It's been three years,
But even in a pitch black room full of strangers,
I would know which hand was hers.
I used to tell her this when we held hands, and it was absolutely true.
My God she is still just that beautiful,
That's part of why it still hurts.
Tapered so thinly, her hand fit easily in my palm.
And there was the way she held her fingers so close together, like royalty in a ticker tape parade.
I think in part due to her ability to speak with her hands.
With languages and music, she was simply brilliant.
It still makes me laugh; all the finger spelling in her sleep.
The last time she loved me,
I think it was Versailles.
Through the lazer lights and man made fog,
She gave me that desirous glance for the last time.
We were there to take the castle, the sun almost down.
Mid country, a land away,
As two poor children in the palace of a foreign king,
We were powerful leaders of a private resistance and we knew it.
But, I was mistaken to think,
Beauty of this kind could be anything but free.
I never wanted to possess her,
Only be a part of the way she shined.
But no other person can be the vessel that carries our worth.
She noticed this from the beginning, that I was broken.
It always showed up when she wanted to dance.
She tried so hard to pull me out of myself,
But I anguished about what other people would think,
Missing over and over the chances to make her happy.
I was just afraid she'd fly away,
The dancing fool I wished I'd been,
Alone and lost inside myself,
Knowing that my chance had passed,
to put her needs ahead of mine.
I thought I needed her to prove my worth,
Kneeling when she screamed,
Standing when she caved,
Hanging on for dear life while trying to convince her/myself I was loveable.
This kind of push and pull,
It's like a storm.
Confusing love with other things.
Despite all this,
We fought the world together.
Accentuating our better selves,
Especially when the world pushed back.
If nothing,
What I need to say is finally clear.
My holding back somehow undone.
I applaud your courage to scale the palace walls alone,
And I'm not so sure I would have even tried if you hadn't let me go.
Saturday, December 29, 2018
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
John Doe
I often heard him crying out,
As if someone would answer:
The color of his grief,
Came across in familiar terms.
He was always there,
Slumped beside his basket full of missing things:
Lacking more than a man should be,
Too far gone for human contact.
For 15 years he sat,
Staring across the asphalt fields:
Even in the Texas heat,
He stayed buttoned down with winter booze.
But as our city changed,
He was constant:
A slowly growing myth,
Pinned outside the grip of time.
He lived so long,
In my mind he was immortal:
The eccentric watchman,
Holding fast at the southern gate.
And then he was gone,
Missing from his normal perch:
His basket left alone,
Its contents scattered by the summer wind.
As if someone would answer:
The color of his grief,
Came across in familiar terms.
He was always there,
Slumped beside his basket full of missing things:
Lacking more than a man should be,
Too far gone for human contact.
For 15 years he sat,
Staring across the asphalt fields:
Even in the Texas heat,
He stayed buttoned down with winter booze.
But as our city changed,
He was constant:
A slowly growing myth,
Pinned outside the grip of time.
He lived so long,
In my mind he was immortal:
The eccentric watchman,
Holding fast at the southern gate.
And then he was gone,
Missing from his normal perch:
His basket left alone,
Its contents scattered by the summer wind.
Ham-Bone
To you I am a dancing fool,
Without a care in the world:
In our own sweet way,
We drifed into each other's arms.
Like playmates in the summer sun,
We seem to find the magic shade:
And even in the night we are young,
Savoring all the stars like lovers do.
You said that I came to you,
In a dream to calm your waiting heart:
But I was looking for you all along,
Floating through an unkind world,
Looking for a place to land.
Or maybe,
By some strange twist of fate:
Nature found a way,
To help us laugh again.
And now I'm beginning to see,
That scars upon the heart can heal:
That my once solemn soul can mend,
By letting go in your embrace.
This is why I hold you close,
And why I kiss you so softly:
Because we are in many ways,
A gentle mystery to unfold.
So travel if you will,
With me to see the northern lights:
Or any other place would do,
As long as I can hold your hand,
And share this world with you.
Without a care in the world:
In our own sweet way,
We drifed into each other's arms.
Like playmates in the summer sun,
We seem to find the magic shade:
And even in the night we are young,
Savoring all the stars like lovers do.
You said that I came to you,
In a dream to calm your waiting heart:
But I was looking for you all along,
Floating through an unkind world,
Looking for a place to land.
Or maybe,
By some strange twist of fate:
Nature found a way,
To help us laugh again.
And now I'm beginning to see,
That scars upon the heart can heal:
That my once solemn soul can mend,
By letting go in your embrace.
This is why I hold you close,
And why I kiss you so softly:
Because we are in many ways,
A gentle mystery to unfold.
So travel if you will,
With me to see the northern lights:
Or any other place would do,
As long as I can hold your hand,
And share this world with you.
Sunday, April 5, 2015
Directions
Sometimes I feel wild inside,
With dark thoughts and wishes:
Holding back with all my might,
Things made worse by thinking.
With all these scars,
Perhaps I've changed too much:
Though I have done my best,
To dull at least my sharpest edges.
But there were times,
When by restraint my joy was lost:
And because of fear I did not sing,
At least when you were looking.
So I remained the stranger,
Even when you held my hand:
Hiding with my words,
The things I really wish I'd said.
I regret not risking more,
To save the love I've lost:
Waiting too long,
For fate to intervene.
I Loved you so deeply,
When we snuck away:
And we kissed that night,
On top of Serenity Hill.
Just know,
You pulled me through the darkest nights:
The crayon drawings I made for you,
Calmed the hell inside my head.
When I left,
I cried against the car window:
Giving up,
The beauty of what might have been.
I was not wise enough then,
Too young to understand:
The selfish way I begged,
That God would bring me back to you.
For many years after,
I thought I saw you:
Mistaking strangers from behind,
Because I couldn't forget your face.
What power your memory held,
And you are inspiration still:
Thanking all my lucky stars,
For all the ways our Summer changed me.
Saturday, April 4, 2015
Stop Telling Me To Calm Down
I hear people say things and they make me wonder....Why can't I hear God's voice? It's not as if I haven't been listening. At times I've been so low I begged for God to tell me something, anything. Based on what I learned in Sunday school, if the answers don't come you're just supposed to wait. I have yet to hear any voices from above. I've always wondered what it is that makes me different from those that say they hear God speak. Do I have the wrong kind of ears? Is my life and all it adds up to unworthy of acquiring a direct connection to the heavens? I have tried to believe as blindly as a person can in some kind of God that listens. The problem I keep having is that blind faith and the life I've lived just aren't compatible.
It's no secret that I used to drink too much. As a result of that excess, I found my way to the water wagon many years ago. When I first quit drinking, I believed that God had personally saved me from my addiction. Everything felt so new and crisp without the bottle in hand. As time passed the highs of my new life wore off. During various attempts at being sober, people tried to point out to me that, in fact, I hadn't really changed much. Years after I quit drinking I was still the same arrogant drunk, only I WAS D-R-Y. As I fucked up in all the same areas of living, I often used the excuse that it was God's will that things happened the way they did. Of course the pattern would go something like this--act badly, blame others, and walk away feeling justified. I was just carrying the good message of clean living in a profoundly confused way. This is the definition of a rationalization. Ignoring the facts of a situation in order to protect oneself from the truth is the kind thing that exempts a person from being responsible for any behavior under any condition. I believed that if someone else was in pain it must have been their faults that made them so vulnerable. I would say things like "I didn't MAKE you feel anything". It's popular in modern psychology to expect everyone to "take ownership" of their feelings. I took that to mean that we should all expect others to be invulnerable--talk about ignoring reality. Maybe we can't magically zap emotion into each other but we definitely have the power to provide the stimulus that evokes a painful response in those around us. As we move through the world, we constantly receive feedback from others. Friends, lovers, employers, and family, they all provide us with the necessary information to adapt to our surroundings.
