I'm not sure what i really want, maybe that would be a good starting point,
huh? I want silly stuff overall, like sticky rice every day, along with sickly
sweet soda pop, something Thai or lao, just so I can have some small connection to thatforgotten part of myself. I'd like to write like Lester Bangs, or Hunter S. Thompson, or somebody like that, except I want to sound like me, except cooler, I wish the clutter was gone as well, but something about kids, don't think it's going to happen anytime soon, I want to stop wanting, but know deep down that I never will,,,
and i knew that way back when, Writing Down the Bones was given to me in high school by someone who saw my need,but i keep trying to run from it, some stoopid thing about self-worth and all that,but ignoring that part of myself doesn't make it go away, only makes it stronger, and Lester--he's the voice i hear in my head, have heard it since maybe 1980, when my cousin introduced me to "Creem" magazine--made in Detroit,way before I ever read Rolling Stone or Thrasher or Spin--
12.22.2008
snow day (kicked in the head)
By the time I woke up this morning, four or five inches of snow had already deposited itself all over the landscape. My wife tells me that they are expecting another inch an hour through noon, so I should run to the store before it gets any worse. I also need to go buy a shovel since the my little guy snapped the other one in half the other day. Apparently, E was trying to build a mountain in the yard, so he wouldn’t have to walk three whole blocks to the sledding hill.
The weather was pretty bad, I think I drove to the store at the height of the storm—visibility was about an eighth of a mile and the snow plows hadn’t come through yet. Added to the mess was the fact that my wipers and tires are all shot, so I was fishtailing every which way, so I no idea where I was going. I had to guess at where to turn—couldn’t really see the streets or driveways all that well, but everything still seemed to work out.
Z-man and I stopped off at the Asian food mart to grab some goodies and there was only one other car in the parking lot, which was pretty treacherous to begin with. I bought my usual—Vietnamese rice noodle soup-which tastes exactly like Thai rice noodle soup-and fixings (meatballs, holy basil) for perhaps the second or third greatest meal ever invented. The best is and will always be a traditional Lao offering of sticky rice, laab (a ground meat dish mixed with various spices), papaya salad and fried chicken.
We feasted after we zigzagged home through the unplowed streets, laughing at one of the neighbors who missed his driveway completely and ditched his minivan. Little E even ate with us—surprising since he’s usually a mac and cheese kind of guy. The boys and I went and cleared the driveway and the patio behind the house after our repast. Actually, it was just me and Z--E was busy rolling around in the snow and playing with his Tonka trucks.
Z and I recruited Bess to come out and play football with us once we were done, an idea that seemed really good at the time, but proved to be anything but after further reflection. For one thing, the snow was so deep that it was over the tops of my boots and it kept funneling in and soaking my socks. The other thing is Z ended up stepping on my face, he had beat me to the corner and managed to slip out of my arms as I was trying to wrap him up. I was falling and flailing after his legs when his foot shot down, searching for terra firma, but instead it found the bottom half of my face.
It felt like someone punched my right in the mouth, which makes sense I guess. The funny thing is that it didn’t feel like a kick to the head, which it was in a way, but painful all the same. Good old smash mouth football in six inches of snow. The bonus part was that I got to keep all of my teeth; my parents spent way too much money for me to be coughing up teeth over a little backyard football game.
We had even more family fun when I tried leaving for work, both lips fat from their recent meeting with the sole of Z’s Asics and a bruise forming on the chin. I shot out into the street from our freshly cleared driveway only to get stuck as soon as I had reversed. I would give the car some gas and lurch forward, only to get stuck a few feet further up. I kept this up for about 10 minutes, managing to get a half a block down the street.
I ran back to the house, cigarette dangling from my mouth, and had Z, Bess and my wife throw on their winter gear to help push the car. I don’t know if the front-wheel drive or the weight of the Saturn was the culprit, but we basically pushed that thing for three blocks. My Olds Cutlass would have lumbered through all that snow without much trouble, but my plastic excuse of a car could barely make it five feet at a time.
The main streets weren’t that bad compared to my street, but driving was still no picnic. I passed three accidents on Michigan Ave. and it seemed like most of the driveways going into stores or gas stations were still clotted with snow flung from the plows. City streets were worse than the suburbs, but that’s pretty much expected by now, and everyone was going below the speed limit, a rarity in these parts.
I’m not sure how much snow actually fell, my guess would be seven to eight inches, guessing by the high top fade made of snow atop one of my coworker’s cars. He’s one of those people who only clear off the windows and hood, leaving a pile on top of the passenger area and the trunk. I always thought that looked kind of funny, and it’s a bear if you’re driving behind a car like that when the snow decides to take a suicide jump at your windshield just for kicks.
All in all, not a bad snow day for the kids, I suppose. My daughter and I even played guitar for a minute, I was showing her the chords to the Ramones’ “I Just Want To Have Something To Do” and “I Believe In Miracles.” I tuned my top E string down to D, so we-she-I can hit the power chords easier. One finger on one fret, three strings is all you need. I could use a better amplifier or even a better guitar to truly hear the notes, but we’re still working on that. It’s only taken me-us-we eleven months to get that far, but I think its going well, that geetar crunch makes most of the other stuff seem not so important.
