but that part is easy to explain

slow burning

amped up

her brain does it easy

the fading light of the Back Then

melted in a spoon with the thrashing nights

it blends together until his head in her lap

coming down

is bright and it burns

her back against the garage door

his blue eyes red with premature aging

slow dying

white tshirts black jeans

until he’s in flames and gone

until she’s holding smoke and writing letters that won’t be answered

it blends together with friday nights in the barn

band practice in the basement

clumsy love on a dirty black futon

it blends and burns and giddy remembers when she was she

when she was nineteen and…

giddy was giddy once

giddy was free

but always in the arms of disaster

Back Then

back when giddy was she despite disaster and

the sky was partly cloudy but mostly blue

back then she was sunshine and bliss

now it’s all manmade white and gray and she searches for god along the highway

she searches for water and wind but

at 9am the jets appear

leave white scars along the horizon

slash the sun and zigzag back

giddy can’t help but remember

puffy white cuts laid out with precision on the end table

she’d sit like ice and watch him breathe it gone

that was before the jets

she sets them alight in her mind but they don’t come careening

like the rest of them did

she longs for disaster

remembers other white scars

giddy sits by the fire these days to forget

to drag out every old scene

playing on loops on the ceiling at night

white faces, then red, then blue

giddy thinks of america

how american they were

and how like america to go up in flames

she pulls those scenes out and destroys them

but Back Then

back when giddy was pure light and blushing

back when he asked her

before disaster

revealed itself in stolen bills, dirty spoons

Back Then it was golden

pure stillness and fall leaves

giddy smells summer charcoal

winter defeat

giddy’s been thinking a lot about renewal

of phoenixes and other myths of survival

giddy sits in the arms of disaster

like always

but he doesn’t hold her back

as if it’s not still happening now every time we remember bloodshot eyes from crying slow dying

we talk about innocence as if we ever really had it

we equate it with red cheeks white shirts blue eyes

we discover ourselves downtown in songs sung by strangers arms around each other in camaraderie understanding

hopes of not falling apart

we have to hold each other up these days but never find the time

we used to talk about the future as if it would all fix itself recover

we talked morning muffins and neighboring apartments there at each others gallery openings book releases

we talked like we would live that long

now we come together on late night drives suppressing the obvious repressing much more

once a year we try and make it feel like it used to

i cant tell if it means as much to them now wont admit that i’ll take whatever i can get

desperate for anything that resembles that fortress we built back then

though nothing stands where it used to and some of us dont stand at all never stood a chance anyway

we drive down those old ghost roads and find nothing left

foundations (of our midnight headquarters) never meant to last

foreboding.

Crime in Stereo, there was crime in a lot of things back then.

and it didn’t help that he hid the needles in the hollow of his speakers,

filthy bedroom, filthy black futon, criminal youth.

it didn’t help that i told his mom.

back then, when it began,

we never would have believed

or could have guessed.

he was shy smiles and shaking hands,

he was crooked teeth and pure white.

happy.

and i was starstruck, enchanted,

(determined and) certain this time.

and we were free.

there were 7 of us and we were fucking free.

but then life came hunting.

then he was stolen from and stolen.

he was broken and he broke and he crumbled and i kept fighting.

how seamlessly denial passes for destiny

when youre desperate– sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, dead.

i made it to nineteen before i let it fall.

even then they had to drag me away.

but before that.

before that i was always flying.

before that we were golden.

i was seventeen and he was my savior.

before that fall, his fall, the fall of man, the end of everything,

before irreversible betrayal, there was perfection.

we never saw it coming.

i was giddy. he was disaster.

but i’ve been told

you never die

if you never grow old

ticking like bombs at the dinner table, scratching forearms raw, and wrists. i felt them all trembling as we held them together. and then i felt them crumble. it’s not that easy to let go of bones, but when that’s all there is you just let them fall. eventually they crumble too, and then all that’s left is a memory and a vague recollection of a smell that’s somehow familiar, and sour.

you never forget the taste. metal and remorse, desperation and disaster. sometimes it tasted like dishonesty. vanilla chapstick and nicotine.
i saw it all. i didn’t crumble. but when i did, i built myself better. this is the stuff i’m made of.

and i feel it when it’s approaching like i feel a train carrying the north with it, hear and shake with the rumble of wheels and the knowledge that i’ll soon be swept away. carried off to forgetting and more forgotten. sometimes it’s what i need– the getaway, the remembering and the familiarity of a dark and unending void. but other times i fear it and ward it off like the curse and the blessing that it is.

other times it’s too heavy. and though we said we’d wear these heavy boots forever, i i forget that we don’t always have to march. sometimes i sit still and remember flying free. swept away in trains and orange leaves. either way, i know why i am here and where i’ve been, if not always where i might land.

again, it was so nice to hear from other fans and just plain appreciative people from all over the world. so thanks for all the feedback!

much love

I can’t blame you for hiding behind smoke from the end of the world.

here’s one of my favorites and a link to download it:

Oh,Susquehanna!.mp3

defiance, ohio — “oh, susquehanna!” (printed with all due respect but no permission from defiance, ohio)

