Ah, I knew that title would get your attention. I was going to simply title this "Addiction". That too would have had its pull. Even the clinical label for losing control of one's choices pulls eyes in like a smoking tangle of steel along the interstate accompanied by flashing lights, ambulances and stretchers. Add to that the Biblical label, sin, and you've got people. We don't readily avert our eyes from the sordid details of life.
Sorry to disappoint you. You won't get much of that here. The best way to leave sin and addiction behind is to do just that--leave it behind. There has to be some understanding about the personal pull, what the repetition of destructive behavior provided the addicted, and an awareness that those connections which were forged in the brain through repeated stimulation are still there, yearning to be reconnected whatever the cost to you and those around you. And that's about it. After making amends if need be (when and where possible), walking away from the wreckage is simply the best course. Crawling through the steel shards, glass gravel, and hot coals on your hands and knees, or fanning the flames of the inferno just to keep the scene alive so that you can analyze how everything came unhinged, will not set you free. Standing up, noticing that the sun is still there in the sky, and that there is a road to walk down, away from the heat, one step at a time, may.
I walked that road, and I'm not turning back. But I think honesty here requires saying, Yes, my life in El Paso included long, wonderful walks through the magic of borderland. Images, sounds and smells I will never forget. Late afternoon sunlight on a stark white storefront along a back street of Juarez, dogs barking, three kids playing in a vacant lot of garbage and rubble, laughing as sunlight glistens the girl's long black hair amber, and they all squint into the intense light towards some gringo with a camera.
And Yes, there were the best of people--sitting on George's living room floor, listening to his great stories, and his constant wondering about how it's all got to add up to something, doesn't it? Or is there nothing at all? Maybe this is just it, maybe we sit leaning against a sofa, trying to figure it all out, forever, and then we just die, and they put us in a hole, and worms devour us... But I don't know, there's a lot of space out there, and galaxies, and supernovas, things exploding, and there was the time my friend and I put a pipe bomb under a palm tree on base and blew it all to smithereens. Talk about cool. Hey you want another drink?
And there was Bobby and Lee.Bobby's great big, life-loving politics. His anger against unrighteously-poweful men doing dirt to the powerless poor. His love of life and pomegranates. Lee's quiet appreciation of sunsets, neighbors and children.
Yet, with all this, there was also me at the topless bar, the strip club, the XXX-rated video store, or up in my apartment all alone, feeding my addiction. There was also me sitting by myself at the hole-in-wall club on whatever given corner trying to drink myself into oblivion.
Those do not need to be a detailed part of this narrative. All that I love about El Paso is something other than that. I'm not running from who I was. But I'm not going to stand around the wreckage either, trying to sort through the unsortable. Redemption is redemption. The atonement is a get-out-of-jail-free card requiring only humility to obtain it. I've learned happiness comes from a willingness to use those gifts. I will only bring up my choice-stained past when it serves the purpose of this narrative: to show gratitude towards all those who made Texas memorable for me. Sometimes the sin and good get entangled, as do the joy and the pain. When that happens, I'll feel free to bring up what I need to. It's a matter of focus--not running, hiding, or burying the past.
Yet there needs to be some accountability. Otherwise, the memoir isn't an honest one. This post is to get that out there. Texas wasn't all heat and blue skies and roads that go forever. Dallas wasn't all shiny glass skyscrapers, parks, museums, and tree-lined suburbs. Juarez wasn't all quaint little eateries with chickens spinning on rotisseries in open windows, happy mariachi music playing in the background. There was pornography and pain, bleary nights, and hangovers. Some of that pain was handed to me by brutes in high school who victimized me to fill their own black-holes, pain they did not know how to handle, so they pushed it forward. But most of it, I chose, a willing participant in the dinging and denting of my own soul. Now on, with what matters:
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.
Although I walked every block of Sunset Heights and Downtown hundreds, if not thousands, of times, as well as Skyline Drive and even parts of the Five Points neighborhood, I'd never been to the El Paso Municipal Rose Gardens until this trip. It was like I was tourist in a foreign city. I always wonder why so many people love to travel to other cities, and when they do, they go to museums, theaters, and municipal parks and gardens, but when they live in the city themselves, their life is confined to the freeways, the shopping centers, a few favorite restaurants, and home. They put up with all the bad that comes with city living (the traffic, smog, and congestion) without reaping the benefits. The grand parks, zoos, museums and aquariums seem to be for visitors, outside the holidays, or when company comes. The cities that I resided in, I owned. The Dallas Museum of Art was mine, as was White Rock Lake and the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens. I claimed them. If I was going to put up with Central Expressway, LBJ, and I-30, by gosh I was getting something in return. The same was true with El Paso. I knew the border like few others. Yet, somehow, I'd missed this jewel of a garden.
Even though we hit the garden off-bloom, with only a sprinkling of color here and there, it was still wonderful. What we missed in blooms, we gained in light. It was late afternoon, and the light sculpted the Italian cypresses magnificently, throwing beams of shadow across the tight, formal layout of the garden. The air was warm and sweet with the faint smell of scattered blossoms.
I didn't expect much, as grand parks is one thing El Paso is lacking, despite the city's abundant culture and history. Most of the parks are little squares of grass trying to hold on under the intense heat, and unlike Phoenix, the city isn't willing to squander ballfields of water and risk the survival of future generations in an attempt to turn the desert into Kentucky. Yet, they also haven't invested the money to return their outdated parks into natural spaces set aside for native species. Therefore, most of the parks are dirt patches with sprigs of yellow grass clinging-on for dear life.
Yet, walking down those long, stone walkways of the rose garden, in the late afternoon light, shadows thrown from the the very architectural cypress trees, I felt like I was is in Italy. I felt a low melancholy sweep over me as I realized this space could have been mine too. How many wonderful afternoons did I miss sitting among the fragrant scents and bright colors, distractedly reading a book, my eyes now and then drawn to butterflies and hummingbirds, my ears pulled into conversations of people from other places? I could have owned this place the way I owned the Plaza.
I never want to live in a city again, but if by chance life forces me to, I will make that city my own, whether it be Provo, Utah or New York City. Wherever you live, don't let the tourists know your city better than you do. Life is short. Experience more than the line at the checkout counter. Hit those clubs. Hear that music. Taste that food. See that art. Know the city that is yours for-the-taking better than the tourists do. You pay the taxes, you breath the air, you spend mind-numbing hours waiting for red lights to turn green. Get something out of the deal.
