Travel Date: September 16, 2018
A cool but not unpleasant breeze stirs while Marci and I sit on Bobby and Lee's front porch and eat gourmet pizza with them, watching the fireworks in Juarez. A shimmer of city lights rolls out below a crackling sky. For a minute, all of us wonder what the festivities are for. Then Bobby says, "Ah, Independence Day," and I remember also.
Sidewalks lined with tables outside the small eateries. Wonderfully, chaotic symphony of sound. Competing mariachi bands serenade each and every little eating establishment. Aroma of competing foods. People weaving in and out of tables, making their way up and down Av. Benito Juarez, stopping, eating, and drinking, and talking to friends all along the way. A chaos of conversations. A unity of joy.
I used to go to Juarez on Mexico's Independence Day.
For a brief minute, I think Marci and I should be over there. I should have known the date. I should have planned this trip better. I should have gotten passports--something that was never needed before 911.
It's not that I don't want to be here on the porch with Bobby and Lee. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's just that I want to show Marci as much of my life here as possible, and there part of it is, right now, across the river, going on, and I'd totally forgotten about it. A mariachi band is very different live than on the radio. On the radio, I turn the station. Live though, it's very hard to walk on by, no matter how much of Juarez you want to taste and see. On September 16th, though, one doesn't have to make that decision. The mariachi bands are everywhere. One band just bleeds into the other as you move down the street of brass sounds and copper-colored lights, whole chickens spinning on rotisseries in restaurant windows reflecting back the city lights. And, oh those smells! It's like we're here in New Orleans, sitting on a porch in some back neighborhood, having totally forgotten Mardi Gras is going on, the lights and music shut out by a cloak of dark, sweating trees.
My moment of regret is brief though. It's too peaceful here on this porch with windchimes tinkling, and the distance sounds of fireworks popping, for me to hold on to any We should have... The moment softly demands our presence. Lee and Marci do most the talking. Bobby and I join in now and then. As always, I don't have much to say. There is a difference though from years back. I'm at peace with who I am. I am no longer running from something I don't understand. This is not the first time I've been back to El Paso. Each time was a little different. The first time I was anxious to show off our new born baby son, Everest. The next time I was anxious to show off his three older brothers, who didn't come previously. But each time, as glad as I was to be back on this porch, I was still anxious. I wanted to prove something. What? I'm not sure.
This time I just sit and listen to the conversation and the wind chimes.
I'd like to say that there was some grand change in me, perhaps, that my religion had changed me, or that I'd done some heavy emotional lifting, and that I'd overcome. My religion has changed me. Perhaps I've overcome some things. But mainly, it's just been time. I don't know why the bullying I received in junior high and high school affected me so. Many people go through far worse trauma seemingly unscathed. Physical abuse. Addiction. Rape. War. Statistically speaking, I've been about as lucky as one can get. Yet, one doesn't totally get to choose how one reacts to the world. We like to think we do, and certainly choices are ours along the way, but not unlimited choices. Our biology and our environment together confine our options even as they teach us. That confinement is an illusion, but it is a strong one.
I showed up in El Paso broken. What Bobby and Lee had to teach me was built for the future. I was capable of writing good poems back then, perhaps far better poems than what I write now, but I wasn't capable of sitting on a porch in the company of others, at ease with those around me, and at ease with myself in their company. I could observe life, but I couldn't live it. My shyness removed me from everything. I stood outside the world and watched, walking around this giant glass cylinder, looking in. I'd try to enter, and every time I did, the glass would push back. Sometimes the people inside the cylinder would even be waving, welcoming me. But I couldn't enter. My fear was just too overwhelming. I had the choice to go to a party, and I often did. But I didn't have the choice to be part of the party. I never was. I was always on the outside looking in.
That night with Marci, Bobby and Lee, I was not only where I wanted to be, I was actually there. Still shy. Still not having much to say. But the glass tube was gone. I was no longer outside, looking in.
I have a strong belief in God, but I don't think he always works the way we think he does. Mainly, he just gives us time. Some people, not so much. Perhaps they don't need as much. Some people, a little more. But, except in the case of infant mortality, everyone gets some time and some experiences. Those experiences, and that time, softens us, transforms us, without us really being aware of it. We dream and make plans along the way. Dreams of stardom, dreams of wealth and fame. Some get it. Some don't. We work. We accomplish. We show off our success--whether it be our poems, our family, or our new boat. Some of us have a lot to show; some not so much. But what we all learn sooner or later is that we all fall short, that we just don't quite live up to our desires, and if we do, we desire even more, so that we still fall short of our own expectations. And that softens us, makes us kinder. To what degree? That depends on the person, how open they are, but nobody gets out of this life without being a little more understanding and a little less selfish than when we showed up.
Life teaches, in varying degrees, that we are less important than we ever could have imagined in our youth, and once we realize that, ironically, we also become aware that we are important beyond measure, as is everyone else. God gives us experience to break us down to the point where we can recognize the divine. There is no transcendence without pain. No one gets out of here unchanged. And that change always comes from the same realization: Oh, I'm not the center after all.
Those moments of recognition are the moments we truly live. People like Bobby and Lee are the rare individuals who have let those moments sink in and become part of who they are on a regular basis. I always felt that peace around them. I just wasn't ready to let that peace in. What they had to teach me was built for the future.
That time is now. At least while I write this. A few moments from now I might be ranting and raving over the most trifling thing. I often do that. I've seen Bobby do that plenty of times also. But thanks in part to Bobby and Lee, once I can talk my ego down from consuming me, I know how to return to the front porch and the stillness of my being. That peace is available to everybody if, and when, they are ready for it.
God gives us life so that we can become ready for the peace that he provides through porches, and windchimes, and conversations with those we love.
He also gives us life so that we can become ready for the peace that he provides through revolutions, pandemics, wars, and famine. Far fewer of us are ready for peace in those moments, certainly not me, which is fine. He gives each and everyone his/her own timeline regardless of what some madman is doing across the water or in our very own backyard.
Yet, whatever our individual timeline, transcendence is what we are here to experience. A moment might occur while slowly tuning into the slow drip of the kitchen faucet on a warm Thursday afternoon while home from work with the flue. A moment might occur while facing down hate on a bridge near Salma, Alabama. Yet, those moments of knowing that we are both nothing and everything simultaneously are ultimately what we are here to experience. Knowing God well obliterates any notion of I individually without you, whoever you are, whatever you think, whatever you do. The moments those glass tubes shatter are the moments we are truly living. Everything else is the dream. Transcendence is real. Mortality exists so that we can tell the difference.
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