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Today, I thought about the first time I met you. A memory that hasn’t been siphoned out of my temporal lobe in years. If it ever has.
It was 2004. Or was it 2005? We had a mutual friend who suggested that technically we had met before. I liked you instantly. You were tall and gangly. (At least that hasn’t changed.) A bit younger than me, but sweet and mature. You complained about your bimbo girlfriend. I asked you for advice about some unrequited crush I was developing. I remember her name, but not his.
I remember we went to a mall. It was dinner time and we ate in the food court. I don’t know if I ate but I think you had Taco Bell. I think.
I wanted you to like me. I secretly cheered for your break-up with the bimbo. I see fragmented scenes of us driving home. You were in the backseat and I in the passenger. Our friend drove us home while I glanced back at you to catch a smile. It was winter and we blasted the heat.
I don’t know why now. All of a sudden this memory gushes forth. It’s probably ‘cause I had another dream about you. It’s probably ‘cause I still want you to like me. I want you to never forget me.
-
I finally lit your old Dietz lantern.
Its champagne halo butterfly-kissed the ceiling.
Cotton wick like sycamore, its roots
were veined, kerosene-coursed and beating.
Our own loss-prevention.
No longer nailed to a railway car, branch-lashed or doused by rain,
it is my pharos. Like Christmas lights fleeced with snow,
gleaming smoky and unfelled.
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Of all the nightmares I had as a child, only one has left a lasting impression on my adult self.
It goes like this: you’re running hard, trying to get away from some evil something. Your arms are pumping, your legs are bionic machines propelling you forward as your breath quickens into exhaustion. But try as you might to move fast, you’ve only put away inches. Something’s slowing you down. You’re stuck in a gigantic vat of goo. Or jelly or wet cement. You are stationary. Futile motion surrounds you and the harder you try to overcome it, the quicker you succumb to immobility.
More than falling from a great height to certain death, being kidnapped in a zoo, and even more than a clown haunting— the “running in place” illusion grew up alongside my most opulent daydreams. I detested that feeling of treading water. Having the power and will to escape what hunted me, yet not achieving a clean break-away. It brought forth such physical frustration that most times I encountered the terror, I’d wake up with tears crusted in the corners of my eyes. I still detest it.
I used to walk along Wacker and the Chicago River to get to work. Last week I looked down and imagined I was buoyed in the filthy water. Tethered to a clutching weight around my ankles. I wasn’t necessarily sinking, but my limbs wouldn’t answer motion’s call when I swam. Like trying to do jumping jacks in a straightjacket.
If only I could see the forest for the trees, eh?
Maybe this recurring nightmare of sans-motion is a gentle reminder to slow down and to stop constantly seeking the next change of scenery. OR is it some deep-seeded fear of helplessness that plagues my larval psyche and pokes its neotenous head out on occasion- lest I grasp hold of pulpy, fibrous maturation?
Whatever the explanation, I’m worn and incidentally tired of caging too many of my dreams. And nightmares. Do your worst, diurnal incubi— I’m a pretty strong swimmer.
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It’s still rotting out in the west field, streaks of ash running down the planks- gooey like war paint, sodden by late April rain. The coffee-stained moon marks the grave. You’d never know it was ablaze last October.
Just an infant scaffold of a barn then. The sawyered oak and cherry glinted in the sunlight- it’s what Christmas smells like- pine-sapped and cinnamoned.
I helped build it, you know. All by hand. While Pa ran his mouth, supervisin’. My fingernails scraped the inside of the buckskin gloves, the sawdust peppered my forearms and conjured the whiskey out of my blood. Always the sunlight turning denim into sauna.
The new barn would stand as hard work and deliverance from dependency. That’s what Pa said. An autonomous edifice. Lady Liberty’s torch. What platitude! He didn’t know I nailed and hammered, lifted and beveled at night with the Tull boys from Jefferson. Hired ‘em. Paid ‘em, too. Told Pa I was gettin’ ahead by myself. Tricked him into freedom. We painted it red with crisscrossed stripes white like militia frontlines.
Three weeks later sulfur and orange slithered across the field and I woke up knowing. The mare screamed like a string section – or maybe the soprano herself. I ran across the field, skiing on the dew-stained grass, face blazoned red. Bovine and equus were rescued. Hay bales and instruments left molten.
It burned into the morning. The pinked flames a mirage for sunrise. Pa strangled my hand as the barn dissolved into black carbon and oxygen. Like a house of cards, it collapsed without a sound.