Poet and publisher Bobby Byrd stands in front of one of the many great works of art at Cinco Puntos Press
"Bobby is like a second father to me". That would be a true statement if I didn't already have two dads, but I do. I guess that puts him at number three. Maybe. I'm not so sure. Writing isn't simply a vocation; it is a way of being. It is impossible to separate who I have become as a person from who I have become as a writer. They are one. Bobby played an essential part in my growth as a writer; he also played an essential part in my growth as a person. Through mentoring, he became part of me. That's how it works in the arts. My brother had a painting instructor who did the same for him. Bobby himself had a mentor, the poet Paul Blackburn. There is no way to overstate the importance of a mentor on a young writer. It's about more than just learning the craft. It's about learning to allow words to fill some need, complete some fragmented part in oneself, not all at once, but in bits and pieces. It's about openness. And the process doesn't end. Or usually doesn't. If it does, the good writing stops. That's because the best writing doesn't come from putting down well what is already known to the writer; it comes from the writer touching the unknown. The magic is in the awe of discovery, a startling arrival at the answer to some need, known or unknown.
Need is complex. It doesn't arise out of a vacuum. Or perhaps it does, but not one giant void. That is more often the source of terror, which halts creativity, rather than fueling it. Instead need forms from little absences here and there, that ooze together to form larger voids. A mentor doesn't replace the emptiness; a mentor shows the mentee how to use it, and in the process, complete it little by little. If I needed Bobby as a third father, it wasn't because my father and step father failed. Quite the opposite. It's because they gave me enough to know I needed something more.
1. Joe
My stepdad was too good of a father for "step" to be included anywhere in his title; he was always just "Dad" to me. He gave me my love of working in the yard and my eventual sense of ease with myself. That last one took a while, but I eventually got there, using his example as a path forward. He had this innate recognition that we are here to enjoy ourselves. I had a perfect role model of how-to-be despite my struggles with shyness. He never preached that. I'm not sure he was even aware he encompassed that quality himself. Later in life, he talked an awful lot about the financial success of his biological children. From words alone, it could seem he idolized wealth, but he was just a proud father. Actions speak louder than words. He got up each day and enjoyed life effortlessly.
Winter 1981. It's a cold, blue Friday afternoon after a Thursday when blistering white came ripping through. It's about 4:30 and the sun is at a good slant, firing up the sandstone and concrete-block facades of the homes around town. Right now the sun angles in on our living room window with such intensity that a bird doesn't see it and knocks her little brains out against the glass. Sassy, our cat, jumps up on the couch to look out the window. She is meowing, wild with excitement. I give the bird a few moments to come to. When she doesn't, I let Sassy out to dispose of her.
As I am opening up the door to let the cat out, Dad drives up in our old, beat-up Mercury. Wilbur, our pig, hears him from the side-yard and comes ripping around through the snow, wildly oinking. He is still small, but smart as can be. He's snorting and pounding his snout against Dad's legs.
"Well hello, Wilbur, you being a good pig? You want to go up in the mountains and see your mommy? Okay, now go on, get! You're getting mud all over my good clothes. Steve, go in and ask your mother if she wants to go to the canyon. With the snow and all, tonight's a good night to burn tree limbs."
I go in and ask Mom. She has been making chili for dinner, but we can cart it up there and heat it on the cabin stove. We are packing food in a cardboard box, happy, happy, happy! Dad comes out from the bedroom in his winter overalls and asks the two little dogs, "Do you want to go to the mountains? Want to go in the car? Yes, yes, yes, you do!" They yelp and wiggle, and they are happy, happy, happy!
Dad could have been a very rich man, and he was for a short time, a couple of times in his life, but each time the money slipped out of his hands, he accepted it rather easily and moved on to what really mattered to him--which always was the same thing. He loved pruning trees, raking leaves, building fires, and making trails on our land. He passed the land on to my brother, sister and me, as his children already have ranches. Yet, his greatest gift was waking up each morning with a natural smile. He'd wake up singing, and he wasn't much of a singer, but his off-key tune was full of joy and acceptance.
Winter 1977. My sister Kim is sleeping on the couch. She got in late last night (actually early this morning) and had a fight with Mom. Dad said nothing. Instead, he's up early this morning, singing. Kim rolls over, hides her head in the pillow. He dances around the living room. I think he's singing "It's So Easy" by Linda Rondstadt, but whenever he sings, it's hard to tell the song source. He goes high, and then deep down low, completely spontaneously, with no regard for the original song, and so a tune is a very hard thing to recognize flowing from his mouth. Even with his singing, Kim has not yet risen, so he comes by and tickles her feet. She kicks at him and groans. Mom's way to handle her strong-willed teenage daughter was to rant and rave. Dad's way of handling her is to amp up his natural morning joy a little. No judgement. No lecture. Just a simple strategy to make the morning hangover a little too real to be relived comfortably on a regular basis. Deterrent without judgement.
2. Larry
My biological father, although more complex, was pretty amazing also. He gave me the woods of northern California, my love of the road, and eventually, through a challenge, my relationship with God. I knew he loved me deeply, which has always meant a great deal to me. Christmases were big because he couldn't be there. Maybe it would have spoiled other children, but somehow we always knew the gifts were telling us what he couldn't say personally. He was making sure he was part of our lives even in his absence. During the summers, he shared that same love through his almost weekly camping trips, as well as one annual two-week vacation.
Late afternoon shadows are thrown across a long, narrow red, cinder-paved highway edged on both sides by forests of tall ponderosa pine. John Denver on the stereo sings--
Life in the city can make you crazy The sounds of the sand and the sea (I'm of the sea) Life in a high-rise can make you hungry For things you can't even see
Fly away, fly away (fly away) (Denver)
Dad's sucking on a mint, as always, and as soon as it's gone, he asks, "Can you hand me another one?" I reach in the bag. I pull out a Brach's blue mint and grab a couple of caramels for myself. He unwraps the mint smoothly with one hand while steering with the other and pops it in his mouth. He doesn't say much. He never does, and he doesn't need to. The ticking of shadow and light rolling across hood of the truck, up the window, and across our faces, making us squint over and over again says enough. It's hypnotic. Sandy (my stepmom) and Bobby (my half-brother) are in the camper behind the cab. Bobby knocks on the sliding-glass window behind the seat. He wants more Brach's too. He's playing cards with Mom as he's bored. I'm never bored on the road though. Neither is Lloyd, nor Kim. Dad is at peace here on these long highways cut through deep, tall forests that seem to go on forever, and so are we.
