proteanme

I’ve been thinking about the upcoming trip home for Ned and Kristi’s wedding. I haven’t been home in the fall since I moved here and I wonder if I’ll notice the leaves and the crisp air as much as I have the snow when I’ve come back in the winter or the humidity when I’ve been back in the summer.

I like the idea of making such a grand statement in the fall, or at least the fall in Indiana, when the chances are things will be colorful and friends and family won’t be sticking to their clothes which will in turn be sticking to their chairs. But more than that, I like the idea gathering together the things that are important to a person before the winter sets in. It’s a kind of romantic notion about storing up to face the winter together.

I like weddings. I especially like the one’s of folks for whom I have lots of affection. Clint and Kelly’s ceremony was so moving. As was Pat and Rachel’s. And Jim is a toastmaster extraordinaire — such a pleasure. I feel lucky to be included in Ned and Kristi’s big event. Please make me tear up. Seriously. I can be super sentimental.

It’s funny to be writing about a wedding but mostly talking about myself, which is one of the downfalls about blogging for me. Me, me, me, me. Need I say more more?

I miss Ned on the blog, but I’ll trade in his absence for knowing that there are these really wonderful things happening in his life. Here’s to you, buddy.

Poems from a book called Stupid Hope.

Summer is on the wane.  It’s cool in the morning when I ride my bike to work. I swear it’s just on this side of crisp — not enough to wear a headband over my ears, but almost. And there’s dew. Dew covering windshields and hovering on top of stop signs. The kind of dew you see in autumn. And if I leave work much later then 6:30pm, I’m tempted to turn on my back blinker. Not because it’s dusk, but it’s close. The sunsets have been beautiful though. And I feel lucky to notice them, but they are coming too early. And that’s the problem.

I don’t miss winter out here. Sometimes I get a little wistful for the snow, but the feeling passes or I drive up to the mountain and get a fix. But I do miss a proper summer. One that begins before the days have peaked. A summer where the end of May and beginning of June are like the extended versions of good first dates, and the equinox marks the tipping point where you fall in love. But out here summer starts as the season’s beginning to wind down. You know it’s high summer in Portland when the days are actually growing shorter. It’s like falling in love with a girl who got accepted to grad school two months before you met and she’s leaving town in another two; there’s nothing you can do about it but be happy and sad at the same time.

It’s the indulgence I miss.  It’s how it feels like the volume is turned up on everything in the summer and not just the heat and the humidity, but how things are over the top, like everything that can get lush, get’s way lush, or it gets parched to hell. And how those kind of extremes have this hint of forever that’s not real, but you still feel like you’ve got all the time in the world.

That feeling gets under your skin, which is why county fairs are full of demolition derbies and amateur boxing matches and giant sized portions of deep fried foods and rides that scare the shit out of you and make you want to vomit. But everyone’s still standing in line to ride the tallest most bad ass roller coaster anyway. God I miss feeling that. Not that I ever stood in line to ride any roller coast. Not even something modest. I’m more a bumper car kinda guy, although every now and then I’ll tempt the fates with a ride on the Scrambler. Which is where I usually draw the line, except this one summer when I rode the double ferris wheel at the Indiana State Fair. The only thing I can say on my behalf is I was really high and I was really hot for this girl I was dating.

It’s the luxury of doing something that scares crap out of me and feeling like I didn’t waste any time. Because out here summer’s a fleeting thing, even if we had a 10 day heat wave in July, it still feels like playing catch up before it’s over.

I had a dream about my dad last night. When I first woke up, around 5am or so, I thought to myself oh man, I really want to remember this dream, but then the second time I awoke up at 6:30am I’d all but forgotten everything except a general outline, which basically consisted of my dad and I working on a project together. Maybe building something or fixing something; I don’t know exactly, but we were wearing big, matching, straw hats. And at some point my mom walked into the room where my dad and I were working and she said something to us about my sister.

