When I went to the square, I got there early. There was only one street musician setting up to play. I dropped some money in his case and asked him if I could sing Feliz Navidad with him. “Hell yes, you can!” And so it came to pass as he played his guitar artfully, he sang the bilingual version while I accompanied him purely in Spanish. None of my co-workers, both current and past, had yet arrived.
Sometimes, getting there early makes all the difference.
For reasons I can’t explain, I think I will always remember standing there near the inside corner of the Fayetteville square on a weird, warm December evening. Singing.
I stopped at the inconvenience store on the way home. The Nepali clerk was stocking the lottery scratch-off rolls. She had one loose one left that she didn’t want to place loosely in the holder. “Do you want it?” she asked. “No,” I initially replied. But then I realized I should tempt fate. “How much is it?” I asked. “$10 dollars.” Hmmm. “Well, okay, let’s tempt fate. Maybe this will be one of those stories of coincidence.” The guy behind me said, “That would be amazing!” I took it over by the self-scanner and scratched the reader strip without bothering with the top half. I won my $10 back. Though it sounds stupid, for just a moment, I had this feeling that perhaps the universe was about to open one of its rare surprise boxes for me. The clerk and the other man felt it too. We all laughed in recognition of thinking that maybe we almost witnessed a surprise.
As I headed to my car, two addicts approached, a man and a woman. I recognized the man from a previous encounter. He’s difficult to understand. They were walking a large, sweet-natured dog, which I kneeled and petted. I figured out the man wanted a cigarette, so I went inside and got them cigarettes. The woman was beyond appreciative. They moved to the side of the building to smoke. She held her back in a certain way, which I recognized as serious back pain. She’d seen better days. Her clothes were dirty, and her hair was probably a mess three days ago. But she smiled back at me, even as she seemed to understand what her male companion was saying. Though I grew up with the worst mumbler on the planet, my dad, I scarcely understood every fifth word her companion uttered. The woman looked at me again and made eye contact.
I smiled back, hoping an infusion of a bit of my energy might reach her.
You never know.
About any moment.
. . .
Earlier in the week, I received an unprovoked attack email that denigrated me with seething anger. Happy people don’t write words like those. I felt sorrow and sympathy for the author. I’m certain that the author doesn’t understand that the mere act of sending such an email telegraphs to anyone with an appreciation for human behavior and psychology that they are unhappy. Part of their motivation was to be a revisionist of the past; that’s normal, and everyone does it. People need to buttress their self-image. Revisionists are easy to spot because of their reluctance to admit wrongdoing or cast themselves in a questionable light. That’s not to say that some of what they wrote isn’t accurate! It is incomplete, however.
The other part was an attempt to silence me when I write about parts of my life that overlap. I go out of my way most of the time to avoid spilling people’s secrets or the things that they prefer to be kept hidden. Most people aren’t like me. They won’t share their warts, believing that people don’t otherwise know. This is one of the reasons I can’t be blackmailed. I’ll spill my secrets regardless of whether I need to. I’ll release nude pictures of myself after eating six Happy Meals. I don’t care. It’s hard to shame someone who willingly shares their life. I think back to dealing with some of my family, who spent years failing to dissuade me from finding out some of my family history.
As for convincing people that they have the wrong idea about me, that’s foolish. If people have only a partial story, it’s hard to blame them for listening to the person with the ax to grind. “Only the spoon knows what is stirring in the pot” is always an apt phrase to remember. As for the rest, slander is when you willfully and knowingly speak mistruths, and libel is when you write them. And if it is true? It’s neither.
It’s odd to see self-righteousness from someone who doesn’t share their full story. I don’t feel self-righteous precisely because I’m the first to say I’ve been a hypocrite. But I’m not ashamed to share the stupid things I’ve done. But I do know that I know a lot that would embarrass the hell out of people. It’s not my job to share it, nor do I want to. I write about this when I reference seeing behind so many people’s curtains.
I willingly open my curtains, even if makes you wonder if I’ve lost my damn mind.
I won’t open your curtains unless it overlaps with my story.
