Once a stone has been dropped
into
the depths of a green and living pond,
it
cannot be recalled, the action cannot be undone;
it
has become a part of that green continuum.
Reality
has been changed,
altered,
rearranged.
I met him in the eighth grade.
He
took LSD on the weekends and was already
a
guitar virtuoso.
He
loved the early Yardbirds, jazz and blues.
He
taught me how to jam.
He
once fired me from a junior high band
but he was always kind.
Years later a storm blew in.
Voices
roared in his head.
He
wanted to banish them to the darkness.
But
how could he win
against
such a big wind?
Where could he begin?
Where could he begin?
Wishes
changed nothing.
So he
taped his ID
to his wrist and put a gun
to his wrist and put a gun
to
his head
and
squeezed the trigger until he was dead.
Each night his mother longs to dream of her only son,
before
the voices and the gun.
She
once believed in happy endings
but no more,
but no more,
not
without her son,
not in a world undone.
not in a world undone.
*Note:
While the poem above was written some years after learning of the
death of my childhood friend in 2004, the one below was written
shortly after hearing the tragic news. My old friend struggled with
both addiction and a mood disorder. I played rhythm guitar for him in
eighth and ninth grade and in exchange he taught me how to play lead
guitar and bass; he played with breathtaking virtuosity. He went on
to become one of the finest jazz bass players in the Twin Cities.
Sadly I lost touch with him after I left Minnesota in the mid
seventies and was never able to carry "the message" of
recovery to him; that regret echoes in the lines below. What a
loss...
This track is embedded with the friendly permission by the creatives on wikiloops.com.
In my
mind, I hear your voice
telling
me that you had no choice.
That
there was nothing left to do.
That
your world had gone from black to blue.
Do you have nothing left to hide,
there
on the other side?
No
more secrets, no more lies,
no
more need for alibis?
Was there nothing I could say
to
make you want to stay?
Did
you really have to go?
That's
what I want to know.
Andy Warhol made movies of folks doing nothing. George Costanza, in the comedy “Seinfeld”, tried to persuade NBC to make a TV show about nothing. As much as I like “Seinfeld” and Andy Warhol, this journal won’t be about nothing. I won’t try to make something out of nothing. I will try to focus on the turning points, the moments of heartbreak and high drama (at least as they seemed to me). Not that I won’t engage in some navel gazing but I will attempt to cut away the rind, and get to the juice. Many things will be left out. In no way will this journal be an all inclusive representation of the events in my life. It will be more of a series of vignettes, incidents, stories and poems. Memory is a funny thing. It is not an event in itself but the fragmentary replication of an event, made of fleeting impressions, feelings and images. It cannot be weighed or measured. It is dependent on us, on our brains, on human consciousness. In the end, memory is a kind of fiction, an illusion, a magician’s trick, where the past is revived and pulled out of a hat.
On French TV, I once saw an interview with an American actor who used the expression “12 step program” instead of AA to protect his anonymity. In subtitles this was translated as Alcoholics Anonymous. The American actor did not break his anonymity, the translator did. While I will refrain from using last names (including my own), those referenced may recognize themselves. They may be wrong, or not. So be it. Of course, as the details of my life emerge in these pages the possibility of who I really am will become narrower. Then again, I may be making all of this story up or at least parts of it. Half remembered conversations certainly will become fictionalized. One cannot experience an event like God and see and remember all things. What happened decades ago flashes back to us in an instant, but it is not reality. Reality is long gone. Maybe the past is out there somewhere in an alternative universe, but access to it is uncertain. It seems to be locked away in a house with very few windows (where we can peer in and glimpse its inner secrets). It is in the realm of ghosts, the realm of dreams; it is in a far off country that one only hears rumors about (and no one really knows if any of those stories are true); it is in another world.
Folks whose names I have forgotten will be given new names; in more than a few cases, I will intentionally change even the first names of those who were once close to me.
We miss much of what goes on around us. In writing this, things may become clearer to me. I may discover things that have been buried, repressed, forgotten. So we will take this journey together. We will see what we can see.
.________________________________________
1971 was the best year of my life. My dad got sober. I turned fourteen. I had my first wet dream. I found love. It was also the year, I discovered drugs. We moved into a new house: a big two story with a fireplace and a rec room with shag carpet in the basement (where I could play my electric guitar and listen to records). It became my studio apartment and later band rehearsal space. I was in heaven. Even so, I had a lot of strong feelings for the old house. In the winter, I could ski from my backyard to a park that had a tow rope and ski hill, or I could walk up the block to a skating rink and play hockey. In summer, I played endless innings of baseball in the neighborhood. I played football in the fall. While I had many great experiences in the old house and neighborhood, the new house promised something new, something different, and it delivered. While the new house was on the fringes of the Minneapolis New Hope New Hope
I would change schools. (Later I would attend high school with the same kids from my old junior high and grade school.)The new house was just a mile away from the old house down Medicine Lake Road
The years before that grand event were both magical and traumatic. If not my for my dad’s drinking, my life would have been perfect, idyllic. Even so I had a lot of fun. In the fall, my father would take me deer and pheasant hunting. Since my dad’s drinking was periodic, when sober I could not have hoped for a more tender and loving father. During vacations, I would go fishing with my grandfather (my mother’s step-father) in southern Minnesota
The move to the new house meant that I would have to give up my morning paper route. In winter, I would have to get up before five (on my bike in summer the route took less than thirty minutes; when there was snow and ice, it took over an hour). In many ways, I enjoyed my morning paper route. In the late night hours the world is mysterious, full of long shadows, most everyone is asleep (except for paper boys and insomniacs and those up to no good). One morning, I saw the shadow of a man digging a hole in his front yard. I imagined the worst. The move took place in January, so there would be no more delivering papers in the cold, subzero dark. It was soon replaced with an evening paper route in the new neighborhood.
