Hold Up the Sky

Exhausted, I wonder how much longer I can hold up the sky. If it falls, can I stitch it together with leftover pieces of skin and dreams? Once I had the intention to shape the sky, to fashion it into a circle that wrapped around a world of beauty and possibility. I have since learned that the sky is endless, that a soon as one section is up another comes down.

All of these things in my loved ones that I cannot find a way to fix. I listen, I think, I dream but they remain immovable. I push against them, cutting myself. Yet even blood is not enough. (Blood is never enough.) Another day ticks by. A different pair of shoes, a glimpse of a bare shoulder. The clouds I can handle, but the rain has been endless. My body absorbs the water and the sky sinks a little more. For a moment I curse the uselessness of my hands as I prop one corner up while watching another slip.

I am so very, very tired.

Crush

In the spring of my 9th grade year, I was the victim of an overwhelming crush. It wasn't technically my first crush, but it was the first that coincided with the hormones and the over-the-top emotions that define teenagedom. You know those crushes? The ones where you can't think of anything else, where you write endless poetry you'll never share, where your heart races in patterns you didn't know existed, when you sweat too much, when every song you listen to is about this amazing love? Even all these years later, when the first rays of spring break through the clouds of winter, I can still recall how powerful those emotions were, how all-consuming. It's tinged through nostalgia and distance, but what is a ghost but a reminder? You can't feel that way more than once in your life; every subsequent crush comes with more...understanding of your emotions, perhaps, if not maturity in dealing with them. You get older, you learn things.

I lived on a farm and the object of my affection lived in town, but it was only a couple of miles away. Nearly every evening that spring and subsequent summer I rode my bike into town on a route that took me by her house, just in case she might be out and about and I could very casually stop and say hi. (In reality, I'd sweat bullets and mumble, the cheap sunglasses I thought made me look cool slipping down my nose and making me even more of a dork.) My crush attended the same church and so we would talk on occasion, but of course I never told her I how I felt. I mean, hello. She was supposed to magically realize it; isn't that how it works? (My wife would suggest this has never changed; I'm strikingly oblivious to when people have a crush on me so perhaps it's only fair. Fortunately I'm now old enough I never have to worry about anyone having a crush on me again.) In any case, looking out my window at the early spring rays right now, it's those bike rides I remember. Ray Bradbury would have understood the innocence, the very rightness of those rides. If I wrote it in a novel it would be too simple, too trite to believe. But it happened, and I'm thankful it did.

The crush lasted through the summer before fading as these things do. By the next spring I had another crush, this one taking a long strange journey to being my first girlfriend, albeit as far from the simple Bradbury version as could be. Even a year later, life got complicated.

But oh that spring! That summer! Those bike rides, hoping for just a glimpse of her golden curls! (Seriously. They really were golden.) If I ever doubt it happened, I still have the notebooks with all the bad poetry. Few artist's souls were as tormented as mine, I'm sure. I'm so fortunate to have lived a spring/summer of innocence. It wouldn't last and it shouldn't last, but everyone should have a chance to experience one. I think we all might treat people in a more caring, empathetic manner if we did. Way too much darkness eventually came into my life, but I think one of the reasons I've been able to fight through it is knowing that such pure, beautiful feelings exist. Perhaps I would never have learned to love as an adult otherwise. I can laugh about that crush, but I would never laugh at the experiencing of such powerful, innocent emotions.

Last I heard, a few years back, my crush was living as a spinster, her heart broken by her fiance who walked out after a long engagement shortly before their wedding. This from my parents, who know her parents. Life is cruel. But if you're lucky, there will be at least one special spring and one special summer.

Downbound Train

I want to say something about exuberance. I want to say something about joy. I want to say something about how it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness. I want to tell stories. So shut up and tell them. Find the words.

I'm currently reading Bruce Springsteen's autobiography, Born to Run. It is going through me like an electric current, like exuberance, like sex and joy. I will likely not read a better book this year. Perhaps it is no surprise that Bruce writes so well, tells a story that is anything but the cliched celebrity rise, fall and redemption. Bruce is one of the finest storytellers America has produced. Reading this book I find myself thinking about how important storytelling is. The rock and roll of present day (really, since the 90s) has largely moved away from telling stories, becoming something more abstract and more inward-focused. Which is fine--I love many, many bands that do this--but we need stories.

Rock and roll saved me. Stories saved me. Music has always been my church. Stories my passion. I have all this I want to explain to you. Let's have a beer, I want to talk. But we can't, not tonight. We are separated by this technology. We are living in darkness.

This is a one and only draft. This is not a story. This is the only story.




Jesus I'm tired. I can't tell a story, not today. So I will let Bruce tell it: