PHOSPHORIMENTAL

I grew up with this drive…and sometimes it was a band (skynrd, molly hatchet, journey, REO, 38 special, Dead, Rush, YES)…it was an event, fast ride, beer cans, woods, a camaro…a house party, bon fire, south jersey shore and wooded county highways from the farms to the coast…springsteen and southside johnny…slipping down the crevice between baby boomers and xgeneration.  Unconcerned, I kicked a discarded beer can whose consumer I’d disdain for ever throwing it out to begin with…an environmentalist, with a dead aim between a Genesee beer bottle launched at a yield sign somewhere along a straight road through jersey corn fields.  I hated then the money that I wish I had now…that without, compels me to reminisce.  I loathed killing then, as I took up arms to defend my country against other parents; I swore I’d shoot another man and thank God that I never had to pull that trigger to defend my country’s right be what others strive to be.
 
I wasn’t worried as I searched everywhere…I had no idea of the mistakes I’d make.  I was 12 when I wrote about always searching but never trying to find.  I saw beautiful girls and I tried to choreograph my life and its characters so that somehow, fate would land one in my arms…I fantasized of great athletic achievements…I never figured that I’d bring two beautiful children into this world through an act that I never trained for, have no skill in, and that sometimes shames me.  God sees my spiraling life and for love of his chorus of angels, He shed a tear and transcended the most magical of imagination when my children burst into the light of our closest star.  And they too will fail beautifully and be in the eyes of God when He gives life again into the world…I am in awe of my children, because in all my life, it will be the greatest creation of God that I’ll ever witness, until maybe I stand before His angels.
 
If I’d only known for sure where you were…I remember being that adolescent drinking just one more beer thinking it was necessary…either to swing that spotlight on the delayed frame movie strip of my life, or get me just a little bit higher.  I never knew there was a worm at the bottom of the bottle…I didn’t realize what I would remember about those stolen beers was the thin tinny taste of the aluminum can.  Meanwhile, you leaked into my heart;  keeping me from a tragic dosage of wanting too much.
 
I didn’t know the writing would get better, and mean less.  You were dancing, draped in flowing terry cloth on the other side of a lonely door hidden in the shadows of the corners of my cavernous mind.  I’m not sure how I became half of who you are to me; who I am to you, considering the garden stone walls between us.  Hewn rock, hoisted by Herculean men, stacked, thud into the rich soil…seared with moss, a cancer of roots.  What gave us, you and me…these time encrusted borders so thick that we never heard each other scratching at the surface of the great divide.  A divide that now paves the ground we tread…our dance floor.
 
I tripped and feared being alone; I fell into the dull pattern of searching for a face with the dream.  And I forgot about the dream, but it didn’t forget me.  I listened to the words I thought were meaning in the songs I never thought would come…and the music keeps playing and there is no end to the melody, no loose string in the harmony, yet the end is found in every new beginning.
 
I just know that I failed in everything I set out to do alone and had I not, I’d have never understood.  I stand hear before you, wounded, faulted, jeered, less than perfect from all its angles…and I realize the miracle that cements all this together is that I indeed stand here before you. And all you want me to do is love the life I’m never expecting…I hope the unexpected, finds you.

tis nothing if not heard

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…still smelling like Athit, I found myself awakening in first class next to the recluse, Jim Harrison.

Jim Harrison was planetary from the moment I saw him. He is a thick and somewhat round man, dense enough to have his own gravitational pull and orbiting moons. From the corner of my eye, I can make out that unruly salt and pepper hair, blown back in disarray like Tea tree branches on Rottnest Island off Perth. Add to that a thicket of mustache, with different shaped teeth jutting down, like tombstones out of bear grass. He needs some grooming and some detangling. His eyes remind me of stout cement nails, beset in a tan round face. It’s leather and creases are like that of an old fashion catchers mit. In his eyes are little hematite beads, lens caps on film projectors rolling polyester film from the early 60’s. His left eye roams blindly, while his right tries to console a childhood injury that left him sightless in that one. His clothing this day is reminiscent of that which you’d find hanging wearily in a dark storage closet. His light brown T-shirt is a bit too small stretched over a hemisphere of abdomen. Over that he sports a rust colored and distressed suede jacket, with gnawed fringes on the sleeves as I recall; or so I seem to imagine. I’ll bet that in his pockets are a couple of old well pressed diner receipts, a turnpike ticket, and crinkled cellophane candy wrapper from, like, 1970.

Sitting beside him, I can hear the pitter pat of a mouse running on a squeaky toy Ferris wheel turning in his mind. From drink or lost years, he slurs slightly through stories about Jack Nicholson and that genre of people (Hunter Thompson, Dennis Hopper, Jimmy Buffett, and a few others.) He speaks with a bit of disgust about the Hollywood scene; having just returned geographically and mentally from a movie director’s office in LA, says that there is no money in being an author, but screenwriting, well there’s a living… Aspiring screenwriters are coming out of the knotty woodwork, with lolling tongues and pointy pencils (that’s not exactly what he said, but so I like to imagine it). I don’t get the feeling he’ll be putting out another book – but I hope to see some poetry.

What would I say to Jack Nicholson, who I ran into walking along the bay in San Diego years later? About this chance meeting with his friend Jim Harrison? “Hey Jack, I went out for barbeque with your friend Jim Harrison when he came through Tucson…he told me what a fucking nut you are.” When I ran by Jack that sunny day, I just said “hi Jack,” which seemed to startle him…he lifted his head in bewilderment and tried to spot me from under his shades.

Jim Harrison and I drank booze and made up a story for the flight attendant…you see, he was an underwear model and I was his agent…this went on for the entire flight. He disappeared while disembarking – ending up somewhere in Patagonia for a retreat. That day, I went home and Googled Jim Harrison. And scanned excerpts from his book, “Legends of the Fall”…and it made me think about Thaksin and Athit and Nicholson…

tis nothing if not heard

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