In the past, despite my apparent personal flaws, I could tell you all about God's will for myself and the world!...Blah blah blah and peace and love and God's plan etc. I was a spiritual giant and simultaneously the worst listener a friend could have. Eventually the wheels would fall off the water wagon and so would I. A delusional person is only one banana peel away from disaster. I know from experience that things don't always go according to plan. Pretending to be so wise as to be above mistakes is an isolating way to live. As time passes people tire of arrogance. They go away in disgust or pity. What choice do they have? This kind of selfishness leaves no room for human connection. The superior minded person rejects all wisdom from outside sources because their delusions are the foundation of their reality.
It's no secret that I used to drink too much. As a result of that excess, I found my way to the water wagon many years ago. When I first quit drinking, I believed that God had personally saved me from my addiction. Everything felt so new and crisp without the bottle in hand. As time passed the highs of my new life wore off. During various attempts at being sober, people tried to point out to me that, in fact, I hadn't really changed much. Years after I quit drinking I was still the same arrogant drunk, only I WAS D-R-Y. As I fucked up in all the same areas of living, I often used the excuse that it was God's will that things happened the way they did. Of course the pattern would go something like this--act badly, blame others, and walk away feeling justified. I was just carrying the good message of clean living in a profoundly confused way. This is the definition of a rationalization. Ignoring the facts of a situation in order to protect oneself from the truth is the kind thing that exempts a person from being responsible for any behavior under any condition. I believed that if someone else was in pain it must have been their faults that made them so vulnerable. I would say things like "I didn't MAKE you feel anything". It's popular in modern psychology to expect everyone to "take ownership" of their feelings. I took that to mean that we should all expect others to be invulnerable--talk about ignoring reality. Maybe we can't magically zap emotion into each other but we definitely have the power to provide the stimulus that evokes a painful response in those around us. As we move through the world, we constantly receive feedback from others. Friends, lovers, employers, and family, they all provide us with the necessary information to adapt to our surroundings.
In the past, despite my apparent personal flaws, I could tell you all about God's will for myself and the world!...Blah blah blah and peace and love and God's plan etc. I was a spiritual giant and simultaneously the worst listener a friend could have. Eventually the wheels would fall off the water wagon and so would I. A delusional person is only one banana peel away from disaster. I know from experience that things don't always go according to plan. Pretending to be so wise as to be above mistakes is an isolating way to live. As time passes people tire of arrogance. They go away in disgust or pity. What choice do they have? This kind of selfishness leaves no room for human connection. The superior minded person rejects all wisdom from outside sources because their delusions are the foundation of their reality.
Sunday, March 15, 2015
The Impossible Trials of Living
Of all the missing colors,
Washed away by sleepless nights,
I missed the blue sky most of all.
The morning birds,
They could hear me shuffling,
Behind the tin foil window shades.
My skeletal hands,
Moving in the half light,
They shook as I talked inside my head.
A few small bills and chewed up bags,
Beside an empty pack,
Were laid upon the table.
In this falling stillness,
I would often hear my mother's voice,
"Jason?"
As if she was searching,
In the dark,
Through rooms of strangers.
She was losing me,
I was losing me,
To an impossible disease.
The fantasy of death,
It always followed,
As my high began to fade.
The violence of addiction,
No moral code can bend,
Taking what it wants from many.
But in my last minutes on earth,
Just before giving up,
There came an inner silence.
My cheek upon the cold pine floor,
Struggling for breath,
I closed my eyes as if to vanish.
Somehow I am still here,
Begging for another day,
In the mystery of what remains.
I found there were many,
Survivors of that desperate prayer,
Watching for the drifters.
Threadbare,
Hand over hand,
They pulled me into the fold.
Together,
We give and take,
In turns like friends do.
Holding each other up,
Past midnight in the coffee shops,
Because some nights we just can't be alone.
Many years have passed,
Still sober,
I am grateful.
My daughter now fifteen,
Knows only the stories,
Of the dying boy I used to be.
And I don't miss the sky anymore,
Because I am not afraid,
Living day to day this beautiful life beneath the sun.
Washed away by sleepless nights,
I missed the blue sky most of all.
The morning birds,
They could hear me shuffling,
Behind the tin foil window shades.
My skeletal hands,
Moving in the half light,
They shook as I talked inside my head.
A few small bills and chewed up bags,
Beside an empty pack,
Were laid upon the table.
In this falling stillness,
I would often hear my mother's voice,
"Jason?"
As if she was searching,
In the dark,
Through rooms of strangers.
She was losing me,
I was losing me,
To an impossible disease.
The fantasy of death,
It always followed,
As my high began to fade.
The violence of addiction,
No moral code can bend,
Taking what it wants from many.
But in my last minutes on earth,
Just before giving up,
There came an inner silence.
My cheek upon the cold pine floor,
Struggling for breath,
I closed my eyes as if to vanish.
Somehow I am still here,
Begging for another day,
In the mystery of what remains.
I found there were many,
Survivors of that desperate prayer,
Watching for the drifters.
Threadbare,
Hand over hand,
They pulled me into the fold.
Together,
We give and take,
In turns like friends do.
Holding each other up,
Past midnight in the coffee shops,
Because some nights we just can't be alone.
Many years have passed,
Still sober,
I am grateful.
My daughter now fifteen,
Knows only the stories,
Of the dying boy I used to be.
And I don't miss the sky anymore,
Because I am not afraid,
Living day to day this beautiful life beneath the sun.
Friday, March 13, 2015
Finally Standing
Unto the silence of man,
Born mad from hunger:
The upside of nothing,
Wherein all dreams can die.
So fast humiliation comes,
With have-not shoes upon your feet:
When poverty is on your face,
Glass ceilings teach us to hate ourselves.
But I have gleaned from faith,
A power thought lost:
Some deeper strength to fight again,
And use what lessons my tangled past has taught me.
In life there is no salvation,
Only what acceptance brings:
For all that people wish would be,
Miracles never seem to last.
Many pray because they're told,
A God will come to take them home:
And all their days,
They slip away like rain upon the glass.
The real magic simply hides,
Within increments of living:
Like the music of a first embrace,
That sends us dancing home to a private tune.
If only we could look again,
To find the simple truth:
We are all together here and now,
Searching not for God but each other.
Born mad from hunger:
The upside of nothing,
Wherein all dreams can die.
So fast humiliation comes,
With have-not shoes upon your feet:
When poverty is on your face,
Glass ceilings teach us to hate ourselves.
But I have gleaned from faith,
A power thought lost:
Some deeper strength to fight again,
And use what lessons my tangled past has taught me.
In life there is no salvation,
Only what acceptance brings:
For all that people wish would be,
Miracles never seem to last.
Many pray because they're told,
A God will come to take them home:
And all their days,
They slip away like rain upon the glass.
The real magic simply hides,
Within increments of living:
Like the music of a first embrace,
That sends us dancing home to a private tune.
If only we could look again,
To find the simple truth:
We are all together here and now,
Searching not for God but each other.
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
The Illusion of Power
Ten million feet will stomp the march,
Racing strong to the fortress gates:
And as the hinges crack and fold,
The colorful masses will rise.
If you have been the fortunate few,
Be warned your time will come:
Your vision of a white washed world,
This temporary illusion will only fade.
Our burdens have strengthened us,
As builders of your citadels:
Your cords we've carried,
And now we know the truth.
We are stronger by far,
An unbreakable and beautiful people:
As dreams of freedom grow to rage,
Our children sense what change is coming.
With wealth is born an ignorance toward suffering,
Stealing as it does the last of everything:
Not one thin dime a beggar can retain,
When defamed by the rich for asking.
This myth of merit that you preach,
Staring from beyond the glass above:
Now all at once your truth has died,
For we can finally hear our own voices.
The oppressed will not forget,
Your violence cannot be undone:
Our loved ones were struck while we were caged,
And I for one remember every crease upon your hand.
And so I carry on til when,
My peoples' eyes will douse the road:
And on this day-
As we climb the horizon with the sun,
We will sing the gospel of the coming storm.
Racing strong to the fortress gates:
And as the hinges crack and fold,
The colorful masses will rise.
If you have been the fortunate few,
Be warned your time will come:
Your vision of a white washed world,
This temporary illusion will only fade.
Our burdens have strengthened us,
As builders of your citadels:
Your cords we've carried,
And now we know the truth.
We are stronger by far,
An unbreakable and beautiful people:
As dreams of freedom grow to rage,
Our children sense what change is coming.
With wealth is born an ignorance toward suffering,
Stealing as it does the last of everything:
Not one thin dime a beggar can retain,
When defamed by the rich for asking.
This myth of merit that you preach,
Staring from beyond the glass above:
Now all at once your truth has died,
For we can finally hear our own voices.
The oppressed will not forget,
Your violence cannot be undone:
Our loved ones were struck while we were caged,
And I for one remember every crease upon your hand.
And so I carry on til when,
My peoples' eyes will douse the road:
And on this day-
As we climb the horizon with the sun,
We will sing the gospel of the coming storm.
Friday, January 2, 2015
Everyone Has a Moment
I was working today in a vacant apartment. I'm a handyman-I fix broken things. While fixing a problem in the bathroom, I passed in front of the vanity mirror. I was singing along with The Shins on my Ipod and nostalgically re-living a moment of contentment from the past. When I realized I could see myself singing in the reflection, I shied away. I called myself a "fool" and turned off the light.
There is still in me a critic. He is more sour than a lonely old man that yells at children to stay off his lawn. He cannot observe happiness without feeling his own bitterness. He is a tragic flaw for someone as naturally silly as I am because he makes letting go seem like a mistake. My whole life people have said things to me like "Why don't you ever smile?" or "Are you mad?" I might be happy as a lark but apparently it's the critic that shows up on my face.
Maybe this is the year I can find the strength and put the critic to rest forever. Maybe next time he screams "Get off my lawn kid!" I'll look him dead in the eye and dance a jig across his Bermuda grass while singing Elton John at the top of my lungs. I mean what's he gonna do anyway, spray me with the water hose?
There is still in me a critic. He is more sour than a lonely old man that yells at children to stay off his lawn. He cannot observe happiness without feeling his own bitterness. He is a tragic flaw for someone as naturally silly as I am because he makes letting go seem like a mistake. My whole life people have said things to me like "Why don't you ever smile?" or "Are you mad?" I might be happy as a lark but apparently it's the critic that shows up on my face.
Maybe this is the year I can find the strength and put the critic to rest forever. Maybe next time he screams "Get off my lawn kid!" I'll look him dead in the eye and dance a jig across his Bermuda grass while singing Elton John at the top of my lungs. I mean what's he gonna do anyway, spray me with the water hose?
Saturday, November 8, 2014
A Gift
He is a huddled shadow, for what colors can a dying man display? There is no safety in his bottle anymore. His dark brown gaze with glassy desperation awaits the mercy of strangers. In this city, with all its wealth, he is one in a thousand. He could be saved, but try and stop the masses from moving. Their heads are all aimed towards destinations. They shuffle over one another as it is, barking and pushing like cattle in a chute. They are unconcerned with ANY nameless face. They are without mercy in a group and he is but part of a weakened fringe in their eyes, a sickened homeless straggler. Today I chose to stop, to affix meaning to my memory of his existence, perhaps to imagine he looked familiar or that I knew his name. As I looked upon him I could suddenly hear singing from the Metro hall. This raised him from his lethargy and he began to speak. As I was nearest to him, he turned to ME and said "Thank you for the music". In truth, it was he that brought the music to that moment. I only stopped because he was there. He pulled me from the rushing day and led me to a quiet shore just long enough to listen.
Saturday, September 20, 2014
"Liquor At the Airport"
Being young was ferocious and I loved it. I sped to the edge of insanity every night like a fucking rocket. I rode the wheel of my 69' Ford pick up 100mph down every street in Travis county. One of my favorite past times was sitting on my hood while idling down the Howard lane airport runway in the middle of the night. The Granny Gear in that old Ford would crawl to South Austin if you let it. I crept down that midnight runway a 1,000 times; it never died once. After a while, my favorite pair of jeans went missing the center belt loop from me snagging it on the end of the broken tip of the passenger side wiper. I'd leave the driver's side door open and lean back against the windshield drinking Goldschlager out of the bottle. I remember being grateful for the way the unsanded black primer on my hood kept me from sliding down and off the nose of the truck. Hell, to this day, I won't buy a pick-up that still has good paint. You can't sit on a wax job without slipping off the edge. I just might be the only drunk in Austin who's ever done one person Chinese fire drills at the airport. I don't recommend trying it, at least not without practice, and NEVER at the airport.
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Where Do the Quiet Go?
Musing against an overwhelming madness, a ceaseless downbeat blocks my pen. I try and nothing, nothing, nothing, thus I relent to slumber. Is it possible for creativity to flow without this ache? To feel deeply sometimes is not to function. I often shy away. I envy those that face the shining world, that climb the peaks and write their memoirs. Still, there are reasons to be common. In the end, the limelight distorts charisma and the vanity it creates becomes a frightening thing. The most powerful poetry I ever read was never meant to be sold or even spoken, a tiny scribble in a lipstick box--the words--"Will I be forgotten?" Placed upon a re-sale shelf, the grey box lid lay open. A sliver torn from a legal pad lay inside. Discovering it was like the first time I heard Nina Simone sing "Take Me To the Water", I gasped and froze. How could such a message have been misplaced? So many quiet voices go unheard for they haven't the desire for pomp or worship. They choose to keep their gifts just close enough to never be stolen or exploited. Though I'll never know who wrote that note, for me, its power was in its obscurity. Whether its author is here or gone, one thing is for sure, their words will never be forgotten.
Saturday, May 31, 2014
Excuse Me While I Wreck
It's true, I like to find some sappy point in every turn of circumstance. Who gives a fuck? The other side of me wants to spit in the face of every shit head yuppy that walks across my path without saying excuse me. I could give an extra half a rat's ass about what people think of me. I notice how people take advantage of vulnerability. They crave an opportunity to pull you into their lonely world so they can give you advice. It's as if you need to listen to them in order to save yourself from whatever dilemma is at hand. How the fuck you gonna tell me shit when you ain't got a pot to piss in? Don't mistake my often "sentimental journey" for being weak minded.
