The pendulum swings.
And the prism dances from light to dark.
Often, I’m not quite sure which cycle has overtaken me.
Blessings are disguised as curse just as often as gifts or acquisition result in loss of time and energy.
Things visit us. Memories of people linger as long as we’re here to remember.
Is it melancholy or recognition?
Love, X
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This post is partially personal and also a metaphor. Or analogy. Although I know the difference, I don’t care about grammatical accuracy. If this post is all over the place, you can thank me later for taking you around the world with my shotgun storytelling.
In 2005, I visited my brother north of Chicago. He brought out a giant bag of tortilla chips, one suited for his appetite. Then, he brought out high-quality horseradish and made a two-ingredient dip. Although I’m laughing when I write this, my brother Mike might have held me down with one of his giant paws of a hand and inserted a horseradish-laden tortilla chip into my mouth had I persisted in refusing to try it. I grabbed a chip and loaded it. My brother’s eyes widened, and he laughed like a hyena because he knew I would eat the whole bite. Though it burned, it was delicious!
“See, you dumb bastard? I told you you would like it. This ain’t the horseradish Aunt Ardith kept hidden in a side shelf.”
Although my brother was one of those people who thought he was always right, I had to give him credit for insisting I at least try horseradish. The worst that could have happened is that I still would have hated it.
All these years later, I think about that. He did the same thing with guacamole after I refused to have some freshly made guacamole at what used to be my favorite Mexican restaurant in Springdale. Guacamole was the equivalent of turkish delight from C.S. Lewis’ Narnia tales.
I am now a world class aficionado of pico de gallo. For too many years, I assumed I wouldn’t like it because my mom made me automatically distrust onions. Onions were the second component of her one-two punch of seasoning, which consisted of onions and cigarette ash. It was a story of culinary violence in the South, never knowing if the potato salad or mashed potatoes would have fantasy-level chunks of onions.
The above anecdotes hint at much of our problem. Because I was naive and poor, I was rarely exposed to a wide swath of food, much less quality. My cousin Jimmy’s house was the crucible of exposure to many foods. Because of my dad, Bobby Dean, almost literally making me eat food at gunpoint, some of my first exposures to some things were less than ideal. That’s putting it mildly. Some of the food at my house was the equivalent of the discarded version of what you would find behind a dollar store grocery aisle. That explained my aversion to morel mushrooms.
And also horseradish.
I don’t remember how old I was when I first tried horseradish. I remember the time that soured me on it. It turned out to be old and nasty by any standard. So, it’s no wonder my first exposure was the equivalent of eating a goose-poop-filled donut. I was lucky to have Aunt Ardith and Uncle Buck. Without them, my life would have been much worse in several ways. Visiting my cousin Jimmy always guaranteed that I’d be well-fed and get to try a variety of things. I like to joke about the horseradish because it was one of the few times that Aunt Ardith convinced me to try something exotic (to me). She had the best intentions, unlike my dad. If he got a hint of an idea that I didn’t like something, you can be sure that I’d be eating a bucket of it. Aunt Ardith and Uncle Buck did their best to tell Dad to jump off a cliff when he behaved that way around them.
We have parallel aversions to many things resulting from our initial exposure. Look at most relationships, and you can see that it’s true. You had your heart broken. You repay your future self by carrying the mistake and believing that all relationships will turn sour. Or you think most people grew up without the love and caring everyone needs. You carry your words into the future, and all the potential people you meet indirectly pay for the wound. You either avoid deep relationships or insist the system is rigged and broken. The concept of relationships isn’t the problem; it’s us. You’re letting your version of horseradish tarnish your future with other people.
Life is horseradish and guacamole.
Be open to new things.
Be aware that you may have blinded yourself or made truth from experiences that should not be extrapolated into cynicism or isolation.
Although it is true that people rarely fundamentally change, it is possible both in outlook and preference.
Changing is, in part, acknowledging that the things, habits, and ideas that once defined you no longer do.
Only healthy people change their minds and their lives.
PS During this crazy election, I’ve had a few laughs because of my brother. He’s been gone for four years. In his later life, one of his proclivities was to be a blowhard, much in the ilk of Bill O’Reilly. My job was to be the liberal and sentimental brother that drove him crazy. And as I was fond of telling him, the person left standing gets the last word. Since I bought gallon by the ink, he didn’t have the temperament to keep up with me. If he were still alive, he’d be pissed off at me constantly. But I miss it. Not the anger of the last few years; that period owes its shadows to alcohol and unresolved trauma. I miss the undeniable intelligence of my brother, even when he used it to wither my well-intentioned arguments. I absorb a lot of the election craziness and play a dialog in my head, one in which my brother is the one repeating conspiracy theories and horrible rhetoric. My brother taught me that if you can’t argue the facts, you pound the table. If that fails, flip the table.
