Asheville, North Carolina

December 31^st 2004

Beth was working in Garageband and making a song. We made a movie called Super teen about Superman as a teenager. I was Superman, she was my mom. I don't remember much. I remember the white DVD that I wrote the date on. My Uncle always wrote the dates on things so I suppose that's why I did it. We drove to Illinois. A month and a year ago you died. You weren't the first person I knew to go, but certainly the closest. Three years from December 31^st 2004 everyone would go to bed, I would try to come up with some pseudo new years resolution. I scribbled something on paper about talking to a girl I liked or ridding myself of a bad habit. I took it and lit it on fire on the window sill of my room. Unsurprisingly the smoke detector went off. I slapped myself in the head trying to blow the smoke away, turning the fan on etc. Mom and Dad crept out and walked into my room. Dad led. He was furious, he knew what was up. Ella and Leslie crept up in the background. Mom was beside the situation, going with the lead, she was thinking, I think. The night settled embarrassed and the break with arift. I awoke to my Mother's voice blurted out to surprise me, scare me.

“I want you to know how it feels to be woken up like that. It's scary.” These words aren't exact.

Your Dad and my Mom were going to your ex-boyfriend's apartment to pickup your stuff for you.

My mom was livid, she set the situation out.

“I'm going to go help him get his screwup of a child move out today.”

“I'm trying to teach you so that you don't end up like her.”

“But I'm not like her.”

“I'm doing this for your benefit, you should appreciate me doing this.”

I thought you had become irresponsible too though, by that time you weren't going to college.

We didn't talk, you were on your own and didn't come visit with your Dad as much. I remember my Mom telling me your dad had gone to visit you and your crappy boyfriend, almost like they were making amends, despite no huge falling out. Time rather than a fight. Mom showed us the picture. You looked like a small boy. I guess I'm trying to convey that if you were still alive, we probably still wouldn't be that close. You might still live in Evansville, maybe married. You might be considering adoption or considering pregnancy saving up with a good man to keep you on your toes to actually save this time.

I guess we weren't close in the end. We were kids together and you were an older sister, I think a lot of us can say that without offense to your real sister. We all loved you the same way, for the same reasons. I was writing this before I was tying this and something was in the air. I sneezed so hard it all came out and I was balling my eyes out like the day after you died.

That happens you know, I feel like when I scratch the surface again and again it just floods, but each time I have to add another memory, and there are only so many. I miss you and it burns each time I really look at your face like I did on November 22nd, but then I think of December 31st 3004 and then I think of December 31st 2010 and I'm a good man Kim.

On Perfume and the home movies of a 17-year marriage

Thanksgiving Adulthood

So the day after our little Thanksgiving in Monmouth I wake the girl up. 

"I think we're going to go soon, babe."
I'm a little anxious.
"Leslie you wanna go to?"
"Sure"
We get in the car and roll down through Monmouth on our way to Alexis. She plugs our destination into the navigator. I realize half way down that I wanted to get flowers. Leslie and I run into County Market and we try to find something relatively cheap. She picks out the poinsettia and we check out. I get some quarters out of the change and drop them in the machines. I get two rings out and we walk back to the car. 

It's been about two years since I've seen this town. Work and School stopped me from being able to come and I often think about my priorities. The navigator is moving us onto gravel roads and she's ", Where are we going."
This isn't right.
I didn't grow up here, this isn't where I was born, but it is for everyone else I know.  i back up and we get back on the road. The Navigator adjusts. We keep driving. The blown out speaker in my car sizzles.
"Ahem...Let's pretend Marshall Mathers never picked up a pen, let's pretend things turned out no different"

We move into town, past the fire station. This is what keeps Alexis alive, and nothing else. The population is 850. She says that we're in the town out of "The Crazies."
I say to Leslie "That green patch of grass there is 'Sparies' where Dad used to get comic books. One time I got Grandma to come out here at sundown so I could film a night scene for The Pinklydoodle in that telephone booth."
"I'm surprised you got Grandma to drive at night."

"This is so sad."
I'm looking at the shut down "My Store."
"Tell us about 'My Store' Barry."
"Well my store was owned by Don Mckelvie."
"What did he sell?"
"Uhm he sold everything, he was a painter to. I saw him perform in the Galesburg Choir Concert once." 

We mull around some more looking at locations. I tell the stories my Grandmother has told me and her mother told her(so one day when I'm a mother...).
"That's the Library that Mary-Alice owns, she also runs the Alexis Museum. That used to be the phone company. That's where Iola used to go to see silent movies..."
We continue down the road and I remember a day ago Grandma telling me her high school is being torn down. She and her mother graduated this high school which was built about ninety years ago. We park at a stop sign and she gets out to take a picture. The only remaining part of the school is the entrance. It's eerie with the entrance still open holding a staircase that one would consider leads to some meaningful purgatory. 

Alas though, it is dead and gone. Speaking of death, we're going to visit MyDeadGrandFatherwhoInevermet's grave.


