10.31.11

Halloween on Alta Dr. meant you had to hit at least three houses - Roger's, Janette's, and Jo's. The holiday was a big event for our neighborhood and for the surrounding neighborhoods, my brothers and friends and I filling pillow cases to the brim with a better catch every year - the blue and red and silver fish flopping and jostling their paper fins as they struggled for breath - ultimately giving up their chocolate and nougat ghosts to greedy costumed fishermen.

Roger's house was stage-right, dark and dismal. As you approached along the driveway, you could just barely see a table on the porch. Closer and there was a bowl of candy on the table. A simple setup, novel, but there was, of course, a sickening twist.

 ***

Roger's daughter was an acquaintance of mine at school and the victim of one of the first terrible injustices I can remember. We were graduating Junior High School together, an exciting time. I remember one day walking to the bus and watching a couple kissing passionately, on another day I observed a boy throw up, on another I heard whispers of "that one redhead" being raped, and there were always dirty stories of dirty videos, lingo, slang, new vocabularies that had to be learned quickly on penalty of ostracization, on another day there was my first girlfriend giggling with nameless cohorts, on another a fear of wetting my pants, on another a fear of someone noticing the awkward angle of my pants due to the quintessentially pre-teen concentrations of blood that frustrated me to no end in the nature of their volatile, seemingly random occurrences; "random" in the current context being synonymous with embarrassment and thus, death - all these memories floating in the estuary of pubescent emotion and imagination where nervous feet still prepare to board the bus. It is like some migratory settlement, some open market of the newest signals, symbols of confidence being exhibited by frantic-eyed performers, their audiences simultaneously dazed in awful rapture and secretly plotting their individual means of perfect mimicry. That was the world of the bus.

At the end of eighth grade I asked Roger's daughter to sign my yearbook. As she was doing so, a tall, muscular boy named Brandon approached us. He insulted her, she defended, and he insulted her again before leaving us, my yearbook still in her hand. She finished writing her sweet congratulations and best wishes; she handed me back the yearbook and walked away weeping.

***

Roger's porch was lit by a solitary black light, casting unearthly shadows of perfect terror. And there, in the middle of the table, on a silver platter, was Roger's head, pale and bloody. "Take one please; only one piece of candy," the head would say in a hallow voice, as though its vocal chords were no match for the undead decay creeping up slowly from the empty veins at the neck. Roger was always just seconds from the guillotine, freshly lulling open his tired eyes to observe the world as if for the last time; each child the son or daughter of some French revolutionary, screaming as a parent chuckled, delighted at the memory of Her Majesty The Blade.

Stage-left was Jo's house. No twists here, only the most finely crafted jack-o-lanterns I have ever seen.

***

Jo was one of my dearest childhood friends and, to the best of my knowledge, is still one of the best artists of all time, ever. I was friends too with Chris and Kevin, but this latter friendship was much more about looking up sexual words in the dictionary, trying to figure out what a condom was, and getting caught repeatedly looking at Playboy magazines whilst (to the grave, no pun intended) swearing that they were only the latest issues of Sports Illustrated.

But Jo's friendship was much more meaningful, we would draw or paint together in her garage and talk. She loved Greenday and mohawks, she showed me once a model of a M*A*S*H helicopter she had made, she showed me her art, we often rollerbladed together.

At one point Jo owned a pair of large toads. One day we were in the garage observing the toads - one was sitting on top of the other. "I think they're mating," I said. That was my only awkward moment with Jo.

One summer Jo came back from school to visit. She had a purple mohawk and piercings. She came over to our house and told our family about her new adventures, we laughed at her stories (somehow a bumblebee had once gotten caught in her mohawk) and were excited for Jo, we loved her, I loved her.

***

Each pumpkin on the walkway leading up to Jo's front door was a brilliant work of art. There were symbols or scenes, witches, beasts, dragons, everything - a museum made mausoleum, the artwork displayed in creeping beauty to visitors with images of Roger's severed head still fresh in their minds. At the door there was usually only a simple bowl; that's just how Jo's family was, a bit reclusive, a bit mysterious. I would never enter the kitchen or living room of that house until years later, when Jo and her family had long since stopped curating the eery walkway.