I hope my kids will look back at some of these experiences and get a chuckle out of it. How many times do you get to push a car three blocks through the snow, or get to splurge on a Thai/Vietnamese meal, or step on your father’s face playing football, or figure out a guitar riff? For all my whining and complaining, I like my life, really enjoy the moments with the kids. I hope they do too, I’m sure they’d let me know if they didn’t, or at least hope that they would let me know. It’s better than a kick in the head, I suppose, but even that doesn’t have to be a bad thing either.
The weather was pretty bad, I think I drove to the store at the height of the storm—visibility was about an eighth of a mile and the snow plows hadn’t come through yet. Added to the mess was the fact that my wipers and tires are all shot, so I was fishtailing every which way, so I no idea where I was going. I had to guess at where to turn—couldn’t really see the streets or driveways all that well, but everything still seemed to work out.
Z-man and I stopped off at the Asian food mart to grab some goodies and there was only one other car in the parking lot, which was pretty treacherous to begin with. I bought my usual—Vietnamese rice noodle soup-which tastes exactly like Thai rice noodle soup-and fixings (meatballs, holy basil) for perhaps the second or third greatest meal ever invented. The best is and will always be a traditional Lao offering of sticky rice, laab (a ground meat dish mixed with various spices), papaya salad and fried chicken.
We feasted after we zigzagged home through the unplowed streets, laughing at one of the neighbors who missed his driveway completely and ditched his minivan. Little E even ate with us—surprising since he’s usually a mac and cheese kind of guy. The boys and I went and cleared the driveway and the patio behind the house after our repast. Actually, it was just me and Z--E was busy rolling around in the snow and playing with his Tonka trucks.
Z and I recruited Bess to come out and play football with us once we were done, an idea that seemed really good at the time, but proved to be anything but after further reflection. For one thing, the snow was so deep that it was over the tops of my boots and it kept funneling in and soaking my socks. The other thing is Z ended up stepping on my face, he had beat me to the corner and managed to slip out of my arms as I was trying to wrap him up. I was falling and flailing after his legs when his foot shot down, searching for terra firma, but instead it found the bottom half of my face.
It felt like someone punched my right in the mouth, which makes sense I guess. The funny thing is that it didn’t feel like a kick to the head, which it was in a way, but painful all the same. Good old smash mouth football in six inches of snow. The bonus part was that I got to keep all of my teeth; my parents spent way too much money for me to be coughing up teeth over a little backyard football game.
We had even more family fun when I tried leaving for work, both lips fat from their recent meeting with the sole of Z’s Asics and a bruise forming on the chin. I shot out into the street from our freshly cleared driveway only to get stuck as soon as I had reversed. I would give the car some gas and lurch forward, only to get stuck a few feet further up. I kept this up for about 10 minutes, managing to get a half a block down the street.
I ran back to the house, cigarette dangling from my mouth, and had Z, Bess and my wife throw on their winter gear to help push the car. I don’t know if the front-wheel drive or the weight of the Saturn was the culprit, but we basically pushed that thing for three blocks. My Olds Cutlass would have lumbered through all that snow without much trouble, but my plastic excuse of a car could barely make it five feet at a time.
The main streets weren’t that bad compared to my street, but driving was still no picnic. I passed three accidents on Michigan Ave. and it seemed like most of the driveways going into stores or gas stations were still clotted with snow flung from the plows. City streets were worse than the suburbs, but that’s pretty much expected by now, and everyone was going below the speed limit, a rarity in these parts.
I’m not sure how much snow actually fell, my guess would be seven to eight inches, guessing by the high top fade made of snow atop one of my coworker’s cars. He’s one of those people who only clear off the windows and hood, leaving a pile on top of the passenger area and the trunk. I always thought that looked kind of funny, and it’s a bear if you’re driving behind a car like that when the snow decides to take a suicide jump at your windshield just for kicks.
All in all, not a bad snow day for the kids, I suppose. My daughter and I even played guitar for a minute, I was showing her the chords to the Ramones’ “I Just Want To Have Something To Do” and “I Believe In Miracles.” I tuned my top E string down to D, so we-she-I can hit the power chords easier. One finger on one fret, three strings is all you need. I could use a better amplifier or even a better guitar to truly hear the notes, but we’re still working on that. It’s only taken me-us-we eleven months to get that far, but I think its going well, that geetar crunch makes most of the other stuff seem not so important.
I hope my kids will look back at some of these experiences and get a chuckle out of it. How many times do you get to push a car three blocks through the snow, or get to splurge on a Thai/Vietnamese meal, or step on your father’s face playing football, or figure out a guitar riff? For all my whining and complaining, I like my life, really enjoy the moments with the kids. I hope they do too, I’m sure they’d let me know if they didn’t, or at least hope that they would let me know. It’s better than a kick in the head, I suppose, but even that doesn’t have to be a bad thing either.
