bring the noyz

Last night I dreamed I visited The Nuge at his Texas Ranch.

He was a calm and mellow Nuge. That is how I recognized in the dream that I was dreaming.

We smoked Camel cigarettes and played the blues.

As I was leaving he invited me to come back anytime. I slowly walked away, kicking rocks as I shuffled down a gravel country road.
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From this morning's news:

Scientists Say Everyone Can Read Minds

I knew they were going to say that.

BAH DUM BAH CHING!

Thank you very much, thank you, good day.
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You say it's your birthday
It's my birthday too, yeah

- J. Lennon and P. McCartney

Yep. Sure'nuff is. For eight more minutes.

Older than I used to be, younger than I'm gonna be
Fewer things puzzle me than when I was young
But when my pace is falling slack
I catch myself thinking back
a certain night, a certain summer
Long gone long

- B. Walkenhorst

Not for the first time, and not for the second time, but for the third time this year, I beseech thee my dear reader, to raise your 40 high and join me yet again in a toast:

To the brotha that ain't here.

_______________

The Grave
(an identity crisis in two parts)

My reflection stares back at me through the pink distorted tint of polished granite. The sun shines without restraint, unihibited by the cloudless sky. Leaves whisper the names of the long forgotten as a warm early summer breeze circulates through the trees.

Here I am. Here it is.

My mirror image lies buried in the ground.

An intense feeling of anxiety strikes, my muscles tense, and my heart pounds against my ribcage. My mind blanks as a sudden unexplainable fear crushes me. Nausea waves crest and recede, and my eyes open wide in a rush of adenaline. I am distinctly aware that the world is spinning, spinning, spinning. . .

I half-step, half-stagger around and stand momentarily awe-struck. I try to disperse the psychological fog of fear and concentrate on getting a clear image of my last visit. I remember coming here once before, briefly stopping on the way to a picnic in a wooded park. It is a hazy half-real dreamlike memory from the distant years of youth. It is the memory of a child who did not fully comprehend what he saw. "Okay," I say softly to myself, "What are you afraid of. . . ghosts?" With slow determination I turn around.

BLAM! The world revolves much too rapidly beneath unsteady feet. Running away becomes a very real possibility. Fear, uncontrollable and irrational rails down my spinal cord. Why? This fear, this anxiety, this inner beast I must confront has no reason for being. I look the beast in the eyes and attempt to stare it down. "Relax," I tell myself, "breathe deeply, breathe slowly. . . good. Now look down." I look down:

Polyvinyl Chloride
April 27 - May 1, 1966
son of
Mr. and Mrs. Noyz

Wow, this is really weird, outright eerie. I'm looking down at the grave of my twin.

My twin? Another like me?

I never knew him. How could I? I didn't do much socializing or fraternal bonding in the first four days outside the womb. Lying basically motionless in an incubator stuck full of tubes couldn't have facilitated much communication.

I checked into Life's Hotel almost two months early and forgot most of my luggage. So did Polyvinyl, but he had forgotten to make reservations.

Do I know him? Can I know him? Do prenatal memories exist of the two of us floating blissfully inside the womb while our mother dusts the furniture and listens to Dean Martin albums? He was my twin. A feeling, a vibe, informs me with the clarity of a chime that we were once one and the same. A previously unexposed emptiness evacuates me inside. A bond stronger and deeper than the closest of lovers or the best of friends could ever hope to share was destroyed in its infancy, after about 96 hours. I feel anger. I feel loss and grief. A buried sense of mourning bursts through.

I read the stone again, pause, then I read the stone again. I slowly etch its image in the folds of my mind. Tears begin to form and distort the edges of my vision. I begin to wonder what my childhood would have been like had Polyvinyl not died. How would things have been different? What would life be like for me now? So many questions will forever remain unanswered.

they flutter behind you your possible pasts
some brighteyed and crazy some frightened and lost

- Roger Waters

The world pauses and is still. No movement, no breeze, nothing. Silence envelopes my world. The artificial flowers my mother placed on the grave earlier appear cartoonish. Their colors glow too birightly and their petals are too perfectly shaped. The stone becomes monolithic, massive and threatening. It dominates my field of vision.

