Trying

I'm trying to
think of something sweet
to say to you,
but I don't remember the ABCs.

I'm trying to
carry the weight of the world
for you,
but it brings me to my knees.

I'm trying to
hold your hand in the snow,
but all I can feel
is the palm of your glove.

I'm trying to
look at the photos you send,
but I can't seem to find your smile.

I'm looking over
all the letters you send,
but I can't read between the lines.

I'm trying to
think of something better than today,
but it seems too far away.

Pulitzer My Finger

The other day I got the urge to write a memoir. I sat on the couch and thought about what I'd write. I haven't been to rehab; I wasn't sexually molested as a child; after 30 years, my parents are still married; so, I can't write about that. When I grow up I want to be a; police investigator, writer, author, prolific cartoon voice; cereal-box model; fashion victim; movie of the week; one-hit wonder; junkie; spiritual junkie; heart-throb; bus driver; blind painter; lip-reader; movie-goer...

It's pretty clear that I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm your priest who has turrets-syndrome, every blessing is followed by a curse. But this isn't about me, it's about what I'm going to write about me. This is a memoir, though we can bend the rules for the sake of fiction. Don't get me wrong, I'm not out to self-immolate on the lawn of James Frey's house, I just want to create a piece of art.

I want to tell you about the worst night of my life. When I was staring a twelve story fall in the face, but I spat into the night and laughed while I did. I was unemployed, no money, no prayers for rain, lost, random. That's how I lived my life. I read until I started repeating the same sentence over and over again, out loud, until the words lost all meaning. I do that with names too. I spent a lot of time sitting on the floor. Reading books, watching movies, playing guitar, writing poetry, listening to the static sound of nothing that surrounds my apartment, and lives in it like a silent roommate.

I wanted to be back following her down the road. The setting sun going down on us as we laughed, and held eachother, felt pulses, relaxed, opened our eyes as wide as the galaxy so I could really see who she was. My camera still remembers when it caught her being human. She put the makeup down, sex still in her hair, and before she left the room, she looked over her shoulder and smiled at me. As she did, her fingers pushed her hair aside, revealing the most beautiful delicate I've ever seen. A light dusting of snow that would blow away any second if you moved. So I froze, I didn't want to look away, yet it was burning my eyes just to behold. I wasn't made for this moment, when she would look to me for my love and I would release it through my eyes leaving trials down my face so she could see that my love was a more than a trickling spring a heat-wave could just evaporate. I need her again. When I fall asleep I want to know she's there counting my breaths. And I can feel her body twitch, and I'd be there in the morning to watch her open her eyes.

This is what I would have in my memoir. But I wouldn't use drugs, NO. I wouldn't want her to know that the only thing I could do to forget about her was to try and erase her image from my brian. To rub it out at the expense of what else I stood to lose in the process. Wake-up, burn. Lunch, burn. Movie, burn. Dinner, burn. Homework, burn. Poetry, burn. I burned out and felt like the stuff that was crusting the ash-tray.

I wouldn't replay this story with funnier sounding words. It won't mean the same.

Our World is Blurry to the Fish

And now it's happened, we don't know why, we can't look back, we can't let go. Things we want to do now seem like a memory, a distant spot on the horizon that we cannot touch.  We can fly across the date line and admire the curve of earth, but we cannot go back. The things we used to dream about have turned into a question mark that floats between us as we sleep. We can turn off the bedside light, roll over and hug the pillow, but our nightmares will surface on the other side. 

What can I say to your naked back, that I can't say to your eyes.  In my head I've forgotten how they sparkle and burn like rebel stars on vacation from the galaxy. Your sky, my sky, three moons over the deserted island in the middle of a crystal sea. Our world is blurry to the fish. They are introduced to it as they flop around trying to free themselves from their metal-lined fish hook dungeon. The instruments of torture we use to feed our children.  

I remember nights when the earth stunk of human ignorance.  The moon tried desperately to soak up what the sun couldn't burn away. We are drowning in rivers of concrete, incarcerated in phallic towers threatening to collapse. It's hard to learn about cooperation and survival in a world were the basic instinct is kill to stay in the game. We don't look in the rearview mirror because objects are as big as they appear. 

This history, this forgotten story, this rhyme without a chorus, this struggle to repair a broken quilt that we've ripped apart with our hands, cannot happen because the sweat from our skin and blood from our mouths have made it poisonous to touch. A flesh eating virus will leave you naked to the bones, and strangers will turn away and shrug their shoulders saying you didn't have the guts. And you still don't know what you're made of. 

Soon, our life stories will be written on gravestones that kills any flower placed underneath. Our last lay will be a dare-haunt for drunken distant coeds hot for a chill. You can't follow the footsteps to here because the dirt road of our entrails will be paved over by eye-candy arsenic draped over plastic people in strip-malls. 

I was walking down the street when I saw a homeless man smiling. 

Why are you smiling? 

I am free. 

Doesn't it rain on you at night? 

Only when it rains. 