There's parts of me I withhold for good reason. You can't run around jawing people and stay out of prison. However, let it be known, there are people in my life that I walk away from daily just so I can be present for my daughter. A quiet man just might have secrets. Sometimes silence is a warning. Some people don't realize how fucking disrespectful they really are. They drop little comments here and there in an attempt to dominate their fellows, to prove their superiority especially when you're down. They should be more careful where they step. Unfortunately, there's an Eddie Haskel in every social circle. They smile, kiss your ass, or pretend to pity you while talking shit out the side of their mouth. This is why asking for help can be a tricky thing. All I can say is, watch closely, while you're busy running your mealy mouth I'll be proving why I never needed your advice in the first god damn place.
A quiet rage resists adversity. It burns much slower. It weighs the risks. It survives. Stronger from the timber of calculation, a thinking man can save himself and all he loves by conscious inaction. From where I sit, I can see all the cards. So, don't fuck with me.
There's parts of me I withhold for good reason. You can't run around jawing people and stay out of prison. However, let it be known, there are people in my life that I walk away from daily just so I can be present for my daughter. A quiet man just might have secrets. Sometimes silence is a warning. Some people don't realize how fucking disrespectful they really are. They drop little comments here and there in an attempt to dominate their fellows, to prove their superiority especially when you're down. They should be more careful where they step. Unfortunately, there's an Eddie Haskel in every social circle. They smile, kiss your ass, or pretend to pity you while talking shit out the side of their mouth. This is why asking for help can be a tricky thing. All I can say is, watch closely, while you're busy running your mealy mouth I'll be proving why I never needed your advice in the first god damn place.
A quiet rage resists adversity. It burns much slower. It weighs the risks. It survives. Stronger from the timber of calculation, a thinking man can save himself and all he loves by conscious inaction. From where I sit, I can see all the cards. So, don't fuck with me.
Friday, May 30, 2014
Tired of Rambling
I remember how she told a story. She never left out the grit. She was so clear, so sober. I read in a psych course years ago about how someone that is lying will avert their eyes when they speak. Bright blue and gleaming, her eyes never wavered. She could face a room and look straight into a crowd with hardly a nod. This woman will always be a hero of mine. At one point in her life she was a practicing drunk and a prostitute. After hitching a ride on the water wagon, some years after she became a lawyer.
She always spoke about redemption without dogma. For her, there was only one chance to recover and it didn't include making herself a moral authority. Oddly enough, when she spoke about her shortcomings, it made me feel less alone with my own. Morality is poison to a sick and drowning man, especially If you've already failed. When the guilt of all your mistakes is pulling you to the bottom of a murky pool, it makes no sense to sit on the rocks below re-reading each broken commandment. There comes a time to let go of the fragments and swim for all you're worth. My hero, this anonymous woman, she taught me how to fight for things that make sense. When things get difficult, I try and remember the things she told me. She said things like "You can fall apart and live to tell the tale" and "If we can't see into the future, there's no sense being unhappy about things that may or may not ever happen".
Now is one of those times where I need all the wisdom I can possibly recall. This uncertainty I see ahead makes me want to run for home. Maybe I should? I still don't know who I am or where I'm supposed to be and that scares me. How many times can a person start over? Does there come a time when passion must take a back seat to conformity? If this is true, there must never have been any magic in the world to begin with. I can't stomach thinking that happiness isn't meant to last or that it's only meant for a special few. I hate questions that beg questions. Somewhere in the sharp and tumbling mess of my currently overworked mind, there's a private rebellion taking place. It's late here and I'm alone. I've been here before, like a soldier in a quiet house, pacing with a waking nightmare while the world sleeps. The words upon this paper have become my place to fight, the strength that grants me the agency to overcome the long walk to daybreak. If I can just fill the page, I will survive. If I survive, my hero was right, YOU CAN "fall apart and live to tell the tale".
What I wouldn't give to fall apart in a familiar Pink house on an old dirty chair. I know he's gone but I can see Jon-Paul's face welcoming me home. Such comfort lies where family makes the bed and I just need some rest. I miss you Austin. I miss MY people! It's taken me a year just to say...I just want to come home.
She always spoke about redemption without dogma. For her, there was only one chance to recover and it didn't include making herself a moral authority. Oddly enough, when she spoke about her shortcomings, it made me feel less alone with my own. Morality is poison to a sick and drowning man, especially If you've already failed. When the guilt of all your mistakes is pulling you to the bottom of a murky pool, it makes no sense to sit on the rocks below re-reading each broken commandment. There comes a time to let go of the fragments and swim for all you're worth. My hero, this anonymous woman, she taught me how to fight for things that make sense. When things get difficult, I try and remember the things she told me. She said things like "You can fall apart and live to tell the tale" and "If we can't see into the future, there's no sense being unhappy about things that may or may not ever happen".
Now is one of those times where I need all the wisdom I can possibly recall. This uncertainty I see ahead makes me want to run for home. Maybe I should? I still don't know who I am or where I'm supposed to be and that scares me. How many times can a person start over? Does there come a time when passion must take a back seat to conformity? If this is true, there must never have been any magic in the world to begin with. I can't stomach thinking that happiness isn't meant to last or that it's only meant for a special few. I hate questions that beg questions. Somewhere in the sharp and tumbling mess of my currently overworked mind, there's a private rebellion taking place. It's late here and I'm alone. I've been here before, like a soldier in a quiet house, pacing with a waking nightmare while the world sleeps. The words upon this paper have become my place to fight, the strength that grants me the agency to overcome the long walk to daybreak. If I can just fill the page, I will survive. If I survive, my hero was right, YOU CAN "fall apart and live to tell the tale".
What I wouldn't give to fall apart in a familiar Pink house on an old dirty chair. I know he's gone but I can see Jon-Paul's face welcoming me home. Such comfort lies where family makes the bed and I just need some rest. I miss you Austin. I miss MY people! It's taken me a year just to say...I just want to come home.
Friday, March 21, 2014
Fear and Music
I'm not religious but I know how to pray. I think everyone does. Maybe we don't all kneel or recite from a text, but we've all asked for help with something. Five days a week I'm probably an Atheist. Or maybe I just don't care to fiddle with questions I can't answer. When I am desperate I do things I normally wouldn't to find relief. In my opinion, prayer is just an honest action of any kind that reveals the reality of my current situation. There was a point in my life where a fist fight was the best prayer I could come up with. Win or lose it was quite a humbling experience. To collapse all bloody and worn and beg for the strength to get up is as honest as it gets. We've all done it in one form or another.
If I've had a bad day, it follows me long after the sun goes down. While my family sleeps I sit and think. Fear has a way of catching you when no one else is around. Without the shield of distraction that other people provide, there isn't anywhere to hide. In the past I used to try and outrun the setting sun to the nearest bar stool. The minute I walked into the artificial midnight of the closest dive bar, I knew I was safe from "that old sinking feeling". If I didn't see anyone I knew, at least the music was loud and they rarely ran out of whiskey. Even half drunk and alone in the smoky corner of a lively pool hall I could create the illusion that I was at least part of a crowd. At times I was lucky and could look mysteriously attractive (and drunk) enough to catch the eye of another loner. The fantasy was always the same. I'd see her looking longingly at the ceiling. Then, she'd notice me out of the corner of her eye and saunter over and ask me my name. I found other loners but the reality of our encounters turned out to be far removed from the velvet curtain backdrops of my mind. If there was a saunter, it looked more like a stumble followed by a limp. Five packs of "reds" later we'd watch the glow of a cocaine sunrise find it's way into my room. There's not a curtain on earth that can block the sounds of a waking planet. I hated those god damn birds. White lines at dawn feel like death. Fear can make anyone a fugitive and I went to great lengths to escape the reality that I would someday unravel.