I wanted so much to remember more of it, which for a little while made me feel sad. Dreaming about my dad is the only way to be close to him now; plus, I am afraid I am going to forget him.

I know it must sound like I’m way down, and sometimes the grief does hit hard, but mostly I’ve wanted to use the blog to my chronicle grief. It’s a intense. Door opens and it’s a different world.

I’m sick of being sad. Ya know. I really am. Even though I’m not sad all the time, I’m tired of it. It’s like the other day I was standing at a party talking with a friend about running. And I thought, wow, this is a pleasurable, standing here talking like this. I can’t believe how much I’m enjoying talking about running shoes and body form and training regimens. It was almost a luxury. A small one. A secret one. But sweet to be following every word he was saying and saying things in response that made sense. And maybe he asked me about what I’d been up to or how my year was going and I said something about how amazing it was to be standing there enjoying this conversation and not be conscious of the fact my dad had died in a house fire this past winter.

Things kinda quietly fell apart from there. He went inside to find his girlfriend or something. I can be sad or notice I’m bot being sad and either way if I say something people stare at their feet and go away. No pity. I mean I’m not looking for pity when I say that. I just want more people to look back. Ya know.

About a month ago I went to NYC with RU. It was the first time I’ve taken more than a long weekend off work since I went to Paris. I’m not counting the week I had to go home to attend to my dad’s death. We stayed in Brooklyn. Everyday we walked so much that by the time evening came around we were almost always too tired to do much more. But we did. Sometimes. Like the night we went to see some live theater in the East Village. The guy that took our tickets said we were the cutest ones there. But he was a flirt; plus, there barely anyone had taken seats yet. We ate some first rate Chinese food, tried various takes on bahn mi but Nicky’s is still my favorite, walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, saw the Francis Bacon retrospective at the met, went to H & M, walked around the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, checked out the High Line, rode the subway, got ignored by all Hasids in South Williamsburg, explored Park Slope, tried to see a cool dance show in the rain but ended up just seeing lightning bugs, which i miss, and ate some awesome bagels. When we flew out I remember looking back at the city as we ascended. It’s a human Grand Canyon. The spectacle of a mountain, but made by hands. It’s like we all got together and said “look what we can do”.

I miss summer. We’re just not getting enough of it this year. Please come back. J’taime été. Seriously, je-the- fuck-taime.

From The Different Kinds of People that There Are

Wizards

Assholes with beards who do magic. In modern times, wizards look just like normal people, because they’ve learned to wear tracksuits and tuxedos over their robes. This means that wizards could be anywhere. Can you trust the people you work with not to be wizards?

The grieving know that grief is more than a single emotion, that, in fact, it is a doorway to all the other emotions, from anger to something approaching joy.

I’ve recently become aware of some loss and tragedy in the lives of a couple friends. Since hearing the news I find myself thinking of the small and ordinary pieces of their days that must be taking on some different shape and meaning. And not one of their choosing, as far as I can tell from my own experience.

I also know of some other friends or friends of friends who are in the middle of other kinds of changes. Changes that involve some type of upheaval, like break-ups and big moves and job loss. Life got altered for them too.

And everybody is kinda standing apart from the routine but negotiating with it at the same time. I don’t know if that makes sense. I keep picturing crying in one’s coffee, not euphemistically, but more as image of how one grieves and “gets on with it” at the same time.
My heart and my mind is with a lot of people these days.

Most days I don’t know any more. I don’t know in a way I can’t explain. My whole world’s been re-configured but then again everything pretty much looks the same. I mean I do the same things, see the same people. I don’t play music as much and I’ve gained a little weight because I ate a lot of junk food to get me through the thick part of grief. But it’s really quite possible that a whole lot of life is about one manages the whole, whole lot of stuff that one doesn’t know.

Used to be people like me were called half orphans. I think it’s apt. If someone right now were to ask me what I am, that’s what I’d say — I’m half orphan.