2 posts tagged “anderson”

The curvature of the road, concrete laced into the foothills and on up into the red wettish rocks of the mountains stacked ahead, makes it seem gingerly placed, a conservative landscape artist's idea of a way out of town. There are pastures on either side, slick grasses, young yellow flowers growing up for the spring coronation, with little, furry brown mouths closed for now to the bees and the rain. Far from the picket fences are sheep. It is about three years ago. I am driving home from school. My voice is hoarse from singing for hours to keep myself company, and I am thinking about my friends. It's an afternoon and it's raining and I'm despondent in Kentucky.

Earlier in the present day, I was doing the same thing, of course - I took myself to church, and after church I eventually went down to Five Points and had a beer at Nofo and read the New York Times.

I was thinking about my relationships.

Roman Catholic Churches are in the process of closing in Japan. As people become wealthier, they are losing interest in their faith, I read. Catholic sons and daughters move into the cities from their remote Catholic villages, and blend in with secular society, marrying spouses with no religious beliefs. John McCain has a son in Iraq. More and more veterans are being diagnosed with PTSD, being re-deployed too quickly after serving tours.

I was thinking all day about self-imposed punishment.

Threeish years ago, I am driving this gorgeous road, praying in my heart that God will keep my girlfriend safe, thanking Him for my best friend Dave, and dreading the house I am coming towards. I am lonely as hell.

Earlier this Sunday, I found myself walking out of church just after the blessing, but before the procession filed out. My feet just wanted to. A woman in the pews looked at me as I walked by, at first surprised and then I saw my face in her eyes and her expression changed. She caught her bemusement in her teeth before it made it to her lips, and her raised eyebrows seemed to change at the last moment, to ask their question rhetorically instead. I guess I looked pretty disturbed.

I have miles to go before I pull into my parents' driveway. It will be warm when I get there, night-time. Humid.

Outside of Mass, I pulled my dad's old red hooded jacket as close around my arms as possible, until the bunched sleeves made thick rings. I thought about how I would spend the day alone, and wondered if this part of my life was going to scour me clean or damage me permanently. I wondered what damage feels already done.

I went to the mall, just to be around people. I checked the balance on a gift card I'd found: empty. Talking to the guy at the counter felt like my spirit was being cut up right through my chest. I wandered around for awhile until I felt like people were stopping behind me when I stopped, and then got back in my car and went to Barnes and Noble. I used to work here, I thought, as I went unrecognized by a familiar face. I took a look at a book called Religion Explained, and decided that I'd had enough of other people being right about everything for the time being. I left, and got back in my car, to sing and head to Five Points.

I'm thirsty, and I've been drinking coffee for the whole trip. Like usual.

These old compilations, all that time, and I don't seem to change enough. Time doesn't change anything. I'm grateful for the things I've lost. How much of my life has gone to waste on me.

Today, the sky and everything the way they are, is a beautiful day to be lonely. 

Of clowns and costume.

Got to do some quiet things today, errands.

Lately it's been very windy here. In North Carolina, we have a peculiarly beautiful sky that, as the light comes on and dies down, seems to cycle between blues, and explosive oranges, honey and God's own red, I swear. With the wind rising like it did today, the clouds moving so fast they seem almost to take a sheen, you'd believe you're looking at the second week of Creation, nothing settled. The air keening through the trees, an enormity branches rushing and rustling like a tide so many feet above ground, the forest feels like the cool bottom of a wide, living belly of clouds, wide as the horizon, thick of the smell of pine and dirt. You feel at the bottom of something huge and alive. There's something altogether gamely about sinking your shoes into the soft clay, wet after yesterday's rains, improvising paths among fallen timbers and short stalks of bare bushes. Time stops when you don't absolutely need it. Like when you're walking in between odd jobs around the house.

Kelly and Scott came today. I've done my best to not be 'myself'. I think I'm doing okay.

Got some more vitamins. Folic Acid, St. John's Wort, Biotin, and some more Fish Oil capsules, because we're running out around here.

I stayed quiet all through dinner tonight at Uno, not on purpose or by accident, just kind of in thought. My dad had a couple of beers - I even got him to try a Stella. He didn't care for it too much. He looked at me strangely a couple of times. I wonder what he sees when he sees me?

I saw a few pictures of me from last year, and in them, I'm wearing a pair of seersucker pants rolled up to the knee, a white polo shirt with thin horizontal stripes, and a sky-blue sweater tied around my neck. In the first, I am with a friend, underneath a glass arc memorializing some veterans or donors or something, and we are standing on one leg, balancing our bodies to point with both hands towards some unseen thing, smiling and laughing. In the next picture, I am alone, bending over backwards, looking up at the glass blocks with all the names in them, contra the arc. The day was warm. We'd gone to Real Hacienda, Cara and Jesse and I. It was part of what I remember as a fun night. Perhaps one of the better ones of the whole summer. And the outfit. I remember putting that on. I remember having the picture taken. I had a couple beers at a restaurant. Later, walking back from Real Hac, we got hassled by a cop. I remember looking in the mirror a lot that day. I know I never saw what I'd hoped - whole-heartedness, real confidence, self-forgiveness, balance. 'Balance'.  I'm uncomfortable and a little disgusted at the person I see in those photos -  a young man being so clearly antisocial, for abandoning limits to the point of costume, and the strange hopeless pride and passion in his body - a passion I both envy and am ashamed of, now. I would recover it today if I could.

It's strange, and stranger still knowing it in the moment and halfway accepting it, but the shock of the pain and uncertainty I was feeling seemed like my whole world at the time, it seemed that I had no other way to cope but to act out as outrageously as possible, to make myself as unrecognizable as possible, an angel, a caricature of something else. The crest of shame drove me to stand out, just to give my shame an object, so I could experience it in another context, turn it into a kind of pride - watch what the fuck I'm wearing. Hear what I'm saying. A broken-hearted person-panther in a cartoon panther costume. How come he's so erudite lately? Talking about religion like an atheist, and Catholicism like the Pope? He says it's an experiment.

And an experiment it was - at least, in the sense that it's an unsustainable fiction of limited scope and duration that's prompted by some incalculable question in the real world. There was no hope behind it. I see a man in a sweater, making an empty gesture. I was the reagent, to be consumed, transformed. Clothes were part of that methodology. It needs no explaining. I was lonely.

I thought about this often today day, and find myself thinking about it a lot, with a sick feeling in my stomach now just as then, as I knew I was wasting my days, that it wasn't possible for me to be 'normal' around people and yet these faces and these people might be my last people, and I was going to lose even the ghost of a chance to know them, walking away without a sound. So, Kendra Patton, if you ever read this, I'm not really shy or a freak or a possible homosexual. I get the feeling that I probably scared you. Well, sorry.

Ah, life.  

It's too lame a sentiment to admit without a sigh, but as for everybody else, "fuck you". I still haven't forgiven you for just watching me.

So I'm listening to that compilation CD I made for Cara, during the end of this era. It's funny to me, how much of the music evokes this time. I wonder if our friendship will survive my weird clouds and wild light leaving Anderson. Now I'm already feeling like somewhere else, someone else, something else. It's hard to understand how anybody gets to befriend a boy like in those pictures. It's better than luck.

It's no need for philosophy when you're lucky.

I've got a few little things to feel good about. I was out today, outside. That's always good, even when it doesn't feel good, it feels good after.

Things feel good after.