When I'm afraid, I write. It helps. I can dig in and get honest. I can bring up the past and sort it out. With the past sorted I can envision a real future. Today I am terrified so I MUST write! There is so much inside a human being. I could write every minute of my life until I die and record only an abbreviation of myself. Even then, perhaps only the apostrophe would show up with the letters in the word missing. That's how I feel most of the time. As the pen moves, there emerges a conversation on paper I do not understand. That reflection can be a terrifying glimpse of who I am. This is what I've always been afraid of. If it turns out that you are the villain in your own story, can that be changed? What if you try as hard as you can and the story is always the same? Then what? When all I have is questions, I start looking for stillness. I hate it when fear makes my life feel like I'm looking through a dirty cellar window. Here I am on my tip-toes staring out a dusty pane trying to see just enough to understand what's going on outside. I huff/wipe and huff/wipe but only the outside of the window is dirty. There's not much I can do except get down off the balsa wood box I'm standing on before it sends me reeling.
This is not as hopeless as it sounds. Some people ask a specific God for specific direction. Some people drive around in their cars late at night crying to sad songs on the radio until they feel better. Some people make love and some drink. Prayer is what you make it. For me, answers are not terribly important in the end. It's the honesty in the surrender and in the words that show up on my paper that lets me sleep. It's ok to say "I don't know what to do" or simply "I just don't know". I shuffle through my struggles in conversation with that written reflection that initially always terrifies me. In all my years of writing the only thing that hasn't changed is the never ending rediscovery of some part of me worth keeping.
If I've had a bad day, it follows me long after the sun goes down. While my family sleeps I sit and think. Fear has a way of catching you when no one else is around. Without the shield of distraction that other people provide, there isn't anywhere to hide. In the past I used to try and outrun the setting sun to the nearest bar stool. The minute I walked into the artificial midnight of the closest dive bar, I knew I was safe from "that old sinking feeling". If I didn't see anyone I knew, at least the music was loud and they rarely ran out of whiskey. Even half drunk and alone in the smoky corner of a lively pool hall I could create the illusion that I was at least part of a crowd. At times I was lucky and could look mysteriously attractive (and drunk) enough to catch the eye of another loner. The fantasy was always the same. I'd see her looking longingly at the ceiling. Then, she'd notice me out of the corner of her eye and saunter over and ask me my name. I found other loners but the reality of our encounters turned out to be far removed from the velvet curtain backdrops of my mind. If there was a saunter, it looked more like a stumble followed by a limp. Five packs of "reds" later we'd watch the glow of a cocaine sunrise find it's way into my room. There's not a curtain on earth that can block the sounds of a waking planet. I hated those god damn birds. White lines at dawn feel like death. Fear can make anyone a fugitive and I went to great lengths to escape the reality that I would someday unravel.
When I'm afraid, I write. It helps. I can dig in and get honest. I can bring up the past and sort it out. With the past sorted I can envision a real future. Today I am terrified so I MUST write! There is so much inside a human being. I could write every minute of my life until I die and record only an abbreviation of myself. Even then, perhaps only the apostrophe would show up with the letters in the word missing. That's how I feel most of the time. As the pen moves, there emerges a conversation on paper I do not understand. That reflection can be a terrifying glimpse of who I am. This is what I've always been afraid of. If it turns out that you are the villain in your own story, can that be changed? What if you try as hard as you can and the story is always the same? Then what? When all I have is questions, I start looking for stillness. I hate it when fear makes my life feel like I'm looking through a dirty cellar window. Here I am on my tip-toes staring out a dusty pane trying to see just enough to understand what's going on outside. I huff/wipe and huff/wipe but only the outside of the window is dirty. There's not much I can do except get down off the balsa wood box I'm standing on before it sends me reeling.
This is not as hopeless as it sounds. Some people ask a specific God for specific direction. Some people drive around in their cars late at night crying to sad songs on the radio until they feel better. Some people make love and some drink. Prayer is what you make it. For me, answers are not terribly important in the end. It's the honesty in the surrender and in the words that show up on my paper that lets me sleep. It's ok to say "I don't know what to do" or simply "I just don't know". I shuffle through my struggles in conversation with that written reflection that initially always terrifies me. In all my years of writing the only thing that hasn't changed is the never ending rediscovery of some part of me worth keeping.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Standing Still
If you trust me,
stand close.
Two shadows now,
stronger as we grow.
No outsider can imagine,
what history proves,
an inseparable will.
Love imperiled,
never complies.
Victims of convention,
mock skillfully.
Their true intentions,
clear to all they criticize.
stand close.
Two shadows now,
stronger as we grow.
No outsider can imagine,
what history proves,
an inseparable will.
Love imperiled,
never complies.
Victims of convention,
mock skillfully.
Their true intentions,
clear to all they criticize.
Something Gives
It's time I closed the door on regret. The truth is that the world turns with the most beautifully flawed of intentions. As six billion clueless shuffling people lean against one another like keystones in an arch, they shape each others edges over time. Sometimes I resent the marks others leave on me. Sometimes I resent myself for the marks I leave on them. Either way, it's an unavoidably imperfect existence. Worrying about what was and what might be; it just simply accentuates the distance we all reside from perfect.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Progress Eats a Bigot
“But courage was growing in me too. Little by little it was getting harder and harder for me not to speak out.”
― Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi
In 1963 during his inaugural address, George Wallace said--"I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever." He did what bigots do in the face of criticism. He cited God's-law and states rights to frame an unarguable platform to resist integration. Apparently, if "God" makes a law, you become a Godless tyrant in opposition. This argument that "God's Law" nullifies the laws of man (Now we hear about what God intended for us) has always been an arbitrarily clever Catch-22. A person that believes this will not be persuaded by voluminous earthly evidence contrary to their beliefs. Even obvious human suffering, in the mind of a zealot, can be viewed as a manipulation. Wallace stood in that schoolhouse door to keep Vivian Jones and James Hood from exercising their newly established legal rights. Even in that moment, when integration was a foregone conclusion, he continued to blame the victims for rocking the boat.
It is now widely accepted that Wallace was a racist; that he used his power as governor to actively discriminate based on race. Eventually, Wallace himself realized he'd been on the wrong side of history. For what hateful men do, history's "Angle of Repose" is slight. By 1979 Wallace was at the bottom of a slippery slope. That same year, while addressing the Montgomery Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, he back pedaled:
During his era, Wallace picked a side. There is no doubt that he represented a Dominant group interest in prolonging the power dynamic of previous decades. As the country began changing, his choice to resist made his alienation an eventuality. Many household names have suffered a similar public death. Examples are as prevalent as the social movements that rolled over them. Wallace had been either uninformed or didn't care about the shifting social data concerning race relations in America. It cost him his political career. Comparative Historians and Sociologists had been tracking and publishing the markers that led to civil rights advancements years before he took office. It amazes me--so many "Celebriticians", like Wallace, wind up politically destitute because they simply cannot accept the apparent facts that ALWAYS predate social change. A social movement is not a nebulous entity manifested from the minds of an angry minority for no reason. Activism/legislation often merely becomes visible at the boiling point of social turmoil. Wallace must have seen the water rising. He would not budge. He is now a villain in America's written history.