Genetically, Dad gave me his explosive temper (which sometimes even erupted amongst his beloved trees), his shyness and his tender heart, as well as his critical nature. Dad was pretty sure most of what humanity was up to (both individually and collectively) was not good, and I have to admit I agree with him on that, but he also cared deeply about those around him. He loved fiercely, but acceptance of himself or others was much harder. It is in my nature to parent like him, and I have had to work very hard to not do so. Both love and acceptance are necessary for us to grow, but having strong examples of both, I can tell you this: out of the two, acceptance is the most important gift a parent can give a child.
Winter 1986. Lloyd and I sit on the brown sofa of the split-level home in Salt Lake terrified. Icicles, slightly visible behind the lacy living room curtains, hang before a deep purple evening sky. Dad sits in the gold flowered beige chair in front of the window, a lamp on the end table beside him. We have no clue what to say. We never do. Unlike in our younger years, the quiet no longer sits comfortably between Dad and us. It is filled with unspoken disappointment on his part and unspoken apprehension on ours. He's never hit any of us. I've never even been spanked. Yet, there we sit, guarding our words carefully, deciding which ones to suck back down and which ones to carefully let out. The pressure is so intense that every time we come to Utah, Lloyd gets physically ill upon our return to Texas, absolutely exhausted by the trial he's been through. Dad always asks Lloyd how things are coming with his art. Lloyd always tells about whatever show his work has recently been in. Dad always asks, "Have you sold anything?" Lloyd tries to explain it's not about the money. Dad gives him advice on how to make it about the money. I sit there quietly feeling Lloyd's pain but hoping the focus stays on him, least Dad turn his assistance towards me. I'm more volatile, and unlike Lloyd, I have no accomplishments whatsoever to share. Still, I know how to use words as weapons. So does Lloyd, but he's more disciplined. I fear Dad, but mostly I fear myself. If I let go, there may never be a way to get back what we had on those two-lane roads in northern California. I don't want that to happen because I know that as much as I love Dad, my love for him pales in comparison to the love he has for us, his children. I don't want to hurt him. I am counting the minutes before I'm safely in bed with the knowledge that this time I didn't strike back with the same judgment he lays on us. My judgment wouldn't be through slow probing questions. It wouldn't be wrapped-up as verbal care packages. Nope. I'd hand over a word bomb. Here you go Dad. Have that.
As Dad aged, he softened. I think he knew all along he was doing more harm than good. I think he tried constantly to change, but change is difficult. To be fair, he moved the mark of effective parenting considerably forward. His father was an alcoholic. Unlike us, he was physically beaten as a child. He had a lot more to forgive his father for than we did. And we knew it wasn't that he hated us. Quite the opposite. He loved us so much that he couldn't accept us for who we were. We'd say and do things he thought were far below our potential. He took our failings on himself as his own: If I'd not left them, everything would be different. It was really quite unfair. He always had to correct our mistakes because of his one big mistake.And believe me, compared to those of a normal teenagers, our mistakes were quite small. No drugs. No screaming at our parents or throwing things. No slamming doors. No cigarettes. Kim drank for a very short time in junior high, but I don't think he even knew about it. We were good kids; he just needed to over-parent because of his choice to leave his family.
Yet, in my younger years, I was unfair to him also. He was critical, but not abusive. He seldom yelled. And though we never could live up to his expectations, we knew he loved us deeply. That's what created all the silence in his living room when we visited. If we hadn't felt his love, it would have been easy to fight back. Love stifled our natural resistance.
Over time, he did change. After he moved to the Oregon coast to be among his beloved trees near the sea, the questions became softer, less frequent. He talked instead of the church books he read, not to convert us, but because that was his interest. Mainly, he spent time acting as a tour guide to the lakes, woods, sands, rocks and churning sea near by, sharing his love once again with fewer words and less criticism.
Winter 2011. Rain beats heavily on the skylight as I follow Dad through the utility room of his modular home near the Oregon coast. He opens the back door and cool, moist air meets us. Rain thunders on the aluminum porch covering and drops over the edge in sheets. I follow Dad into the garage. He has something to tell me in private. I fear that after several years of having a good relationship, he's going to lecture me once again on something he feels I've done wrong. Instead, there in his garage, rain thundering down on the roof of a small modular home in a small development along a big bend in a river near the churning, wind-swept sea, my dad tells me that he's dying. Love that I never knew I had for him bubbles up in torrents from the cellular level. He explains his disease--how long he's had it and how much time he has left--but I can't really take it in. This can't be happening. Then he says, "I don't fear death, you know. I know there is an afterlife, that we continue. I'd like you to have that same knowledge". He asks me about my feelings towards the church. I tell him that I go regularly, that it's a good thing, but that I don't believe. He asks if I would put some time and effort into finding out for myself, one way or the other, for sure. As all the judgement is gone, I promise him that I will. The rain, though very much still alive, seems to have silenced. The only thing present is all the love we could never put into words.
3. Bobby
Although having two fathers, puts Bobby Byrd at number three, words don't capture how much he means to me. I'd entered a poem in a poetry contest and he was the judge. He liked it, awarded it first place, and asked me if I wanted to work for Cinco Puntos Press. He gained an employee, and I adopted a father. He didn't necessarily adopt me; he had his family. I'm the one who had the need. Lloyd and I were born artists in a world absolutely unconnected to the arts. My mother, a gifted, self-taught pianist, always played by ear, and I grew up in a house filled with music. Yet, she wasn't schooled in the arts. She was born to be a concert pianist but was never given that opportunity. Her words were the notes soaring out of the piano. We never sat around the dinner table and talked about books, music, or art. I'm not sure exactly what we talked about. My step-dad told great stories. We listened to his stories. Life was about our small town, the garden out back, and our property up by the canyon. But I needed a home where people sat around and talked about music, poetry and painting. I'd listen to Elton John, hear Bernie Taupin's lyrics, and think there had to be so much more out there:
Tune me into the wild side of life I'm an innocent young child sharp as a knife Take me to the garrets where the artists have died Show me the courtrooms where the judges have lied
Let me drink deeply from the water and wine Light colored candles in dark dreary mines Look in the mirror and stare at myself And wonder if that's really me on the shelf. (Elton John and Bernie Taupin)
Bobby and Lee were able to provide for me what my family could not: a model of how to live life normally and fully as an artist. The University of Texas at El Paso taught me how to write; Bobby provided an example of a sustainable pathway forward in the arts. So many of the writers I knew (only through their words on the page) lived miserable lives. From the books, it seemed to write well one had to drink oneself into oblivion, and then at the end of your truncated career, place an exclamation mark after your best work by taking your own life. Yet, here were Bobby and Lee, clearly writers, clearly happy, clearly sane, and obviously lovingly-kind to each other. Despite the biographies of the writers in the anthologies, the Byrd's demonstrated that in order to create, one did not have to drink obsessively, snort cocaine, or have affairs. Yelling, screaming and insanity did not have to be a biproduct of the arts. Instead, one could go out to the back shed (converted into a writing studio) and write for a couple hours and then come in, do dishes, steam vegetables, and sit down and have dinner as a family.