On my route, I often would listen to music from my transistor radio with an ear piece, privately, so as not to wake anyone up. Late one night, while in bed at home, I heard the news through that tiny ear piece that RFK had been assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles
* * * *
On my first day of the ninth grade, I arrived at the bus stop early. Johnny O soon joined me at the bus stop. We did not know each other well but over the next few years we would become close friends. Johnny was a year younger than me and had recently formed a band with my old pal Roger on bass. Johnny was the front man, the guitarist and singer. He was small, good looking—he had that whole David Cassidy, Mick Jagger thing going for him. With my long wavy, blonde hair, I looked pretty good myself (earlier that summer I had gotten chubby but I dieted on Fresca and yogurt and with the help of a major growth spurt; I was once again a contender for the girls’ hearts). I was dressed in my new schools clothes, a lavender shirt, corduroy bell bottoms and boots. (Soon there would be no division between school clothes and play clothes; I would wear blue jeans and whatever shirts my mother had laundered that week.)
The ninth grade would be wild. While I wouldn’t become a total stoner (that would come later), I would dabble with drugs whenever I had the chance. I would find the girl of my dreams and then lose her. I would then be asked to join Johnny and Roger’s band (the best junior high band in the Twin Cities) and then be asked to leave. The thing about good fortune, about good luck, is that there always the chance of a reversal of that good fortune, of that glittering prize being stolen or lost. But a loss (and in particular a loss in love) can bear its own kind of fruit, its own kind of wisdom, bittersweet and dark. This dark night of the soul can change us, transform us, if we let it. After all, it brought us the cantos of Dante after the death of Beatrice, and a whole world, no a whole universe, constellations, of poetry and song.
* * * * *
There was a pond behind my house, and beyond that another pond and a large field and creek. In winter, the ponds would freeze and everything would turn white. In a few months (that coming spring) Roger and Johnny O would name the field Peachland (after the cover art from the album “Eat a Peach” by the Allman Brothers). As long as I can remember I loved Christmas vacations and this one was turning out to be the best yet. Dressed in my father’s old Air Force overcoat, I trudged through the snow. I pulled out a corn cob pipe and filled the bowl from a dime bag of marijuana (mind you, this was nineteen seventy one; I’m sure prices have changed).
I lit the bowl and took a puff. My eyes turned upward and I began to ascend into the clouds (in that Air Force overcoat, I was a pilot alright). This is what I had been looking for, I thought, total bliss. But I could not just stay up there in the clouds, I had a mission. I had bought a gold locket for my girlfriend, Laura, as a Christmas gift. Inside the locket, I placed a picture of myself from my Canadian fishing trip, one that I had cut out from a group photo—all that remained was a kind of head shot, and really all that could be seen was my hair shining in the sun.
Laura had an identical twin, Lisa. In the beginning, I could not tell them apart. But that soon changed. To me, they were just sisters—as different as sisters can be. Not that they weren’t close, there was a bond between them. But their personalities were their own. They shared the same interests and history but there was a difference in vision and attitude and there certainly was a difference in how I felt about them (I had no romantic feelings for Lisa and she had none for me).
The twins would often accompany me on my paper route. My customers did not consider that I was a long haired stoner, opening their doors and invading their space. They thought I was a girl (my sister, Anne, often collected for me). I would correct them when they would call out to a spouse: “the paper girl is here.” During this time, I grew as tall as my mother (five foot four) and then to my father’s height (five foot seven). Soon I would tower over both of them and I would no longer be mistaken for a girl no matter how long my hair was.
I first noticed Laura the spring before when I saw her and Lisa out smoking cigarettes in Peachland. They waved at me, I shouted back but nothing came of it. Later we hooked up and made out at a party at Boone’s farm. (I call it that after the two bottles of cheap wine I drank before I arrived. Still it really was a farm.) Johnny and Roger’s band played that night. Roger asked if I wanted to play Johnny’s cherry Gibson ES335. I tried to play but I was too drunk. (Roger insisted that I was a good player). But Johnny was not impressed.
Laura and Lisa lived close by, just across the field and up the block, ten minutes by foot. (Later, after the break up, it was if Laura lived on another planet, she seemed so far away. That distance, that feeling of emptiness, lingered in my soul for a long time.)
After I arrived at Laura’s house, I pulled the gift box from my pocket and gave it to Laura as Lisa and her mother looked on, smiling, touched.
“But I haven’t got you anything.” Laura said.
“That’s alright,” I said.
“I will get you something.”
She did get me something, a watch, but the gift I wanted, I already had, Laura. Such an intelligent and tender girl, a true paradox, wild yet innocent, and like Roger sadly prolific in her use of drugs, including LSD.
* * * * *
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