Still Here (August 25th, 2016)

-- Despite the buzz of my phone's constant emergency alerts of flash-flood warnings, I made an attempt. I sat down to write.

The trees were bent to obtuse angles by the wind. I felt washed-out, blank as the night sky.

I thought about all the stars I couldn't see and might never see.

Instinctively, I reached for my personal journals. Many of the entries I read went back in time to a much younger self... I lingered over pages of passionate penmanship, declarations of purpose, wading through hopes and fears and dread. As I looked at the downpour, I began to perceive what it was like to feel it all at once.

Strange, how words once written continue to feel mysterious and fresh. It is as if a part of us is constantly in flux. We are split open. Always ready to feel the world anew. Multitudinous. Fragmented. Complex. Or, at least, capable of new vantage points.

Like a meteor that streaks across the sky, the moment changes and burns up. We are but a memory we are seeing... We question if we saw it.

Was it?

A journal does more than help us to remember. We are different each time we take something in-- each time we process experience, we transform it.

If words deepen and change inside us, and even the familiar becomes current, maybe the stars outside are less important than the many fragments of light within.

Perhaps, by seeing something in retrospect, we become more whole, more able, more willing to carry the torch of Olympic feeling in a weatherbeaten hand.

Perhaps, surviving the rain is what allows us to walk in it.

Reading the words of those who have endured difficulty quickens my resolve. It is because others dare themselves onto the page that I can have courage.

I have formed the impression that even my own words can be a beacon when I've lost the way.

How many times have I silently felt my way through the dark?

How many nights have my feelings overtaken me with too much exquisite feeling? Is it possible to possess too much knowing?

Sometimes the captured words of our past transform the present.

*

If my words are a tonic, poured over rocks, on this hot August night, then I am ready for the flood—— I know, even when consumed, I'm still here.

Journal Entry: June 16th, 2002

Today, I walked home from work. The sky was awful-blue, a strange melancholy pressing down on the green grass.

I called my grandmother. Her voice was distant, four hundred miles from Baltimore, the weight of her voice like a hundred pounds of sand resting on my shoulders. If a voice can weigh as much as this-- then, I am carrying an extra body.

Many years ago, she became my father. She was my mother too. And when I think of it, she was ancient even then.

She sounded lonely tonight. She doesn’t go out and she doesn’t let anyone visit. She hardly answers the phone.

So many years have passed since her good days, and she says she's staying alive for me. What can I say? It's a terrible burden to be the reason for another person's existence. How do you make new memories when the ability to engage with others is no longer there?

I suppose she lives on old memories, whatever warmth they supply. Yet, this diet has led her to become less compromising. Still, memory is a strong ally. For her and for me. The word 'ally' comes from the Latin derivative (alligare) which means 'to bind.' It is the glue that never forsakes us. She relies on her memory of me as a child, and I keep her close.

Today is Father’s Day. I begin this journal. I feel the need to write down my life, my thoughts, the crumbs of my days, the hopes of my nights, the way it sifts from my head, nearly headless.

I do not know why I write, only that I can’t help myself. So I do it with the candor I expect from others but seldom receive. I do it to make sense of the sadness of those around me. I write poetry and make art for various reasons. I plainly write, for reasons less understood.

Maybe, I write to enter into a universal sympathy with all that has been written before. Maybe, I write to understand, and to present myself in opposition to the quandaries of life. Maybe it's just to engage. To remember. To make new memories. I don’t really know.

Maybe all that I write is a letting out: a place where pain and tears and love can be at one with humor and observation. It can be an honest mate, as honest as words can be. Although, words have no meaning until we, ourselves, breathe meaning into them.

I am my father. I am my mother. And, I am my grandmother tonight. And, I am the blue pressing down, and I am the slanted stars that appear only to reappear.

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Pages From the Journal: A Visual Lover