Across the street was Janette's house, the piéce de résistance. Even before you approached the house, even before you approached the cul-de-sac, you knew about Janette, the witch, her wailing cackle piercing the night at regular intervals, carrying on for miles. At Janette's there was no candy, there was something else: witch's brew. Her evil screeches billowing from her like the clouds from her gigantic black cauldron. The witch herself was disgusting, sitting, one would imagine, on a chair made from the bones of eaten children. As she poured you a drink, you wondered what frightening ingredients had been added, what subtle poisons might be found within. Long, green fingers handed you the styrofoam cup from which you drank your doom; Hawaiian Punch, devious.

Janette died of cancer a few years ago. Every Halloween I remember her, hear her witch's laugh resounding in my head, taste the brew. It tastes like childhood, it tastes like cool autumn nights when I didn't wish my mattress was an ice block before falling asleep. It tastes like something instantly lovable and instantly respected. That was Janette to me, stubborn, but friendly - powerful in personality and sweet in understanding. Dedicated to community and neighborhood and family, a mover, and the finest screamer I have ever heard. No witch I have met comes close. Halloween isn't the same without Janette, but at the same time, Halloween couldn't be what it is to me without her.

10.19.11

I remember it as a perfect day in California, only a few skim-milky clouds spreading thin across a pale sky. I like to think that an airplane or two crossed that weightless sky as they often did. My mother and I were in the backyard of our house. I remember the backyard only slightly - there was a small table and chairs, the table may have even had a large umbrella to shade it from Valencia's heavy July's and August's. That was the same house that resided across the street for a taller house that had, at the tip of its roof, a small concrete cap that always looked like snow to me. Ironic too as I do not remember it ever snowing there, though it did once - we have pictures.

That was the same house from which we moved when I was still relatively young. I remember sitting in the passenger seat of our car as my mother drove us away, down Gaucho Ct. one last time. As we reached the corner of Gaucho and Magdalena, she began to weep. As I reflect now, I can only imagine what she felt - perhaps that strange quasi-grief that so often accompanies us when we move on to a new stage of life, a feeling of gentle peace and loss that simmers late into the evening, pushing our minds into reverie as we go from Magdalena to Del Monte to Estaban, down John Russell to Alta Dr., where the years of this new stage will sweep by in brilliance.

But all that is to come; for now, my mother and I are still in the backyard on Gaucho Ct. A tall wooden fence surrounds the backyard, a dark, dry wood that is frequented with knotted holes just big enough to peek through. One time I remember observing a gigantic grasshopper crawl across the fence on the left side of the patio - it was about as big as my whole head, maybe my entire body, it inevitably gets bigger every time I am brave enough to recall the memory. Suddenly the grasshopper haphazardly jumped off the fence and attacked me; I am still terrified of grasshoppers.

My dear mother will not budge, she has a plate of macaroni and cheese in front of her and is wielding a fork with one solitary, cheesy noodle impaled upon it. I do not want to eat the noodle; my mind cries against it in childish drama. I simultaneously crave the attention of my mother, fear the social implications of walking away, and am adamantly determined never to admit that menacing noodle into my tiny mouth. I do not want to eat the noodle! Why do I have to eat it!? Its gross; I don't like it; I don't want it!

Surprisingly, I'm not sure entirely why I don't want it. I mean, it might not taste amazing, but what am I so afraid of? And I afraid it will kill me? Not really. Hurt me? No. Cause emotional duress? Leave a bad taste in my mouth? Induce violent convulsions? No, maybe a little, but not really, and no. Are any of my friends there to make fun of me? No. Wow, I'm really running out of possibilities...

Somehow the situation embarrasses me; somehow I have decided that I do not want to eat the noodle (perhaps due to its purely undesirable unknown-ness) and that now eating it would have some adverse effect on my control of the scenario. My mother doesn't understand: she thinks that eating the noodle will help me overcome some trivial fear of the unknown. Little does she know how badly she is upsetting the complete social comfort of my life that I worked so desperately hard to achieve; an environment where I simply do not do what I don't want to do - what is she trying to pull!? I do not want to eat the noodle!

