Something happened in eighth grade. I'm not sure what or why. It wasn't all good. It wasn't all bad. But I was somehow sucked from a primarily external world into a primarily internal world--from doing to observing. I noticed deeply the world around--the lights, the shadows, the stark winter light on blue boned trees. Everything gained a richness, a complexity, a texture I'd never noticed, never knew. It was quite startling. I didn't know how to react. I didn't know if anyone else experienced this new world. I felt awkward, a bit like an alien.
Although in many ways I was less mature than other kids my age, definitely more socially awkward, in some ways I all of the sudden was an old soul. I understood the adult world more than my own. In music, I was drawn to songs with adult themes, like Eric Carmen's "All By Myself".
Outwardly, I still tried to be the kid I knew how to be, but it didn't work. I felt fake, and I think I seemed fake to others. All of the sudden, everything was hard. And yet, there was a clarity, a complexity I saw in life that thrilled me.
I was interested in layers. In the natural world, I loved the layers of leaves along the canyon bottom at Dry Creek--how on the top layer they'd be crisp and crunchy; and in the layer below, the leaves would be soft and partially eaten with little squares nibbled out between the fibers; and finally, the later below them would be leaf-skeletons among potato bugs. Below that would be rich, black dirt.
In music, I liked layers also. Fleetwood Mac's Tusk album had that. "Over and Over" had the complexity in sound and lyrics I was looking for.
A richness, a Rembrandt brown in tones, an uncertain hope in the lyrics--hoping something might be, but knowing it just as likely might not be. Hoping, yearning, over and over.
I don't know what caused it. I loved a girl, but I'd loved her since fifth grade.
No dramatic event happened in my life.
My family was good, stable.
It's almost as if I was invaded by a knowledge unwarranted.
That person who moved in during 8th Grade has been who I've remained the rest of my life. I haven't necessarily done much with him other than that I've become a little more comfortable letting the world know it's alright to see shadows in the rain.
But I live in a complex world, a world hope and broken dreams, of love and heartache. Not because that is my reality necessarily. But because I see the shadow lives around me--those pretending because not pretending is too damn scary. Because of this, I don't have a lot of tolerance for those who have no empathy.
But, I'm not sure they can help it. I too once lived in a world without shadows. I'm glad that for whatever reason, complexity was thrust upon me. It's not necessarily an ingredient for success, but it is an ingredient for humanity.
I rip romaine lettuce off the head, rinse it under an high faucet above an old fashioned sink and listen to Eric Carmen's "All by Myself." Outdated?--I know. Emotional saccharine?--I know. All but forgotten--I know. Sort of like the movie, Jonathan Livingston Seagull or the Niel Diamond sound track, for that matter. But as I argued on the panel at the Beyond Post Modernism symposium at SMU, the job of the artist is to identify the real in unlikely places--the sentimental that works simply as sentimental and yet as so much more. If post-modernism is about juxtaposition, irony, deconstruction and refabrication, then beyond-post-modernism is about fusion, synthesis, bringing together high-art and pop-art without the outside sarcasm. No more intrusive narrator needed to justify black velvet Elvis paintings in a collection of Matisse and Picasso, but neither is the pure third-person-limited voice needed, where the author is all but transparent and the story takes center stage. Rather, text--fluid like the mind--flows between points of view, from objective to subjective, from external to internal--narrative, expository and persuasive all grafted together to bring forth a new, original fruit, like the voice in the head of a man standing at a sink, rinsing romaine lettuce, listening to Eric Carmen while simultaneously narrating his life and arguing for a more inclusive, organic art. It can work.
By the time I cross out of the kitchen and across the small, glossy wood-floored living room to the gold, arched door leading out to the balcony, I am on stage with Eminem and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir backing me up as I expound my philosophy before thousands of screaming fans through a rhetoric that combines the raw energy of Ginsberg with the eloquence of Emerson.
Door swings inward. I step out onto the small cement cantilever to pick cherry tomatoes from a potted plant under a small cheese-cloth umbrella I constructed from the front fork of a bicycle, two wooden dowels, and, of course, cheese cloth. It protects the plant well from the intense noon-time sun, but is useless in the wind. I know a summer afternoon monsoon wind could send it flying high over Mesa Street in bits and pieces in seconds, and so I usually remove the umbrella as soon as I get home from UTEP, as the sun is on the other side of the building by then. Today I have failed, and it is pure luck that my tomato umbrella is there.
I bend down to unwind the wire that holds it fast to the pot, when I hear giggling followed by, "Hey, Professor Brown what are you doing?"
I stand up and look towards the neighboring balcony. I jump.
"Monica, get down from there."
"Don't be silly."
"No, I mean it. It's not safe."
Monica sits on the corner of the black wrought iron railing five floors above Mesa Street in a short, lacy, white summer dress, her bare feet swinging slightly back and fourth past the hairy legs of the boy who is standing on the patio with his arms around her delicate waist, hopefully keeping her from plunging to her death.
"Who's your dad?" he says, referring to me."
"My creative writing teacher and neighbor," she says with emphasis as she sways further back over Mesa street, long, black hair flowing in the wind.
I run to the rail, ready to grab her arm. Dumb-ass boy doesn't even tense up, but just lets her cantilever out into the dry, west-Texas atmosphere.
In another story tension leading to tragedy might build here, but perhaps there is enough of that in the world already. She just giggles, "you were worried, weren't you?" She puts her arms around her friend and pulls herself in. "Jake, why don't you worry about me like Professor Brown does?"
Jake doesn't know what to say. For some stupid reason, I instinctively reach out to rescue him too. "Age," I say. "You don't really comprehend death on a cellular level until you're at least twenty-five. That part of the brain just isn't there yet."
She sways back over Mesa Street. "Sweet, sweet death come take me!" Jake again does nothing, and I decide I can't take this and head inside.
"How was that for poetry, how was it?" She calls to my back.
I pause at the door and think, dangerous, erotic, perfect. Instead, I quote Yeats:
That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees --Those dying generations--at their song, the salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas...
Inside, I finish my salad for the permaculture meeting in Mesilla and look forward to Mike Bantam's stories of dumpster diving. The crazy old man lives totally off previously used products, even food. I picture him pulling out his schedule of when the grocery stores discard their old milk and smile.