I didn't realize it until quite recently, but when I moved to El Paso, I was experiencing something akin to PTSD. I'd been bullied pretty heavily in junior high and high school. I had a few good friends, and so I did okay then. But, I started to fall apart in college. I had one year I basically didn't talk to anyone except Phil, my best friend and roommate. I worked. People there tried to be nice to me. I remember one girl going out of her way to invite me to go out clubbing with her and her friends. I knew she was asking me out. She was very pretty, and I liked her, but I just couldn't do it. Had she come right out and said, "Hey, I'm asking you out," I would have said yes. But because of all of the teasing I received in high school, I just couldn't make myself believe she was interested in spending time with me. What if I'm misunderstanding her? What if she's just letting me know what she and her friends are doing Friday night and that I might enjoy it? That isn't the same as saying, "Would you like to come along?" I don't remember what I said to her in return, if anything, but I know I didn't do the normal thing, and say, "That sounds fun," so that she could actually invite me out. After she quit the job, I pretty much spent the rest of the time working there in silence. I went to my classes in silence also. I was living as a monk on a crowded college campus. My only verbal outlet was my writing and conversations with Phil.
I moved to El Paso as a means to intentionally get away from myself, to learn how to not-be-shy, if that was even possible. It worked for a short while, and then somehow the shyness that overwhelmed me in Dallas discovered the route to El Paso and showed up at my doorstep. I didn't have any choice but to let him in; he was after-all, kin. Shutting down had become second nature, and I was terrified to let my silence go, no matter how miserable it made me. I caved in, and grudgingly let myself in, like a relative who constantly puts you down. "Oh, Hi" (forced grin) "Good to see you. Come on in."
I'm sitting at the Byrd's dining room table. It's the day the maid comes, and she's out in the office. So, here I am, working on Bobby's laptop. He's in the kitchen, cutting up asparagus. He talks of Memphis, his mother, the nanny he so loved. He talks of the Memphis sound--jazz, blues, country, and early rock and roll, and the heartache he caused his mother during his late nights out. He talks about how when he goes back to Memphis, he starts out in El Paso as a grown man, and gets younger and younger with each passing mile, so that by the time he reaches his mother's house, he's once again that teenager with all the same insecurities and rebelliousness he ever had.
I want to say, I know the feeling, but I don't. Instead I yawn. Bobby goes on, talking about Harvey Goldner, his partner in crime, and the one who introduced him to jazz, blues and poetry. I yawn some more. This goes on for a couple of hours. Bobby is telling me his life story and I'm yawning all the way through it.
Finally Bobby says, "You sure do yawn a lot." I want to tell him, "Sorry." I want to tell him that it has nothing to do with his stories. I want to tell him I just do that when I'm nervous. I want to tell him I'm not nervous because of him. Well, I am, but not because of anything he's doing. I'm constantly in fear. The only time I'm comfortable is when I'm in my own company, or with George. In Dallas, I had my brother and my friends. But mainly this is just who I am--absolutely terrified to be in the company of people. I do well as a stranger in a crowd. I love Juarez. There I can't speak the language; there I can be verbally invisible.
However, I do notice something. When Bobby said, "You sure do yawn a lot," it didn't sting. I'm still nervous, but not hurt. I sense that there is no judgment in it. It's like he's pointing out a detail in the landscape. "Look at the light on that yucca over there." He might be annoyed that I'm yawning through his stories, but if he is, it doesn't affect me negatively.
I don't remember what I said, if anything, that day. I do remember that I needed to hear Bobby talk about Memphis, music, politics, poetry and art. I needed to hear the back screen door slam on warm summer days, to lift up the door in the floor in the living room, and go down into the cool partial basement where the stacks of extra books for Cinco Puntos Press were kept, to put data into the computer out in the shed--the door open, bees buzzing around the flowers along the fence--and then have Bobby come in and say, "Damn, it's a beautiful day; isn't it glorious?"
I remember once, after Cinco Press moved to the office downtown, a space we were sharing as I was trying to get a copying service started, Bobby came in and said, "Isn't it a glorious day? Do you ever just walk around downtown and enjoy the day?" I did that often after work and every weekend, on both sides of the border, but I didn't say anything. So, he said, "You should just go; these orders will wait until tomorrow. Get out and enjoy the city."
What I really should have done was walk around handing out fliers for my business, but that involved talking to people, so I took his suggestion, grabbed the book I was reading, and headed out to find a warm bench in the sun on a fine spring day. I remember it because it is the only time in my life I've been told to to leave work so that I could fully enjoy the moment.
Those days come back often when I least expect them. I lost a brother in-law a couple years back, the only other writer and Democrat in Marci's family. He committed suicide. We never said much to each other, but we understood one another well. We were mutual admires of one another's craft. When I tried to write a tribute to him, I was immediately taken back to El Paso:
Poem for Michael Flynn
I don’t know what to say, other than I can hear your laugh. I'm not sure how this fits yet, but I'll tell a story and hope meaning comes around eventually. I used to despise the anthology Top 500 Poems edited by William Harmon because he called every third poem “robust”. It sounded like he was describing a can of Dennison Stew or Hormel Chili instead of poems that are to English what the sequoia is to trees, what Mahatma Gandhi is to men, what Mother Teresa is to women, what Blue Bell is to ice cream.
I would sit in a Chinese buffet across from 109 N Oregon in El Paso, Texas, a tall, old sleek blond brick building with an elegant brass elevator and a smoke shop on the ground floor that smelled of sweet pipe tobacco. It was watched over lovingly by a short man with a thick beard.
