridge, one frieghter headed out of the bay, another headed in. They came close to each other, as if they wanted to warn each other of what lay ahead. But they just drifted by without stopping, as if they knew such warnings would always fall into the water before finding their target…so they just blow the horn, leaving the deep, slow, monosyllabic honks to represent everything they want to say to each other.

Ships in, ships out.

Sunlight danced across the water in a brilliant blue hue. I was shocked to have never noticed such a color before. I stopped to take a pic – a permanent momento of this other worldly blue on the water. Snap, snap. It was also low tide, and I noticed how surreal the green algae-covered rocks appeared. They are of course submerged during high tide, but like the blue sunlight, I was shocked to have never noticed such a green – a color beyond description other than alien. Snap, snap – more pictures to remind me of what New York looked like when I was 37 years old – an age when I know longer thought of Life as a battle, but more like a game with no ball, no uniforms, inconsistent officiating, and a time limit that doesn’t seem to be enforced until one of the other players never shows up again. My hands were cold after taking the pictures. The sun had lowered to a late afternoon angle. The wind gently shoved me in a homeward direction.

When I got back to my apartment, I perused the pictures I’d taken on my smartphone. But I was somewhat puzzled to find that none of the pictures looked the way they did when I took them. Manhattan and the World Trade Center didn’t look very big in the picture. They looked far away, insignificant. The Statue of Liberty didn’t even show up in any of the pictures I took. In one, if I zoomed in all the way, I saw a blurry glimpse of Lady Lib, but no one would guess the green blob to be a symbol of liberty. I was even more puzzled to find that the sunlight on the water were not electric blue but just plain, ordinary white. And finally, the hyper green rocks – that green that made me sense thriving and vibrant existences were possible outside of the known and only have to be seen once to become reality…was just run of the mill, algae-green.

It’s much greener in my mind.

I moved beyond mere puzzlement and became perplexed. Could my perception of what I saw that afternoon, of what I saw in all my 10 years of New York, of ALL I’ve ever seen on Planet Earth, be fundamentally skewed? Could the color dial on the old RCA TV that is my brain be broken? Do I need to be fixed? I leaned back in my chair, scratched my head, collegiately. Then I crossed my arms to begin a session of long and deep pondering. As I did so, I felt something in my coat pocket. Hmm, what could it be? I asked myself in a deep and learned voice. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my sunglasses. Oh, that’s right, the lenses are reddish-brown, and tend make the lighter colors pop out – they tweak the greens and turn whites a soothing yet sparkling blue – and blends the background in earth tones, to give life something like a holographic vibe. The sunglasses alter my vision reality.

They’re cool sunglasses but I always feel like an idiot when I wear them, they’re just not my style. But like I said, I rarely wear them. And though the pictures I took show the facts and real colors of the day – and not what I saw – I did, nonetheless, see crazy blues and greens. They have been recorded in my mind, along with a towering glass and steel giant just waiting to bump and grind with a little green lady as she stands her ground on a little island in the bay – unafraid of what’s behind her, and clear in the hue of an undefined color as she faces the endless sea, holding her torch high over the troubled waters. That is what I saw – when I existed at that time and at that place – and is forever in my mind.

10 Years

I still haven’t thrown anything out yet.

Be well…

Billy And Willie And The Most Fabulous Wedding

Hello Everybody,

The other night – after a dinner party – I decided to take a long walk through the Lower East Side. As I walked down the narrow streets of the old tenemant neighborhood, I realized that I could easily swing by 70 Allen Street. In the nearly 10 years that I’ve lived in New York City, I’d yet to visit 70 Allen Street – even when I lived two streets away, 4 years ago. I know, I couldn’t believe it either. But now I would get my chance!

The Lower East Side in the late 1800s. A tough place to be born.

A few moments later, there I stood, at 70 Allen Street. I stared at the corner building with wonder. What’s at 70 Allen St, you ask? Nothing out of the ordinary, a company that sells ticket and ID scanners, and a furniture repair shop. But I didn’t come to 70 Allen Street to see what it is. I came to ponder over what it was, and – according to legend – 70 Allen Street was the birthplace of Billy the Kid. In 1859, Billy was born to a young Irish woman who’d come across the pond to escape devastating famine. The threat of starvation was tenacious, however, and she soon ran face to face with hunger in New York. She did whatever she could to keep young Billy and herself from starving, but finally – around 1869 – mother and child headed west, like many other starving Irish were doing at the time. America seemed to spring up from the ground – right under little Billy – as they ventured further west. After his mother died of tuberculosis in Santa Fe, Billy had to go it alone, doing what he needed to do to survive. He would turn out to be a defining ingredient in Experiment America – the outlaw, and ultimately a legend. But we all know that, it’s old news.  But who could’ve known what was to come of baby Billy when he slithered out of his mother’s womb at 70 Allen Street? Nobody probably thought much. Just another Irish baby – slap him on the ass, knock on wood and hope the back alley typhoid doesn’t get him.