12.08.2008
blood memory
The sound hits me as I walk down the hallway, the thump thump thump of the drum, eight drumsticks smacking over the taught leather, wrapped around a cedar body. I feel the drumbeats in my chest, keeping time with my heartbeat, calling me into the large ballroom, past the low-slung couches and the carpeted lounge.
Curious students turn toward the large double doors, trying to determine what the sound means, but it calls to me, and my steps quicken on the polished faux-marble floor. Looking into the room, I see a group of people huddled around the drum, others mingling around the rows of maroon covered chairs facing the podium. The sound pulls me through the doors, toward the drum, voices now sing in unison, as one lone falsetto breaks through and rises above the rest. Unintelligible vocables fill the air, heyas and other phrases, so full of meaning despite the fact that I can’t translate any of it.
Blood memory rushes forward, the sound envelopes and surrounds me, welcomes me home. One lone singer hits the animal skin with hard even honor beats, thud thud thud, like exclamation points, stressing the importance of the moment while the others keep time lightly.
I find my friend sitting in the front row, microphone and recorder in hand, but I have no words for her, just a look, face flushed and happily anxious for what comes next. I see some familiar faces from years past, go and reintroduce myself, get some of the background info for my article as the crowd, all of whom were standing, begins to fill up the chairs.
The students make a few announcements, take care of some housekeeping issues, welcome their esteemed speakers, etc . . . then ‘she’ walks up to the podium. Jet-black hair pulled back, easy confidence all over her face, black t-shirt and jeans, smitten from the very first. “Who is that?” Familiar refrain whenever caught off guard, intrigued, curious, frightened.
When everything has been said, the story of the first Thanksgiving, what it means to American Indian peoples, all things I had read or heard before, but never so vibrantly, I tell my friend to interview the mystery girl, but she freezes, says she can’t. I take her recorder and microphone, corner mystery girl, and ask to interview her, afraid that my article is quickly slipping away.
I throw the usual questions—who, what, why, when—visualizing my inverted pyramid in my mind, piecing together the article in my mind. The easy laughter, the confidence again, can’t take my eyes off of her, I nod when I think it appropriate, but I’m not listening to the words so much as listen to her body.
Smitten, flushed, love or longing, whatever it is, on first sight. Not that I’m a believer, but there it is, and was, but something stronger than sense pulled to me. Maybe the future was calling to me, my children, the binojiinhs, but I stammered my thanks and ran the other way. The article wrestled with me throughout the night, but I finally spit it out, wrote it all down on my old electric typewriter, quoting from the tape and listening to the drum songs repeatedly.
We’d meet again the next fall, and that time I was unable to escape, a cold September night when I surrendered to fate. Not that I regret any of it, but I was busy trying to become something else, trying to chase the middle class dream, when she awakened something else within me.
The blood memory, the call of past and the future simultaneously, learning more about my own culture and my self than I had ever hoped to before. My father’s family embraced assimilation and left their past firmly in the past, but my wife’s family lived their lives differently. They were on the front lines fighting for sovereignty and rights—religious, cultural, spiritual, political and otherwise. Things that some Indians now take for granted, things that they take as something that is owed to them.
The circle felt complete, felt as if I finally found where I belonged, but this kind of growth never comes easily. The outside person was never the point, the surface reality nothing but a front, the inner work much harder but far more long lasting. My beliefs have to be based on the experiential; just taking something that I had read or heard isn’t good enough.
That evening program in November of 1990 seems a lifetime away, in some ways it was several lifetimes ago for me, but it was the start of my real life. The things that I have done and the places that I have gone since then all started with the drumbeat and the sight of my wife. There are still many things that still need to be done, still other experiences to be had, and sometimes I forget why I started this journey to begin with, but moments of absolute clarity are precious.
The song that the drum was singing that night was the American Indian Movement song—composed by members during their standoff with the U.S. Army at the Wounded Knee compound in South Dakota in the early seventies. It’s a call for pan-Indian solidarity in the face of outside political and cultural pressure from the government and other outside forces.
My focus isn’t that universal these days, more time and energy is devoted to familial issues, but that is as it should be. My two teenagers are almost ready to go out into the world and I need to teach them who and what they are. Rooted in the past, but living in the present, planning for the future. My little one still has years of hanging out with mom and dad before he faces the same thing.
My children come from a long line of strong people—Webkamigad, who fled northern Michigan and canoed to Manitoulin Island (the dwelling place of the Spirit)—Pamptopee, who escaped the U.S. Army and forced relocation to Nebraska, then walked back to Michigan—Tyendinaga, colonel in the British Army and leader of the Mohawks during the Revolutionary War and their forced relocation to Ontario afterward.
We survived despite the government’s attempts to annihilate and later, assimilate us. This isn’t about bitterness—this is about strength of character, strength of belief, strength of culture. These are their ancestors and they should be proud of where they came from, have faith in where they are going. Their hard-fought sacrifices and victories should not be forgotten, it makes us who we are as a people.
I spent most of my youth knowing next to nothing about my own culture or history. I only saw Indians on old fifties movies or shows and we were either the enemy or a superfluous sidekick. My image of who I was provided to me by the ancestors of those who usurped and displaced us.
