People move in the manner to which they are accustomed.
Silence is not stability. A river’s turbulence conceals obstacles.
The merest word or the most slight of tone often pushes a lever past its fulcrum.
“The last drop makes the cup run over” matches the thesis of the picture.
The weary and tested among us felt the skitter of the susurrus in the early morning. Unlike two years ago, we didn’t stare vacantly into the nothing.
Him.
Again.
F***.
This susurrus brought the most dangerous of things. A possible lifting of dread, the merest reflection of a glimmer of hope. Its whisper derives from the collective disquiet of those who’ve recently benefited from the usurper summoning all manner of power. And it only happened because the inevitable consequence of the unqualified with a blunt hammer ripping their pocketbooks.
We’ve been kicked with entropy. No matter what progress is made, it can be wrenched from us and stained. Entropy in nature describes the inevitability of order to disorder. In information theory, it describes the amount of uncertainty or hidden information inside a system. People can be fickle, guided by enrichment, and distracted by the loudest and dumbest voice in the room.
We cannot easily slip comfortably back to assuming that the absence of visible snarls equates to kindness or benevolence. Chaos sits behind us, unseen, ready to justify all manner of things we label as heinous.
He who knocks once shall knock again. If we drop our guard, there will always be another “he.”
Those who would say, “It was another election, one among many, bearing no particular significance,” are wrong. The rise of an unqualified power monger gave similar license for people to put aside the veneer of civility and embrace the chaos. He brought frailty to the balance of power, and he did so willingly. Using the shield of adopted and false faith, he pushed the banner of infringement. His interests, his money, his power – all in a way that surpassed even the most brazen of predecessors. Erode the media, implode the infrastructure of government, vilify with intent to subvert, and cash in.
The danger was not his presence. It was the lack of systemic controls to hinder such a person. His most ardent supporters were not created by him; they were revealed. Those who stayed silent through benefit declared their allegiance toward economy over people resoundingly.
This election is largely a referendum on direction and economy.
But those who shake their heads in denial that it was also a rebuke of such men are attempting to deviate the narrative toward normalcy. Taking time to understand your complicity in his emergence and dominance will cost you a sliver of your humanity.
This was not normal, not even by the standard of a country once warring with itself over its existence.
The susurrus of yesterday might well swell to a crescendo of change. It might easily falter and evaporate, too, creating more apathy in some and cynicism in others.
Taken as a whole, this election was a “No.”
As strongly as you might continue to object, this election was either a way station on the road to democracy’s ongoing erosion, or a slap to those responsible to remind them what governance must look like.
Assuming we manage to extricate ourselves from the lunacy of this type of governance, he will be forever remembered as failure personified.
This election came away with orange-stained fingers, after having slapped its rebuke.
This is one of those posts I wrote knowing I couldn’t dare rewrite it or reread it, not even for grammar. It had to just spill out, probably absent context and subtlety. I hate pulling my punches.
Sometimes I can’t be a speaker for the dead. People and families sometimes need to hold their secrets close, even after the cause of needing to do so has withered. This is never more true when self-harm or addiction are among the demons in people’s lives. I’ve lived through countless versions of this story.
Someone I was very close to when I was very young passed away. I had fallen completely out of contact with him. As he grew up, it’s probably a good thing. His life was a mess by any standard.
For those who have been connected to either addiction or criminality by way of another person, you understand the implicit risk of trying to stay close. Bystanders, even innocent ones, always end up paying the price. It’s confusing for the person with the addiction. They don’t understand how they attract bad things. You cannot stand by the fire without being scorched by it.
Coincidentally, the last time I saw him was truly a wild coincidence. It’s been over 30 years. He lived in another part of the state and I lived in Springdale. Several coincidences aligned. Not only was I driving down the street I normally wouldn’t at that time, but I also happened to turn my head and look down the length of a long parking lot adjacent to a rehab center. I recognized his mom first, followed by him. At the time, their awkwardness and discomfort didn’t really register for me. I gave them my contact information and told them I lived less than a quarter of a mile away and to reach out if they needed anything. Looking back, I realize that I was in the presence of ghosts already.
This rehab stint was one of many in his life. The odds of me driving by and looking that direction to see him are almost impossible. I do wonder what might have become of it if he or his mother had reached out to me.
My earliest memory in life, one that my mom attempted to angrily tell me was impossible for me to remember, was one of his mother and my dad. Over the years, I reconstructed all of their lives combining research and resented questions. My memory held against my mom’s denial.
He had a violent and addicted life, one completely different than the one I shared with him when we were both very young. But lord, do I have stories. He was destined to be a hellraiser. I have a lot of memories that make me laugh when I think about him.
It’s strange when you mourn the version of a person who hadn’t existed in decades.