My mother understood perfectly. Years of mature confidence and patience now paid off as she brandished that cursed silverware with its painfully unrelenting noodle. She waited, resolute in winning this mental battle, in staking her claim and completely derailing the institutional cohesion of my wonderfully parasitic utopia. But I was fixed there too with something far more dangerous than patience, confidence, and determination: love.

To this day, I hate macaroni and cheese. To this day I shudder at its gooey consistency and the squishy sounds of cheese and noodle and bowl. To this day I hesitate to accept such apparently undesirable dishes into my mouth and stomach; into my being. And to this day I remember somewhere deep within me the lesson of that one lonesome noodle. And though I may weep and kick and hurt that such a noodle be presented me, ultimately I must take it and eat it, just like I did on that early-summer's day. And once the noodle hits my mouth and I begin to chew I inevitably remember that mac and cheese doesn't taste so bad or that, even if it does, the reasons that fix me there seem to always infuse the pain of chews and swallows with something from my mother's tender, deep desire.

10.17.11

It is a warm Saturday morning in Ntinda; the kind that remind you that here, along the equator, the afternoons come quickly and drench the city with a dense, palpable heat. The sun, elsewhere so fickle, beams down in a strange consistence, as though the world is finally able to rest in a routine balance. The sun; the sun that "[God] maketh [to] rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust" (Matthew 5:45, KJV).

It is a short walk to where we are going. First we take a small asphalt path to Bukoto road where, directly across from us, there is a gigantic Evangelical church: Victory Christ Church. On Friday and Saturday and Sunday nights, large crowds fill the hall and sing until early hours of the morning. I wonder now how they feel as they sing, how they feel after. Do they smile as they think back on their evenings? Do heavy heads nod in blissful relaxation?

We turn right and walk along Bukoto. On the left (across the street) there is a slight hill which drops down sharply to end in a small gutter before meeting the road. On the right there are a few gated houses which are lined with bushes and low trees. Trucks often park along the grassy sidewalk, their gigantic hulls finally resting from whatever long journey ended with their march into the city, no doubt being slightly annoyed as they did so by the many small streets that would hardly admit them. Eventually we cross to the left side and start walking up the small hill along a dirt path. To our right is Buddies - a small, yet immensely popular bar and dance club. Strait ahead, just behind Buddies, there is a beautiful building within a gated complex; it is to this building that we are headed.

The building is locked, so we wait out front for Christine to come with the key. As we wait, a large open-backed truck backs up to Buddies and the workers there start loading it with crates. I hardly notice at first, we are still a bit tired as we stand here in the early morning - the heavy mists of dreams still squeezing our eyes tight and pushing yawns from deep behind our cheeks and jaws. Eventually I notice though; I notice the tall towers of crates waiting to enter the truck, I notice the men walking back and forth, in and out of the club as more crates and more crates and more crates now populate the small dirt path. In the aftermath of some swirling massacre, these men work to clear away the decay.

The crates are full of empty beer bottles, empty laughs, empty hours of escape. Some still half-full of liquid, they slosh and spill as they were thrown into the truck - bleeding carcases flailing their rag-doll limbs as they are stacked in a putrid bliss. More crates, the bottles clinking together in posthumous screams, their open eyes staring up at heaven, empty, blank, the glassy film of death eternally contemplating in rapt unawareness, as though the eyes, before their glazed atrophy, were forever fixed on one delightfully elusive thought; a fixation now so completely unaffected by any movement of flesh that one could almost believe that in resting peace, in some cloudy afterlife, that empty soul just might find it.

More crates, more bottles, stacking, hefting, stacking, sliding, the hands of these gravediggers wet and soiled. No gloves, no masks, they laugh in foreign tongues as they breathe the fumes of forgotten lives. I don't know how to feel; I feel sad, angry, a twitch of melodrama in the monotony and unfeeling nature of the task being witnessed. I wonder where the souls had traveled to after leaving the open bottles, where they had finally laid down to rest. I wonder what brought them here. I wonder how many more crates they will pull out of the minotaur's cave.

And then Christine is there, opening the gate that we might enter the compound and begin to clean the building. I grab a broom and start with the largest room upstairs, the room where our Sunday services are held, the room where men in white shirts pray and bless our bread and water, where sincere voices sing a cappella, where children wonder why everyone is suddenly so quiet and why their mothers weep.