There is and has always been a correlation between movements of any kind in society with quantifiable social and political conditions. A state governor has access to that data. Advisors put it on their desks daily. There are many complicated reasons why our leaders ignore the causal logic of social change. In brief; Conformity yields status. Status equals power. To be suddenly viewed as deviant by one's peers can often bring home negative social sanctions harsh enough to effect all areas of a person's life. If you are a politician you risk losing elections (Or much worse). It takes a brave person to advocate for an unpopular cause. As I write this, I fear what some people will think of me,...Will I even publish it? Beyond the fear of ridicule is an ultimate fear of speaking up publicly in a country where negative social sanctions have historically led to extreme violence. Rational or not, the fear is there. Is it worth the risk? In today's polarized political climate, taking a stand on a divisive issue could cost you everything.
The "civil rights era" has not and will never end. There will always be a new kind of bigotry for each generation to fight. As far as I can tell, no country on earth has achieved a full state of equality. We simply keep adding more banners to the civil rights movement each year. What has now reached a critical visibility is the issue of sexual freedom. This is not new. The public fight for sexual freedom began long ago. Some people even call the 60's-80's sexual revolution America's 2nd sexual revolution, the first being the "roaring twenties". America was, until about ten years ago, becoming a more permissive society concerning "sexual freedoms" on the whole. Public policy records support this statement. However, around 2002, we began seeing a statistically significant shift in America towards conservatism. This is also reflected in public policy records. This recent rise has brought into the light many previously more latent Dominant group opinions concerning sexual freedoms, religion, and the law concerning each. Between the year 2000 and now, 33 states have banned same-sex marriage (17 have legalized it). The point here is that all this drastic legal motion has come within the last decade. Kansas banned same-sex marriage in 2005. Following this, in February 2014, Kansas House bill 2453 was drafted and introduced to a vote by a Republican majority. The bill was entitled "AN ACT concerning religious freedoms with respect to marriage". It stated:
Section (1)a. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no individual or religious entity shall be required by any governmental entity to do any of the following, if it would be contrary to the sincerely held religious beliefs of the individual or religious entity regarding sex or gender: (a) Provide any services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods, or privileges; provide counseling, adoption, foster care and other social services; or provide employment or employment benefits, related to, or related to the celebration of, any marriage, domestic partnership, civil union or similar arrangement.(Kansas. House of Representatives. HB 2453 2014. N.p.: n.p., 2014. Web. 18 Feb. 2014.)
In practice, this bill legalizes discrimination/ segregation against same-sex couples or an individual participating in a same-sex union. It allows discrimination at both the public and private levels per a service provider's individual religious ideology. This is just one example in one state. February 2014, in Tennessee, there was a similar bill introduced by Sen. Bryan Kelsey (R). The premise behind such legislation is that religious people are being persecuted by the homosexual community. Remember George Wallace? He took a similar blaming the victim approach towards racial integration. He blamed the African American community almost as if they were causing white people to suffer. To ignore the entire documented history of an oppressed minority in this way,...that was his downfall. He believed his way of doing things was divine and therefore racial segregation was justified. If you don't believe me, research his speeches. They are full of stubborn ideologies despite what was then a mounting public outcry against racial segregation. He played the hard case and he lost. History taught him a stern lesson in listening. I contend that any person that so willingly and blindly ignores the voices of the have-nots can expect to eventually join Wallace as an outcast villain. As the fight for equality continues, let the bigots come out. Let them scream and shout their exclusionary rhetoric and cite God with their imputed righteousness. In time they'll ruin themselves AND when they go back into hiding we'll know just where to find them.
From here I cannot proceed without first revealing a few personal and little know facts about myself (This might be where I lose friends). The psycho-sexual development of a human is quite a complicated thing. It resides on a continuum. We are not all the same. How could we be? Our experiences develop US! We do not control them or rule them. Our surroundings combined with biology provide the involuntary stimulus that comes with being alive. Within these frameworks we learn to love whosoever fits who we are. Love is not sex and sex is not gendered. I had my first homosexual experience at age 5. Most people would call this "playing doctor". Strangely enough (not) my first experience happened in a closet. The fact that we felt we had to hide tells me something about how powerfully reinforced the stigmas concerning sex, sexual preference, and gender roles really are. During my adolescent and young adult years I had a variety of sex/relationship experiences as I tried to figure out who I was. I've been with men, women, and both simultaneously. Erikson outlines this very process in his "stages of psychosocial development". For people in the 12-18 age group--in his chart in fact--he entitled this life stage "Identity vs. Role Confusion". I painfully dragged through many identity stages. Some roles did not allow me to challenge conventional ideas of sex or gender identity. Within certain circles I pretended to be an over masculinized version of myself just to avoid confronting my own insecurities. I thought I could avoid detection by playing the part of what would be considered a traditional WASP male. The problem with hiding among people with whom you fundamentally differ is, YOU slowly begin to hate YOU. There are a multitude of popular and yet homophobic sub-cultures in America. I've been just about one of each trying to escape my own duality. This self hatred and the drugs and alcohol I used to cope nearly killed me. Society was telling me I was wrong for not knowing whether I was gay or straight. Currently, in 33 states the law says it's wrong. If I had grown up in Kansas and not Austin, would I have survived?
My experiences are far from unique. As I've grown older, I've learned to love myself by relating to other people. I've met men and women with the exact same story. They struggled like I did. They fought hard to survive long enough to accept themselves and some of them fell in love in the process. They've built homes and families. Many have been together for years. I happened to fall in love with an old friend. We've been married almost 15 years. We have a 14 year old daughter. Among my friends and family, love is love. It does not depend on sexual attraction. In our life stories, we are as varied in who we love as there are primary shades in a kaleidoscope. It seems to me that love happens by chance delivery during an unexpected life. "Preference" has nothing to do with it. To dictate to people via law the level at which they are allowed to express that love is wrong. I have been publicly quiet on these issues until now. I have been admittedly scared to speak with any force except with certain confidantes. To engage the storm ahead, for me, I had to tell all. I needed to qualify my values as rooted in an indisputable life story. Nobody can take away what you've lived. People are suffering. They are suffering as we speak. If activism does not continue, what will become of people like me, like us, in the future? If we allow love to become connected to the consequence of law, at some point, there will be no place in this world for anyone.
Jason Leverett
― Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi
In 1963 during his inaugural address, George Wallace said--"I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever." He did what bigots do in the face of criticism. He cited God's-law and states rights to frame an unarguable platform to resist integration. Apparently, if "God" makes a law, you become a Godless tyrant in opposition. This argument that "God's Law" nullifies the laws of man (Now we hear about what God intended for us) has always been an arbitrarily clever Catch-22. A person that believes this will not be persuaded by voluminous earthly evidence contrary to their beliefs. Even obvious human suffering, in the mind of a zealot, can be viewed as a manipulation. Wallace stood in that schoolhouse door to keep Vivian Jones and James Hood from exercising their newly established legal rights. Even in that moment, when integration was a foregone conclusion, he continued to blame the victims for rocking the boat.