The truth is I didn’t know him at all anymore. He became a stranger to me almost 50 years ago. He became a name, a memory, and a connection to a life that I was dragged away from unwillingly.
Not that it’s important to this story, but I had to move to Northwest Arkansas because of my dad. It took me almost 50 years to find out the deep, dark secret that forced him to leave a place he swore he never would.
My dad and the man from my childhood who passed were connected in another tragic way, one I’ve written about in other stories but don’t want to connect here. It’s one of my foundation stories, one that screams that truth is definitely stranger than fiction.
I didn’t hear about his death until about 3 weeks after it happened. He died alone unless you count the substance he couldn’t escape from. He faced yet another return to prison. Whether the two events are connected is conjecture. But I do know that after a certain age, you are either forced to change or the universe takes over and cripples you. Often, you’ve burned so many bridges and people that your circle has become a flat line. Inevitably, you become one too.
Though I am sometimes heartless in ways some people don’t know about or understand, I do mourn him. Much in the same way I mourn my brother who shared names with him. They also shared middle names with an extra letter thrown in just because we were Southern.
The person who told me of his passing also mentioned once again how grateful she was to have pulled out of the life that took him. Coincidentally, he died at about the same age that the person informing me of his death reached when she finally stepped away from that life.
I guess I mourn what could have been and what should have been.
By way of confession, I was among those who knew the inevitability of his end.
I’ll still have my childhood memories and stories where he was prominently featured.
The other part of his life?
That biography belongs to a stranger I did not know.
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Thirty-five years have passed since September 28th, 1991.
One of us was a world-class pilot, and the other was a rudderless young man with no clear direction. The pilot’s incredible ability couldn’t overcome the habit he practiced. That’s how I ended up looking into the September sky and seeing his parachute floating down, a grey-silver jacket inside it.
I met him only in death.
That day rarely touches me deeply. Not beyond the cerebral and superficial. This September infected me with a desire simply to get past it.
When it does touch me, it is a chill on the back of my neck.
You can do everything right and still fail. You can also do the most minor thing, a thing you’ve done countless times, until the universe notices and adjusts your arc in life without any consolation or care. If you do two things wrong, the odds don’t double. They become infinite.
I can’t stress enough how gifted this pilot was. His family in Illinois was legendary for their flight simulators. Some reports indicate he ran out of fuel; I’m not certain whether that was true. Whether he jumped or fell out of his plane, he didn’t have part of his parachute attached. I’m certain he did it a million times. Those two things had the final say in his life. How the plane and pilot landed on the ground basically in the same spot still bewilders me. The capricious luck that kept either of them from killing me is never lost on me.
Some of you rightfully caution me about climbing trees, especially in the dark, or about meandering while the world sleeps. There’s no such thing as safety. It’s exactly like when I went skydiving; there is a slight risk, of course. It is the appearance of relative danger that makes it enjoyable. It’s surrender as you fall out or jump.
It is VERY rare for me now, but sometimes, I find myself hesitating at doors. Thirty-five years ago, I jumped up and ran out of my bedroom to investigate. I opened the door to mayhem. I get tenuous glimpses of it in dreams that immediately fade. Not too long ago, I heard a commotion and ran out of my apartment and into another one to see someone needing CPR. Pun aside, I went into autopilot.
I had two tremendous lessons like this.
Both deaths happened in September.
Both of them died unexpectedly in their early 30s.
Both of them were within feet of each other, separated by decades.
Most of the time, they are simple memories from a lifetime ago. Other times, I look up into the blue of the September sky and wonder about probabilities. If it can happen once, it can happen twice. And also, that no matter how big or small the world seems, it is happening to someone right now.
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80s fans all know “Lunatic Fringe” by Red Rider.
Or they think they do.
If you’ve seen the 80s movie “Vision Quest,” you either get chills when the guitar intro riffs right before the drums kick in, or you roll your eyes.
Do you know what the song is about? It’s not love, personal triumph, or sports.
The song came out in 1981 and came back with a vengeance in 1985 with the movie.
The song is about extremism and anti-semitism. Tom Cochrane knew he had to finish the song that night in the studio after he got the news that John Lennon was dead.
It’s an appropriate song for current events.
If you listen closely at the beginning, you can barely hear someone say, “See you on the other side.”
It is an anthem that warns extremists that they are not invisible and won’t win.
We think that the nutjobs appeared from the ether. They’ve always been with us; the ebb and flow of time requires that we periodically remind them there’s a reason they can’t feel welcome in public discourse. I grew up right in the middle of some of the most pernicious racists imaginable. Like most extremists, they lived in a bubble of self-perpetuating hate.
Everyone who studies sociology knows the paradox of tolerance.
Red Rider hid a pointed societal warning right in our faces 45 years ago.
Today was someone’s last day at work after a total of 40-plus years. Such lengths of service have become increasingly unlikely given how much the world has changed and how differently companies operate.
