Pivotal Reverberations

Wanted to be famous, but it's rough in the provinces. The days are short and cold. And dark.

I'm staying with my cousin in a house all to ourselves. He's still in high school. So I drive him to basketball practice where the other guys re-enact scenes in a midwinter parking lot from my own high school days. Ratty cars with salt stains and blurry bass-amped speakers, with resigned upperclassmen disembarking and walking across the parallel parked tundras like ex-convicts in a state standardized skid row. Funny how fast the years go by, but I'm not yet old enough for the really deep-seated regret. Yet.

"Who's The Masked Man?" he asked me, looking through my solemn neglected laptop. I've been out of the country for half a year. He's 14 and he seems to swivel between knowing absolutely nothing and being sublimely hip. Try letting your hair down emostyle. Don't wear that blue scarf with your corduroys. Hell to the Yeah. Anyway, he asked about DMM. "Is he, like, something your friends do?"

Who was That Masked Man? Don't know how to answer.

"Well I used to draw him in high school," I say.

The neighbor spits over to ask what I'm doing with my life. How long ya stayin'? Boy getchurselfa job. That sort of thing.
I'm a real novelty item because in this town they've got one old beatnik and a few years ago their first homeless person. Both eccentrics know their place and don't ever make a scene.
"They say Roger's parents have loads a money but he don' take any of it. Likes spending time at the library, sleepin out behind the grocery store. I go in 'ere evermornin round 5 for the bread delivery and there he is, wrapped in a blanket and gone. But that's how he wants to live his life." As if I needed an explanation.
"Yeah," says I, "some people need their own way to fit in." I feel like I'm talking down to a forty year old, but really I'm only letting down myself.

Coming to an understanding with one homeless guy isn't enough for me. I want to know them all. I want to experience the whiskey crawl of a lifetime and chase the spiral staircase screwdriver to heaven- really screw myself up. Shun affection with force and disappear into sunsets and emberous bonfire nights of the starfuck eternity. I recently went to the ends of the earth and ran into holy men. Weirdos and freaks. Dysfunctional ascetics and heavy-handed hippies.
How to carry what they taught into a room full of boozed-up yokels (ye olde friends) this weekend, old Masky expected to Provide and Conquer, alls he wants to do is curl up & howl wolf mantras at the resplendant moon?

Took this picture a week ago of a river where a sign had been painted on rock. "SWIMMING IS DANGER" it said. In classic fashion I can never hear the important advice: Go to College, Get A Job, Don't Drive into That Tree--- but instructional signs of little practical implication never fail to resonant deeply. Swimming is Danger. Of course. Don't go off the deep end. This is life man. This is the safe life. Swimming is Danger.

So I told Ben. My friend Ben. "I wrote three poems today Ben," I said, proud of myself. Ben, being a wise man, was unfamiliar with pride. He frowned.

"I didn't write any."

"Well that's okay," I said, "your whole life is a poem. You're living the poems." His lamentation relieved we walked on, and came upon the river after a time, where Ben stood and micturated for a moment and then made a sudden decision.

"Hold my things," he commanded, already confidently striding away. At the water's edge he stripped down, dove in brazenly, and swam. Happy wet laps. He came back up minutes later. Clean and refreshed, talking about God and living in a song I, at that moment, wished I could sing too.

There's so much more to learn, and having come so far I wish I could share a little and be famous. But the trees here are dead and the night falls fast around blurred edges. The dirty darks blend with snowy white and everything exudes cold safe gray. Grey, the color of America. Swimming is Danger.

My cousin is afraid to make a layup when he sees me standing in the gym door watching him, not knowing that I'm seeing him with impartial eyes that have weighed the world. I'm just another cousin in this town. Nothing special. Just a shivering guy trying out emo hairstyle options, a mask in my corduroy pocket.