I think of the men outside, sweeping away as I am sweeping. Sweeping away the same dust and ashes, but from so different a faith. I suddenly feel a slight defensiveness as I reach for some rational claim, for some logically gated compound within myself. It is frustrating that I do not find it, I find only simple, longing waves of sadness. Where do the souls go before their ghosts are swept up by our brooms?

10.10.11

 
The theatre was a large circular building at the north end of campus. On the outside it was layered with dull pink and beige rock; on the inside it was layered with Athens and Ireland; the streets of fair Vienna, the dismal tombs of Danish kingdoms. Like any theatre house, in this one there were those that dared believe, dared become, dared die upon those foreign scapes, crying out in terror to a sea of watchful ghosts who observed this mortal strife in true attitude of ghastly phantasms - viewing, hurting, pleading, laughing, wondering, lamenting, but never helping, their hands tied in painful diaphaneity and words inaudible to the poor characters strutting or crawling round in disastrous humanity.

But ironically, both can feel both - the ghosts and the players - perhaps so like life in which we strut and crawl almost oblivious to the myriads of hands and hearts and voices of those invisible; dead to us as we die in solemn loneliness, but alive in us as though each generation amplifies the next. This is the audience of the stage: the emotional might of the collective channeled through the individual - him given a powerful responsibility, the giant chest of his theatre laying open, bleeding its unbridled passions upon him, begging him, daring him to express them with what before were only words. And grabbing hold he does so, pulling on the reigns of some colossus beast as though it were the sea, commanding it, tugging with what talent he have at hopes and interests and imaginations, screaming the incantations of some long-dead sorcerer as he feels a force he cannot see, as he dreams a face that cannot be. Is this as the angels are to us?

I see my friend Jamie as she walks into New England, walks into Sarah; Mike into James. With her hands Sarah weaves her story for us, inquirers looking through a part-time veil. Sarah cannot speak and passionately resists the efforts of James to train her to do so. Without word, she is perfect - her expressions are beautiful, her emotion conveyed in silent brilliance, like a candle flame, flickering soundless meanings to which we ghosts can still relate. James translates for her, but only the words. They were the children of us lesser gods, we watching from the stars and clouds that then surrounded our New England. They prayed to us and we listened. And we prayed for them, in turn, to greater gods.

Outside the play house there is a small parking lot where, one day, a group of us are waiting. It is a Saturday, I believe - just practice today. The sun is still low and the air is dry and cool, but not cold. What soon becomes extraordinary is the wind - that day the wind blew powerfully from somewhere southeast, coming through our groups in strong, exhaling breathes. Most of us stayed in our cars or huddled near the theatre doors, but Mike went and sat on the small white fence in front of the lot, his arms high, the leather of his jacket snapping like a thick flag as it blew freely behind him - Michael was our archangel. I left my car and stood to watch him for a moment. Then I closed my eyes and slightly lifted my own arms, leaning into the sweeping pressure of Michael's beating wings.

10.9.11

I am afraid of being angry with God, though I often am. Afraid that my anger will require some harsh, predicated punishment that He, impersonally, will be obligated to deliver. Last night I realized that some unknown someone had taken advantage of me, had taken something that I desperately needed - something that I had worked hard to secure for myself - and would not be returning it. I, of course, went immediately to God in order to direct my fury as He is obviously the one in control of things that I desperately need - this implying that I am in control of everything else - this implying that I should only really recognize Him in the extremes, in the tails of my logical, bell-curve existence - this implying that only injustice or extra-justice should be attributed to God - this implying that God is more mysterious than science has previous proven - this implying that He is not trustworthy as to matters of certainty - this implying that there is an incomprehensible system of divine justice which, as it cannot be predicted, can only be feared - this implying that God, be He personal or impersonal, only allocates mercy to those righteous souls who would never, as a consequence of their saintly nature, be angry with Him - this implying that I should never feel anger in any circumstance due to its high consequences, namely damnation - this implying that my current anger with God would disqualify me from other things that I desperately need - this generating an intense emotional conflict in which I was furious that my Father should deny me my allowance and simultaneously terrified that my reaction would deny me further allowances (these allowances, by the way, already causing enough terror in the clearly unmerited nature of their irregularly), not to mention my worries of divine inflation and pay cuts due to past overdrafts.