The blood memory does not forget—Americans measure things in centuries, but we measure time in millennia. The first European is believed to have reached the Great Lakes some four hundred years ago, but the bones and artifacts of our people litter this area and have done so for over ten thousand years.
Curious students turn toward the large double doors, trying to determine what the sound means, but it calls to me, and my steps quicken on the polished faux-marble floor. Looking into the room, I see a group of people huddled around the drum, others mingling around the rows of maroon covered chairs facing the podium. The sound pulls me through the doors, toward the drum, voices now sing in unison, as one lone falsetto breaks through and rises above the rest. Unintelligible vocables fill the air, heyas and other phrases, so full of meaning despite the fact that I can’t translate any of it.
Blood memory rushes forward, the sound envelopes and surrounds me, welcomes me home. One lone singer hits the animal skin with hard even honor beats, thud thud thud, like exclamation points, stressing the importance of the moment while the others keep time lightly.
I find my friend sitting in the front row, microphone and recorder in hand, but I have no words for her, just a look, face flushed and happily anxious for what comes next. I see some familiar faces from years past, go and reintroduce myself, get some of the background info for my article as the crowd, all of whom were standing, begins to fill up the chairs.
The students make a few announcements, take care of some housekeeping issues, welcome their esteemed speakers, etc . . . then ‘she’ walks up to the podium. Jet-black hair pulled back, easy confidence all over her face, black t-shirt and jeans, smitten from the very first. “Who is that?” Familiar refrain whenever caught off guard, intrigued, curious, frightened.
When everything has been said, the story of the first Thanksgiving, what it means to American Indian peoples, all things I had read or heard before, but never so vibrantly, I tell my friend to interview the mystery girl, but she freezes, says she can’t. I take her recorder and microphone, corner mystery girl, and ask to interview her, afraid that my article is quickly slipping away.
I throw the usual questions—who, what, why, when—visualizing my inverted pyramid in my mind, piecing together the article in my mind. The easy laughter, the confidence again, can’t take my eyes off of her, I nod when I think it appropriate, but I’m not listening to the words so much as listen to her body.
Smitten, flushed, love or longing, whatever it is, on first sight. Not that I’m a believer, but there it is, and was, but something stronger than sense pulled to me. Maybe the future was calling to me, my children, the binojiinhs, but I stammered my thanks and ran the other way. The article wrestled with me throughout the night, but I finally spit it out, wrote it all down on my old electric typewriter, quoting from the tape and listening to the drum songs repeatedly.
We’d meet again the next fall, and that time I was unable to escape, a cold September night when I surrendered to fate. Not that I regret any of it, but I was busy trying to become something else, trying to chase the middle class dream, when she awakened something else within me.
The blood memory, the call of past and the future simultaneously, learning more about my own culture and my self than I had ever hoped to before. My father’s family embraced assimilation and left their past firmly in the past, but my wife’s family lived their lives differently. They were on the front lines fighting for sovereignty and rights—religious, cultural, spiritual, political and otherwise. Things that some Indians now take for granted, things that they take as something that is owed to them.
The circle felt complete, felt as if I finally found where I belonged, but this kind of growth never comes easily. The outside person was never the point, the surface reality nothing but a front, the inner work much harder but far more long lasting. My beliefs have to be based on the experiential; just taking something that I had read or heard isn’t good enough.
That evening program in November of 1990 seems a lifetime away, in some ways it was several lifetimes ago for me, but it was the start of my real life. The things that I have done and the places that I have gone since then all started with the drumbeat and the sight of my wife. There are still many things that still need to be done, still other experiences to be had, and sometimes I forget why I started this journey to begin with, but moments of absolute clarity are precious.
The song that the drum was singing that night was the American Indian Movement song—composed by members during their standoff with the U.S. Army at the Wounded Knee compound in South Dakota in the early seventies. It’s a call for pan-Indian solidarity in the face of outside political and cultural pressure from the government and other outside forces.
My focus isn’t that universal these days, more time and energy is devoted to familial issues, but that is as it should be. My two teenagers are almost ready to go out into the world and I need to teach them who and what they are. Rooted in the past, but living in the present, planning for the future. My little one still has years of hanging out with mom and dad before he faces the same thing.
My children come from a long line of strong people—Webkamigad, who fled northern Michigan and canoed to Manitoulin Island (the dwelling place of the Spirit)—Pamptopee, who escaped the U.S. Army and forced relocation to Nebraska, then walked back to Michigan—Tyendinaga, colonel in the British Army and leader of the Mohawks during the Revolutionary War and their forced relocation to Ontario afterward.
We survived despite the government’s attempts to annihilate and later, assimilate us. This isn’t about bitterness—this is about strength of character, strength of belief, strength of culture. These are their ancestors and they should be proud of where they came from, have faith in where they are going. Their hard-fought sacrifices and victories should not be forgotten, it makes us who we are as a people.
I spent most of my youth knowing next to nothing about my own culture or history. I only saw Indians on old fifties movies or shows and we were either the enemy or a superfluous sidekick. My image of who I was provided to me by the ancestors of those who usurped and displaced us.
