songs of the soul...

Music is a uniquely cultural expression- music from one region leaving one cold while inflaming the other. Country music is the balm to many while to me it's a step away from fingernails on a blackboard. A few songs from this genre have made it past my tense inner ear but it is generally safe to say that I do not like country music.

For me, great music does not merely express the achy breaky emotions of the beer drinking couch potato. For me, music gives voice to the soul, allows it to soar when it begins to take wing and articulates inexpressible sorrow. Today, I listen to Prokofieff's Piano Concerto no.3, 'Ada plays' from Cold Mountain and 'Hansel and Gretal in Africa' from Nowhere in Africa. The solicitude of the musician's caress gives a gentleness to the breath of the moment. As compelling as the gulf breeze kissing the surface of the ocean...

Book of revelation

We pretzel on the rocks as the waves wash over our feet and occasional rock dashing waves slap at our thighs. The sun twinkles merrily on the water's surface and reflects into our cornea an almost painful exuberance. Our conversation quietly flits from one topic to another-- the beauty of the skies, the warmth of the water, the fun we had visiting with the bartender at breakfast, plans for visiting the lighthouse in the next day or two. What do you want to do for dinner? Shall we hit Duval street and pick up a few gifts tonight? The satisfaction in our companionship is tangible, so much so that the florist at our local market once inquired if we are ever unhappy. "No! Maurice's scowl is implausible "Now sod off!" We laugh at his "ferocity".

We linger on the rock-pile barriers spying the occasional snorkler until a new attraction beckons and we head off the beach, our backs and noses sun-baked, streaks of red splashed where SPFs hadn't been slathered. We rinse off top layers of sand and unlock our beach cruisers, lackadaisically spinning to our attic studio to wash off the remains of the day.

The air in Treetop refrigerates our warm bodies, a refreshing break from the sultry summer heat that overwhelms the palm tree's shadow.

the book

Book of Revelation
It lay amidst a heap of papers that sat behind the door. It was worn and ragged, having the look of an favorite shirt whose life now consisted of wiping toilets and spots on the floor. Undoubtedly that was why it was in this pile of papers, having disguised itself successfully as trash, it lay there waiting to be thrown outside where it would lay quietly in the dumpster until the day the trash truck would gather it up into the smelly, moldy, slimy assorted remains of daily living of the neighborhood, then at last cast it into it's final resting place with the rotting mass of human debris of the entire community. The familiarity of it caught my eye and I tugged at it, freeing it from the tyranny of the pile.

The cover is chocolate colored leather. The first page blank, a scribbled pen check in the corner, a torn corner at the bottom and a copied quote from a Frank Herbert novel on the next. Several pages were bonded with syrup and I slip a nail between an opening to unstick the edges. The pages are filled with penned cursives that cover the spectrum of calligraphy to chicken scratch. The biographer is struggling to sort out a puzzle, a frantic pace of writing, panicked with realization. How? Why? What does this mean? What has it been for? I hopscotch back to the beginning, curious for identity.

Barnes and Noble is full of biographies and memoirs about famous people --or not so famous people who think their life is fascinating-- or courageous-- or traumatic. I don't think my life was particularly interesting. And I'm not sure the people I grew up around were in any way singular- although they may take offense at my saying so. But there is something to be said about being raised the WAY I was. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say there is something to be said AGAINST being raised the way I was...

But let's start at the beginning... or the end...

It was a Sunday like any other. I was dressed in my casual, not too fancy, not too sloppy, don't-want-to-make-the-less-fortunate-feel-bad-yet- getting-up-in-front-of-people clothes. The details of the morning hang in the fog of a forgotten past where distinctions are lost, too similar to be dredged up from the billowing clouds of memory. We had sung all the typical songs of the morning- and had landed in the final phase of the mission. The songs had been grating on my sensibilities- "Lord I lift your name on high" (What do I know about god?) "Lord I love to sing your praises" (Praise for creating a religion that dominates and subjugates?) I made it through the song without losing my breakfast and stumbled out the double doors. The person I liked least in the congregation was preaching and I rarely sat through his sermons ever since the summer Sunday he said something so stupid and crass that I decided it was a monumental waste of time even allowing his voice to resonate near my ears. I left the cool dimness of the A-framed building to sit in the sunshine. I picked up the book I had been reading for some time and began ruminating over the section I had just read.