Of course, none of this was able to recant the fact that I was, at that time, angry; the emotion (most illogically) being produced without written consent. It was preposterous - why would God, knowing that I would become angry and that being angry would force Him to punish me, put me in such a situation in the first place? He was testing you, you may say, to see if you would actually get angry. Well, that may be true; kinda makes me feel like a lab rat though. But maybe I am, maybe we all are; makes we wonder what kind of drug God is trying to get through the FDA - maybe He's trying to cure humanity.

And as a corollary, it can be a fascinating exercise trying to be angry with God, like a child making fretful splashes in the midst of a giant, calming sea. I was there last night - trying to grab hold of some minor injustice and fuel it with increasingly irrational outbursts, crouching stubbornly over the dying flame trying to hide it from the sweet, soothing rain. Frantic, I was frustrated by my empty attempts at genuine frustration, each passing minute solidifying the superfluous temporality of what I wanted so badly to hate. How many years have I spent so occupied - holding onto a feeling of which the source is long forgotten, or long exaggerated, or long disassociated somehow with the pain I have thought justified in carrying? How long have I sought dark corners where I thought I could escape the cleansing influence of time, only to find out that such corners only exist in my mind; in the solitary caves of self-willed, self-fueled deception? Where is my allowance?

Sometimes I wonder so intensely as to how God looks at me. Is that what this fear comes down to? Do the unknowns of my relationship with Him leave room for doubt? Of course they do.

Sometimes my prayers feel more sincere when they are illogical; honest; human.

In the movie Howl's Moving Castle, the main character is a young woman who is cursed to look like a very old woman by a witch. Sophie subsequently meets a wizard - Howl - and tries to help him deal with his own demons (pun intended, guess you'll have to see the movie to get it). Sophie falls in love with Howl, and though she doesn't realize it, each time she expresses her love for him, she turns young again; she becomes herself again. I think Hayao Miyazaki may just be a genius.

What do I fear that makes me so angry with God? The unknown, perhaps? Pain, unpleasantness, rejection? All possibilities along the horizon and ones that, ironically, our fear cannot partial out of our lives, although heaven knows we spend lifetimes trying to convince ourselves it can. I think sometimes I look at salvation like an electricity bill: I can't afford to get angry.

10.5.11

I see a living room with small red checkered couches.
I see a narrow mountain road opening up to a small circular driveway; I see the house there looking back down the mountain toward a lake and evergreen landscape.
I see a busy causeway with large shops on either side.
I see the end of a small dirt road, endless fields beyond.
I see a busy train station; and another busy train station, steam rising from tracks and yawning mouths.
I see a hamburger stand at yet another train station; they also have churri-pans.
I see the Thames.
I see a leaf-littered path covered by overhanging trees; a bench.
I see a wide sidewalk with grass and trees on both sides; people walking, playing games, picnicking, laughing.
I see a gigantic golden statue looking across the street at a concert hall; large red buses occasionally blocking his view.
I see a large house serving as a chapel; I see friends there washing and cleaning on a Saturday.
I see a small house and a woman with a large pot of potatoes.
I see a lake and a perfect day, both slowly receding into a warm evening.
I see a little boy swimming with empty milk jugs tied to his waist.
I see a group of children in a dark room; I see their tired, confused faces; I see them chewing on sugar cane.
I see a giant river as I drive along the road at its bank.
I see an audience obscured by several stage lights.
I see two scantily-clad girls giggling at me from a display window.
I see an empty city on a chill morning.
I see empty slopes and endless snow.
I see snow in Central Park.
I see a child smile at me and run away.
I see...

Blah, blah, blah...I see the Grim.

10.3.11

 
Shame
I did not know my maternal grandfather very well; at least, I have very few memories of him. I remember that he loved shortbread and small tins of cookies could often be found around the house. I remember that he would sit in a chair by a large window on the second story of the house and that I would often sit behind it. I remember the almost forbidden nature of an office downstairs that had all his things in it. But mostly I just remember watching television (All That!), lying on the polar-bear-skin rug, playing with the small organ/ piano next to the fireplace, sleeping in a room full of droopy-eyed dolls, the large wooden Buddha on the staircase, the wooden chairs with dragons carved into the armrests, a giant clock, a giant window, an indoor pool that I tried not to splash too much in, the red-rocked landscape around the house, playing arcade games in town.