The blood memory does not forget—Americans measure things in centuries, but we measure time in millennia. The first European is believed to have reached the Great Lakes some four hundred years ago, but the bones and artifacts of our people litter this area and have done so for over ten thousand years.
12.06.2008
the edge
I’ve been to the edge several times, the first was right around my twentieth birthday.
I was shattered—everything that I had ever believed in or thought was true had turned out to be a lie.
My life was a lie. Life was a lie. No God, no truth, no reason, no hope.
Taking any action was out of the question. It would have meant that it did matter to me. And nothing mattered to me at that place and time.
So I did nothing for awhile, hoping to die but not wanting to do so by my own hand. I slept a lot, but sleep was fitful at best. I barely ate and only did when I was beyond hungry. I pulled a whole baked chicken out of the trash one night at the boarding house I was staying at—I’m not at all sure why someone had thrown it away, but I could smell it and I dug through the trash and stood and ate it there in the dimly lit basement kitchen.
I think was living on ramen, Faygo and Hostess snacks for a week or so, until I noticed a sign in the window at BB’s saying they were hiring dishwashers. I had been washing dishes at the dorm before they kicked me out and fired me at the same time. I was dirty and felt like a loser, I could barely look anyone in the eye, so was surprised when BT hired me for the job on the spot. Maybe he felt sorry for me, maybe I was just sober enough, either way it meant a free meal at least once a day.
A strange thing happened when I starting working at BB’s—I stopped talking, or never really started. I didn’t have anything to say, so I said close to nothing for the first month. BB’s was populated with a mostly bohemian crowd, most of whom were a little older than me. Sarcasm was a skill that they all possessed and practiced on each other with gusto. I didn’t participate and barely acknowledged their existence—I soon became the butt of their jokes and jibes, but I still ignored them.
The biggest thing was that I felt everything was pointless—I just showed up and did the dishes because I wanted to eat. Effort of any kind was really useless, since life itself was meaningless, a series of happy accidents that somehow spit us all out into the universe. Desiring, wanting, achieving—it was all pointless, so I didn’t even try. Some of the things that went on in the kitchen were hilarious so I couldn’t help but smile or laugh, but for the most part I was stuck in my own head, closed off to the outside.
I was reading a lot of mystical Buddhist literature at the time, each new book held the possibility of answers to the big questions, offered a possible way out of my conundrum. The hallucinogenics didn’t help, however, especially when I was at work. I finally gave up on all of it, writing all of it off as “brain candy,” amusing but ultimately pointless. Like a dog chasing its tail, until it finally realizes that the tail is his own, I took the deep esoteric teachings as a kind of joke—the answer was simply, “Live!”
So I started living, a little bit at a time, but I couldn’t live for myself, so I started living for Janette Griffith. It was a cop out in a way, but I wanted what she had—good grades, a good family and a sense of purpose that was missing in my own life. I wish I hadn’t latched onto Janette—it wasn’t fair to her and wasn’t beneficial to me either. My happiness became dependent upon her, or co-dependent really. Instead of forging my own path, growing and learning, I had created a new cocoon.
I was shattered—everything that I had ever believed in or thought was true had turned out to be a lie.
My life was a lie. Life was a lie. No God, no truth, no reason, no hope.
Taking any action was out of the question. It would have meant that it did matter to me. And nothing mattered to me at that place and time.
So I did nothing for awhile, hoping to die but not wanting to do so by my own hand. I slept a lot, but sleep was fitful at best. I barely ate and only did when I was beyond hungry. I pulled a whole baked chicken out of the trash one night at the boarding house I was staying at—I’m not at all sure why someone had thrown it away, but I could smell it and I dug through the trash and stood and ate it there in the dimly lit basement kitchen.
I think was living on ramen, Faygo and Hostess snacks for a week or so, until I noticed a sign in the window at BB’s saying they were hiring dishwashers. I had been washing dishes at the dorm before they kicked me out and fired me at the same time. I was dirty and felt like a loser, I could barely look anyone in the eye, so was surprised when BT hired me for the job on the spot. Maybe he felt sorry for me, maybe I was just sober enough, either way it meant a free meal at least once a day.
A strange thing happened when I starting working at BB’s—I stopped talking, or never really started. I didn’t have anything to say, so I said close to nothing for the first month. BB’s was populated with a mostly bohemian crowd, most of whom were a little older than me. Sarcasm was a skill that they all possessed and practiced on each other with gusto. I didn’t participate and barely acknowledged their existence—I soon became the butt of their jokes and jibes, but I still ignored them.
The biggest thing was that I felt everything was pointless—I just showed up and did the dishes because I wanted to eat. Effort of any kind was really useless, since life itself was meaningless, a series of happy accidents that somehow spit us all out into the universe. Desiring, wanting, achieving—it was all pointless, so I didn’t even try. Some of the things that went on in the kitchen were hilarious so I couldn’t help but smile or laugh, but for the most part I was stuck in my own head, closed off to the outside.