 

 

  

Sean Connery Sings Love Songs

We left the house early in the morning. Heavy curtains of fog obscured my view of the other side of the street. In the distance, I could hear the hum of early morning traffic. Sharp rays of sunshine burned my pupils, too slow to react to the brightness of the day's new dawn. We took cameras, a lens bag, and some cigarettes, putting them in the trunk before starting the car.

The car meandered through narrow streets that more closely resembled back-alleys. There was hardly room for one car on the road, when another was approaching head-on, it felt like you were locked into a game of chicken. Not that the sidewalks were any safer; people ride their bikes on the sidewalk all the time here, and try to fuck with you by coming too close. You try to regain your composure, as they laugh it off on their way to school.

Once, during the first few months of my friends arrival in Japan, he was walking one way while three teenage boys, who were riding their bikes and were approaching him head-on. He had made up his mind that we wasn't going to get out of the way this time, and right as the middle boy's bike approached, he dropped his shoulder and sent the kid flying.

"I don't really know where I'm going," my friend admitted with a sheepish grin, as we traded directions and asphalt roads for dirt. "So if we get lost, we may have to ask for help," he added.

"I thought you didn't speak Japanese very well?" I replied.

"I don't." he answered.

I lit a cigarette and rolled the window down just enough to let the smoke escape into the air. "Your Japanese sounded good at class the other day," I said, trying to encourage him.

"Trust me, it isn't. In order to read the paper here, I need to know 2000 Kenji symbols - I only know about 300."

"I guess you'll have to watch tv and let the host read you the paper." I joked.

"It makes no sense to me." he added.

Our car continued through sections of specifically laid out rice fields, which had nothing to show for themselves save the dried, crusted leftovers of the fall harvest. The air was still cool. As we made our way to the foothills of the mountains, the sun played coy with the earth, shyly retreating behind the clouds, and out again, casting curious shadows on the trees in the distance. The farther and farther we moved away from the city, the only people we saw were the occasional tree-trimmer, or farmer.

Along the highway, a tree bearing round fruit shaped like Christmas tree bulbs and coloured orange, gently swayed in the breeze.

"What type of fruit is that?" I asked my friend.

"Ah, I think they're called a persimmon, or something. I don't like them, so I'm not really sure." he answered. "Meg likes them though, try it when we get back."

"Maybe I'll pick one from a tree while we walk." ---

"Can you look at this map. We have to find highway 643, and I don't see it." he interrupted, handing me the folded piece of paper.

"Where are we?" I asked.

He ran his hand over the map, but had to return them to the wheel after the car began to veer off of the road. "Gimme a sec." he barked. Up ahead he noticed a gas station. "I'm going to pull over, gas is cheap today."

"Oil fell to $65 a barrel yesterday," I added. "Cheap gas all over the place."

"Well, it's never really that cheap here because most of it comes from elsewhere." he said. "But, it's cheaper than it has been, so I'll take it."

"That's why I don't have a car," I offered. "Too much money right now. Then again, so is a Happy Meal."

He filled the car as I went into the store to get some hiking essentials - chocolate bars and more cigarettes. I, apparently, had made a pact with myself that while I was on vacation, I would act as if my better judgment was as well. Not that cigarettes here were stronger or anything. The Marlboro Lights I smoked were like smoking a straw. This was the only sign of my stress. Let's be honest, it was either smoke, take out a city block with a big-hairy weapon, or go skydiving with a holey parachute... I chose smoking. Stress makes you feel like the world is limiting your options.

"We need a new soundtrack," my friend said as he plopped himself back down behind the steering wheel.

"Find that Rob Thomas song," I suggested.

He opened the console between us and carelessly rummaged through an assortment of mini-disks. "Maroon 5," he said, before throwing it off the glass of the rear window.

"You're not a fan I take it," I inquired rhetorically.

"It's like every video of theirs is one of his wet-dreams played out." he said.

"Sounds messy." I added.

He popped in a clear disk and began hitting the search button. One, two, three, four; and slowly, the sound of guitar and piano accompaniment filled the car. The voice came next.

It's never easy and you'll never know. What leaves you crying is what makes you whole. There ain't nobody who can show you how to find the surface when you're underground.

"That's a great lyric." he said, as he turned up the dial.

"Appropriate." I said, as I opened a fresh pack of cigarettes.

"That's why you're over here man, to forget about things."

"Feels more like I'm delaying them, than forgetting. I've put them on a shelf for ten days, and sure they'll collect a week's worth of dust, but I'll brush them off when I get home." I said as I exhaled a ploom of smoke. "Hey, stop the car a second!" I shouted.

"Okay, I'll pull in at the parking lot up ahead." he said.

"That's a great photograph. See how the fog is hiding the powerlines, you can just see the tip of the tower." I declared.

In the distance, power lines stretched across the countryside like robotic caterpillars. They were connected at intervals to large metal skeleton-towers, painted red and white. It was the type of juxtaposition I came to love about Japan, power lines and pagodas...21st century, and 1st century in the same shot. I jumped out of the car, opened the back door, and grabbed the camera.

To my dismay, I looked through the lens just in time to witness the fog clear, revealing too much of the tower. "Shit!, the photo's gone," I said.