We walk at the paths at the banks of the mighty Susquehanna, with our feet made muddy by your tributaries that trickle their way to the Chesapeake. It’s like we follow I-83 down to harbor cities with strip malls and tar-mac, people swirling and teeming. It seemed so exciting, but now it seems like such a blight. I grew up near Kentucky’s Mountains of Zion, and all that was there was some old cemetary. All I wanted [was] to be able to walk to the store. Now I don’t live there but there’s too many stores, some apartments, and a Sunoco. And I wonder, what did they do with the bodies? Oh, Susquehanna! And I miss that place behind my house where I hiked and climbed and played, where I ditched this noisy century or just hid out from the decade. M-I homes thought it could stand to be updated, forced it all into a grid until it looked like the funny pages. With every trace of life, it seems, confined within a frame, the faces move from day to day but the strips all look the same. And the punchlines are resoundingly unfunny for those trapped in this architecture of easy money. And I feel like this could all come to no good. The kids who populate these culdesacs will never know what stood beneath their cookie cutter houses: fields and streams and woods. They’ll sit in cars and wait for mom to drive them out of this boring neighborhood. Oh, Susquehanna!

you’d be surprised.

And there was the attic. The five of us, four boys and I, moved a stereo and a couch up the stairs. He put up cheap plastic glow-in-the-dark stars that made our every weekend neon. Our nights were always electric. And even still, the Fall always smells like pizza and must to me. Real stars didn’t shine as bright for a long time until I told myself that I can’t compare those nights in barns and basements and attics to the sky, I can’t hold a memory in front of my life. And I moved on.

But not before the new house. They left his dad and dog with The Barn and the attic. His mother took him and a futon and an heirloom couch. The couch moved into the new basement where we found new sounds to fill our nights, but with his angst, he brought new smells. And my winters of snow angels in the golf course behind the old barn turned to cold days of second-hand smoke and late-night consolations; his doctor said it was up to me to keep him from suicide. No one succeeded in keeping him from anorexia, bipolar disorder, depression, psychosis, overdose after overdose in the following year.  Somehow in the middle though, I learned to love the newness: the new bedroom with a futon and a ceiling fan. The new basement with its empty bottles and graffiti. It wasn’t hard to fall in love in those days. And we all did, and spent our Friday nights in lazy postures writing on the walls and singing old songs that meant everything. That was all that mattered, and it’s funny now how none of it really matters.

I thought it would be impossible to leave that second house behind. To leave his mother without warning, though she had warned me to save myself before. Maybe, I often thought, if I had known that one night would be my last, I would have taken the time to cement it in my brain for good. But it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. We watched Fight Club and ate pretzels and said goodnight, not goodbye.

I can still remember pulling out of the driveway that last night. When I think hard, I can smell the sour summer air, recall the weather, hear the sounds of cars on the other side of the woods. But those parts are dim now. Mostly, I just see him. And not all of him really. Just, very clearly, the eyes. They were clear blue when we met. The bluest blue you can imagine, not ocean blue or sky, but bright bursting Crayola blue that sucked you in. After the move, they never lost their color, but the whites around them turned veiny and red, bloodshot. And the shiny black pupils were always too big or too small, depending on the night’s poison. On the last night they were too small–the needle he used just before I got there had sucked the black right into its chamber.

It wasn’t always just the eyes. In that last image, the one I see clearest when I think of him, there is a mess of black hair, spotted green and blonde, a result of careless dye jobs. A nose perfectly shaped, like his mother’s, straight and narrow. And the shy mouth, two lip rings, self-inserted, and a set of pure white teeth that would have surely needed braces had he cared enough about his image to pursue the matter. He was tall, too tall for me but not imposing. At seventeen he weighed 100 pounds, bones protruded from his shirt when he sat. You could trace every vertebra. He could wear my pants. None of these were flaws to me. Not even the holes in his shoes, newly burned from red-hot cigarettes, or on the knees of his torn black jeans could have made him seem less than perfect. Only the bag he hid under the speaker in his room, only the syringe in the shed.

Looking back it was easy to block out the leaving. It was simple to tell myself the smell of hay and innocence and Fall nights in barns, winters in basements and attics and golf courses could never return and that I had no business holding on to something so inherently fleeting. I convinced myself his parents were ghosts. When I drove by Larchmont and later, by Harrigan I taught myself not to look, not to even hope to see the car that drove us around on late nights when I would lie to my parents to sneak off to shows and highways with him. I didn’t even cry when I went back to the silo we used to climb to look out over the ruins of that burned down building. I didn’t cry when they sealed up the entrance and trapped all our memories inside. I let them stay in there forever. It wasn’t hard to find something else to do with my Fridays and Saturdays and in between every class in school. After he dropped out we just stopped showing up at his locker. I threw out all the notes and dried flowers from our first walk in the forest, our last Valentine’s Day.

It was easy to accept never seeing his father again too. We all hated the man, knew it was his fault that everything came crashing down. His fault for cheating and lying and putting his son’s head through a wall. It was his fault that Charlie had to get away. No, it was easy to let go of all that.