PSS I chose a different picture for this post instead of one of my brother. Both pictures are of joy and of family time. Even though there was a backdrop of unease during both visits, each of the pictures reveals both youth and connection. In one, my niece Brittany charges toward me as I stand by a pond outside a cabin on King’s River. I got deathly ill from food poisoning on that visit, and Mike’s police K-9 got violently snakebit while we were all swimming in the river. Behind Brittany, as she runs, my deceased wife watches happily. The other picture from another visit is of my nephew Quinlan kicking my ass as the three of us wrestle like savages. I’d forgotten that their dog was watching from the doorway. The third picture is of me and my brother. Mike had his wife bought me a plane to ticket to visit them in Illinois. I love the picture despite the goofy look on my face. It documents my brother’s vibrancy in the “before” part of his life. Mike bought me tickets for two such trips, and his doing so proved that he loved me and also missed me. It was before the branching of his life; the picture captures what could have been the case for the rest of his life had he made that choice. My niece is a mother now, and when I think about the fleeting speed of life, I get a glimpse of the idea that nothing stands alone in our lives and that each moment unfolds from the previous one. We don’t see its unfolding or interconnectedness until later.
Love, X
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I looked across the bright blue tablecloth the staff used for decoration and practicality. Behind the older lady sitting uncomfortably slouched in a wheelchair across from me, attempting to eat between coughs, I saw him standing there.
When I looked over the lady’s shoulder, he hadn’t been there three seconds before. He was an older man dressed impeccably in a dark green suit. His eyes were wrinkled yet sparkling. The tall windows behind him didn’t seem to add any illumination to his profile. I could see the sun shining brilliantly down between the wings of the care facility.
When my eyes met his, I didn’t need to be introduced to know who he was. He nodded and smiled, which, under different circumstances, might have made me uncomfortable.
I nodded back, but I didn’t return his smile. Only time softly converts the repeated truth of reality into recognition, if not acceptance.
The older man looked at the framed picture in front of me. “What was will once again be,” he said, although his lips did not move.
It didn’t surprise me that I heard him in my head.
“You’re not here for her, at least not yet,” I insisted.
“No, but I’m always here. I am everywhere to untie the bind when it’s time for each of them.”
“She needs a little more time,” I answered in my head.
He shook his head. “No. Once the mind opens and self-awareness occurs, every moment is borrowed. Do you see the sunlight behind me? Smell the food in front of you? Do you not feel it when you hug her?”
“Yes.” I already knew the point. It had periodically been hammered into me throughout my years. Many of my worst moments were when the lesson slipped from my mind.
“What was will once again be. Take the pleasure and the people around you, and let it be enough. Looking forward or listening to the sounds of the grains in the glass is folly. Just as looking backward too long focuses you on what’s lost. You are here. Now.”
I closed my eyes briefly and listened to the myriad voices around me.
When I opened them, I lifted the soup spoon and gingerly fed it to the woman I was visiting.
There would always only be this moment. A long succession of them experienced individually.
For some, more. For others, fewer.
The voices, the smells, and presence.
We are all the same story, written in different verses and distinct melodies.
It is enough.
When I looked toward the window, the man was gone. The windows were dimmer, but a piece of me felt brighter. Truth is its own luminescence if we let it shine even into the dark corners of our lives.
Love, X
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It’s been 17 years, or 6,210 days, give or take one due to the uncertainty of the day emblazoned on the calendar.
Some years, it is sufficient to look at her family tree and at the countless pictures I indexed for those wishing to remember.
I’m more of a spontaneous remembrance person, allowing random moments to drag me into the past.
The bridge that might transport me back is a duality of both distance and proximity. Everyone who gets old enough feels the clock spinning like a roulette wheel, for its speed and also for the uncertainty regarding where its stop whimsically occurs.
Even if we’re unaware of our demarcations, we divide our lives in to eras. Most of our demarcations are passive. Childhood. Graduation. A child. And the rest launch from the magical yet persistently somber consequence of being alive in this world.
I had my turnstile moment this morning. Disrespect pushed me into a flare of brilliant anger. Because of the anniversary, I didn’t need to think about how I should probably respond. Anger is a call to action for remedy or an immobilizing force. I never need to intellectualize how she might have reacted. If something made her mad, it was a certainty that those around her would not need a soothsayer or psychic. The words would flow with a grimace to match.
