Category Archives: Personal

Lemon Moment, Personal

Expect

Leave a comment

If you could swoop up above yourself, rise above the surface of the earth and look doown, would everything carry the same weight of importance and drama? I don’t know about the rest of y’all, but I have moments where I walk out of the mess of activity in commerce. In less than two minutes, I can descend and immerse myself into a place that makes much of it seem foolish. You don’t need a special place to recognize the sheer wastefulness of much of what preoccupies our minds. But the familiarity and routine of what we expect to see and experience comes with the uninvited guest of blindness. What we fail to experience and see is often the consequence of not expecting anything beyond the ordinary. 

X

.

Lemon Moment, Nostalgia, Personal

Leather Memories

Leave a comment

My cousin gave me a leather jacket that belonged to her brother Barry.  Normally, I don’t wear such nice things because, well, I’m me and I often don’t know whether I’ll end up in a branchy tree or a creek. 

As I was paying at the inconvenience store, a woman behind me told me that she loved the leather jacket and missed seeing them. Her husband loved leather jackets. He passed away a few years ago. I asked her what kind of cigarettes he smoked and she brightened up with a smile. She asked me how I knew he smoked. So I told her that it was almost a federal law that such nice leather jackets required the wearer to emulate James Dean or the icons of the past, all of whom smoked. 

As she laughed, I asked her to tell me a funny story about her husband. Her smile grew even wider and I knew my personal question had opened a memory doorway in her head.

She didn’t hesitate:

“He often said that he couldn’t go out without a leather jacket. Whether it was church, a family dinner, or a quick trip to the store, he would often forget his keys or wallet, but never his leather jacket. When one of our nephews got married, the bride-to-be asked him to remove it for a photo after the reception. The nephew laughed and told his new wife that this wasn’t how we do things in the family. The leather jacket was an official member of the family. Luckily, she agreed and said as long as my husband bought her a leather jacket, it was okay with her. She forgot all about it. But a year later, he bought her and his nephew both leather jackets. It became a running joke.”

She told the story with more detail and definitely with more humor. 

When she saw me in the leather jacket, she was not simply looking at a jacket. To her, it was a nostalgic reminder of her one love in life. She was still smiling when I left. I attempted to act cool as I popped up the collar. It made me smile too. 

X

.

Ancestry, Family, Genealogy, Personal

For Brittany

Leave a comment

Because I was asked to frame my life as an outsider, here’s something I wrote:

“Half of my family beat the gong of appearances, even though the shadows and secrets would inevitably be revealed by anyone dedicated to discovering them. My other half, possessed by similar other demons, revealed their flaws visibly. I came to understand that behavior not concealed by appearances has its own bitter yet revelatory honesty. And that I would choose openly displaying my demons over the betrayal of the insistence of family honor. There is no honor in secrecy or turning one’s head away from the past. A family cannot put to rest its emotional inheritance by denying that it happened.” X

Lemon Moment, Personal

Creek Thoughts

Leave a comment

I’m not the supernatural sort most of the time. Getting to my new place in the creek, I deviated and went through the place I used to live in Johnson. Somehow, it slipped my mind for a while that two of the biggest events in my life took place less than 40 ft apart. Totally unconnected except by location. Both involving death. It’s strange how my mind blurs the mountain of coincidences that resulted from both. When I drove by on my way to the creek, none of that was on my mind. Then the cascade of simultaneous memories and coincidences cloaked me. I’ve mentioned before that I experience odd cycles of coincidences. At times it feels like it was another person living through them. Someone shared a video earlier of a woman who had a particularly bizarre string of coincidences. I know that we all unintentionally string together connections where there aren’t any. But for any of you who have run into a matrix of events, people, and places, maybe you know what I’m talking about. If you do, please share with me what I’m trying to say. (That last part made me laugh.) When I first arrived here, a dad and his young son were fishing upstream. To give them quiet, I went way too far down the road and then cut through the foliage. Even Chuck Norris would have winced at the terrain and the infinite number of sharp, unexpected stones. Even for my tough feet, I let out more than one curse. Sitting on a high bank in the middle of the river with my feet immersed in the cold water and inundated with the loud bubble and sounds of the creek makes me feel like I’m suspended in time. Because I probably am subconsciously. It’s still early enough in fall for there to be butterflies and dragonflies darting about. Every couple of minutes, a random bird will fly over me and below the overhang canopy of trees; if I sit motionless, some of them are within two feet of my head as they pass. I guess my wildly colored dashiki shirt looks natural in the clear water.
X