So if I could so easily turn away from buildings, moments, seasons, dogs, why couldn’t I let go of a ghost? Surely, I could at least loosen my hold… But always, nights and mornings, he comes rushing back in a flood of two blue waves. The bluest, hardest blue to have to face. And once my own eyes connect to them, I know there’s no escaping the rest that washes ashore: the breathless laughter, the singing voice, arms moving lightning speed over a beat-up guitar, the smell of soap and smoke and skin, the jokes and serious conversations, the slow rhythm of breathing on a sunny futon afternoon, the plans for a crappy apartment when I graduated college and he made it with the band, the dreams of something better, something far away from here, the sound of a quiet voice over the phone just before sleep, swearing that things would never end, that when we woke up, everything would be alright.

and so i kept on rowing and you just drifted away. and there’s just no way of knowing where you’ve been melting all these days. but i hope it’s sunny there. i hope the weather’s fair. and in case you ever wonder what you’ve missed or miss the way we wandered through our lips, you should know i’m traveling on and there’s something pure about this. 

i’ve left a trail of shedding days in case you ever choose to follow.

we eat sleep and breathe the toxic debris of 40 generations. and when the time comes we’ve got 40 generators to make up for what the lightning takes away. striking us down in our humble homes to avenge the brothers and sisters we stole from it– the trees and salmon, the hope and innocence. 

we drive on. 

and we think we’re electric. we think we’re powerful ghosts, untouchable and innocent. so we cover our eyes, tie our hands to our wallets and stuff them deep into polyester pockets. 

and we go to work. rats on endless wheels, we pay up front and stab each other in the back. we sit down and stand corrected and kneel, giving the sign of the cross and forgetting what it means to have faith in anything. 

we fall asleep.

it’s too late. we don’t wake up.

and we tried to make you permanent–tried to make those loud days last, those neon nights never grow older. but we couldn’t, they didn’t, they did. 

and then i spent three summers, three winters, too many falls putting you on pages, writing to you across city lines and under lonely trees. but you were already gone. and then every obituary did list your name, even though none ever did. they might as well have.

we miss our calloused-fingered friend. i miss my shy-smile skeleton, my blue-eyed ghost. but i don’t hang my head don’t hold my pen in sadness anymore. you’re one tragedy i woudn’t take back. i wouldn’t take you back now even if you came around. 

in spite of everything, you found something permanent and you let it in instead. you let it fill your veins and replace us. and now you’re a new kind of distant, a sadder kind of lost. more untouchable than the day we met. 

i just hope it felt as good for awhile. and i hope you still remember us on november nights.

it’s sad but i’m not sorry.

In the song he sang last night he said its never too late to be what I could have been, To do what I could have done. But at breakfast this morning I took death tolls with my French toast. A glass full of helicopter crashes. Weeping widows at the fireside. And the gunshots as the sun set were not meant to alarm us. The cops said its not to worry: ”Fireworks over the river” Or something innocent like that. And we believe the flashes in the sky are a celebration Like the 10 millionth down. Of course. But as I wrote it down I insisted art is alteration. Desire, destruction. Even though a voice is never viable: Scream all you want but they wont believe you. They wont accept it til we see the edge of the world. On fire. And we joke about acid rain, how they send our disposable citizens to the Congo. How it’s ok Because they were Canadian. Even though they live American. Bleed American like 8^th grade melodies. And the first time I saw those videos, Sang along, Saw peers lose their parents to progress and progressive lies. Still no one will question it. It’s too touchy a subject like all of us. All of us love touching. We love loving for touch and eating for taste and driving for wind, But hate winding down our taste to touch something clean. Then there’s always the graduation songs they refuse to give up on. It’s not that hard to write your own goodbyes. Its not that hard for most because they wont remember. Theyre drinking blood and smoking steak and we’re all too fat to realize where we went wrong. It couldn’t have been the French toast. It could have been those crayons I stole in kindergarten that sent us all off course. They told me it would get me someday but I didn’t think it would take us all down. If only someone would have warned me About Macaroni & Cheese and Purple Mountain Majesty.

How was I to know we die so young?

I’d like to write a story about London, though I’ve never been.

That’s usually how the conversation goes, I love Europe. Oh, have you ever been?

Been what? I am all the time, but no, I’ve never traveled to the continent of Europe, or very far from this one, come to think of it.

Pity, they’ll say. Pity what? Pity whom? How is it that we’ve come to use such words on their own, I wonder.

You say, Pity, I’ll say, Yes, it is. We’ll grimly nod with eyes fixed on a far off point.

Europe maybe. On the horizon.

I sit down, all goosebumped with the idea of exploring an exotic city in my mind.

He steps into the cobblestone street. Cobblestone? This must be 1820.

I realize I only know London through Charles Dickens. He’s reciting his novels, start to finish, in my head. All of them. I haven’t even read all of them. But somehow when I close my eyes to write of London I see him on every street corner. Next to the dusty fruit seller. There’s Madame Defarge knitting and knitting.

So let’s go modern.

He exits his hotel, lights a Newport and hails a cab. Cab? Trolley.

Trolley? My mind slips to Hershey Park, fourth grade. My whole family is there, and we’re dripping wet. The Tidal Force ride was everyone’s favorite so we rode it again and again until the park closed and then held up our heavy shorts as we ran as fast as a soggy, laughing, rubber-legged family could run. We caught the trolley just in time and fell asleep smiling in uncomfortable puddles. David Copperfield dozed at my right.