"April 27. . . son of Mr. and Mrs. Noyz. . . "

My birthday, my parents, but the name of a stranger.

Someday that will be my name. I feel an awareness of my own mortality and the most intense anxiety I have ever experienced. I am powerless to explain it or rationalize it away. For an instant I am like a mouse trapped before a snake, paralyzed with fear.

Slowly I regain my composure. I take one last look at the grave, turn, and begin walking towards the car parked a short distance away on a gravel path. A new phobia hits me and I begin to argue with myself:

But what if he is me?

GET A GRIP PAL.

What if a doctor or a nurse made some sort of weird mix-up mistake and it wasn't really Polyvinyl that died? Remember that T.V. movie about those babies that got switched at birth?

YOU'RE SLIPPIN' MAN, GET A GRIP.

What if it's really me underneath that stone? What if I'm really Polyvinyl?

YEAH, RIGHT. LIKE THAT'S LIKELY IN THE FIRST PLACE. AND IN THE SECOND PLACE, SO? WHAT DIFFERENCE WOULD IT MAKE?

What difference would it make? It would make my whole freakin' life a lie! It would mean my parents mourned the death of the wrong child! It would mean that I'm not me, and that I'm really my brother!

UH HUH, LIKE ON SOME SOAP OPERA OR SOMETHING?

Don't you understand?

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? REMEMBER WHAT SHAKESPEARE SAID ABOUT ROSES.

I have this debate with myself on the brief drive back to my grandparent's house. I finally convince myself that I am not my dead brother. Or at least I convince myself that after twenty-five years it is irrelevant which one of the two of us is actually in the damn hole in the ground.

I'm the one standing, looking down on him. I'm the one who endured the various trials, traumas, and troubles of growing into a reluctant adult in an ever changing world. I did these things, and will continue to do more, because I live.

Polyvinyl died. Polyvinyl was buried a quarter of a century ago. Polyvinyl has decomposed.

"I am what I am," says Popeye. And so am I.

Polyvinyl, I did not know you, but somehow I can't help but feel that a piece of you is in me and a piece of myself is already buried on the edge of a small rural cemetary on the outskirts of Ackley, Iowa.

I never saw your face
I never saw your eyes
I never said good morning
I never said good bye
I never said I love you
I never had tears to cry
And I've never stopped to wonder
Why you had to die

Well, I do now. I wonder.

- Memorial Day, 1991

_______________

Happy Birthday.
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Last December the wife of one of my teaching assistants gave birth to their fourth child.

Well, my dear reader, as you may imagine four children is quite enough for most folks.

My teaching assistant has decided to get a vasectomy.

The doctor's name:

Dick Chopp
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In the year of '39 assembled here the Volunteers
In the days when lands were few
Here the ship sailed out into the blue and sunny morn
The sweetest sight ever seen.

And the night followed day
And the story tellers say
That the score brave souls inside
For many a lonely day sailed across the milky seas
Ne'er looked back, never feared, never cried.

Don't you hear my call though you're many years away
Don't you hear me calling you
Write your letters in the sand
For the day I'll take your hand
In the land that our grand-children knew.

- B. May

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click here.

That is all.
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God shred his grace on thee
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Every day for the past three days I have journeyed forth into the City and taken full advantage of April in the afternoon.

My bliss has eluded me for months. While still lagging behind, I am hot on its trail.

I travelled by bicycle.

When you travel by bicycle you move in the world. You are plugged in and powered on. When you travel by automobile. . .

. . . you are merely passing through.

I travelled to the gym that had become a vacuum for automatically deducted monthly dues.

I travelled the parks, trails, and rush hour streets of the City, moving "for all the world like an urban toreador".