Personal

November Nightmare

Leave a comment

(a dream that still feels real)

I awoke, my face covered with something itchy and wet. The realization that cold air was blowing across my face confused me. While I wasn’t sure what startled me awake, I could hear a dissonant alarm sounding from far away. Not too unusual for this area. My eyes wouldn’t open properly. I realized that my face was covered with a paste of dusty, sticky, and itchy material of some kind. Using my hands to wipe at my eyes, I fought to open them, knowing that whatever was on my face would impede my vision. With eyes barely open, I scanned the ceiling to find one of the two projection clocks that normally hover over the bed. Raindrops fell on my face. Because of the implausibility of the conclusion, it dawned on me that the roof was missing above me. The alarm that had blared far away now sounded as if it were in the next room. A cat’s painful meow propelled me to lean over to my right. I moved my hands along the bed, and my heart rate skyrocketed when I realized Erika wasn’t next to me on the bed. All I encountered were larger pieces of that same wet pasty material. 

Energy flooded my body. I jumped up on my knees onto the bed and leaned over to feel around in the dark. My hands found Erika on the floor next to the closet. She mumbled incoherently when I shook her. “Stay here!” I told her. 

I realized there was no electricity, night lights, clocks, or anything else powered. As I stood up, I looked up again, seeing clouds race above me. Raindrops still infrequently pelted me as I stood. Without worrying about what I might be stepping on, I walked naked out into the living room and kitchen. The roof was gone across the entire apartment. I heard both cats meowing in distress somewhere in the living room. I ignored them for a moment, knowing that they were still alive.

I reminded myself that I might be in shock. Or dreaming. I pulled on the door, and it popped open without any locks being engaged. It wouldn’t open all the way, so I squeezed through it and out onto the landing. 

I don’t know how to describe what I saw. No lights to be seen. The newly-constructed blue house next to our apartments was gone. All the trees were ripped off or fallen. Cars were upside down, sideways, and thrown at impossible angles. I looked to the right toward the L-shape of my apartment. It was gone; the entire leg of the building ripped off the foundation. Debris and two destroyed vehicles covered the concrete foundation that remained. In my shock, I realized that Güino was gone, as were all my neighbors along my leg of the building. My eyes followed behind the apartment, and all I could see behind the apartments was a path of massive destruction. The light was dim and most of what I saw was crooked silhouettes of oddly upended silhouettes that resembled nothing familiar. The air was filled with a pungent earthy smell.

I turned and pushed back into the apartment and went along the wall to find my phone where I leave it plugged in at night. Unlocking it and glad to see any unnatural light, I saw that I had no signal. It was 1:15 a.m. Opening Messenger, I saw six or seven messages from my cousin, each of them growing in intensity. “X, are y’all okay?” I closed messages, turned on the flashlight of my phone, and pushed my way back outside. At that moment, an emergency siren activated, screeching in the eerie air  Five seconds later, the rain started falling, and I realized that I was bitterly cold. No one else had yet emerged from the remaining portion of the apartment building.

As I pushed back inside the apartment, I realized that hundreds of people might have died. I turned to look toward Gregg Avenue. The road was covered in debris from imploded houses. Ambulances wouldn’t be able to traverse that. Whatever needed to be done needed to happen now by those of us still alive to do so.

…

The dream seemed to last for an hour. And when I woke up, it was one in the morning. I got up, my mind still grappling with the fact that it had been a dream. Even so, I looked up at the clock multiple times to ensure that the red light indicating the time was actually there. 

Animals, Behavior, Personal, Psychology, Work

Subversive

Leave a comment

This isn’t a vaguepost. It’s an observation about how I interact with the world, which evidently runs afoul of many people’s attitudes. We need a ‘pass’ sometimes, wherein we can just stand and shout, “WTF, dude? Explain this to me.” Sometimes, the person in question might apologize and say, “I needed to get my entire foot in my mouth. I am so sorry. That was stupid and petty of me.” People are going to misbehave, have a bad day, or just suffer the same affliction of quickness and not thinking twice that I do. If we did have a ‘pass’ option, at least we’d know if they react angrily that we aren’t dealing with someone interested in communicating authentically. Ain’t nobody got time for that, much less the sanity of long-term exposure.