I’m back in London. Maybe going modern was a mistake, David Copperfield has morphed into his contemporary identity now, and he’s performing his death saw illusion in the town square. There’s a guillotine. There’s a crowd of peasants and a crowd of fashionable London elites in leggings and slim straight silky dresses. Everyone is smoking Lucky Strikes. My family is there laughing and dripping and screaming with their arms in the air as an invisible bench lifts them slowly to the sky then hurls them forward into an unseen river. The crowd of beggars and businessfolk protest the wet affair. They squeal as imaginary water leaves white trails in the dirt on their faces, leaves transparent circles on their white-collared shirts. David Copperfield levitates above the scene. Madame Defarge keeps knitting. Charles Dickens whispers in my ear, It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. 

I know, Charlie, I know.

So it’s spring I guess. The spring of hope, yes, I like that. A motive for his travels, a goal, a start.

He exits The Dorchestor, lights a Newport and hails a checkered cab. I fact-checked—a cab is realistic. He didn’t mind the $400 he had had to splurge for the room, it was all part of the program. He had left his family, his whining girlfriend, his stagnant friends, the drugs, the job, the dog, the crowded subdivision. Winter had been rough. Too rough in fact for his already fraying state of mind.

Too dramatic, he’s just a kid, maybe 26. 26 sounds right for determined naivety. Who flees to London? A 26-year-old from a New Jersey subdivision who’s trying to forget two and one half decades of remembering. It makes sense to me.

He had spent the night erasing.

Trashing bottles of prescription stability and handwritten notes. For an extra $20 you could request things like paper shredders. He flipped through his journal and brushed black paint over every story that resembled someone else’s. He blotted out every name that he hadn’t made up. There would be no ties, no connection, nothing to indicate he wasn’t a newborn baby with absolutely no link to a life before this. A few times he felt like a fugitive. He was Harrison Ford dying his hair in a foreign bathroom, Will Smith trading his family for a life of fighting alien invaders.

I guess the story is pretty old. But it’s not like that in mine, I’d like to think. There isn’t anything specific he’s fleeing. More like a giant conglomerate force made up of each tiny embarrassment and car crash and electric bill. It adds up quick. It takes exactly 26 years to implode. It takes two and one half decades to lose the last sense of self.

Is he me? I’d like to think this isn’t how I’ll end up, though I’d love to go to London. I’ve never been.

I use small insignificant facts about myself to create larger than life characters in stories filled with drama and epic endings. It’s self-serving but it provides perspective, helps to let go of one itching flaw at a time. Makes me think my life is a film worthy of a Sundance Award for tragic creativity and stark realism. I know it would have the perfect soundtrack. He listens to it on his portable CD player.

I don’t want his world to be modern enough for an iPod, because then the trouble would be too big, too imminent, too grave to be remedied by fleeing the country. If he lived in iLife he would surely die. There would be no spring of hope, the end would be too near and he would be wise enough to feel it.

He often thought of himself as a sedimentary rock. He, too, was made of random particles eroded and added to, washed ashore and set adrift into chaos, chipped off by strangers and temporarily cherished, built and built and built upon by large and small pieces of earth. The magic of course, is that the whole thing is at first held together by cemented sand, the essential being of the thing itself. But as it goes, as the large and small particles multiply, and the constant motion of surfacing and submerging and collecting takes it toll, the sand eventually disappears. The conglomerate pieces become a single sedimentary rock and the filling, the essential fabric, is lost. The rock becomes a product of experience alone; it is recognized only by what it has collected and cemented.

I wanted to write about London. I didn’t want to think about memories or meaning or rocks.

He exits The Dorchestor, lights a Newport and hails a checkered cab. He didn’t mind spending the extra cash for the ride, or the $400 he had had to splurge for the room, it was all part of the process. He had left his family, his whining girlfriend, his stagnant friends, the drugs, the job, the dog, the crowded subdivision. Winter had been rough. Too rough for his already near-fatal disillusion.

It was time to go. The new year was already three months old and he hadn’t found that meaning he promised he would seek. Instead he woke up to familiarity every morning and fell asleep to bored despair. It had been winter for the past 26 years. So he fled.

The cabdriver carried him at the perfect speed through the city. It was gray but still sunny enough to keep him interested in the way light attaches to some things and leaves others behind. He was hoping to do the same.

He turned the volume all the way up and put his back against the passenger side door in the backseat—if he bent his knees enough, he could sit sideways and view London from the opposite window, reclined and ready to travel as far as 50 American dollars could get him in a checkered cab. M83’s “Farewell/Goodbye” was on repeat in his headphones but he didn’t tear up this time. Among the things he had spent the night erasing was a notebook of memories he attached to his favorite songs. Today, the way they whispered “my everyday is fading away” was more promising than hopeless. And though he couldn’t explain why, the strange sights that passed in and out of focus through his back seat window somehow signaled the new start he had been waiting for.

An old, bearded man stood on the corner of Charlotte and Windmill and read aloud from a giant black book. A bare-legged woman in a coarse, red cap sat knitting outside a bustling pub. A crowd of rich and poor, young and old had gathered in the square before a man who seemed to be holding fire in his bare hands. A family of six ran through the crowded streets soaking wet and laughing as if the city were a maze to be conquered before time ran out.

Everything was new, promising, exotically unfamiliar. He was lost on another continent with nothing but a pocket full of American dollars and a portable CD player. Head against the backseat window, he thought about how nice it would be to fall asleep as a newborn baby tonight, or at least to fall asleep to something other than bored despair.