Go be happy.
It’s easy NOT to hear me or read my words. Change the channel, don’t look at my social media or blog, and just live a happy life.
Can opener didn’t work. Knife-as-finger-opener did! Blood splatter doesn’t go well with most Airbnbs. 🙂 All the proof you need that I’m an idiot. Note: I only sliced myself because I moved my hand out of the way. Had I left it on the can, I wouldn’t have proven Darwin right! .
This coffee cup is the one I’ve had longest. It’s from one of my two trips to Mexico decades ago. It reminds me of exotic margarita sunrises and sunsets, salt in my eyes from my first trip to the ocean, beautiful sand stuck in places all over my body, people working way too hard for too little money, tasting unlimited food and drinks I never had before. Being able to enjoy people even more because I loved their language. And trying to like shrimp made at least three dozen different ways. (I still didn’t.) When I was in Mexico, I filled this cup with a variety of drinks, “surprise me” concoctions of coffee and whatever the servers wanted me to try. One of those workers went beyond; one drink was made by a cabal of her friends, all shouting ideas. She put a 1/4 lb. sliver of homemade coffee-flavored chocolate in the cup, followed by bitter coffee and liqueur. I walked down to the darkening beach with the cup. My wife, now long absent, had a preposterous fruity drink that defied gravity.
I paid one of the resort people $20 for the cup. He reluctantly but joyously accepted it. He said I could buy a case for that amount. I told him that the cup was full of the memory of that moment. He said, “¡Eres loco pero simon!” (You’re crazy but yes!)
I’ve been leaving cups when I make special trips or when I want an on-demand lemon moment.
This morning, I walked down the leaf-covered and rain-drenched hill. I put my Mexico cup on one of the lower branches. I wanted to climb up one of the trees but these were slippery and the bark laden with water. Erika was inside cooking and preparing us a meal.
I left my Mexico cup there for future observers, a silent witness to the forest below. If this world were comprised of magic I would hope that anybody that looked at it or touched it could feel the salt and sand on their skin and that feeling of being in another world. I experienced it literally two lifetimes ago. I didn’t know at the time that those memories would be foundational for me or that life had shockingly different plans than what was in my head when I was there.
I clambered back up the hill and into house filled with bacon smells and presence.
When the Sun is at the right angle, my apartment is washed inside and out by hundreds of simultaneous prism rainbows. I leave the blinds open for the ficus tree. Sometimes Guino and I sit here in relative silence and let the colors fill the room. We both watch the beauty as it travels omnidirectionally.
Güino is with me on my lap as I did the short video of me near the window.
The advantage of pre-morningtide vivication is that I was able to see some of the meteorites around 2:45. Later, after I got to work, I observed a few more streaking in the interstices of the light cloud cover. It was beguiling, beautiful, and temporarily luminous. I missed the eclipse of last week due to cloud cover. Because the cold November morning was largely absent vehicles or other people, I observed the streaks in the solitary stillness. Not bad for a Monday morning!
PS no picture of the meteorites… Too transitory to stand in the cold with my camera up, waiting. Witnessing them and archiving a memory in my head will have to be enough.
Yesterday, I thought I was in line for free pizza. Much to my surprise, I turned out to be in the voting line. I’m not sure I trust a world in which I’m able to vote. This time, despite dropping my license behind the table and next to the window (where it was almost unreachable), I relentlessly repeated my name and address as if I were being interrogated. I’ve voted early for so many cycles that I forgot how different it is to vote on the actual day.
I voted at Sequoyah UM Church. It was fast and efficient. Remarkably so. Whoever is in charge there did an outstanding job. Other than letting a couple of loons on the ballot. Whenever I see obviously unqualified candidates, much less fringe ones, I remind myself that maybe I, too, could get elected without much sense or qualifications.
Don’t worry about my vote counting. I am still so liberal that I might as well be voting in Finland as in Arkansas.