A taxi horn and some profanity at the intersection brought me back into the now. I quit staring into the past and moved on. A few moments later, I stumbled onto Mulberry Street, the heart of Little Italy. Mulberry also happens to be the arms, legs, head and private parts of Little Italy, too. After the Irish headed west, the Italians came in and claimed the Lower East Side. But like the Irish, their tenure in the neighborhood played out as more and different immigrants came to America. Today, Little Italy is only Mulberry’s row of Italian restaurants which range from quaint to downright molto bello…mhwa! Two very Italian hosts of neighboring restaurants flirted with the two ladies walking in front of me.

“Hey, look, it’s two ladies,” said one.

“That’s right, two beautiful ladies,” said the other.  The ladies giggle.

“And there’s two of us,” said the first host.

“That makes two beautiful ladies, and two of us,” replied the other. The ladies giggle again.

“Numbers add up, this just might work out. Whadd’ya say ladies?”

Leetle Eetaly

The ladies thought about it for a split-second and giggled off into the night. The hosts weren’t disappointed. They were already awaiting the next set of beautiful ladies by the time I walked by. Sooner or later, a couple of girls are gonna go for it. It’s only a game of numbers. Across the street was an old cafe – an old Italian man sat at an outdoor table. He didn’t seem to mind the cold as he sipped his little cup of coffee and simply existed. There was a newspaper on the table but he wasn’t reading it. I doubted anything was news to this old man – he’d heard it all before, I’m sure. And he’d heard the hosts before too – been hearing them for decades now, and seen many a pretty lady walk by. The man looked like he’d be perfectly fine with dying at that moment, for it was a bella noche to do so.

From Mulberry, I turned onto Canal Street, right smack into Chinatown. The streets were dark and the markets were closed, but the smell of fish hung heavy on the air. The signs just above the storefronts couldn’t brighten the sidewalks. There was only a dull glow from above as if an acid trip was happening on the second floor of your brain as you stared into a 13-inch black and white TV in your brain’s kitchen. I came upon a group of Chinese-American teenagers whose clothing suggested they came from The Future. They talked so fast and over the top of each other, which sounded like many squirrels screaming ownership over the last nut in a tree.

Chinatown

As I waited for the walk-light with them, I was reminded that America is a living, growing thing. Like all living things, it must adapt, or die. The Lower East Side grew, adapted, changed – Irish to Italian to Chinese – but remained America throughout. It’ll be something different than Chinatown, in the future, yet won’t be any less American. Understanding that kind of evolution keeps me away from the more dangerous American ideals, such as an English speaking blue-eyed blond-haired Jesus, or righteous chopped-down cherrytree aristocratic fairytales of white goodliness that symbolize only one perspective of America. Those fast talking kids reminded me that America can only be defined through many eyes, many tongues. E pluribus unum.

The story of Billy the Kid is forever changing, too. Legend has it that he killed 21 people, though in-depth research suggests the actual number to be between 4 and 9. While he was alive, the New York presses painted him as a modern day Robin Hood. In death, he has been described as nothing more than a two bit thief, to a near a Jesus of the High Desert. But whatever he was, he seemed to pull away from it shortly before he died. It just so happened Young Billy fell in love with a Mexican girl, and when a young man finds love he begins to wear his guns a little less often.

I hopped on the R-train at Canal Street, and sat next to a group of Manhattan teens who were on their way to a liquor store in Bay Ridge that would supposedly sell them alcohol. From there, they would go meet up with a friend who had some painkillers. They were jittery from excitement over the awesome night ahead. Then they talked about guns.

“OMG,” said the one girl of the group, “I HAVE to go to a shooting range, I swear, like in the next couple of days. You guys have to take me.”

The guys performed for the girl, one-upping each other about their experiences with firearms. One boasted that his dad had two  guns – a sawed-off shotun and a pistol. The other said he shot a kid with his bb gun – twice, because he was being a douche. They all really liked guns.