He closed his eyes and thought of what to name himself.

I closed my eyes and thought of what to name him. I was ok with not writing about London, per se. I’m pretty sure it’s just like anywhere else, only no one would know my name. I could start fresh, walk on cobblestone streets if I have the time to look for them. I could trash my diagnoses and tear apart old memories and love my favorite songs again. Or maybe I couldn’t. I can’t say for sure. I’ve never been.

i wasn’t, therefore, surprised at the goosebumps on my arms and legs or the tears surfacing in my eyes when i heard the first clip of “real” a few weeks ago. after it was released in the uk i searched around for a few days for a generous uploader, acquired my own mp3 of the song and haven’t recovered since. 

i daresay that “real” is as beautiful and relevant to me now as “name” was all those years ago. this band is my oldest and most loyal friend.

for you:  googoodolls-real.mp3

And they cut a slit right down the mountain to put up affordable housing—half-million dollar housing for people that don’t care about backyards (or mountains) and for kids that don’t have a choice. They still cling to suburban ideals like Summer barbeques and patio furniture and every once in a while you can find a grill rusting in the rain on the sidewalk outside their backdoor, a stray lawn chair blown onto Route 9 in front of the ever-glowing Wal-Mart Supercenter. And the poor children—the ones who’ll grow up never having known weekend backyard baseball games with the crooked tree as first base, the corner of the vegetable garden as second, the doghouse as third, and the chipped column under the deck as home. Home.

And I remember when I was told that some things last forever, that words like Love and Trust and Compassion can save the world. I remember believing that a hospital could help me, that teachers tell the truth, that parents are always proud of their children and that best friends will stay with you for the rest of your life. I remember when I thought our planet was immortal and that if two people meant it nothing could take it away. And I remember when I started to wake up, I remember each moment that dismantled my faith. I remember facing death.

And I remember always admiring how the mountains over the Taconic looked like the backs of giant sleeping animals. And how in the Winter the long naked trees stood up like bristles or fur on their white resting bodies. And maybe that’s not so far from the truth. And maybe they’re hurting. Like the families that once called these hills home and the ones that now lay their heads on rocks beneath the Mid-Hudson at night. Or even the ones who curl up on chairs inside Grand Central and pray that someone might offer them one bite of their famous New York City hot dog. Or maybe like the children who age never realizing that anything is missing. And how that’s the saddest homelessness of all.

And I remember the first time I heard them fighting in the bedroom, the first time I sat in a car on the side of the highway at night and heard them scream. I wasn’t old enough to be scared. I remember when Michael’s mom died in her bathroom and he had to call the ambulance because his father was gone, screwing the next-door neighbor. And I remember the next year when the neighbor’s husband put a gun to his son’s head. I remember when I got too old for the wooden playground and I remember the day they tore it down because a child got a splinter. I remember when they cleared the woods and the apple orchard and all the secret hiding places behind my home to put up million dollar houses. I remember when we couldn’t drink the water anymore. I remember when everyone’s fathers started dying from cancer and I remember how IBM hushed it up, how it was still OK for us to go to school next to it. I remember Mrs. Linen’s house and how she always had bags of candy waiting for my sisters and I. And I remember how her children stripped everything from her even before she died at one hundred and six. I remember every homeless person I’ve ever passed. I remember that one orange leaf floating through New York City alone.

And the sirens have been blaring for so long that we no longer hear them–we spend all our time wrestling invisible concepts like expiration dates and martyrs and success. And we only notice the chemicals in the creek when they start rotting the front door, eating through the weeks of messages the fish tried leaving on the porch. We’ll complain when the apples start to make us sick. But not a minute before. “It’s a beautiful world.”

I remember every second every word every smell and song and sweaty palm and laugh and snowfall and texture every feeling of my days with the Charade boys. And I remember being born twice in a warm basement and then dying in a cold smokey one. I remember the first time I saw shrunken in pupils and the bones in Charlie’s face and I remember holding on anyway. I remember believing we could beat it and that a few years would fix it all. I remember when he ran away.

And that was the last day we knew trees. Green became the color of dinosaurs and we never existed. They counted bodies between sobs but this time they didn’t promise to save us. And the contrail vapors were permanent. We stayed inside as we were told. If our neighbors were taken it was only to a better place and we would see them when this was all over, when we could play outside again. The landscape twisted and changed into a grey, desert-iron monster, stretching claws to a blackened sun. It snowed ashes for weeks. The calendar in the sky read The End of Days.

I remember standing on the edge of the tallest cliff in Dutchess County. I remember the first time Sean took me up there and how clean we all were back then. I remember every drive with Margo and the day she stopped coming to class. I remember all the scars on her arms. I remember every time his voice shook on the phone. I remember when the weight of it took me too. I remember watching that animal crying on a pole without its skin and feeling my lungs stop with it. I remember realizing what it’s like to be my mother and father. I remember when the holes started appearing in everyone’s arms like a disease. I remember when Charlie’s bursting blue eyes faded and the black rings started forming. And I remember sinking. I remember when Joe cried in study hall when we realized we couldn’t save them. I remember the baby bird that was abandoned on our porch. I remember the note his mother gave me in desperation. I remember the first overdose. I remember when everyone left for war and everyone else forgot. I remember when the night sky meant millions of stars. I remember being born and dying in a song.