I managed to merge and juxtapose her reaction with my natural inclination. The words came. Those who’ve ridden the ride and exited the fairgrounds know the stupidity of living inauthentically. Once your ticket is torn and handed it to you, the clock is already spinning.
And so through these words that will seem vague to many and perceptively painful for others, I tell you that it’s a dangerous game to be reminded.
I did not have a ticket rendered in two pieces in my hand today. It was given to me 57 years ago. 17 years ago, I had to come to terms with the fact that it probably should have been my ticket being requested.
I was supposed to use the alchemy of motivation and memory to live unapologetically. She handed me the baton and pointed me in the right direction.
When the weather chills in early September, even my oblivious bones haunt me a little.
That’s the way it’s supposed to be.
We are all busy and occupied instead of being purposeful and satisfied.
She whispers.
And I listen.
Love, X
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All Over The Place
“Cicadas are gross,” she said. That’s because she didn’t experience the magical connection of hearing them out in the wide fields of Monroe County during her formative years. The insects of that area are already formidable and should be considered true citizens, counting in the billions. Anyone who has driven on the county roads in the evening knows the folly of attempting to use windshield wipers to remove them. I don’t recall which year I happened to be with my Grandpa and Grandma to experience the cicadas. It was deafening at night because we slept with the windows open, surrounded by fields filled with them. Hearing the cicadas now evokes buried memories, all tied to wonder and childhood experiences.
I have the same reaction upon smelling creosote, especially when it heats up. It reminds me of things I can’t quite remember. Diesel and gas are inextricably tied to my dad’s attempts at operating a gas station on Highway 49. Or my Grandpa, who insisted that the smell warded off the torrent of mosquitoes. The trains humming in the distance. The area of my early childhood owed its existence to railroads. Brinkley was once called Lick Skillet, a name that should have been preserved. The topography conspires to have the train horns and rattling metal echo for miles. Those who’ve not lived in the flatlands don’t understand why people refer to it as haunting. Grandma’s house in Brinkley on Shumard Street was close to the railroad. My apartment is less than 50 yards from one, too.
Years ago, I drove in the late evening on Highway 70 from Little Rock to Brinkley. There were millions of small frogs. They coated the road and the low Geo Prism, so much so that the uneven road became slick and hazardous. My deceased wife, a native South Dakotan, was initially horrified but soon fell quiet in awe of the spectacle. She later told the story to her family. They were convinced she was exaggerating. Had we chosen the quicker route of the parallel interstate, we wouldn’t have had the moment.
Since I’m being nostalgic, yesterday I got out of one of my bottles of burned seasoning. It’s a delicious mix I make myself, but that’s another story for another day. Dabbing it on my tongue, I felt like I was tasting Grandma’s salt pork again. Salt pork is the antithesis of what I normally would prefer to eat. Because of my upbringing, I tended to avoid eating most meat. My dad’s proclivity toward forcing me to eat vile things almost at gunpoint soured me considerably. But if time travel were possible, it is what I would like to return to first. Opening the screen door of Grandma’s house and smell the aroma of her cooking bacon and salt pork. A wall of memory.
Since this post is titled, “All Over The Place,” something that I’ve mentioned before seems much more significant now. I never concealed that I wet the bed much too often when I was younger. When I started therapy, I did a workbook online. I didn’t know that most people barely write a page. I wrote at least fifty pages. I rarely wet the bed at Grandma’s. Of course, I now know that it wasn’t because laundry was much more of a chore for her. It was because I felt safe. Don’t get me wrong. Grandma could be stern. But she never once arbitrarily shouted at me or threatened to box my jaws off unless I wasn’t listening. While not actually boxing my jaws, I knew better than to tempt her. I did not, in fact, ever want for her to follow through on her promise to snatch me bald-headed, either.
Sometimes, Grandpa would tell me not to fear things in the dark or glinting eyes through the screens on the windows. He told me often that the only real danger was things walking on two legs. As mean as he was when he was younger, by the time he had me to call him Grandpa, he protected me. Quite often those who needed a reminder were the two people who came to pick me up at the end of the summer.
In a few short minutes, the train will speed by me on the other side of the road. I’ll be on the landing, cicadas buzzing. And if I were so inclined, I could walk over and touch my hand to the rails. They are connected, reaching the fields of Monroe County.