The words were roiling around my head, a boiling pot on the point of bubbling over the edge. My head was splitting. I could feel the blood vessels expand and contract, the great wall of china fracturing, shattering into tiny pieces. A tear snaked down my check then a sudden gush became river-- sliding off my cheek, onto the sidewalk, trickled down the cement stairs that led to the street, and down, down the hill and into the creek that was nearly dried up. Until that day in October when I refilled it with my tears.

The day I cried myself to death.

So why cry myself to death? Why give up what little I knew about myself and about the people around me for the Great Unknown?

Maybe because it was simply TIME.

It was a tired life

Well, who am I kidding? It wasn't really a life and it definitely wasn't mine. It was what I scraped together in the attempt to make a place for myself and in so doing, made the box that had been created for me, a lifelong cage.

It was

an existence

without pleasure or happiness.

full of service and sacrifice

but I as I surveyed the rubbish

based on a lie.

and I was left with...






.

The day I died

You might presume that I should be glad for what I had-- after all... deadness??? Uhhh!

Yet, I looked over the landscape, saw the refuge and shivered in distaste: A marriage that had been "on the rocks, since the words "dearly beloved" were uttered; Children that I loved, well, adored really but who had been crookedly raised in a home where loving really only involved them; A church "family" that was increasingly suffocating and contentious; and a family (grandmother, parents and two brothers) that were what they always had been-- the thing that kept me tied to all of the above in the way that I was.

I had a job that was, essentially, a throwaway job- someone needed to be in the library and I had popped in at the right moment just after the captain of the ship had taken residence. Need a body? She has one! I had been going to school but finances made my participation sporadic and motivation for getting a degree that was not beneficial was on the ebb. I didn't need initials after my name to follow my bliss- just pen and quill (well, laptops really work better for me).

In theory, I might have been in a good place... well, a not-as-bad-as-it-had-been place, anyway. I had something in my life that made me happy, that gave me fulfillment and it wasn't something that was going to force me to spend more money on education or moving or some other life changing episode and I wasn't too old to do it either...

There was just one difficulty: I couldn't do it. I would sit down at my desk, excitement at the task energizing. But the moment no sooner began then ended. The keyboard became mortal enemy- the bane to bliss. Words flew out of the barrel with vigor, then faltered and plopped to the ground, duds that had no charge and could not even break past the surface of poetic license. Ideas that had been ripe and ready for plucking had become mush between my fingers, the sweet fragrance of harvest under my nails a sad aftereffect. What was begun... sat. And Hemingway's logic started to make sense.

I wasn't completely devastated by my inability to write... this whole "getting my own life", "finding my identity" was new to me. I wasn't raised to have any expectations of self realization- in fact the very idea was an anathema, an idea born of a selfish and sinful generation. It had taken me several years to even allow myself to consider buying myself clothes that were not mere function. I hadn't purchased a CD for myself since they were called albums-- well, at least a non-religious album.

At any rate, the day I died, there was simply not a whole lot to sort through, no carefully cared for memorabilia to tenderly caress and shed a tear over. I had a few books- occasional paperbacks that were purchased when I didn't want to risk spending more on fines at the library for a book I didn't mind having anyway. The kitchen contained my few treasures: a heavy-duty mixer, stone cake pans and cookie sheets, an incomplete set of silverware and stoneware that had been given as a wedding present and a set of 500 count percale, soft-as-silk sheets that I loved slipping into at night. A couple of pictures on the wall and two Bugs Bunny plates, given to me by a friend, were the closest thing in the house to express who I was although I rarely felt any need to have such expressions and the items were rather shabbily kept. An assortment of family pictures carefully scrapbooked or randomly shoved in boxes made up the bulk of reminders and they were hastily packed, avoided for the emptiness they recalled rather than their ability to recall happier days.

What makes it all so difficult to sort through, to look at, to reconstruct, is the blankness. Screaming... a child shoved into a dark closet with nothing to eat... whippings... name calling... make for a dramatic and Oprahatic bestseller. But my life was generally quiet and gentle, the occasional lost temper an aberration that begets an amused smile more than condemnation.