And as we’re tripping through vomit-stained basements, through commuter trains and checkbooks and lies we barely notice the masked men behind us, we never stop to wonder why someone else’s hands are always in our pockets. We bring them to dinner and to bed. We declare our loyalty, we accept their silence as security, strip ourselves in the name of sincerity. And all the while we’re forgetting where we are.

I remember “The Moon.” I remember when he started to slip and I remember thinking we could help and that there was always somewhere to go. I remember every hospital we called, every doctor and teacher, every parent and hotline and cop, every friend, every brother and sister and prayer. I remember how no one cared. I remember feeling helpless. I remember when fear and pride closed the door on our hope, how everywhere we turned, the lights went out. I remember how my mom used to cry on the first and last day of school.

And far off somewhere the record still spins, telling us over and over of the American Dream. He says it’s never too late to be what we could have been. Some of us still believe him and we pick ties off the corpses in the streets and apply for jobs in advertising, engineering and art. We go home to the frames of our split-level houses and wait for our wives to cook us dinner. Sitting at melting three-legged tables we don’t notice that our wives are decomposing in the fallout shelters until we start to get hungry. We don’t notice that the dog hasn’t barked in weeks. Or that the water burns our skin. We review our resumes.

I remember losing him. I remember the last phone call, watching Fight Club on our last night together and having to go home when I could have stayed and saved his life. I remember pulling out of the driveway and I remember him waving a peace sign as I drove away. I remember how he called back three times and how we promised, he promised. I remember the bench outside of K-Mart and how we’d walk and talk and make a scene for hours in the South Hills Mall. I remember the first time we went to the silo and the walk with him and Joe in the forest behind his old house. I remember the lake and the cliff above it. I remember the barn and the attic with its glow-in-the-dark stars and taped-up stereo and the basements the basements the basements. I remember every note of every song they wrote. I remember all our Fuck You dreams and punk rock plans to change the world. I remember that his first words to me were Thank You.

And there are things I don’t explain, like how I don’t take pictures as an art but out of a desperate fear of forgetting each heavy moment after it’s passed. And how each word is a weighted attempt to find meaning in this giant disaster. How I have to keep everything in letters and photographs so that I can tell myself later that everywhere is somewhere real and golden. And everyone is someone special. Or at least that everyone has a story:

I remember being lost. I remember how the four of us kept each other alive when he was gone and how it was such a broken kind of beauty. I remember being able to write about other things and feel other seasons just as passionately as the Fall. I remember when they sealed up the silo. I remember when they knocked down the forest and we lost the barn and attic and the basement where we were born. I remember when they first announced that they were demolishing the South Hills and when they blocked off our lake and dragged it for the murder weapons. I remember when Adam destroyed every song they ever wrote. I remember realizing that punk rock can’t save the world.  I don’t remember his last words. 

And no one remembers the day that all our pictures disappeared, the morning we woke up with no memory of families or purpose or life outside these four walls. We go about our business, clocking in and passing out and forgetting to notice our sons and daughters lying in piles on bedroom floors. If anything seems different it’s just our generation. If anything is to blame it’s just the effects of growing up in times of war. And still we never wonder about the last time we knew peace. Just like the last time we saw trees, it’s all a fantasy now. And we’ve been warned against dreaming, threatened with the fate of dogs and photographs and life outside these four walls. No one remembers what it was like before we disappeared.

I remember the “bad batch” and everyone it killed while no one cared. I remember every phone call of the last six years. I remember the matching bracelets that said “LOVE” and the day his was replaced with numbers. I remember believing we had escaped the system, that we were invincible revolutionaries. And I remember being proven wrong. I remember when he said that love was temporary but we were permanent. I remember reading about him in the paper. I remember learning about Darfur, and then watching it stay the same for the next four years. I remember what it was like to find out we’re alone. I remember every familiar face I’ve seen in a coffin and the crooked way they try to make them smile. I remember the way the corpses always looked cracked, like life is just a long fight to keep ourselves in one piece. I remember losing and losing and losing.

And somehow if the earth survives and they ever come looking for our story, they might find a filthy black notebook. Maybe miles and years from here they’ll find a photograph of desperate teenagers singing and screaming in a warm or smokey basement, and endless words of love and loss, trust and death and compassion and hope and they’ll paint new pictures of a life outside these walls. And maybe they’ll remember in a way we refuse to.

And I remember vowing to never take part in the habits that stole my youth and then realizing it won’t make a difference. I remember when all of them fell. I remember learning for the second time that the things we hold the tightest slip away. I remember the desolation of the first Fall without them and sleepwalking through a year in a new town with faces I couldn’t connect to. I remember being numb. I remember how I brought myself back to life with a pair of headphones and a black notebook. I remember birth in a new kind of song. I remember when Margo said we feel too much and how this is both a blessing and a curse. I remember realizing that my life is mine. I remember that last 4am drive with her and realizing that our story is worth telling. I remember when I discovered there’s still time. 

And someone once called me a nowhere girl. I hope they were right. And I hope I don’t stop marching. I hope that we won’t give up even after our trees become dinosaurs and our children are born without names. I hope that years and miles from here every burning building we see reminds us of desperate teenagers screaming in basements and dark driveway nights in headlights and how each of us almost gave up right before we found hope. I hope we still sing epic songs and remind ourselves of tired orange mornings and how we somehow found meaning in the wreckage. I hope we remember each heavy moment after it’s passed.