Other than his height, his beard, his big, brown eyes, he wasn’t anything like you.
He hated everything but tobacco: Mexicans, gays, lesbians, liberals, Republicans, corporations, Asians, tortillas, chocolate, Juarez, tequila, America. But he liked rum, Cuban cigars and rum.
If you asked him discreetly, for the right price he could get you some Cubans. Not the people. Cubans he despised. But the cigars, oh now that—
Anyway, I would sit across the street and fume while slurping noodles over that damn William Harmon and his over use of “robust”. I’d write volumes in the margins about how idiotic William Harmon is, and the thing is, I think you are one of the few who would understand. The irony is, when I think of your laugh, the only word I can find that describes the rich deep brown coffee colored biting joy in your voice is “robust”.
Had a wrinkle in the universe made us contemporaries and found us wandering the streets of El Paso or the calles of Mexico, I’m sure we would have found each other and fumed together over words and politics, compadres in contempt of mediocrity.
That was long ago before I metamorphosed into a Mormon.
I am not sorry for my transformation. It has only brought me joy. But I am sorry I let God get in the way of us being as close as we could have been, as we should have been.
That is my fault, not His, and certainly not yours.
You may or may not have believed in God. Still you knew God should be a window, not a wall, religion an opening, not a closing.
I’m sorry Man. We all are still learning. If I am ever back in El Paso, a city I know you would love, I will bring along that damn anthology by William Harmon and slurp Chinese noodles again and fume over the word “robust” and how it is the only word I can find to describe your laugh, deep and strong as black coffee.
Somehow I know that is enough.
Peace be my brother.
The river that divides earth and heaven is as thin as the silver sliver of the Rio Grande.
See you on the other side of the border of life if Trump doesn’t erect a damn wall there also.
After I wrote the poem, I wondered why the suicide of my brother in-law took me back to El Paso. Over time, I realized it was because of Bobby. Michael reminded me a lot of my younger self. I was bit jealous of him, because at least for a while, he wrote for a living. The pay was dismal, but he was earning money and respect for his writing, which was very fine indeed. I eventually realized I imagined him into a place he might have received the help he needed. Perhaps Bobby could have reached him the way he reached me. I don't know what I would have done without Bobby and Lee. I needed more than El Paso could provide me at that time. I needed to come home and make peace with who I am, a small town boy from Mormon America. But Bobby and Lee provided me shelter from the storm whirling around inside me at the time, safety from PTSD I didn't even know I was experiencing. I'm not sure what Michael's storm was. He wasn't at all shy. But whatever his storm was, I wished he'd found a way through it. El Paso was my safety; I imagined it could be his.
Thank you Bobby for helping me make it through the storm. Thank you for your poems. Most of all, thank you for providing a model for living the mundane marvelously--a way to sit comfortably in reality, whether the world be blooming butterflies and good vibes or torching all that is substantial and praise-worthy with lies and bigotry.
You put the life into living.
References
Denver, John. "Fly Away." Windsong.
1975.
John, Elton and Bernie Taupin. "This Song Has
No Title." Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. 1973.
It didn't seem to bother anybody. She walked out on this one long, rambling line about drinking a very bright green Lime Rickey soda. Her florescent orange sweater looked amazing against the
neon soda bottle popping
out of the poem
because of placement.
(The fact that it was bigger and had neon light circling the soda bottle periphery like a shoreline around a tropical island didn't hurt much either.)
Anyway, she was out there dancing around in her bright red heals on SODA in NEON at the end
of a very long line, when she knocked the "A"
off and fell
on her own A.
Everyone laughed.
She was embarrassed;
I felt bad for her. However,
I also knew I had my moment.
In the commotion, I'd noticed what my peers hadn't. As that stainless steel "A" had tumbled and the girl in the orange sweater and cherry red heals tumbled with it, the whole poem had slid
SKIWAMPUS
"That!" I said, standing assertively,
pointing to the now skiwampus poem hanging ever so skiwampusly
on a pin
point
Period.
"That is pacing gone wrong before your very eyes, and
You didn't even notice it!
A poem exists on placement. It either is or isn't, depending on where you place your images and break
your lines. If you turn a poem into prose, it says almost nothing. It's not about what
you say, but about how you go about your business of saying it.
Poetry is gardening with words".
I thought I'd made my point. The girl's poem on the wall had once been beautiful. Now it was in shambles. All because some careless soul had knocked off an "A" with her cherry red pumps.
The class just rolled with laughter and went on about seeing Nancy--that was her name, I guess, as that's what they called her, over and over, as she tumbled, and tumbled again and again in their minds, that action just repeated ad nauseam, and they loved it.
Meanwhile.
No one paid any attention to Imelda, the shy brunet poet in the back corner, or her rather remarkable poem with that wildly long line about drinking a green Lime Rickey soda from a bottle almost neon when glazed in the morning sunlight as she, the poet, stood, pop bottle in hand, and gazed out her second story apartment window on an old brick Victorian world shimmering in light as the actual old Victorians went about their business as if the world was made instead of asphalt, Walmarts and dumbass college students who don't know how vital even one letter can be, when placed right
or wron
g. Where am I goin with this?
Two.
I don't remember it this way, for I don't remember having a phone. However, Lloyd insists that I did. If that is true, one night I received a call. Lloyd was on his way. His wife Maxine had kicked him out of the house. If you know anything about my brother, you know he did absolutely nothing to deserve this. Still, it was what it was. One day he was part of her life. The next he was gone like a letter in a marquee of an abandoned movie theater blown off on a windy day or a neon "A" in a BAR sign blacked out on a very black night. Red B. Black space. Red R.
I was in shock. Although Maxine had started to treat me differently, I wasn't aware there were any problems between them personally. Although Lloyd and I normally had no secrets, out of respect for Maxine, my brother had not shared his marriage problems. I had been locked out of part of his world without even knowing it. When I found out, I knew that he'd done the right thing. Yet, I was stunned--both by his dissolving marriage and by the fact that Lloyd had kept secrets from me.
I really liked Maxine. Although it was hard on me when she became the most important person in Lloyd's life, I was happy for them. I thought she was the best thing that ever happened to him. I wasn't losing a brother; I was gaining a sister. Even after Lloyd showed up at the apartment, I still believed she wasn't capable of something so cold. I didn't know much about relationships, let alone marriage, but I assumed they'd had a fight and that they'd work through it. Yes, Lloyd was welcome to stay awhile. Then he'd get that call and he'd say, "I've missed you too." Things would go back to normal.