We can’t know someone’s intentions most of the time. That’s why it’s more important to observe behavior rather than words. But there are times when “nothing” actually happens, but someone has consciously or unintentionally demonstrated a horrific outlook. In those cases, words have significant power. Last week, I heard a story about an example of this. Anger flared inside me righteously and briefly. The person being treated poorly and demeaned will never know about it. But I do. And I’m stuck with the knowledge, knowing that the person and people involved revealed a sliver of the “real’ them in their behavior. It wasn’t mere pettiness. It was hostility on a basic level. They pulled back the veneer and let their mask slip. Witnessing or knowing such an attitude is inside a person fundamentally shifts my ability to trust such people. This is so much of the reason that I have lingering problems with people I know to be racists. If they gossip to you, they’ll gossip about you. If they treat others with subversive hostility, they’ll do the same to you. It’s just a question of when. Most prejudice stems from the false idea of superiority. Superior arrogance lends itself to a lot of rationalization regarding behavior. In most cases, we never hear about it because they recognize that such behavior or words are reprehensible. They conceal and camouflage the “real’ them. I’d rather deal with outright hostility in most cases. You can avoid a snake in the open field or when it announces its presence; the ones hiding in the grass at your feet mostly can’t be avoided.

Love, X
.
PS That’s my cat judging me for not kicking the heat up to maximum. He ain’t 7 feet off the ground for the view.

Lemon Moment, Music, Nostalgia, Personal

Melodious Moment

Leave a comment

A while back, my cousin met me briefly on the way to somewhere else and she gave me a box full cassette tapes, most of which I had made for her decades ago. I took them out several times and looked at the titles and the colored labels that I made back in the day. It brought back a tremendous number of memories for me. Both for the music and the way I had shared it with people. Making cassettes and VCR tapes was one of the ways I helped my mom keep her sanity. Even when she was being argumentative and impossible, the movies, music, and music videos I shared with her kept us connected.

It had been my intention to take them to work and listen to them using an old stereo with a cassette deck. I still have most of the music digitally. Except for perhaps the Looney Toons Christmas music. I put the box in my trunk yesterday.

I’m glad I forgot to take them inside.

When I went to wade the creek today, I followed yesterday’s pattern and went somewhere different. I parked in the apartments near the Agri perimeter. I walked across the wide expanse of lawn, crossed the trail, and walked a different section of the creek. On the way out, I climbed the beautiful tree near the apartments. Most people passing through that section of the trail have noticed the huge trunks that extend horizontally to the ground before pushing back upward. I climbed higher than I should, but I just muttered to myself, “Time is short,” and went up anyway. It was beautiful and the breeze was refreshing.

When I got out of the tree, though I was barefoot, I walked along the protective cyclone fence next to the apartments. A man was sitting outside his apartment listening to music. I don’t know why I approached him. The offer of the box of cassettes in my trunk passed from my lips. He laughed. He said, “Yes, of course! I will give anything a listen.” We talked for a minute and I asked him to wait so that I could walk back to my car and retrieve the box. When I returned, he flipped open the box and smiled. He noted that I had individually decorated and indexed each cassette.

Luckily, he did not pull out very many cassettes. When I went to the car, I put a $20 bill under the cassettes. I also wrote a very short note on one of my infamous index cards: “Thanks for appreciating a returned piece of my past.” I don’t know what he might make of it. But I could tell by the look on his face from just seeing how I had decorated the tapes that he knew it had been a huge part of my life at one point.

It took a long series of coincidences for me to have the box at the perfect time and place. And to find someone who was obviously interested in giving them new life. I owe it in part to deciding to visit new places along the creek. And to my cousin for returning them to me.

Love, X
.

Brother, Lemon Moment, Mental Health, Nostalgia, Personal

October, Personally

Leave a comment

I parked my car and walked barefoot down the trail. I knew I needed an unfamiliar spot today. So I walked much longer than I intended, passing people who took second glances at my bare feet and rolled up pants. It seemed as if they looked more frequently than they had yesterday when I had a billowing (but wet) blue cape on my back. I encountered a dirt path mostly hidden in the trees. Not knowing where it led and not caring either way, I followed it. It led down to the creek and I followed the stones and sat on one of the protruding ledges, sticking my feet deep into the rocks and mud under the water.

The cascade and babble of the water combined with the cloud cover and bird song had to have been aligned and created just for me at this moment.