4.13.8  

Confirm or deny. Please state your opinion on Timothy Leary on the countercultural revolution its successes and failures on the argument against Western capitalism consumerism rational secular destructionism please define the term entheogen please state your opinion on the definition of the word entheogen on use of plants known as entheogens and then redefine the definition of entheogens in your own words. Don’t forget to cite your sources. Be specific. Reject or concur? Never use the word depends. It never depends it’s agree or disagree. Don’t believe in middles or fractions or the color gray. I don’t believe in the concept of gray because it’s not a concrete color it’s a shade and I don’t believe in shades. I demand you do the same. Please state your opinion on the author’s use of ayahuasca in the amazon. Please make sure it’s the same as mine. Please use the phrases imperialism mindset mental imperialism cultural imperialism social context set and setting spiritual malaise spiritual imperialism and any other polysyllabic term I have mentioned in class even in passing irrelevancy. Please avoid any personal anecdotes connections to reality useful interpretations or general musings. I don’t care what you think about modern parallels.

Please start with an introductory sentence that is as overused as it is sycophantic pseudo-intellectual and boring please be sure to include either “throughout history” or “across the globe” you may also begin with a quote from a scholar or other distinguished member of academia who has no relevance to hallucinogens psychedelics the book being discussed countercultures this class or this century remotely. Please follow the opening sentence with irrelevant stuffing that painstakingly begins to draw a connection to the supposed topic of this paper followed immediately by an extremely specific five to six line run-on sentence that attempts to pile everything I’ve addressed in class as well as the aforementioned required buzzwords into a concise and seemingly sophisticated thesis.

Please fill 8-15 pages with quotations and reiterations and your own personal interpretation of the class materials involving psychedelics but never ever mention your own experience or actual opinion. Please transform the opinions of the author into your own and state them as fact. Don’t forget to cite your sources. A works cited is fine but footnotes make you look more sophisticated. Use them copiously for a grade boost.

Please end with a page long paragraph of sheer melodrama that relates the issues mentioned above with world peace sustainable agriculture the current administration organized religion mental illness and what you can do to aid the spiritual malaise of modern western capitalist superstructure society inhabitants. Make sure you’re optimistic and emotionally uplifting. I don’t like feeling depressed and will grade you accordingly.

In class tomorrow, though you’ve stayed up past sunrise writing this paper to the best fulfillment of my desires possible, be prepared to fully reiterate everything you’ve written during a class discussion that I will lead aimlessly even though I will most definitely interrupt you after the first 5-6 words. Please be aware that I will openly praise and smile approvingly at any student who waits approximately 8 minutes after I’ve said a polysyllabic word and then repeats it back to me in a slightly varied sentence. 

After class you may retreat to your room and forget that the materials we read had any relevance to your life.

Please never actually try hallucinogens psychedelics any substance or experience that may in fact expand your consciousness. Openly declare your allegiance to a specific counterculture or subculture and pronounce this devotion clearly by joining as many related ON-CAMPUS clubs as physically possible (or more, as long as it says you belong to them in writing—specifically your resume and facebook profile) but never partake in any actual activities that challenge the status quo. Attend as many political protests as physically possible (see above) but make sure it’s not a waste of time by sneaking into the viewfinder of every camera you see and collecting free tshirts in every color after the rally. Wear these tshirts everyday. If you have the opportunity to travel abroad to experience mind-expansive natural herbs plants and medicines go only if there is a pretense of spreading your superior American knowledge to the oppressed of the world. Write a 10 page account of the poor souls you encountered and then present it at a forum during parents weekend to prove how our college’s progressive programs are making people across the world love America again how we are giving them the gift of modern television america’s next top model ramen noodles. Tell about your donations of nike shoes, hanes underwear. Make sure the parents think we are very gracious for allowing “the indigenous” to own the products they make in their quaint little factories.

In a few years I will permit you to graduate. Please fall asleep every night after this event content with the knowledge that you are more successful than 85-90% of the US population even though you have never held a job in your life. Make a laminated copy of your diploma and place it in a prominent location somewhere in your parent’s house other than the room you still occupy. Please remain blissfully undetermined aware of your superiority eager to use polysyllabic words as often as possible in daily conversation. Remain convinced that your degree in political science and your travels abroad are proof enough of your contribution to the world and that if and when you do decide to look for an extremely highbrow career in the top tier of society it will be readily available to you.

Above all else, please avoid any information alternate reality dream philosophy religious leader psychedelic hallucinogen countercultural revolutionary timothy leary crusader who tries to convince you that there is anything more to life.

but i’ve returned here, to this loyal black book, these knowing pages that have seen the last five years in scribbles and smudges. i’ve returned here because i always keep trying. and now, more than ever, is the time to write.