I was reading a lot of mystical Buddhist literature at the time, each new book held the possibility of answers to the big questions, offered a possible way out of my conundrum. The hallucinogenics didn’t help, however, especially when I was at work. I finally gave up on all of it, writing all of it off as “brain candy,” amusing but ultimately pointless. Like a dog chasing its tail, until it finally realizes that the tail is his own, I took the deep esoteric teachings as a kind of joke—the answer was simply, “Live!”
So I started living, a little bit at a time, but I couldn’t live for myself, so I started living for Janette Griffith. It was a cop out in a way, but I wanted what she had—good grades, a good family and a sense of purpose that was missing in my own life. I wish I hadn’t latched onto Janette—it wasn’t fair to her and wasn’t beneficial to me either. My happiness became dependent upon her, or co-dependent really. Instead of forging my own path, growing and learning, I had created a new cocoon.
bigger threat
I was sitting in front of a brand new therapist, my fifth overall. I had two while I was in high school and two while at university and now another to assuage everyone’s concern.
Actually, that was the reason for all the other therapists before this one when I really think about it. I was laying out the basic story for her, where I’m from, where I’ve been, all the usual stuff. What had brought me there to her. Trying to deal with my anger and control issues.
I really liked going to the first one, but it had nothing to do with the therapist. The whole process was still new and a little exciting in an otherwise normal and boring adolescence. It was also right across the road from Country Day School, in the swank suburb of Birmingham—we had really good insurance at the time. I would stop off at record stores in Royal Oak or Ferndale to look for Punk Rock tapes. Getting out of school early was also a plus as well. The drive home through rush hour traffic in my 1976 Ford Econoline, dubbed “the blue coffin” by me, wasn’t so fun however.
I couldn’t help but stare at my new therapist’s painted toenails, though. I wasn’t overly aware of having a foot fetish, but I just couldn’t keep my eyes off of them. I’d make eye contact from time to time or look out the window. She’d nod and smile, sometimes ask a question or male a statement, but it was the same old game as before. Trying to convince her that I wasn’t crazy. I had stopped trying to convince myself of that years ago.
The hospital wouldn’t release me until I had made an appointment with a local therapist/psychiatrist, so I had found the closest one I could. The best thing about the place was the Russian receptionist—Svetlana or Tatiana or something. Strong eastern European features and these piercing catlike eyes. She probably figured I was there because I was just another crazy guy as well. The hospital stay had been involuntary, per some policy or law that I wasn’t previously aware of. I would’ve promised just about anything go get out of there.
The details are a little hazy, thanks to several Irish car bombs and about twelve beers. But I woke up at the hospital and I was having a hard time separating what I had dreamt and what had actually happened. They told me that I had a seizure and had started foaming at the mouth, so they rushed me to the emergency room. Something about a bad reaction with my medication or other. The worse was when I finally made it to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror—I looked like I had seen a ghost. My eyebrows were arched and my eyes looked crazy, scared and just weird. It was a look of abject terror.
Ghosts and phantom spirits don’t scare me, mostly because I don’t think they exist, most of my nightmares are rooted in everyday reality. Bits and pieces of my life skewed and skewered via a dream state are far more frightening than anything the paranormal could throw at me. I also walked through the woods of northern Ontario, the urban wastes of Detroit and everywhere in between and always knew that the living were a much bigger threat than the dead could ever be.
Actually, that was the reason for all the other therapists before this one when I really think about it. I was laying out the basic story for her, where I’m from, where I’ve been, all the usual stuff. What had brought me there to her. Trying to deal with my anger and control issues.
I really liked going to the first one, but it had nothing to do with the therapist. The whole process was still new and a little exciting in an otherwise normal and boring adolescence. It was also right across the road from Country Day School, in the swank suburb of Birmingham—we had really good insurance at the time. I would stop off at record stores in Royal Oak or Ferndale to look for Punk Rock tapes. Getting out of school early was also a plus as well. The drive home through rush hour traffic in my 1976 Ford Econoline, dubbed “the blue coffin” by me, wasn’t so fun however.
I couldn’t help but stare at my new therapist’s painted toenails, though. I wasn’t overly aware of having a foot fetish, but I just couldn’t keep my eyes off of them. I’d make eye contact from time to time or look out the window. She’d nod and smile, sometimes ask a question or male a statement, but it was the same old game as before. Trying to convince her that I wasn’t crazy. I had stopped trying to convince myself of that years ago.
The hospital wouldn’t release me until I had made an appointment with a local therapist/psychiatrist, so I had found the closest one I could. The best thing about the place was the Russian receptionist—Svetlana or Tatiana or something. Strong eastern European features and these piercing catlike eyes. She probably figured I was there because I was just another crazy guy as well. The hospital stay had been involuntary, per some policy or law that I wasn’t previously aware of. I would’ve promised just about anything go get out of there.
The details are a little hazy, thanks to several Irish car bombs and about twelve beers. But I woke up at the hospital and I was having a hard time separating what I had dreamt and what had actually happened. They told me that I had a seizure and had started foaming at the mouth, so they rushed me to the emergency room. Something about a bad reaction with my medication or other. The worse was when I finally made it to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror—I looked like I had seen a ghost. My eyebrows were arched and my eyes looked crazy, scared and just weird. It was a look of abject terror.