"It isn't gone, it's just different. You have to find it again." he said, in an attempt to reassure. "Here, let me see the camera." He began firing away, and after about eight clicks, he took the camera away from his eye socket, and held it in front of my face. "Look," he insisted.

After exchanging photos, we capped our lenses and drove off. Not far from where we had just stopped, my friend turned the car suddenly, and took us up a short incline and onto a road atop a ridge that ran between two large vegetable gardens. On the other side of the ridge, a large flood plane snaked under bridges and continued into the mountains ahead. In the middle of the plane, a tiny stream of water trickled along, more closely resembling a natural spring than a river.

"You should see this river when it rains...full...this whole riverbed." he said.

We parked the car and walked along the river, taking pictures of the morning dew clinging to spider webs and flowers.

"Shoot on the apeture setting. You'll get some nice up-close shots of the flowers, and you can blur the backdrop." he instructed, handing me the camera.

"Look at the way the sun creates those shadows on the mountain," he said as I pointed to it.

"Shoot it, you have five-hundred pictures." he said in a stern voice.

"I'll take pictures all day, but I still wish I had the camera out for the cattle love back there!" he said, stuttering my steps as I laughed.

"Should've had the camera on your lap, so you're ready." said my friend.

"Next time. I don't think my girlfriend would appreciate pictures of cows fornicating, funny as it was." I replied.

When we got back in the car, the song came on again.

Will you still be there when the heartache ends?

"Imagine Sean Connery singing this song," my friend said as he and I burst out laughing.

Change: it comes in steps

Democracy is a state of grace that is attained only by those countries who have a host of individuals not only ready to enjoy freedom but to undergo the heavy labor of maintaining it.

- Norman Mailer

In the wake of the election of Barack Obama for President of the United States, the notion of change is swimming vigorously in the currents of global conversation. And as the President-Elect mounted the podium in Chicago's Grant Park, Tuesday night, he was greeted with an overwhelming sense that this change, this reformation of the familiar, was not only welcomed by the American electorate, but spilled from their bodies in the form of tears and chants of YES WE CAN.

As important as the election of the first African-American President in the history of the United States is, we must not live to dwell in this numbing state of euphoria. Though I do not doubt the visceral desire of the American citizenry for change, I fear the election of Barack Obama will be seen as change itself.

Alcoholics Anonymous relies on 12 steps to kick addictions, a personal journey that begins with the all-important first step; admitting there is a problem. We citizens of the world must remind ourselves change also comes in steps, and that this election has cemented merely the first; a person with a strong belief in the power of communities.

War Photography

An angry mob attacks a man who stumbles down the street in a semi-conscious attempt to escape the clutches of their fists, clubs and knives. As blood runs down his face from a fresh head-wound, it mixes with his tears and clouds his vision; he falls...

A young Tutsi man turns his head, as if sitting for a closeup, exposing a series of deep laceration scars on his scalp and cheeks; with half of his right ear missing, he wonders if anybody is listening...

In a bunker in war-torn Grozny, a Chechen rebel clutching a M-4 assault rifle with white knuckles, lets out a battle-cry captured in the silence of black and white photography...

These images are but a few examples of the places and events which American photojournalist and war photographer James Nachtwey has seen, and been witness. His images equal the power of the explosions that have ripped through Grozny, and Sarajevo, leaving us to wonder who, or what type of evil can explain the pieces leftover.

The importance of capturing humanity at its worst in order to hope for the best, is the driving force for Nachtwey, who has photographed acts of war, terror and human suffering from the African famines of the early 1990s, to 9/11. For Nachtwey, news of these and other tragedies like them are most intimately and honestly captured in photographs. It remains a mystery to him (and myself) that humanity could be pushed to such liminality, that the only means of defense, the only means of hope, the only act of freedom, is to kill that which shares our suffering...our fellow human beings.

It is hard to deny the power of photography. Photojournalists force us to look not only with our eyes, but with conscious reflection at the consequences of human suffering. Nachtwey's quest to stop the cycle of human violence through photographs -a quest undeniably noble and necessary- begs some questions as to whether or not such a revelation of understanding can be instigated by silent observers - the photojournalist. Are not these photographs simply lost in the milieu of images we see everyday?

There is a visceral haunt that festers in the minds of photojournalists; they see the violence; they capture a newly-fired bullet leaving a white-hot chamber; but they cannot move the targets, lest they should become targets themselves - they can do nothing to stop the violence in the heat of the moment. Like journalists, whose pen is their pistol, the knowledge we gain from war photography is in retrospect, forever carrying the hope of never again.

Nachtwey has tasked himself with understanding something much bigger than himself; for war is a needle in the vein of humanity. It blurs our vision and dilates our pupils with power and greed, leaving precious life in the blind spot.

Perhaps it is too easy look away;
too easy to say their problems are a world away;
to convince ourselves that they are them,
not us.
To do this, is to deny that the sun shines and rain is wet.

Away from me

I don't want you

to only be a memory; 

though I'm starting

to think of you that way. 

My showers are your tears,

piped in from where you are

away from me.