Three years later and I still wrestle with whether the bell which sounded in my head on an October morning was correlation or causation regarding my brother’s death. My ex-wife would roll her eyes and attribute it to sheer craziness. No matter what the cause or how much my brother’s death affected me subconsciously, something in me broke. The breaking left me with a profound certainty of several things. And most of it was the realization that excuses and rationalizations are easy. The bell in my head brought both joy and pain. My new confidence brought consequences I hadn’t expected. Part of which had to be arrogance. It taught me the definition of limerence and of the meaninglessness of intentions compared to consequences. But it also taught me that most of my limitations are self-imposed. All I need is an idea, even more than motivation. Motivation and willpower are for procrastinators. If you get in motion or set things in motion, it is amazing what simple routine consistency will give you. 

Since I was not familiar with this part of the creek, I walked carefully, even through the deeper pockets of clearwater. Countless lightning fast crawdads faced me as I approached, only to flutter backwards so quickly that it was impossible to see them move. There’s always a chance for snakes, but none made their appearance.

The weather is going to shift soon. The days will be colder and likely result in the pads of my feet softening again. I’ll continue to come out here for a while no matter how cold the air or water is. It’s impossible to argue with nature.

The brother of my youth would have loved to be here. It’s true that he probably would have picked me up over his head and thrown me into one of the deep pockets of water. Or we might have even had a rock fight, him promising to not pelt me in the head. Given his size advantage, had he been careless in his aim, there’s not much I could have done about it. We used to spend a lot of time out in the fields having dirt clod fights. It sounds archaic and crazy to anyone who didn’t experience the agony and ecstasy from both ends of a nicely sized dirt-clod bashing someone unexpectedly in the neck or chest. We didn’t invent the rules. They’ve been handed down for generations among kids growing up and playing with the things at their disposal. 

Having said the above, if my brother were here today, there is no question that he would look me dead in the eye and ask, “When are you going to stop being so damn fruity?” I would reply, “Probably about the same time you smarten up and stop being an old conservative hag!” No matter how such a conversation played out, I would lose. Because if my brother couldn’t win through words, he would achieve victory by throwing either me or a table. That’s what happens when the universe mistakenly combines debate-level intelligence with a hulk of a person. 

Somehow in the crucible of our shared DNA, I luckily inherited the introspective yet expressive gene. He inherited the introspective part, but all too often trapped himself in his own head. That’s the worst place for anyone of such intelligence to be.

Mike was right. Maybe I am a bit too fruity. But whether through alchemy or luck, I’m the one standing in the creek getting the last word.

Since I’m long-winded exactly like my brother, I’ll loop back to my initial causation versus correlation comment. It’s obvious to me now that the bell that rang in my head three years ago would have remained silent were it not for my brother having consequences catch up to him. Which ironically likely would have led to me having a major health setback myself. 

The good and the bad may not be best friends, but they definitely sleep in the same bed.

Love, X

.

Behavior, Lemon Moment, Personal

Unbearable Certainty

Leave a comment

I walked into the E-Z Mart store with very few collected small winning lottery tickets from swinging for the fences with the impossible Megamillions and Powerball.

Instead of taking the cash, I told the clerk, “No, I’d like them back in $1 fast-play lottery tickets. I’m feeling very lucky today. I know I’m going to win.”

She laughed and smiled.

“No, I’m serious. It’s time. Remember? A plane will fall on you on a long enough timeline, and you might win the lottery.”

“Well, remember who sold them to you when you win.”

She printed off the tickets. I was shorted 3. While I was standing to the left of the register, I looked at the very first printed ticket.

Though you think I’m joking, the first line of the first ticket was a winner. Had I bought a higher denomination ticket, the amount would have been five times what I won. To think I’d have to work almost ninety hours to net that much money is preposterous.

The clerk is a believer now.

I’ve never had to file a claim form with the lottery. What I won won’t be enough to make much of a dent in my debt. But there’s no better feeling than to waste a tiny bit of money to get such a return. I haven’t gone to a casino or wasted my money gambling on anything substantive since very early 2021. Living single without a roommate and having emergency surgery tends to take the money out of your pocket.

Do you want to hear something even crazier?

I’m going to win something even bigger. I hope the work crew I throw in each week will win, just like everyone else buying tickets foolishly. I can’t imagine a better, more satisfying irony than to work like a mule for 18 years being eclipsed by something as impractical and impossible as a lottery. I’d love to look around at people and just experience the moment of incredulity. If such an impossible outcome ever happens, I’m going to need to block the work doors to prevent them from stampeding out of there.

Today, I won “a” lottery. A small one. It didn’t hurt my afternoon feelings at all.

I included a screenshot of an email I sent myself on Sept. 18th.

Love, X