Ghosts and phantom spirits don’t scare me, mostly because I don’t think they exist, most of my nightmares are rooted in everyday reality. Bits and pieces of my life skewed and skewered via a dream state are far more frightening than anything the paranormal could throw at me. I also walked through the woods of northern Ontario, the urban wastes of Detroit and everywhere in between and always knew that the living were a much bigger threat than the dead could ever be.
...
Push, push, glide. Push, push, glide.
Floating over the concrete, wheels clicking and clacking underneath my
board as I went over the sidewalk cracks, no place to go, nothing to do.
I'd check out my reflection in the store windows on Grand River
Avenue as I passed, a skinny kid in an old worn out brown leather
jacket, blue flannel shirt flapping in the breeze, tied to my waist. My
modified Mohawk was hiding beneath a painter's cap with the bill
flipped up. Wild black and white print shorts that went down to my
shins and a Punk Rock t-shirt peeking out from behind the
several-sizes-too big brown leather my dad had bought in Spain during
the late 60's.
That jacket would probably fit perfectly now. The skinny kid in the
store windows is twenty years older, balder and thicker through the
shoulders and abdomen. I still have that skateboard sitting in my
garage, partially torn apart—the kingpin bushing so rusted that it
refuses to budge. The green Chris Miller board splintered and cracked,
remnants of stickers on the bottom and band names scribbled in marker on
the grip tape.
I'd stop off at one of the parking garage and sprint up the stairs,
catching my breath as I stared down unto the campus four or five stories
down. Buildings rose up through the trees and the sidewalks and roads
were perfectly lit, extending out in every direction. I'd turn and
smack the board down and start to slalom right to left to try to ward
off speed wobbles as I picked up speed. The first corner would be nice
and easy, but each successive one would come faster and faster. Once in
the parking ramp, levels above and below you, the sound of the wheels
would echo off the walls, sounding like a dull roar, but building as
your speed increased.
By the time I got closer to the bottom, I was arcing and carving from
wall to wall, just to try to keep my speed a little more manageable, but
the bottom levels were usually full of cars. The turns got tighter, the
wheels would bark as I forced a turn, I'd miss the parked cars by a
few inches, building speed and going straight down the last couple of
levels until the ramp finally spit me out onto the street.
I spent countless hours on the board, all alone, crisscrossing the
campus and the city just to the north. Drunk or sober, cold or hot,
just as long as the sidewalk was dry, I'd head out into the night to
try to find myself. Somewhere along the way, I'd forget everything,
just a boy on a board, just the pushing and gliding, nothing else.
Moments of clarity under the campus streetlights, creamy concrete or
slick black asphalt under my wheels, the place seemed deserted as I flew
by in the dead of the night. The back alleys of town smelled of grease,
beer and puke, as I headed north toward the high school. M.A.C. Ave.
was lined on either side with frats and sororities, but they had all
passed out hours before, but the heads would be hanging out in front of
the co-ops, passing a "j" as I rolled past, they'd yell out to me
in the darkness.
I would cruise down Burcham Street's freshly paved goodness, four
empty lanes downhill when you're going eastbound toward Park Lake.
Then Park Lake had two hills, roughly half a mile apart, t-boned by
Burcham at the nadir, one lonely light blinking yellow endlessly. Park
Lake was also a four lane at the time, you could pick either hill and
fly down one and go up the other and turn around and do it all again.
You would see the headlights from cars behind you on the hill in front
of you as they crested and headed down toward you, giving you enough
time to move over into the opposite lanes, but then you would see lights
come over the hill in front of you, so you'd hug the center lane.
Everyone drove that stretch with their brights on, doing about 45 mph,
so it was a little dangerous and stupid to be skating there, but
that's also what made it fun.
So much has changed since then, Burcham no longer stops at Park Lake,
there are two or three whole new subdivisions past there now. Burcham
and Park Lake are both two-lane roads, with a turn lane and bike lanes.
Some traffic engineer for the state had decided that fewer lanes would
reduce speed or traffic volume or something like that. All it actually
did was displace traffic onto other roads in the area and through the
neighborhoods.
And me, I sit maybe a half a mile from that intersection, drinking my
PBR and watching bad television. I've been on campus maybe a
half-dozen times in the last five years. I did start riding my bike to
and from work this summer, so maybe I'll make more frequent forays
onto campus. But that feeling--the clarity of mind,
living-in-the-moment, the absolute joy of just BEING . . . I miss that
more than anything.
I've had my eyes on a new set of Sector 9 wheels—the big fat juicy
longboard ones—I'm gonna slap them on my old fish shape board or
gonna get the biggest OMA board I can get my hands on. I'm gonna
cruise and carve. In the street. At the park. In the bike lane. I
might not bomb Park Lake at night like I used to, that was a little
reckless. But I've got to get my mojo back, gotta take control of my
life back.
I've got the shaved head-cuz-I'm-going-bald thing going on. Got
the salt and pepper goatee cuz I'm too lazy to shave thing. Still buy
Punk Rock t-shirts because the music still speaks to me, even years
later, even after three kids. Still wear my pants and shorts baggy so I
can skate (??). So I might as well skate.
