Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Clearification

I worry. I worry a great deal about stability int eh future. I dug up some papers the other night in a bench which my mom took in the divorce. She took the bench without looking at what was inside. Over the course of the six years we were a family we accrued a lot furniture, it almost seemed like a hobby of their’s to me. With so much furniture, we didn’t have enough uses so my mother used it primarily for storage. These cupboards, drawers, dressers, they all contained the stuff that was laying around the house.
Card stock
Calendars
Stickers
Photos
Coupons
Tins filled with numerous treasures that erupted memories of humbler beginnings (My uncle’s watch)

This bench had the very same, and like with all other furniture it contained the lost writing of my father. I don’t know too much about his early life after high school. He graduated at sixteen and from there went to college. He was a very Barry Rowen type, know for his humor and wit. In the middle of an October night in the dead town of Alexis his father sat up in bed and held his chest. His wife asked him what the matter was and he believed it was heartburn. She promptly went down the stairs to get some antacids. She returned to find him in distress.
“Are you okay?”
“No”
He was dead at forty-seven.
I’ve been past the funeral parlor where arrangements were made.
“That’s where I picked out the box they put my father in.”
He said this to me a few years ago, before he divorced. He was funnier then, I think, this was a time when we could get a gag going between the two of us, comic genius.
I think about this grand story of a man coming to terms with his fathers death, dropping out of college, falling in love, having his first child, a son. I think how this story is twenty-four years old and the youngest heir, my step brother from Guatemala, Dominic is just about to learn everything. He spelled his name this week and I thought as I have int he past about the time before i could read. In particular I remember sitting in a car in Madison or maybe Jefferson -back home in Wisconsin at least- attempting to decipher a billboard. It’s a large step, reading, there aren’t as many secrets anymore, it’s just the beginning. It starts there, give it ten years and you know when your relationship is about to begin with a girl.

We’re all at this point right now, this turning, I see it in Lou, Brianna, Kirsti, Myself. Where does it all come together and where do we go from here and oh, yes, where are we, and where were we to begin with.
“Tear down the house that I grew up in, I’ll never be the same again.”
I’ve written so much more year after year and a pages document greets every week finding solace in whatever situation. I have pages of reason, epiphanies, transcript, script, ideas, filler...

This boy is fifteen years my junior.
The stack of papers was just that, a huge stack. This was computer paper filled with the processed light purple in of an electric typewriter and notebook paper filled with small comic sans black handwriting, the kind that i modeled my handwriting together because it was simplistic and cool. My penmanship still lack comparatively. I didn’t know what to do with all this documentation, I took it all to my room and my sister was the only one to even catch a glimpse of it. I found page after page of another novel, song lyrics, poetry, and diary.

What do I do with this? How do I use it? Is it kryptonite? Is it brilliant?
It was almost like finding everything I had ever written, and when you find a copy of all the paper you’ve put your heart and soul into, you feel, unoriginal.
When I tell a cheap joke or get antsy from boredom and someone sees it (a girl). I feel like my father, my uncle, my aunt and their coupled sadness. I don’t feel they’re all failures, but they aren’t doing what they wanted.

When do you realize where you are and feel comfortable with your surroundings? I don’t think he’s sad, he has a woman whom he loves now, he has a son, incidentally. What do you when placed in such a situation, all you can do. Raise him!
I thought I’d burn everything I’ve ever written. I haven’t yet. Clearification.

Will this boy come out with pages of his own, will he play soccer, will be a dictator ( that would be awesome, that’s racist, still awesome thought).
I have a blog now which means I can announce my change of religions, my faith in humanity, my atheism realized and not, my love of chris parnell and phil hartman, the way writing the truth about my love can only come out as poetry, my continuing curiosity about Nick Drake and how it will never be satisfied, how northern kentucky drove me to wherever I end up, the girl, the comfort, and the movies that were born out of it all.

School in the morning, High school.
After two five day weekends in a row, I don’t think it can really claim and legitimacy when being in session. Ryle, don’t take yourself too seriously, you’re a girl when it comes to snow.

4 comments:

  1. My father used to talk about how he wanted to be a history professor. He used to read Rilke and write poetry, glass of wine in his hand, his mouth chewing up a pencil. He used to have a wax seal among his paperwork in his office. There used to be stacks and stacks of paperwork.

    I don't know where any of this went and I can't tell you the last time he actually talked about how he didn't get to go back to school to learn about history, astrology, or anything else he really wanted to do in life. As it were, I don't really know if I know my father. I know that he measures time in the changes of weather and that when we talk on the phone, what he likes to talk about is the weather, how is it where I'm at, what it's like where he is. It's the way he watches the days begin and end and that's alright. that's what I know about my father.

    I think it's amazing that you have such a great record of your dad kept in all of those pages. It might give you a piece of him that maybe you lost when your parents got divorced.

    That happens, you know. Life and events chip away at the identities of people we know. The more we learn about ourselves, the world, and the people we love, the less we really know.

    Maybe that's fatalistic though. Who knows. Great find and great blog entry.

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  2. This is beautiful.
    So is Christman's response.

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  3. I've thought about this a little more...

    I think it's our moral duty as human beings to chase that wild vivacious dream within our hearts. If we don't we'll think about the "what-if's" for the rest of our lives.

    And if things change, and we don't get that dream? Well sometimes circumstances call for difference. And our dreams may "fall through". But that just means we go on to the next dream/passion our mind jumps to, whether it be the same dream or a completely new idea.

    I don't want to make any broad generalizations about life...though I just sort of did. But I think in our youth we have more clarity than ever. And I think if we're aware of that, it can stay with us for the rest of our lives.

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  4. "And I think if we're aware of that, it can stay with us for the rest of our lives." agreed.

    Alan Thick said...

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xPrrKNsaj8&feature=player_embedded

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