After voting, I wandered the back half of the property. It was not well-maintained, but I had some moments of beauty walking back there. The weather was uncharacteristically warm and calm for November. It was odd to sit on the benches in front of the rudimentary cross, feeling the sun filter through the trees and listening to the birds sing. Not too far away, the hectic comings and goings of voters might as well have been a mile away. It was a contemplative place, one that I alone owned for several minutes. I admit that it was a bit strange thinking that the ballot contained an initiative for religious freedom; it’s obvious that the intent is anything but motivated by freedom. Had I been in that mindset, I’m sure I could have felt the presence of a creator in those trees and on those benches. Please don’t fault me for not feeling such a presence. It was sufficient to be there, seeing the beautiful world around me.
When I walked across the dilapidated bridge walkway and emerged from the trees, a man exiting the voting place asked me what was back there.
“Five minutes of peace if you search for it.” I smiled.
“I’m in a hurry, but I’d really like to see.”
“You only live once. Just tell them a crazy guy at the church where you voted told you to take a moment.”
He laughed. “Deal! They will believe that.”
As I walked toward my car on the opposite end and side of the building, I turned to see him traverse the wooden bridge and disappear behind the treeline.
I’m certain he found something worthwhile back there. . . I rendered myself transparent in the picture because I felt a little other-worldly in the retreat behind the trees.
I’m in my cathedral at work. Because I usually have a couple of hours with no one in here with me, I can blast heavenly music curated with the intent to inspire or motivate. My cousin Jimmy used to torture me with Metallica, and sometimes with horrible bands like Pantera. Because he’s been on my mind a lot lately, I played a few songs for him and had to laugh. I also played “Far From Home” by Five Finger Death Punch, a song Jimmy didn’t live long enough to enjoy.I ended the set with a heavenly song from Il Divo, probably the most opposite and contrasting music possible. In his last few years, he would have appreciated the switch. And we probably would have laughed about his mullet.
Each of us has had our mullet years, the ones characterized by uncertain identity and our place in this world.
When we get older, we laugh about our mullet years. But nostalgia makes it golden.
Some of you are probably living through the best years of your life and you don’t even realize it.
Take a minute today and crank up one of your favorite songs. If you do, I hope it makes you vibrant and joyous.
If it doesn’t, go ahead and fill out that AARP application.
I woke up around 3 a.m. and could hear the neighbors outside on the landing, their night still in progress.
I retrieved my trusty sheet, put it over my head, and knocked.
“Trick or Treat,” I said. No treats were forthcoming.
My brother Mike would have been 57 today. I don’t know what to say about that. He could have lived another twenty years had his choices been different. If he were alive, I’d prank call him and say, “Good morning, you dumb bast**d!” and then hang up. He’d probably call back and leave a message, “Sew any non-bunching pillows lately?”
The picture is one from Dogpatch: me on the left, Mike, my sister Marsha crouched on the bottom, and my cousin Jimmy on the right. We got to see a lot of things thanks to Jimmy. I restored the faces in the photo. Jimmy’s gone too, but I’ll take a few moments to think about him and my brother today. And I’ll think about my other sister, the one I didn’t know I had for another 40+ years after this picture was taken.
The nostalgia will undoubtedly make me more at peace as the world swirls around me today; my thousands of steps and interactions will remind me of the frozen nature of memory and time.
Each second carries me further away from that moment so many years ago at Dogpatch.
When I went outside at work, the wind gusted with surprising speed. It seemed like every leaf in NWA was twirling and spinning, even inside the concrete jungle around me. It took me a moment to realize I was witnessing a dust devil comprised of leaves. The inside crux of the tall buildings created an unnatural barrier against which opposing and contradictory wind gusts collided. Because I woke up with more energy than any one person should have, I took off running and chased it before it dissipated. I succeeded in running through it for two seconds. The number of leaves that touched me is unknowable. But the tickling sensation was divine. I probably looked like a damn fool. In fact, I usually do. I’ll take that any day if I can get that kind of sensation. Especially at work. Having fun at work is tantamount to stealing, you know.
Not bad for a Monday morning. Or any morning.
The picture contains the piled remains of the moment, a steadily decreasing number of leaves in each pile.
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 