Perpetual Notion

I biked home tonight
me in my bundles
the street was shared with every degree of readiness
I, ready for cold
the girl in a t shirt
ready for something else
I found warmth
in thoughts of natural selection
let the stupid be stupid
let the stupid die
long live the smart
I felt a chill
me with coffee
going home to write
her with vodka
to do what she will do
I make the words of today
she, the generation of tomorrow
what does nature say to that
does stupid win?

I am not disposed to talking much about this, nor even to think much on it. Though today is an anniversary, and I do feel strongly that remembrance is the true afterlife. And as such, I can grant her that.

Twenty years ago this day, I was picked up from Stonebridge Elementary by my dad as any other day. We stopped over at Grandma’s house to pick up my sister, Greta May. Pulling around the curve of the driveway we could see that there was an ambulance pulled up to the house. Nether of us spoke, but each of us was thinking the same thing, that something happened to Grandma.

Entering the house, I was pulled aside by my older cousin Shawna. She was probably like ten, but that was older. We always stayed at Grandma’s house on sick days, I think that is what she was doing. Shawna told me how she had gone upstairs to check on my sleeping sister, and how Greta had been turning colors, turning blue. The ambulance had arrived just before we did. Even then that had seemed like a heavy burdened discovery for a ten year old, my cousin.

That much of the day remains clear. I know that my folks went to the hospital with Greta. I went with an uncle to pick up Shawna’s brother, my cousin and best friend, Jakob. The family was converging at the hospital and the school bus was going to drop him off at an empty house, so we went to collect him. My sister was blue in the hospital, I wanted to go see Jakob. He was after all, my best friend. I remember waiting for the bus.

I think it was our living room later that evening, where my parents taught me one of my first acronyms, SIDS. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is what killed my sister. It really did not seem to explain much. A baby just dies. Many things are a mystery to a six year old child, but above all is the death of his five month old kid sister.

Twenty years have harvested a disconnect, to where the memory is more fact and less emotive. I have gone a great stretch in which I have neither shown nor experienced any emotional response to this loss. It was out of respect that I write of her today. Yet, somehow in the process of finding my words I have found something else. I have given a voice to feelings I thought dead and faded. To living memory, alive and well.

A boy, any boy. Could even be a man. He comes home from the coffee shop buzzed on his bean juice and needing to kill some time while sleep catches up to him. Okay, read a book. Plopped down in chair, pulling from a water bottle, plucking peanuts from a 5lb sack. Working on the book, some novel of space travel, but making more progress on the nuts. Focused as best as possible on the text, one hand maintains the book while the other cracks shells and dumps content into the mouth, and empties to a lap placed bowl.

Perhaps it is a break in the story, or maybe a notice of something else, but the eyes leave the book to survey the most recent shell. Occupied by the customary two nuts, the shell is also home to one, two, nope… three maggots. Wow, is there a prize for such a discovery? Likely not. More probable is an instantaneous curiosity toward a bowl of empty shells. Only a few pages into the book, but a couple of handfuls into the bag, are these the first maggots? Please be the first maggots. The sack goes in the garbage and queries go in the head.

And as all good stories need a moral… Be weary of midnight snacking.

Religion is poetry. I just spent a portion of my Friday afternoon speaking with some representatives from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons). Listening to them speak of how their god speaks to them, watching their eyes glow, it was lovely. Their’s is not my path, though I could almost enjoy it vicariously through their energy.

They discussed their faith and their encounter with it. The idea seemed abstract. You get it, or you do not. When it grabs you, it passes all other understanding and goes straight for the heart. They spoke in metaphor of passion and exhilaration and the planting of healthy seeds.

They handled their faith as though it were poetry. But they would not see themselves as writers or artists. It is just how they live, not something separate to be scribbled in a book or read through a microphone. The poetry is an external label. A name given to an abstraction.

I enjoy poetry, but they spoke in a prose unknown to me. I felt on the outside. Understanding that what they said was heartfelt, but going no further into meaning. I was no longer an artist myself, but a simple man wandering into a gallery. Yes that is nice art, but I do not know much about that. Their’s is a “high art” that I am too much the layperson to comprehend. I can only note that it is pretty.

The experience was a lovely one, to see three poets in their ties, out walking about. They gave me a little book, though it does no justice to the words and ideas they had shared with me. There is no parchment suitable to hold such things as they spoke.

I do not understand their poems,
though I know they do exist.

They do not call themselves poets,
though they know He does exist.

The other day I smirked. I do this occasionally when reason dictates. It is a natural reaction to the situation I find myself in. Usually not thought out, but more impromptu like a laugh. I do this expression around other people. It is an exchange that is telling without speaking. Though context may change, I usually take it to suggest some greater meaning, added humor, a facial acknowledgement that when seen by the other person, amplifies the content of the interaction.

The problem is, I smirk on the wrong side. In the last month I have begun to notice myself smirking on the side of my face opposite that of what is facing the other individual. A smirk is a quick moment and I am not about to readjust my face or stance just to flicker what should be so natural. Yet, I feel as if some humor is being lost. The joke is being setup, but I shoot the punch line into thin air.