I’ve been at my job well over 21 years. The succession of new faces renders as a blur. When an anchor person such as the woman retiring today departs, you know things will be different.
Someone who retired almost 5 years ago after an impressive run showed up for the retirement celebration. The gap between the years collapsed to such a degree that I felt like it was merely a month ago. At her party, I remember quoting Andy from The Office: “I wish there was a way to know you’re in ‘the good old days,’ before you’ve actually left them.” Everyone knew when she left that something fundamental was shifting.
It’s likely that only older people can feel the sublime emotion that signals recognition that, in some ways, regardless of our current reality, we’ll likely look back on just about every definable era as worthy of remembering.
I should have known better than to turn on the radio in the sweltering heat of my car as I left today. There was one second of silence before the next song started playing. “Ordinary World” by Duran Duran. I’m not particularly fond of the group, but this song always touches emotions that go beyond the alleged subject matter.
“…What has happened to it all?
Crazy, some’d say
Where is the life that I recognize? (Gone away)
But I won’t cry for yesterday, there’s an ordinary world
Somehow I have to find…”
Strange that tears would come to my eyes. It’s almost as if these moments remind me that on some secret level, we know we are not chasers of things. And yet, we are more defined by possessions, routine, and obligation than we will ever be by the wild creative potential lurking inside of us.
Hell is truly other people. But stop to imagine how much more hellish life would be without the people spanning the decades with us.
“The past is gone.”
That’s a lie. The past superimposes like a template. It overrides, echoes, and grooves an outline on our present.
Were we able to rise with a blank slate, maybe our sense of wonder and appreciation would flourish.
Age brings wisdom. But it also brings the uninvited companion of certainty. Certainty murders creativity and whimsy.
Memories and nostalgia are our constant companions. They are both comfort and curse. You cannot remember the earthy smell of wood smoke from your childhood without the pang of knowing the people that dwelled in that place with you are no longer here.
The timespace theory of our timelines being a book is true. The past is still there and some of us live in it. Our experiences both enhance and discolor the world we’re in right now. The future is always a burden on us too. We live with worry, as if worry is a real action and makes any difference. The future can no more be controlled than a feral cat.
I watch people getting older. One of the worst things about the human condition is that we lock in as we accumulate experiences. Instead of being magical, we become static, finished, and rigid.
I think back to 19 years ago when the universe slapped me out of certainty. And when that feeling of surrender started seeping back out of me. That knowledge is not tangible, but I feel its absence.
About 1 in 10 drivers in Arkansas don’t have a valid driver’s license. Those 10% are responsible for 25% of accidents.
After rewatching my video yesterday of the highly trained police officer getting seriously injured outside of my apartment, I realized it’s time to once again remind everyone that nothing protects us from the chaos of random circumstance. All those years of training and becoming a masterful motorcyclist amounted to nothing when confronted with an idiot without a driver’s license and in too much of a hurry to yield to traffic.
You can be the smartest, healthiest, most careful person in the world. You can do everything right.
There’s always going to be an idiot without a driver’s license or someone in too much of a hurry to remember that it’s not worth it to be in a hurry, to be angry, or to remember how precarious it is to be encased in a biological body.
You can work yourself to the bone, being loyal, diligent and doing your job. And that job can be swept out from under your feet without warning. Often by people who are callous to the fact that money fails to compare to the impact on human beings.
We can dedicate ourselves to being compassionate citizens, only to wake up one morning and realize that the people in charge have lost touch with their intended purpose.
The balancing act never ends. We have to find a way to keep moving no matter what craziness happens to us. Even when we’re bitter, pissed off, or unsure whether anything we do really matters.
I try to keep an eye out for the people who seem to be positive even when they’re getting slapped. It’s a rare attitude and probably more important than intelligence or hard work.
PS You don’t have to wave at the grim reaper. He already sees you.
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Which weirdo has all the magenta light coming out of the window? Additionally, how did I not know that the word ‘gulab’ is a synonym for rose?
The thunder of the birds started early this morning as the moon drifted down.
As I walked this morning, I listened to an amazing article in Spanish this morning regarding the new unified universal health care system for Mexico. There’s no reason we don’t have the same here except for ignorance and profit motive. Maybe one day after enough people have suffered we’ll tear down what’s obviously not working here. Probably not.
I love the idea that a man with a beard and dressed as a woman while doing hula hoop routines has hundreds of thousands of followers. Meanwhile, a demented narcissist is actively ruining everything he touches.
It’s wild that this world is capable of intense whimsy and such hatred.
I would elect Daniel Middel as president at the drop of a hat. Press conferences at the White House would definitely be more entertaining. It’s also highly doubtful that he would waste our time spewing nonsense and hate.
Anyone capable of self-deprecation and humor earns an extra notch in my book of admiration.