I make a left turn which should yield the cemetery, but there is nothing in site. We turn left and right and I don't know where I'm going (and I should). We pull over to the water tower and I try to call Grandma on this dead Illinois signal.

We go straight down main street. 
"And that's where Grandma grew up and Iola lived for a good fifty years."
"That's it?"
"Yup."
I almost turn the corner as she and Leslie point out the truck bearing down on us and I stop. 
It's good to have loved ones. 
We pull in see the graves.
LAUGHEAD
McBride
Sims
They're all related to us somehow. We stroll through as I point them out.
"He died young."
"Oh that was Grandma's brother. He was injured in Vietnam and when he came back Grandma said he just wasn't the same little brother. He was driving a truck when he shouldn't have been and was hit by another car and died."






Barry Dwayne Rowen



He died 13 days after his 47 birthday. This doesn't say anything about the man, but it's all we've got. 
We look around and there are some really weird graves. One woman has an enormous portrait of herself, another has a giant picture of a semi-truck on the back. Barry has a short poem he wrote. 



"Creativity is the essence of civilization
This no one can deny
for it allows each individual
to make his mark or try"

I hope they remember me

By Barry




I didn't know you, but I feel like I have a privilege only for my name's sake.

Sir I didn't know you. You were a military man all your life. You kept interest in the mechanics rather than art, film, and music. Maybe that's not so true. Barry, I've been writing letters to your brother Bill this semester. They're short recaps on how the others life is. He even sends me a check for "pizza." He tells me stories about you, encounters you had with other people and how you reacted. I suppose most everyone does that. Anyways... I'll never know you, never will feel your presence or take your words of the moment to heart, but we do share something. I've love the people you loved. I've shook the hand of the brother you shook hands with. I've worn the clothes you've warn. This hasn't been forced, this hasn't been planned out, it's simply the affect of being your grandson. I'll tell you the truth, just like a lot of things that probably would not have happened if had lived, I probably never would have been born. You can't dwell on this though (because you're dead), you can't tailor life like that either. Back to the Future wasn't real and I can't change the past or jump to the future. All I can do is think and think slow and that's how I'll change the future. You're dead and I can't have it any other way.
From one Barry to another.

I drive home, just the two of us in the abyss of the Midwestern fields. I've shown her my other background, the one which is mine by relation. As the sun sets and we switch drivers, she plays stick wars on my phone and my eyes move left above the trees to the navy blue sky. Three of us go to visit Barry Rowen, none of us knowing him. I put a measly $5.00 towards a plant and look at the grave. We stand for a second or two. No memories, no prayers, we stand. It's respect in Adulthood.

Post-Thanksgiving Meal Nap

I had a river once

she was born a stream

but men came along and filled her up

and now shes the ohio

and that means a lot to me,

because I didn't get the job with that piece of info

I worked for that illusion

and it carried me as long as it could

one final day it decided on its own

its time to set me free

Cincinnati i'm not mad at you, I just wish you would have told me

these are things we can talk about

build more buildings

make your towers higher than any

don't worry about money, the money will come

but its going to come through truth

in your current state the honest dollar is running out

but I think I know you well enough and you

I've been around

but you, you'll make your decision

we'll either go our separate ways or we won't

so think, think about the future,

think about the past.

Illinois

My resonators echos, sometimes too much; more than I can handle.

Cincinnati’s got me down.

“I’ll be in Nashville by the morning, cause Cincinnati’s got me down.”

I drive to Kroger right across the street. This is not a drive. I start to think to myself how much better this place looked last year. It’s not disappointing, it just is. This is the full extent of Highland Heights. Every now and then while I’m riding the TANK that I look over at the houses surrounding campus. They have old brick and are littered by trees and this is almost an old college town.
Louisville is the same way, at least what I’ve seen. Any street along Bardstown in fall, now that will convince you, but you keep driving and you’ll wind up near 75 in no time. I don’t relish the place I grew up, but I’ve grown out. That’s hard when you have no money, nor any credit with anything to your name.

I ride a riverboat everyday. We can be packed or completely empty at any given time. Yesterday it was eight. I took a picture of two and they weren’t interested. The captain forgot he had to work and we left fifteen minutes late. And as we pulled out of the dock he scrambled to button his shirt, he drank from a plastic cup and cleared his throat.
Out it comes.
“Well folks, let me first welcome you to Cincinnati.”
He speaks of how the river was once a fourth this size, how pioneers rode flatbeds down, but weren’t able to go back up, and how in the summer you could cross between Newport and Cincinnati.
I picture Ford’s “How The West Was Won” but these me were real, and how did they feel about the city.
And I worry that these are side thoughts, that this is the echo of every dream within me as they dwindle down into an abyss.
Are these cities living a lie? Are the Carolinas everything I dreamed they are.
Utah, Maine, or wherever the travels take me, life moves farther with a girl and a car.

Basic Drawing has changed my life-NO JOKE. I can draw a wine bottle in 2D forced perspective, thus I can draw Henry in 2D forced perspective.

And:


http://www.vimeo.com/14558733