Such misfires, though insignificant, get me to thinking about the larger state of humor. My humor. If I am falling short at something so simple as a lip twitch, then where else may I be doing the same? And not just physical, but verbal and mental. Could this be a telltale sign that my humor in general might just be a bit off? The things that I think, say, and do are not all hitting their marks in my social interaction. Communication breakdown.

I guess this just leaves me with the shotgun method. I shoot all I have in your general direction in hopes that a few things will penetrate. This is not so bleak as to suppose that we are operating on separate levels. I may just have to accept that a few gems may slide by on occasion. Such is your loss.

This last Saturday I retreated from the heat to the cool enticements of an air conditioned theatre. I saw Transformers…

There was a moment during the Transformers movie where I felt a kinship to my childhood of two decades past. I fused that space of then and now in tears as I watched that semi first transform into Optimus Prime. My body quaked in the tingles of expectance as the truck rolled up. And as the robot came out of his disguise, I too came out. Sitting in the theatre, I there and then felt my eyes wetting as I began to cry. I did not fight it back, but just accepted the outburst as proper.

Reliving a moment of my childhood far superior to how it originally went. A memory from the past made more perfect through clarity and quality. I saw it now not just as a twenty-six year old, nor a four year old, but as both and with new eyes. For any questions or concerns his modernized look could arise, the sound of his voice gave all the necessary reassurance. That voice is a father to me, and to many other children of the Eighties. Optimus Prime could tell me anything, and I would hear it.

I am not easy to tears, though such an event does happen. More often for the worse reasons, but a good one (a happy cry) may slide in on rare occasion. Rare, in that the degree of emotion must be quite severe to go beyond a smile, a laugh, and even the chills. The chills are customarily my benchmark for cinematic excitement, though I guess now I can go further.

I am at a loss to express the magical fusion between two eras of my life. For one moment I was a captivated child absorbing every sensation in the room indiscriminately as well as a reasoning adult awed at the technical achievement and execution playing out before me. We stride from our youth never to regain such innocence or such a beautiful account of the world. Memories can be sharp, but never with same emotive thrust of our earlier years. For one minute on a Saturday afternoon I was able to experience a childhood memory as even better than it originally was.

Quite possibly my favorite room in any house. I have always been quite at home in the bathroom. I was sitting there one afternoon and trying to figure when this interest began. I though back to my youth when my cousin and I would play in the bathroom at either my family’s home, his, or grandma’s. We would hover around the sink and mix our potions created from all the fine bottles, slimes, and powders in the cabinets below. Not concerned with how much it cost or what it could do to our skin, we filled everything we spotted into our test tube. With so much mysterious and wonderful plunder, it was fortunate that we had such a large test tube. And it looked remarkably like a family drinking water glass, hmm. Everyday was spent on the verge of a major breakthrough in science.

Any small room makes a great clubhouse. Big spaces get boring. But put me in a small room and it can become anything. The bathroom is the dominant small room. It could be a submarine or a tree fort or perhaps the wreckage of a plane on a deserted island. That one was always a favorite. It is such an isolated space, the rest of the house disappears. I could keep my mind within the game and be unconcerned with life beyond the wall. What the imagination could do to the common bathroom was unmatched.

A personal sanctuary. Anyone can walk into your bedroom. But that bathroom, under your control, is yours and yours alone. When I lost my imagination but gained my curiosity, I still enjoyed the bathroom. This was not so much about puberty as it was just having my own time. The walls remained a comforting blockade to the outside. Instead of daydreams, I could focus on clear thinking. I did not go to the bathroom because I had to think, thinking just happened to be a byproduct of going to the bathroom. Anywhere else in the home, school, or work I could always find a distraction. I am a very distracted person. The bathroom is where serious thinking takes place. I am not in conversation, there is no television or computer, no books, photographs, nothing. Nothing except for toilet paper and shampoo. Maybe once I will read the ingredients to shampoo. But once is enough. Philosophy, theology, literature, sociology, great breakthroughs in thought happen in the bathroom. If I could harness the focus native to the bathroom for daily practice, I would be a very diligent man.

Two is a crowd. Not since play dates with my cousin, has the bathroom been hospitable to more than one. Of course there is space for multiple people in these public restrooms, but it is my personal space. Does not matter if you got there first, you are in my space. With these feelings the bathroom becomes taboo. Men do not talk, and if they do, barely. They do not make eye contact, and if they do, they keep their eyes high. Ceiling is a good target, the floor if you can commit to it. This quiet dance around each other helps to maintain the illusion of personal sanctuary. It is this illusion I have grown a desire to break. In the last few years I have become interested in the awkward social dynamic of men in the bathroom. Certain folks are oblivious to this: small kids and the elderly. But for the rest, those in their prime, we just feel awkward. I like to watch this, I want to prod this, and to investigate. I feel increasingly compelled to make conversations, and sometimes I do. On occasion it works, other times people get weirded out. But usually I do not act. I think about it, and I want to, but it is so easy not to.

My New Year’s resolution was close to being a mandate that I must, when encountering another person in the restroom, always make conversation. I decided that ”always” could come back to bite my butt. It will remain instead, a barrier that I will pick at, on occasion, when I can get up the guff. But it is fun. And someday, maybe, the restroom will become the new break room or lounge area. It is at that point that I will regret my social course and long for my lost sanctuary.