***BUT WAIT! How can this be?! We are in the Northeast, for Chrissakes! We don’t want guns up here. It’s the safest damn place in the USofA and we wanna keep it that way. It’s so safe, a gay man can get married up here, if he wants.  Well, sure, there was the Newtown massacre in Connecticut, but….well…we still want gay marriage! So, no guns, yes gays. It’s places like Texas that’s gun crazy. All you have to do is watch the news. And they don’t want the gays to marry down there. So, go Northeast! Yes gay, no gun!!! Rah, rah!***

Annise Parker, Mayor of Houston, Texas.

I would be inclined to think as such, too, based on what I gather from the news. But I have to say, Facebook cracked a big crack in the wall of Coporate Owned American Media. During Supreme Court Gay Marriage Week, I was surprised to see so many of my old friends from South Texas – my homeland – showing support for the right for gays to marry. Most were straight, yet still posted the red and pink equal sign, or some kind post stating solidarity. Turns out there’s a lot of Texans that support gay marriage. Jiminy Cricket, Houston even has an openly gay mayor! And Texas’ bright son, Willie Nelson, vocally supported gay marriage. Willie has consistantly walked the walk for human rights. Willie’s my hero and life example. Absolutely EVERYONE is equal in Willies’ America, NO. MATTER. WHAT. There’s a great saying in Texas – that, sadly, gets trumped with the hateful wealth-motivated faux-religious speak that is so loud down there – and that’s you go your way, friend, and I’ll go mine. That’s the real Texas. Granted, those gay marriage supporting friends of mine would shoot you if you tried to take away their 18-shell 9mm pistols or AR15 rifles, but gay marriage? Sure.

It’s a Texan’s natural urge to to champion the underdog. Texans only need the slightest reason to tell Authority where they can stick their unmanned drones. There’s another theory that Billy the Kid born in Texas. That makes sense, because he told Authority where to stick it right up to the point when Pat Garret shot and killed him. Billy had escaped from jail shortly before he died, and could’ve disappeared and lived on. But love was too strong. Billy wanted to marry his Mexican girl. So he came back to New Mexico, ignoring all risk. Her father did not approve and alerted Pat Garret that Billy had come back to the area. Soon, after, two shots in the dark put an end to the forbidden love.

Billy the Kid

Of course, there is no way to know the truth about who Billy the Kid was or wasn’t. But I prefer to believe he was born in obscurity in New York, that he wandered westward with his Irish mother and found his American self out there. I choose to believe he made the Western Trip – a pilgrimage into the wilderness – all the way to the setting sun if necessary – and through the toil of such a journey, prejudices are stripped away, and we become who we are supposed to be, love who they need to love, even if the law gets in the way.

The next morning, I got up and did what I always do – drink too much coffee on an empty stomach to piss off my ulcer. Of course, to add to the misery, I checked out the news. Like every morning, it told me what side I should be on, on just about every subject possible. A recent poll shows 42% of Americans think this about this. A recent poll shows 59% percent think this about that, now here’s a whole slew of commercials about pills and clothes and cleaning products that may cause tremors, impotency, psychosis and dragon tails, so be sure to ask your doctor which one is right for you, but rest assured, there IS one for you. I’m a straight white Texan, so I must be a gun lover and who’s against gay marriage, because in a recent poll…NO, dammit! Don’t tell me who I am!

Maybe I wanna see two ten-gallon hat, pointy boot wearing gay Texans get married with six-shooters on their hips. Let’s shoot down the roof after they get hitched. My friends from South Texas would be there too, loading and unloading. Bang, bang, bang. Then Willie would come in, calmly tell us we don’t need the guns no more, and we’d lay our weapons down. When everybody was unarmed, he’d light up an Austin torpedo and pass it around. The first to take a hit would be Billy the Kid, then he’d spend the rest of the night dancing with the ghost of the Mexican gal he loved enough to die for. Soon enough, we’d all be laying around, looking up at the starry sky through the holes in the roof, eating moonpies. We’d all agree with Willie that everything’s just stardust. There would be absolutely no fear, no need to load even one pistol. I’m not a fortune teller, but I’m willing to bet with less fear there’ll be less guns.

One of the Greatest Texans, with a slightly altered equality logo.

After a lengthy debate, I make one more cup of coffee, so what. But I stay away from my computer and the news. Then, my stomach doesn’t hurt so bad. I look out the window and the sun is shining. My, it’s a pretty day. And I don’t see the America that the news tells me is out there. I don’t see it toward my left. I don’t see it toward my right. Don’t see it anywhere. I just see you and me. Funny how that happens every time I turn off the news.

Be well…