2007 was my year of emergence. it was emergency and salvation. 2007 was the year of everything. i came out of the living hell kicking, and i tried hard again and again to find solid ground–  i slipped back into the dark just as many times. but with the spring and some amazing songs i emerged, and felt free for the first time even though i wasn’t. that’s all that counted then, freedom and fleeting feelings. summer was when black and white turned to color and i said the last goodbye to all my skeleton friends. i said goodbye to the ghostboy in the middle of a crowd, dancing. it was sunny. the idol on the stage sang “fuck the police” and we sang along in spite of our sadness, and because of it. the summer was surreal and careening, and it ended with a crash into something i never thought i’d find again. summer ended with an accident i’ll wear forever.

and it hit so  hard that i forgot all my favorite vocabulary, like loss and intrusion, missing and dying. everything was new. and without familiarity, i couldn’t find the words to put it on paper. it was none of the things that had killed me before, it was everything else. it was everything. and so i started to skip those night time scribbled reflections and stopped trying to find meaning in each footstep. instead i scrawled on walls and stomped through forests and ignored the pens tearing holes in my jeans, the desperate need to interpret every gesture. i just lived every note of every song. and i never felt better. because there are things i don’t explain, like how i don’t take pictures as an “art” but out of a desperate fear of forgetting. and how each word is a weighted attempt to find meaning in this giant disaster. how i have to keep everything in letters and photographs so that i can tell myself later that everywhere is somewhere real and golden. and everyone is someone special. or at least that everyone has a story. and when every word they speak is proof itself, i no longer have to convince myself of meaning. and when every moment burns this bright, there’s no need to fear forgetting.

my story was love and loss and certain death. i was almost at the ending until it cut straight through and brought me back to the start. and suddenly there’s something to hold me back on these cliffs and the skyline is more beautiful than imminent. now i see the tops of orange trees without wondering if they’ll break my fall and for the first time, i’m at a loss for words even when the pen meets these familiar pages.

there’s no way to thank them for giving me trees again, no way to describe what i was missing and why, or how they brought it back. i’m afraid to tell them that they brought me back from certain death. but i’m not afraid of Them anymore. and though the Us and Them is so concrete now, it’s not so tragic when i’ve found someone else who sees through the glitter in the asphalt, the silver in the clouds.

because i spent so long mourning the loss of a friend i couldn’t save that i didn’t see myself slipping until someone came to hold me up. but how do you tell a stranger that he saved your life.

and somewhere miles away i’m still screaming in a basement. but somehow they’ve helped me find a balance here between dark driveway nights in heroin headlights and sunny morning songs with tired eyes and smiles. because it’s never either or. and if this story has taught me anything it’s that you can’t have one without the other. and maybe i know now that i wouldn’t have found this freedom without that cell. or this beautiful view without stepping to the edge that one last time.

and if i fast forward to the fall, it’s clear that it’s never felt this right before. and some days it’s like a postcard. i read howard zinn, and they read endgame on the way to the filthy city. and that’s how it should be. just kids, dreamers holding hands on a train, learning and wishing for ways to start this all over, to tear it down and build something pure with the same bricks we use to smash the windows.. we traveled two hours to get free. spent our last paychecks on the ride and on coffee and cigarettes before we left town. and we made our own way to the river and breathed in epic songs and danced in solidarity. it smelled like  cigarettes and redemption. and that’s all we needed.

and i take pictures of empty things like tennis courts in the rain, ice cream shops in the fall, like widows and bike racks and video stores, laundromats, used records stores, traintracks and doctors’ eyes. and they collect the feathers of birds who might be just as empty now that all their homes are lost. and sometimes all you need is someone to show your scars to.

so under speeding headlights i felt my pulse and squeezed my way back to life. and we all lied in the backseat and their eyes were widening pits and they stuttered and tried hard to remember how to speak. but they didn’t have to. and maybe we’d all lost something irreplaceable, but we refused to talk about it. and maybe what i’ve learned is that love erases loss, and maybe we can learn to start again by gluing our pieces together and squeezing our way back to life in the back of a car. with the fading scent of zombie kids that had shrugged off the drugs and inhibitions and realized that there is no more time to waste before miles turn our tired smiles to memories. so we all hold each other as tight as if  we’re dying, and we hope it doesn’t happen before we find the nerves to speak out loud.

and i don’t know how to say this but i’m feeling safe now. and the bombs and cars and ticking clocks don’t seem to matter much at all and i write like i don’t care who reads these words. because i’m trying to find a new vocabulary just like everyone else. because there’s nothing to feel threatened by when all the shame and bitter eyes have turned into these beating hearts and wooded drives and smiles. so i stay up all night laughing and singing songs and passing time like death has never touched me, like the things i’ve lost are free. and that’s how it should be. because i’ve finally found that peace and it’s been nothing like they said it would be but i’m feeling right at home with these strangers’ faces and stranger places and beating hearts and wooded drives and love.

and in case i look back and wonder, there’s no need for names anymore. it feels like everything. it’s everything at once. everything i touch means the world to me now and means nothing at all. and that’s ok. and i’m ok even though i’m not sometimes. and that’s ok too, because we’ve moved beyond words. and words are the only way i can try to explain it. beauty means being everything at once. beauty means nothing.

someone once called me a nowhere girl. i hope they were right. and i hope he doesn’t stop marching. i hope that he won’t give up even after our trees become dinosaurs and our children are born without names. i hope that years and miles from here every burning building he sees reminds him of desperate teenagers screaming in basements and dark driveway nights in headlights and how each of us almost gave up right before we found hope. i hope we still sing epic songs and remind ourselves of tired orange mornings and how we somehow found meaning in the wreckage. i hope we remember each heavy moment after it’s passed.