I undoubtedly awoke with all this on my mind because before going to sleep last night, I stood at my kitchen window, listening to the roar of the cicadas. I dreamed of fields and imaginary stories. Waking, I recalled none of them. Just the tendrils of fading geography and bygones.
Love, X
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The universe definitely has a perverted sense of humor. Perhaps It is providence that it wants to repeat a lesson or theme until it sinks in. Possibly it is coincidence.
The other morning, I wrote a post sharing myself and my thoughts. As happens, someone reacted very badly to it – and rightfully so from their perspective. But their reaction was based on a misunderstanding, one that punctuates what I was trying to say. I wish I could have given them a hug. It wouldn’t have solved anything, but silent human acknowledgment is often more than we need. She accused me of being self-righteous. It stung and triggered a defensive reaction. Which of course means that she’s right. We only react when something challenges us. I earned myself self-righteousness. It does not serve me well and of course I understand that it makes me unlikeable to some people.
I had so many alcoholics in my periphery that their stories overlapped. It’s because at the heart of it, it is the same story repeated in an endless loop, like trying to ride a unicycle while drinking hot tea.
All of us are out here in the world staying busy, earning a living, and avoiding facing the idea that in so many ways we are small children camouflaged as adults.
By coincidence, someone on my periphery was secretly struggling with the consequences of someone else’s choice to dive into the bottle. Her story overlaps with mine. Although she didn’t say it in that way, I could feel the ambivalent resentment and love reverberate. It’s a feeling I know all too well. It’s why I wrote the Bystander’s Prayer that sometimes comes back around to me on the internet.
There are people around you right now who need hugs and attention. But what they’re getting is the temporary allure of things that distract them. The distraction comes with a price, one paid incrementally and almost always ending the same way.
The things we choose to numb us end up isolating us. If not in person, definitely in our own heads.
Sunlight cures almost all of this. Setting aside secrecy. Embarrassment. Shame. Not changing is a choice. We’re supposed to be honest and open, starting with ourselves. The fact that we can’t be adroitly explains why we cannot be that way with other people.
Love, X
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One Less
I sat to write words of memory this afternoon. No matter how I tried, I kept returning to the places surrounding the person who departed Monroe County, Arkansas, yesterday. Though she lived in Memphis for a time, she came back to Holly Grove and lived a long life. She had the iron in her bones to outlive her husband, Poor Bob. She shared that almost indomitable spirit with my Grandma Nellie. I could write a volume about how much I misunderstood my aunt when I was younger. My childhood was both an enclave and a firestorm. When I was very young, she stood ready to voice her opinions loudly. Her gaze unnerved me. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized how fierce her sense of humor was. She needed it to do battle with my mom. My aunt was a hard worker and had iron in her hands that my mom didn’t.
Monroe County no longer exists, but it’s still on the map. Citizens still dot the places within with their presence. But it is a place largely holding its breath and studiously peering away from its dwindling ranks. From 2010 until 2022, it lost 19.3% of its population. In that same time frame, it lost 1/3 of its 35-49 age group. Brinkley, Roe, Clarendon, Fargo, Holly Grove, Indian Bay, Blackton, Smales, Pine Ridge, Dixon, and Keevil; all these places sit in careful silence, awaiting their turn to be memories and names of places once filled with people living their lives. They’ll survive as census notes. I’ve learned more about them as an adult than I ever did as a child living there or as an adult returning to visit.
I did not appreciate the beauty of those small places until much later. To me, Monroe County was where my grandparents lived. Truthfully, Monroe County could have been almost anywhere in the delta, on either side of the Great River. Most of the places share a similar heartbeat and footprint. The odd asphalt roads, the infinite number of dusty dirt roads, miles of telephone wire stretching lazily across the flat land, interrupted by crops, mosquitoes, swamps, and irrigation ditches. Community was everywhere, regardless of the distance between neighbors.
Although I better understand it now, the prejudices seemed disconnected. I didn’t know that the same small town that held my aunt in its embrace was also the crucible for a sister that I hadn’t known for almost five decades. Now, Monroe County has a citizenship rate of almost 100% and no household reported being secondarily English-speaking. Monroe is not a place to go to; rather, it is a place to leave or retire and await one’s fate. For those who love the places of Monroe County, they feel it in their bones and wish their bones to rest there.
I cannot observe a storm without recalling the austere beauty of watching the weather move in across the open spaces, the towers of lightning and clouds visible for miles. I cannot sit on a swing without remembering summer nights. Nostalgia mostly erases the agony and buzz of mosquitoes.