It was my brother, although much younger than I was, who actually seemed to have a stronger bond with our grandfather. As I was the attention stealer, my brother seemed to settle more into a genuine, peaceful state of being. Perhaps I don't remember grandpa as well because of how concerned I've always been with myself - even those memories I do have of him are based on my own interactions. I cry out now for more observation, but find none; perhaps my brother better remembers, his sincere innocence holding truer to the wholeness of the man. I hope so, even as a pang of jealousy and self-rebuke gazes back and wishes for a more personal curiosity.

***

One day I was playing with a friend in my backyard. There was a red basket of old toys in the yard and, as we were playing, I kept hearing a strange noise emanating from the basket. It was sort of a plastic grinding noise, the kind that cheap wind-up toys make when they are walking or driving across the table, or doing a back flip, or chomping their giant teeth on some invisible, superfluous enemy.

We continued playing, but the noise insisted - the gentle plea of something long-neglected. Or perhaps not, perhaps just the simple expression of something so long in playing with that it reveled in this new dutiful rendition of its noise, which seemed to grow ever louder.

In the excitement of play, I suddenly turned my attention to the basket. The sound had not so much annoyed me, but as my companion's attention had also been turned to the noise, I was obviously obligated to incorporate it into my performance. Given too much leeway, the noise could have completely divided his attention, which I could not allow.

I approached the basket, making some exaggerated comment about the noise; he laughed, my scene was progressing excellently. I searched through the basket to find the source; the basket was full of guns and cars and miscellaneous pieces of past adventures. The last thing I expected to find was...a toy train? It was small, comparable to any given Hot Wheel also found at times in the basket. It seemed a bit older though, something quite distinctive from its flashy contemporaries. Green, it was a small green steam engine that, invigorated by some invisible Duracell, had been chugging along some distant reverie; pulling its faithful wheels through an abandoned desert, the crisp, dry smell of cactus and tumbleweed trapped in the boiling estuary of sun and rock, thus forcing the aroma to blossom slowly and permeate its barren eternity. The train asked nothing but to ramble on in its dream, in its nonchalant, joyful canter.

But I had my audience in perfect, rapt attention. I searched the toy for the "off" switch and found it, but then quickly realized that simply turning it off would have very little artistic value. What could I do to make the scene more dramatic, more powerful?

I turned the train off, but then back on, dropping it back into the basket, its tiny wheels still grinding. My audience was intrigued, I delivered a perfect mask of overbearing frustration, he laughed, I drank in his curiosity and childish delight, it fueled me, intoxicating me sufficiently to abandon simple reason. I dove back into the basket and pulled out the enraging perpetrator, the tool of my addiction, the damned soul. The passion in my eyes and mind burned in the chaos of a child's condemnation. I held the engine before the world, wishing nothing more than to bring it to a terrible end, to seal the act of this momentous play with a momentary hatred bent to crucify.

With its wheels still whirling gently, I turned and hurled the train. It flew ever so gracefully and then, in romantic brilliance, exploded against the stone wall of my backyard. The noise had stopped forever.

Later that day, my friend long since having left the theatre, I sat inside. My brother was outside playing alone when he happened upon the remnants of my sacrifice. He picked up the pieces and began to weep; deep, powerful, heartfelt sobs - not of the scraped-knee brand, or of the leave-the-toy-store-without-the-game type - this was much more. It was the terrifying onset of grief, the realization of a pure ideal suddenly being ripped from the world in horrid, undeserving malice. At his tiny fingertips lay the pieces of a dear friend, a link to a meaningful past that now had been smashed and violated - the pureness of the bond being mocked in the selfish assurance of its end.

So innocent were his sobs, so genuine; the approach of despair to a child: not jealous, not vengeful, not angry, only intensely sorrowful, not knowing what to try to understand, only feeling the extreme unfairness of the moment, the incomprehensible hurt of an unblemished loss.

My mother went outside to comfort him, told him it was okay, asked him what had happened.

"This was my train from grandpa; this was grandpa's train he gave me."