Three.
I have this problem. I'm still working on it. Whenever anyone is down, I take it personally. I don't allow those around me the necessity of falling apart. I somehow feel I'm to blame when the shit rains down on them and splashes a bit on me. It's quite selfish really. Sometimes you need to be there for others, to contain their pain for them. You can't do that if you're always worried about your own standing.
Four.
Lloyd, of course, showed up not his usual self. He hated my apartment. It was too small; the bathroom faucet leaked; the toilet had hard water stains. He wanted to get out of that damn cell I was living in. That was his reality, not mine. So, I'd take him on my long walks through Juarez. He didn't really like walking for hours either, at least not to begin with. I should have understood that. I should have welcomed it. He'd certainly put up with a lot of dissatisfaction from me when I was a teenager. Many nights, he had to drop whatever artwork he was working on so that we could go to the dollar movie or to the mall to buy a CD. He and my friends were always having to deal with my restlessness. I was always pushing everyone around me to do something more entertaining. I was always seeking escape from the void gnawing away at my gut. He always accommodated my dysfunction.
Yet, in Lloyd's time of need, I wasn't similarly accommodating. I'd finally found the life I wanted--one where, when I wasn't at school or working, I walked El Paso and Juarez for hours at a time, taking it all in, and then came home late at night, and in the silence of my little apartment, which I loved, sat and wrote whatever came to mind. I was finally discovering who I was, really touching that void for the first time, and all of the sudden Lloyd shows up very unsatisfied and needing a lot of attention. I thought I'd found myself, but I really hadn't. I was like a Buddhist monk who becomes irritated at a homeless man interrupting his meditation by tugging on his robes and asking for alms. Still, that's where I was. To be honest, I'm not sure I've progressed much beyond that. The problem is that there is some part of me that accepts the crap I'm receiving when others are understandably lashing out as really being directed towards me instead of just a manifestation of their own pain. I can't fully be there for them because I'm always assessing my own safety. It's always about me.
A wise man would have been able to say to himself, "Lloyd doesn't give a rats ass about my apartment one way or the other. This isn't about me; it's about Maxine. Just let him whine and complain until time begins to heal his broken soul."
Five.
We soon moved to another apartment. It was much bigger. On the surface, it wasn't much nicer. Both had spectacular views, but both had old sinks, old toilets, and old tubs. My first apartment was actually better maintained. It had been remodeled and had new windows and new carpet. It was sealed from the elements and had the fresh smell of a new home.
Yet, the move was important. Lloyd chose the apartment. We definitely needed more space. More importantly though, Lloyd needed to take over. He needed to assert himself, to have some say in the shape and space in his life. He'd let Maxine run the show. For her career, they'd moved wherever she needed to go. He'd accepted her mom, who lived with her, as his own. He stayed home and painted, his career carefully scheduled around her daily to-do lists: dog, dishes, errands, etc. He'd sacrificed his world to become part of hers. That probably would have all seemed worth it had the marriage worked, but it hadn't. Lloyd needed to establish himself again in the world. My apartment simply wouldn't do. A new place was more than a space; it was a symbol.
As dumb as I was, I did get that much, and the truth is, I liked it too. It was on the fifth floor and had spectacular views. It was unfurnished, and Lloyd got busy building a table, a bench, and then purchased two nice chairs, and restarted his life with me.
Six.
I've gone back and fourth on whether or not to include "Lloyd Moves In" in my book. At first, it didn't seem to be my story to tell. Then, I had that dream last night about pacing, and I realized, This has got to be here. The pacing of my book simply will not work without it.
Why? That's not important now. This section just needs to be here, like a period, a place holder, until meaning can be built up in what follows. Its placement is like large granite stone above a trail in the high Sierra. You see it there, above you, looming with significant shadow, looking like it's ready to roll. You pass below, knowing that even after you pass by it, you will look back now and then, and see it still, even from a distance.
There are markers in our lives, stories that must be told, even if not directly ours, simply because our path winds its way under the weight of them.
Everything is about pacing. Placement.
Whether or not we have a choice in that positioning or not. Lloyd dealt with his rock the way he had to. Later, I would have my own. Later, I would look back and understand the day Lloyd moved in better than I did when I was first under its shadow.
This morning, well before 6:00 a.m., I searched through Dreams by No One's Daughter and Natural Histories by Leslie Ullman looking for a quotation with which to start this piece. It seemed only proper as it is about her. Yet, as I've worked over each draft, she has stubbornly refused to enter the room. It took me some time to figure out why, but I did it. It's so simple: I don't know her. So, this morning I got up thinking I could attach a bit of her to this piece by finding the right quote from one of her poems. Although I entered many, walked around, stayed a while even as I watched the clock (My daily writing block is a bit confined by my life), I didn't really seem to find anything that shouted, "Begin with this." However, since I do keep coming back to two lines from "Running", perhaps it would be dishonest to leave them out altogether, even though I don't know exactly how they will connect with what I have to say:
Sometimes I run in Louisiana where I've never been
Leslie Ulman impacted me as a writer more than any other professor. As her writing style is very different from mine, it wasn't an affinity for voice or structure that affected me so. She was just a damn good teacher. She opened up the world of poetry to her students two ways: her writing workshops and her exploration of the standard works of contemporary poetry. All of my peers loved her workshops, as did I, but they were less enthused about her Contemporary American Poetry class. However, that is the class that impacted me the most.
I'm not sure why the public understands that fields like medicine, engineering, or astrophysics require diligence to enter and comprehend the full glory of the content they explore; yet, that same public seems to think that fields like art and literature mean nothing if someone without a high school education doesn't immediately "get" the work. No, your two-year-old cannot paint like Jackson Pollack. You just think he can. And no, it's not the work that's lacking. No one is trying to pull the wool over your eyes. Staff at art museums across the country dedicate their lives to making it accessible, but you've got to be willing to be present. Art is not something you stand before and have an argument with without even getting to know each another. Not that there aren't con-artists in the arts; there are. However, without putting in the effort to learn the vocabulary, one is not qualified to make that call.
Just because I don't understand quantum physics or can't meditate or do yoga doesn't mean they are empty worlds with nothing real going on inside that space.
I'm not an elitist. Sometimes the simple truly is the most profound. My favorite writer is Bill Bryson, who is as accessible as anyone. Other times, though, beauty is complex. Just because I don't understand black holes doesn't render them insignificant. Just because E = MC2 doesn't mean much to me, doesn't mean it has no meaning.