Now? The last of those in my family who followed the beacon of Monroe County have gone to visit other places, ones to which we cannot tread. Not yet, anyway.
Monroe County now has one less to claim as a citizen.
But if you tally her voice and character, it lost something precious in her that is hard to define. People might be easy to come by, but there are so few remaining who, upon hearing them speak, evoke in us the spine and vitality of the places that are becoming shadows.
I can’t return to my hometown of Brinkley or Monroe County, which holds a place in my head. The same winds blow, and the same crops withstand the blistering sun. There is some wisdom that only older age can provide. Among that knowledge is that you carry some places so deeply inside you that you can’t quite identify what’s missing until you take the place of your ancestors, remembering what once was.
You can return and stand next to a recently plowed field. Or up to your knees in growing cotton. The only thing that has changed is everything.
One less.
With some, we lose more than one with their passing.
Love, X
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It wasn’t until today that I realized I was proud of my mom for at least one thing. She received her GED when she was quite old, and she didn’t do it to achieve a better career. The Brinkley School District employed her in environmental services. She is yet another person who proves that readers have an advantage over those who don’t.
She died younger than she needed to. Along those lines, I’ll pull out one of my favorite jokes and mention that after I told her congratulations for the GED, I asked her if she got angry when the photographer told her she couldn’t smoke while having the picture taken. If you’ve ever seen an industrial smokestack, you can join me in appreciating that she was a Chuck-Norris-level expert when smoking and cursing were involved, often simultaneously. Legend has it that she may have been a consultant to the dad on “A Christmas Story” to prepare for his role.
My sister Marsha, who is almost 60, posted about a newfound interest in perhaps taking some college courses. Those of you who know me know what I told her. In her post, someone I don’t know wrote, “Don’t waste your money.” That floored me. It’s the opposite of love or encouragement. Marsha had a tough life, hobbled by bad choices. But she finally gained sobriety, something that I was convinced was out of reach for her. I’m not proud to say that, but it’s best to water the garden of stories with truth and respect. Many in my family not only embrace addiction but make it their sole dance partner. Recently, Marsha talked about wanting to see the ocean. I couldn’t help but comment on her adult wish to fly, a wish she was granted when she started her journey into sobriety. Maybe she didn’t know it then because failure paints with a bitter brush and often washes away our ability even to try to stand up again.
Education is seldom wasted. Nor is self-discovery. Age does not magically wipe away the joy of discovering new things – especially about oneself. A person who expands their mind ignores the calendar. It’s more important than ever in our morphing world.
If someone expresses an interest in learning or discovery, no matter their age, it should be obvious that it is our job to enthusiastically encourage them at every opportunity.
Love, X
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Last night I dreamed of Grandpa. The storm had passed and the air smelled of earth and bean plants. Grandma was inside nervously attempting to watch the grainy picture on the small living room TV, her ears tuned to the weather. It scared her to have the TV plugged in and connected to the tall antenna on the side of the house. Grandpa and me sat on the porch swing facing the fields. It was past bedtime. I held a very small cup of coffee, warmed up from the morning. Grandma put pet milk in it, even though I would have preferred black coffee. She ascribed to the idea that somehow heavy milk canceled out the caffeine. We didn’t talk as we sat on the porch swing. The blizzard of unseen insects slowly returned to normal following the storm. Though Grandpa enjoyed TV, he loved the porch after a storm. Not just because the heat had temporarily lost the war against the cooling winds. It was his living room, one facing the immense fields of Monroe County around the small house. I don’t remember many of my dreams, possibly because I don’t sleep long enough to process them. This morning I woke up with a piece of me lingering in the nostalgia of 50 years ago.
X
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“The ax forgets. The tree remembers.”
Once you’ve let someone down, it tends to leave a scar. Once those words escape your lips, they could echo forever to the person hearing them. It’s impossible to know the alchemy in someone’s brain and heart that converts something seemingly inconsequential into a wound. If you speak in anger or through the bravado of substances, though you said or did those words or deeds solely with the desire to inflict pain, these things break both trust and connection. I’ve been both the guilty party and receiver many times. Once words are born into the world or behavior is demonstrated, the ripple effect may be permanent. If you say the words in anger, it demonstrates the urge to cause pain. If you say them under the influence, it is truth exposed only through the virtue of a lack of inhibition. If you commit words or behavior to a chapter in your life without the intention of pain, an apology born in one’s heart is the only place to start. Ears and hearts conceal scars inflicted long ago. And they shape the perspective and outlook of the person receiving them.
Love, X
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 