Just to forget everything, just a dude on a board, just the pushing and
gliding, nothing else.
Push, push, glide. Push, push, glide.
Floating over the concrete, wheels clicking and clacking underneath my
board as I went over the sidewalk cracks, no place to go, nothing to do.
I'd check out my reflection in the store windows on Grand River
Avenue as I passed, a skinny kid in an old worn out brown leather
jacket, blue flannel shirt flapping in the breeze, tied to my waist. My
modified Mohawk was hiding beneath a painter's cap with the bill
flipped up. Wild black and white print shorts that went down to my
shins and a Punk Rock t-shirt peeking out from behind the
several-sizes-too big brown leather my dad had bought in Spain during
the late 60's.
That jacket would probably fit perfectly now. The skinny kid in the
store windows is twenty years older, balder and thicker through the
shoulders and abdomen. I still have that skateboard sitting in my
garage, partially torn apart—the kingpin bushing so rusted that it
refuses to budge. The green Chris Miller board splintered and cracked,
remnants of stickers on the bottom and band names scribbled in marker on
the grip tape.
I'd stop off at one of the parking garage and sprint up the stairs,
catching my breath as I stared down unto the campus four or five stories
down. Buildings rose up through the trees and the sidewalks and roads
were perfectly lit, extending out in every direction. I'd turn and
smack the board down and start to slalom right to left to try to ward
off speed wobbles as I picked up speed. The first corner would be nice
and easy, but each successive one would come faster and faster. Once in
the parking ramp, levels above and below you, the sound of the wheels
would echo off the walls, sounding like a dull roar, but building as
your speed increased.
By the time I got closer to the bottom, I was arcing and carving from
wall to wall, just to try to keep my speed a little more manageable, but
the bottom levels were usually full of cars. The turns got tighter, the
wheels would bark as I forced a turn, I'd miss the parked cars by a
few inches, building speed and going straight down the last couple of
levels until the ramp finally spit me out onto the street.
I spent countless hours on the board, all alone, crisscrossing the
campus and the city just to the north. Drunk or sober, cold or hot,
just as long as the sidewalk was dry, I'd head out into the night to
try to find myself. Somewhere along the way, I'd forget everything,
just a boy on a board, just the pushing and gliding, nothing else.
Moments of clarity under the campus streetlights, creamy concrete or
slick black asphalt under my wheels, the place seemed deserted as I flew
by in the dead of the night. The back alleys of town smelled of grease,
beer and puke, as I headed north toward the high school. M.A.C. Ave.
was lined on either side with frats and sororities, but they had all
passed out hours before, but the heads would be hanging out in front of
the co-ops, passing a "j" as I rolled past, they'd yell out to me
in the darkness.
I would cruise down Burcham Street's freshly paved goodness, four
empty lanes downhill when you're going eastbound toward Park Lake.
Then Park Lake had two hills, roughly half a mile apart, t-boned by
Burcham at the nadir, one lonely light blinking yellow endlessly. Park
Lake was also a four lane at the time, you could pick either hill and
fly down one and go up the other and turn around and do it all again.
You would see the headlights from cars behind you on the hill in front
of you as they crested and headed down toward you, giving you enough
time to move over into the opposite lanes, but then you would see lights
come over the hill in front of you, so you'd hug the center lane.
Everyone drove that stretch with their brights on, doing about 45 mph,
so it was a little dangerous and stupid to be skating there, but
that's also what made it fun.
So much has changed since then, Burcham no longer stops at Park Lake,
there are two or three whole new subdivisions past there now. Burcham
and Park Lake are both two-lane roads, with a turn lane and bike lanes.
Some traffic engineer for the state had decided that fewer lanes would
reduce speed or traffic volume or something like that. All it actually
did was displace traffic onto other roads in the area and through the
neighborhoods.
And me, I sit maybe a half a mile from that intersection, drinking my
PBR and watching bad television. I've been on campus maybe a
half-dozen times in the last five years. I did start riding my bike to
and from work this summer, so maybe I'll make more frequent forays
onto campus. But that feeling--the clarity of mind,
living-in-the-moment, the absolute joy of just BEING . . . I miss that
more than anything.
I've had my eyes on a new set of Sector 9 wheels—the big fat juicy
longboard ones—I'm gonna slap them on my old fish shape board or
gonna get the biggest OMA board I can get my hands on. I'm gonna
cruise and carve. In the street. At the park. In the bike lane. I
might not bomb Park Lake at night like I used to, that was a little
reckless. But I've got to get my mojo back, gotta take control of my
life back.
I've got the shaved head-cuz-I'm-going-bald thing going on. Got
the salt and pepper goatee cuz I'm too lazy to shave thing. Still buy
Punk Rock t-shirts because the music still speaks to me, even years
later, even after three kids. Still wear my pants and shorts baggy so I
can skate (??). So I might as well skate.
Just to forget everything, just a dude on a board, just the pushing and
gliding, nothing else.
Push, push, glide. Push, push, glide.
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