When it comes to poetry, most of my peers were lazy. They were happy enough to explore their own poems, the poems of each other, or even the poems of some of the more accessible poets like Lucille Clifton or William Stafford. However, they were unwilling to put in the work required to enter the poems of someone like Robert Lowell, even with an extraordinary guide like Professor Ullman. Her writing workshops demonstrated anyone can write well with a competent guide. Her literature classes demonstrated that few have the discipline to become poets. At the time I went through the program, there was only Michi and I. Several other students had the natural talent, and there were a few fine fiction writers in the bunch also, but only the two of us had the drive to push ourselves beyond what came naturally.
I too lost that dedication along the way, and only recently started to write seriously again. Yet, I was trained well. One thing Professor Ullman did that facilitated entry into the poems we studied was that she allowed us to respond to a poem in one of two ways: we could write a standard literary analysis, or we could respond to the work through our own work, not so much to mimic it as to dialogue with it. I went back and forth between the two methods, but it is the latter method that really pushed me forward as a poet.
Story Built from Galway Kinnell Bricks
God, I had been working so long,
until midnight I think,
but it felt like three.
I closed up shop,
dragged my weary eyes up the street to Village Inn
for a needle of coffee in each socket.
And then to,
there among the fat men with shiny badges
read Galway Kinnell,
it was like a dream, dark growing tall,
two small boys bearing cornstalk violins
--I swear I saw them!--
outside the Circle K across the street.
Above the Franklin Mountains the moon ate itself out.
Two young lovers sat on the curb,
their tennis shoes in the dusty gutter.
Headlights and hum zipped past
like lion eyes after zebra.
The young just sat there, heads trailed
by the beginning of necks,
shivering in the guarantee they'd be bodies,
flesh rivered by blue erratic wanderings
of blood, saliva passed back and forth,
hands running stone saint smooth stone.
I laid down my tip and lit
a cigarette, a small fire against
the loneliness that I knew would rain
when I tore open my bed like a polar bear
and climbed in and closed her up
to sleep in blood
and pain.
The words in italics are Kinnell's, the ones not, mine. Through this collage method of using bits and pieces of other people's poems to write off and respond to, I was able to get out of myself and expand my options when returning to my solo work. The process, was, I suppose, something like playing jazz.
Lucille Clifton
is woman,
real woman,
so sure of her big, shouting,
swinging, mighty, magic, spell-spinning hips,
she doesn't have to kick me in the balls
to make me listen.
She needs no combat boots.
She's got roots
and God and babies and girls and boys
and collard and kale and kinship and roaches
and green trees and tree talk
and nations of wood and nations of words,
words galloping out of her mouth,
crazy and wild,
wild and root,
speaking loss,
deep, black loss,
cutting greens to give back life,
forgiving Daddy to get on with life,
calling the kids home from the movies:
"The picture be over. Stop making some babies
and raise them!"
Her black breasts pressed against the windowpane
every inch of her woman converting me to myself, man,
making me run through the streets naked, crying in tongues
while she bellows WOMAN!
and invites me to join in the song and dance
in spite of Zora Neal Hurston's
Joe Starks (that bastard!)
telling Janie,
"Somebody got to think for women and chillun
and chickens and cows.
I god, they sho don't think none theirselves."
In that poem, I no longer even know what words are Clifton's and what are mine, and it doesn't really matter. The voice is clearly hers. That was the point of the exercise: to expand my options as a poet so that I wouldn't always respond to my own previous lines in the same old predictable ways. I believe it worked. I'm a pretty versatile writer and can take on multiple voices even in the same piece. I'm not sure how mature or significant I am as a writer; that is for others to determine. What I do know is that I was good student, and that I had a great teacher, Leslie Ullman. Those are prerequisites for most, if not all, good writers. Artists are not born in vacuums. They use and expand a language handed down to them. It is a mentoring system. Leslie Ullman was a master mentor, and for that I'm grateful.
That's why this post seems a bit odd to me, even disjointed. Leslie Ullman the teacher is here, but not Leslie Ullman, the person. Perhaps that is how it is with the best teachers. While teaching, it's not about them; it's about pulling out the best in their students.
Of course, I do have memories of Leslie. I did attend a few parties and social events where she was there. I remember well how she carried herself, how she could command the attention of an audience, even college students not much more mature than high-schoolers. I could describe her looks. Bright blue eyes that danced with light but unlike some eyes didn't necessarily invite you to enter. Not necessarily guarded--just enjoying the space between self and the outside world. I realize now, I don't really know her, even as an acquaintance. I know some shop keepers in town much better. I don't rule out writing about anyone or anything, but I don't feel any particular need to write about them. Whereas, I do feel any memoir about my time in El Paso must include a section on Leslie Ullman. It's not that she never shared anything personal. She did. It was just that her class wasn't about her; it was about us. She allowed herself to all but vanish in that setting so that we could grow as writers.
She did the same when she discussed the work of Anne Sexton, Mark Strand, or whatever poet we were studying. The poems entered the spotlight full-bodied, as she, the presenter slipped back into the shadows.
Yet, because she taught me how to write, how to really read, how to do what I was put here on earth to do--explore life through words, I love her. That is how it is with mentors. Their greatness comes by not drawing attention to themselves but by bringing out the best in others.
For a time I was an ungrateful student. I got too caught up in living life. Like many of my peers were not willing to give the poems we studied their full attention, I was not willing to get up at 5:00 a.m. to write, and more importantly, to stick with something when it became hard. I don't know if I'll be able to get this book published or not. I'm not sure it's the type of book that can generate any interest outside close friends and family, but I do know this: I'm almost there; it's almost done. I have almost completed this journey. Soon, I will be able to say to myself, "I have written my first book". That will make the next one, whatever it is about, much, much easier.
Now, I understand why I was drawn to those two particular lines of Ms. Ullman's:
Sometimes I run in Louisiana where I've never been
She allowed me to run in places I'd never been. The poems she opened up and made accessible to me grew inside me and became part of me. The way those writers handled words became ways I could handle words also. I do not know if I'll get this book published, or even the next one, or the one after that. I do not know if at some point many people will read my words or if my writing will vanish soon after my body.
But I do know this:
I can run with writers;
I am one of them.