It is now widely accepted that Wallace was a racist; that he used his power as governor to actively discriminate based on race. Eventually, Wallace himself realized he'd been on the wrong side of history. For what hateful men do, history's "Angle of Repose" is slight. By 1979 Wallace was at the bottom of a slippery slope. That same year, while addressing the Montgomery Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, he back pedaled:
I have learned what suffering means. In a way that was impossible, I think I can understand something of the pain black people have come to endure. I know I contributed to that pain, and I can only ask your forgiveness.--George C. Wallace
During his era, Wallace picked a side. There is no doubt that he represented a Dominant group interest in prolonging the power dynamic of previous decades. As the country began changing, his choice to resist made his alienation an eventuality. Many household names have suffered a similar public death. Examples are as prevalent as the social movements that rolled over them. Wallace had been either uninformed or didn't care about the shifting social data concerning race relations in America. It cost him his political career. Comparative Historians and Sociologists had been tracking and publishing the markers that led to civil rights advancements years before he took office. It amazes me--so many "Celebriticians", like Wallace, wind up politically destitute because they simply cannot accept the apparent facts that ALWAYS predate social change. A social movement is not a nebulous entity manifested from the minds of an angry minority for no reason. Activism/legislation often merely becomes visible at the boiling point of social turmoil. Wallace must have seen the water rising. He would not budge. He is now a villain in America's written history.
There is and has always been a correlation between movements of any kind in society with quantifiable social and political conditions. A state governor has access to that data. Advisors put it on their desks daily. There are many complicated reasons why our leaders ignore the causal logic of social change. In brief; Conformity yields status. Status equals power. To be suddenly viewed as deviant by one's peers can often bring home negative social sanctions harsh enough to effect all areas of a person's life. If you are a politician you risk losing elections (Or much worse). It takes a brave person to advocate for an unpopular cause. As I write this, I fear what some people will think of me,...Will I even publish it? Beyond the fear of ridicule is an ultimate fear of speaking up publicly in a country where negative social sanctions have historically led to extreme violence. Rational or not, the fear is there. Is it worth the risk? In today's polarized political climate, taking a stand on a divisive issue could cost you everything.
The "civil rights era" has not and will never end. There will always be a new kind of bigotry for each generation to fight. As far as I can tell, no country on earth has achieved a full state of equality. We simply keep adding more banners to the civil rights movement each year. What has now reached a critical visibility is the issue of sexual freedom. This is not new. The public fight for sexual freedom began long ago. Some people even call the 60's-80's sexual revolution America's 2nd sexual revolution, the first being the "roaring twenties". America was, until about ten years ago, becoming a more permissive society concerning "sexual freedoms" on the whole. Public policy records support this statement. However, around 2002, we began seeing a statistically significant shift in America towards conservatism. This is also reflected in public policy records. This recent rise has brought into the light many previously more latent Dominant group opinions concerning sexual freedoms, religion, and the law concerning each. Between the year 2000 and now, 33 states have banned same-sex marriage (17 have legalized it). The point here is that all this drastic legal motion has come within the last decade. Kansas banned same-sex marriage in 2005. Following this, in February 2014, Kansas House bill 2453 was drafted and introduced to a vote by a Republican majority. The bill was entitled "AN ACT concerning religious freedoms with respect to marriage". It stated:
Section (1)a. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no individual or religious entity shall be required by any governmental entity to do any of the following, if it would be contrary to the sincerely held religious beliefs of the individual or religious entity regarding sex or gender: (a) Provide any services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods, or privileges; provide counseling, adoption, foster care and other social services; or provide employment or employment benefits, related to, or related to the celebration of, any marriage, domestic partnership, civil union or similar arrangement.(Kansas. House of Representatives. HB 2453 2014. N.p.: n.p., 2014. Web. 18 Feb. 2014.)
In practice, this bill legalizes discrimination/ segregation against same-sex couples or an individual participating in a same-sex union. It allows discrimination at both the public and private levels per a service provider's individual religious ideology. This is just one example in one state. February 2014, in Tennessee, there was a similar bill introduced by Sen. Bryan Kelsey (R). The premise behind such legislation is that religious people are being persecuted by the homosexual community. Remember George Wallace? He took a similar blaming the victim approach towards racial integration. He blamed the African American community almost as if they were causing white people to suffer. To ignore the entire documented history of an oppressed minority in this way,...that was his downfall. He believed his way of doing things was divine and therefore racial segregation was justified. If you don't believe me, research his speeches. They are full of stubborn ideologies despite what was then a mounting public outcry against racial segregation. He played the hard case and he lost. History taught him a stern lesson in listening. I contend that any person that so willingly and blindly ignores the voices of the have-nots can expect to eventually join Wallace as an outcast villain. As the fight for equality continues, let the bigots come out. Let them scream and shout their exclusionary rhetoric and cite God with their imputed righteousness. In time they'll ruin themselves AND when they go back into hiding we'll know just where to find them.
From here I cannot proceed without first revealing a few personal and little know facts about myself (This might be where I lose friends). The psycho-sexual development of a human is quite a complicated thing. It resides on a continuum. We are not all the same. How could we be? Our experiences develop US! We do not control them or rule them. Our surroundings combined with biology provide the involuntary stimulus that comes with being alive. Within these frameworks we learn to love whosoever fits who we are. Love is not sex and sex is not gendered. I had my first homosexual experience at age 5. Most people would call this "playing doctor". Strangely enough (not) my first experience happened in a closet. The fact that we felt we had to hide tells me something about how powerfully reinforced the stigmas concerning sex, sexual preference, and gender roles really are. During my adolescent and young adult years I had a variety of sex/relationship experiences as I tried to figure out who I was. I've been with men, women, and both simultaneously. Erikson outlines this very process in his "stages of psychosocial development". For people in the 12-18 age group--in his chart in fact--he entitled this life stage "Identity vs. Role Confusion". I painfully dragged through many identity stages. Some roles did not allow me to challenge conventional ideas of sex or gender identity. Within certain circles I pretended to be an over masculinized version of myself just to avoid confronting my own insecurities. I thought I could avoid detection by playing the part of what would be considered a traditional WASP male. The problem with hiding among people with whom you fundamentally differ is, YOU slowly begin to hate YOU. There are a multitude of popular and yet homophobic sub-cultures in America. I've been just about one of each trying to escape my own duality. This self hatred and the drugs and alcohol I used to cope nearly killed me. Society was telling me I was wrong for not knowing whether I was gay or straight. Currently, in 33 states the law says it's wrong. If I had grown up in Kansas and not Austin, would I have survived?
My experiences are far from unique. As I've grown older, I've learned to love myself by relating to other people. I've met men and women with the exact same story. They struggled like I did. They fought hard to survive long enough to accept themselves and some of them fell in love in the process. They've built homes and families. Many have been together for years. I happened to fall in love with an old friend. We've been married almost 15 years. We have a 14 year old daughter. Among my friends and family, love is love. It does not depend on sexual attraction. In our life stories, we are as varied in who we love as there are primary shades in a kaleidoscope. It seems to me that love happens by chance delivery during an unexpected life. "Preference" has nothing to do with it. To dictate to people via law the level at which they are allowed to express that love is wrong. I have been publicly quiet on these issues until now. I have been admittedly scared to speak with any force except with certain confidantes. To engage the storm ahead, for me, I had to tell all. I needed to qualify my values as rooted in an indisputable life story. Nobody can take away what you've lived. People are suffering. They are suffering as we speak. If activism does not continue, what will become of people like me, like us, in the future? If we allow love to become connected to the consequence of law, at some point, there will be no place in this world for anyone.