But I wouldn't be without Leslie. I'd write, I'm sure. I did that before her class. But I'd be like that hobby painter who picks up a paint brush now and then to paint a scene of the daisies in the back garden without ever having stood before a Claude Monet, an Edward Hopper, a Richard Diebenkorn, or Jackson Pollack and uttered "Damn!" totally amazed at possibilities formerly unimagined in his own work.
To grow, you must run in place's you've never been. It helps to have a good guide. Leslie Ullman was among the best of them.
A Grocery Store on Mexico 2, Southeast of Juarez, Jan. 1992, mixed media diorama, Lloyd Brown
I don't know why I so often need to start my writing for the day grounded to where I'm physically at, but I do. Perhaps place is my coffee, my starter for, my transition to, something more.
So here it goes: It's 7:12 a.m., on a brisk Sunday morning in November. The sky behind the juniper blobbed ridge outside my front window is a frosty, pale blue, with a yellow tinge towards the bottom, right above the juniper-splotches. The crooked, knobby arms of an oak shatter the frosted blue like an untended crack in a windshield. It is 33 degrees outside. The heater hums.
Soon I will put hot water on the stove for a cup of Pero, my replacement for coffee. Then, somehow I will have to get myself from here to the other side of the border, over 841 miles away, and to a time over 25 years ago. Such is the work of a writer.
Perhaps what will transport me is the light. Both places have that same unfiltered light that ignites and sculpts ridges and ranges with stunning clarity. The low-angle winter light was even more intense there than here, for the ranges were far less vegetated, and light on stone told most of the story.
On the Mexico side of the river, known there as the Rio Bravo, even the houses were stone--concrete block covered in plaster. I have an image in my head now. It's one of Lloyd's dioramas, A Grocery Store on Mexico 2, Southwest of Juarez, Jan. 1992. I may not be able to take credit for the artistry of the work, but I can take credit for its existence. We were clearly on that drive because of me. I had to share my little slice of Mexico with my brother, as I will do here with you.
The painting is of a line of three connected buildings along a two-lane highway on a bright winter's day. In the left hand corner there is an old rusted, red pick-up from the 50s next to an elm and a telephone pole. To the viewer's right is a small haystack of old bales starting to erode at the edges. Then there is a do-it-yourself combination car port and patio with an elm growing up the center of it. The beams sag with the weight of time and of limbs laid across them for shade. The house itself is white stucco well-aged with a flat roof and the stains of time, all tinged with that stark yellow horizontal light. A homemade ladder, like what you'd see on a pueblo, leans against the house, as does an old screen door. Electrical wires connect to long metal poles attached to the façade. Below them rust stains trail down the stucco. Old faded curtains adorn the two front windows. The place appears to still be inhabited, although once can't be certain. There is no car out front, and the screen door appears to be leaning against the front door, which would make entry difficult. So perhaps, it is abandoned, although probably not for too long.
The building to the right, however, is another matter. It is but a rock shell. The roof is gone, and so is the back wall, and even part of the front. It is made of rough stone.
And then there is a store with a what appears to be red Coca-Cola sign on the white stucco façade and a matching red Coca-Cola machine on the right side of the front door. I don't know if the store is open or not, but there is a mud-covered green Chevy pickup from the late 70s out front with two guys sitting on the raised tailgate. Perhaps, someone ran in for drinks and snacks. Or perhaps the old store is now a residence, and someone left the truck running and ran in for his wallet.
Beyond these three isolated buildings are fallow fields and desert ranges, that though not included in the cropped surface of the painting, I know are sculpted by that same stark light.
This is the Mexico I know and love and spent hours upon hours exploring. To be honest, it's not all that different on the U.S. side, but different enough that I was never satisfied with my knowledge of my world ending at the river. Perhaps, in that regard, I was different than most Anglo-Americans living along the border. They go to Juarez for business, for dinner, to take family members for a night out when they come to town. Many of them even know the language. I didn't. But they did not know the streets and highways the way I did. I knew those country roads almost as well as I know the county roads outside my hometown. They are burned forever into my memory. I know the fields around El Porvenir almost as well as the fields in this valley.
Most of the Mexicans I met along the way didn't understand that. Neither did the U.S. Border Patrol. I always hated being asked upon return, "What were you doing in Mexico?" I don't know why I always felt the need to be honest, but I did. I'd say, "to take photographs". They seldom believed me, and so my car would be searched very thoroughly almost every time. If I had said, "to get drunk and laid," they'd have let me sail through unquestioned, unsearched, for that's what they expected of a single male my age crossing the border. However, the border patrol agents were not the only ones to question my motives.
I remember once I was traveling from Juarez to El Porvenir along Mexico 2, and almost all by itself, among fields was this swimming pool. If I remember right, it was near Guadalupe Bravos. It amazed me to find such a place out in the middle of nowhere, and I have to admit some snobby U.S. attitude in me thought especially in Mexico. The light was right, and it was beautiful, so I stopped. There were some girls in their early teens diving, and I went up to the fence to take some pictures. Just as I was aiming my camera, I heard, "You like girls young? I can get you some." I turned around and saw some guy in his twenties smiling a slimy, knowing smile.
I did, without doubt think the scene, including the girls, was beautiful. And I was, without doubt, yearning. Yet, he had totally gotten the wrong idea. What I was looking for was a connection to my youth, for a way back home to my rural roots. I felt alone, lost. Though in an entirely different country, in a land where I didn't even know the language, somehow those country roads south of the border felt more like home than all of the years I spent living in Dallas. The hay fields there could have been the hay fields out by the lava ridge west of my home town, and that pool, though in a field instead of the town square, called to me like the pool of my youth. I wasn't seeking sex that day. I was seeking something quite the opposite: innocence. At twenty-something, I already felt very old and world-weary.
No one could know that though. Both the Border Patrol and the Mexicans could only assume what they knew well from experience: United States looks south of the border with ill-intentions. No gringo crosses the border seeking for a route, if only psychologically, home. Thus, I was relieved when a friend told me of a route through Sunland Park, New Mexico that avoided the official border crossings altogether, which although illegal, saved me from the shakedowns on my way back to the States. I took it often, an outlaw in deed, but one only seeking peace and wholeness in a foreign land. I'm not sure why I felt I couldn't find it at home, but I didn't. Stubbornness, I guess. Too proud to admit that I needed Dry Creek like air, too proud to admit that I just wasn't built to make it anywhere beyond the fields, juniper and creek bottoms that were woven into the fabric of my soul from an early age.