Jason Leverett
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
From One Extreme To the Other
When you lose the person you love most, there is no going back. I think it must be harder to lose what's ahead of you than to let go of what's behind. How does anyone get over knowing that "God" has robbed them of their future? When these kind of promises are broken by random tragedy, the loss is so personally crushing it can feel like divine punishment.
Follow if you can,
What parts of you the world must see:
The bravest of what fades and dies,
If too dim in company we keep.
As all living things need light,
We must love away what hate provides:
For we are all but lost,
If through fear we punish others like ourselves.
Follow if you can,
What parts of you the world must see:
The bravest of what fades and dies,
If too dim in company we keep.
As all living things need light,
We must love away what hate provides:
For we are all but lost,
If through fear we punish others like ourselves.
Hopeless Convention
Secretly she'd been removing one knick-knack at a time from her desk for three months. It was more than just coincidence that no one noticed her work space slowly become just a space. The only words anyone in the office ever spoke were piecemeal motivational prose learned at seminars and company meetings. Her colleagues were like pet parrots. Even with their cage doors wide open they wouldn't fly away.
Having to sneak away with her personal items from her own cubicle made her hate going to work even more. If they discovered she was planning to quit, termination was certain. She needed those last few paychecks. At least this way, she was able to control her fate. All her daily fences lacked living color. The drab metal cubicle frames outlined what amounted to nothing more than a 5'x 8' piece of Berber carpet. She cursed every square inch of it for boxing her in. In part, she cursed herself for letting it. There was even an "unofficial" company rule printed at the bottom of the last page in the employee handbook,..."No Peeking". It sounded like a slogan used to prevent school children from cheating on a test. This meant employees were prohibited from looking into another person's cubicle door or over the divider. Because of this, human interactions were limited mostly to walks toward the elevator or short jaunts on the ground floor from elevator to exit. Breaking this rule had always been her private rebellion.
With every stolen glance into the world of her peers she glimpsed the missing pieces of their lives. When time is money, love becomes a luxury. Family photos, seasonal calendars, clever stapler covers (made by children and grand children), and souvenir paperweights--these were the dusty proof of lives lived less than people intended. Ten years of "peeking" told an awful tale. She could see that times had changed. When she was a child, family photos looked like Mary Tyler Moore and sibling bunny ears. Now, they looked more like rolling eyes and I-phones. It was like watching the whole world slowly forget how to breath. A year at a time the faces in their spaces slowly dimmed. She imagined they'd someday all become soundless but living colorless smudges locked in their tiny cross hatched cubbyholes. Her own face was changing color. Now that she could hear her own gasping, it was time to go.
She had always imagined herself as the bulletproof exception to the pressures that so quietly cause a person to trade wishes for washboards. She never meant to become so aloof as a mother and friend. Indeed she paid the bills and kept food on the table. By most peoples' standards she was extraordinarily successful as a single mother. Yet, around her, eroding her, the spin of countless angry early mornings washed out her love of just about everything. Her drive to work made her feel like she was holding her breath at the bottom of a pool. Lying motionless under the pressure, there was always that same seductive temptation to stay down too long,...to close her eyes and perish in the quiet hum of her morning commute. As her dreams became unaffordable pleasures, death had become a romantic notion.
She started her corporate job with a sense of empowerment. After the divorce, she needed that kind of a boost. It let her know that she could keep going forward with school, work, parenting, or whatever she might plan for the future. When she and David split, she feared all her future plans would fall through. As time went by, Sara had come to realize that she'd betrayed herself over and over for the sake of the marriage. She had tied her own hands and David was more than happy to let her play the traditional domestic role. Now, she was grateful that her American nightmare was over. In 1981 however, the nightmare was over for many people. She and thousands of other women flooded the workforce. The day she was interviewed, she saw more variations on the pants suit than there were factories in Taiwan. She beat the odds and got hired in a skirt. In 1981 when Jimmy Carter was leaving office, he said "Our American values are not luxuries, but necessities--not the salt in our bread, but the bread itself." What he didn't know was that the time for "bread" and circuses was over. With a 50% divorce rate, Sara and many others were no longer content to put their happiness on the back burner for some antiquated idea of matrimony. As she gained a voice, she lost a husband.
Having to sneak away with her personal items from her own cubicle made her hate going to work even more. If they discovered she was planning to quit, termination was certain. She needed those last few paychecks. At least this way, she was able to control her fate. All her daily fences lacked living color. The drab metal cubicle frames outlined what amounted to nothing more than a 5'x 8' piece of Berber carpet. She cursed every square inch of it for boxing her in. In part, she cursed herself for letting it. There was even an "unofficial" company rule printed at the bottom of the last page in the employee handbook,..."No Peeking". It sounded like a slogan used to prevent school children from cheating on a test. This meant employees were prohibited from looking into another person's cubicle door or over the divider. Because of this, human interactions were limited mostly to walks toward the elevator or short jaunts on the ground floor from elevator to exit. Breaking this rule had always been her private rebellion.
With every stolen glance into the world of her peers she glimpsed the missing pieces of their lives. When time is money, love becomes a luxury. Family photos, seasonal calendars, clever stapler covers (made by children and grand children), and souvenir paperweights--these were the dusty proof of lives lived less than people intended. Ten years of "peeking" told an awful tale. She could see that times had changed. When she was a child, family photos looked like Mary Tyler Moore and sibling bunny ears. Now, they looked more like rolling eyes and I-phones. It was like watching the whole world slowly forget how to breath. A year at a time the faces in their spaces slowly dimmed. She imagined they'd someday all become soundless but living colorless smudges locked in their tiny cross hatched cubbyholes. Her own face was changing color. Now that she could hear her own gasping, it was time to go.
She had always imagined herself as the bulletproof exception to the pressures that so quietly cause a person to trade wishes for washboards. She never meant to become so aloof as a mother and friend. Indeed she paid the bills and kept food on the table. By most peoples' standards she was extraordinarily successful as a single mother. Yet, around her, eroding her, the spin of countless angry early mornings washed out her love of just about everything. Her drive to work made her feel like she was holding her breath at the bottom of a pool. Lying motionless under the pressure, there was always that same seductive temptation to stay down too long,...to close her eyes and perish in the quiet hum of her morning commute. As her dreams became unaffordable pleasures, death had become a romantic notion.
She started her corporate job with a sense of empowerment. After the divorce, she needed that kind of a boost. It let her know that she could keep going forward with school, work, parenting, or whatever she might plan for the future. When she and David split, she feared all her future plans would fall through. As time went by, Sara had come to realize that she'd betrayed herself over and over for the sake of the marriage. She had tied her own hands and David was more than happy to let her play the traditional domestic role. Now, she was grateful that her American nightmare was over. In 1981 however, the nightmare was over for many people. She and thousands of other women flooded the workforce. The day she was interviewed, she saw more variations on the pants suit than there were factories in Taiwan. She beat the odds and got hired in a skirt. In 1981 when Jimmy Carter was leaving office, he said "Our American values are not luxuries, but necessities--not the salt in our bread, but the bread itself." What he didn't know was that the time for "bread" and circuses was over. With a 50% divorce rate, Sara and many others were no longer content to put their happiness on the back burner for some antiquated idea of matrimony. As she gained a voice, she lost a husband.
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