I feel exhausted and am grateful for the invention of ibuprofen.

Because I hurt. Lordy how I hurt. It feels like every muscle in my body throbs dimly in the dull ache of over-exertion.

But at least it feels.

I am managing to make good on my pledge. Mostly.

There have been minor lapses. I cannot control the songs that are played on the radio. But for the most part, ob la di ob la da. . .

The numb shadow that has been hanging over me since this horrid stream of death began is lifting.

I am beginning to feel invigorated.

Refreshed.

Renewed.
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Former Hitler Youth.

His conservative orthodox interpretation of Catholic theology has earned him the nickname "God's Rottweiler".

He intervened in the 2004 U.S. Presidential election by writing a letter to U.S. Bishops which basically told them John Kerry was a bad man who should not receive communion.

Benedict?

Or still is one?

BA-DUM-BAH-CHING


(lest you take offense let me remind you, my dear Catholic reader, of the immortal words of The Great One, "Comedy is not pretty." )
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The world weighs on my shoulders
But what am I to do?
You sometimes drive me crazy
But I worry about you

-- Neil Peart

Well. . .

. . . not anymore.

No, not ever really. There was never really the need. But I suspect that the roles were frequently reversed. Unbeknownst to you or not, you were typically regarded as the more stable of our pair.

Well. . .

. . . not anymore.

We went together to see The Police on the Synchronicity tour. It was either in the fall of 1983 or spring of 1984. It was that month's show not to be missed. It seemed like everyone was there. And we had floor seats!

Due to "youthful indiscretion" I really don't remember the show. Before it began a friend of ours seated a couple rows back offered a small handful of multi-colored pills which I eagerly gobbled. As I recall, you displayed more sense, and were happy with the large beers we aquired by asking some "cool looking" old enough guy in the beer line to buy us a couple while slipping him enough cash to also get himself one. I was always amazed at how well that worked. I don't remember anyone ever saying "no".

The show ended and somehow I was driving us home. I should not have been. We were on the expressway heading back towards the Sprawl, one very and one slightly hopped-up high school kid out too late on a school night.

That's when I saw it, a hallucination that if I close my eyes I can still see as clearly as that night: The Wall.

Yes, The Wall, just like in the movie. It was several stories high and completely blocked the entire road, extending as far as my peripheral vision could see in both directions. I knew it wasn't real, but hey man, in retrospect I was pretty freakin' high so that whole line between reality and imagination was a little fuzzy.

The panic began to take hold. I screamed. I was considering radical action, like slamming on the breaks and turning hard, which would have doubtless sent us hurdling into a lethal out of control skid.

You reached out and calmly placed your hand on my arm. At the moment of impact you said, "It's okay, it's not real."

POOF! The Wall dissipated like a cloud as we drove through it.


I am reminded of that story because it is an appropriate metaphor for our relationship.

You always had a way of seeing past and shattering my illusions, of grounding me in reality with a positive spin. Basically man, you were always there for me.

And I for you.

I know we didn't talk as frequently in recent years. And that's okay, although it is now something I will no doubt regret for years to come. Since college our relationship was like that. We'd go months, or even years without so much as a word between us. That was fine. Invariably we'd connect again and it be like we hung out yesterday. Although not bound by blood, we were brothers none the less. Neither time nor distance ever impacted the strength of our friendship.

Just knowing you were there, no farther away than an e-mail or a call, was comforting.

Well. . .

. . . not anymore.

Last weekend, on the day after your memorial party, I found myself alone with you in the house. I sat and I looked at the photographs of us: younger, thinner, goofier. Your beloved bass guitar hung on the wall. I vaguely remember when you got it. I held the urn that contains your ashes. I still wish I had been able to find a post-it or a notecard with a piece of tape to label it:

"Can-O'-Chris"

You would think that was really funny.

I held the urn. It was, as your father said, "kinda like holding a baby." I think that is strangely the most affectionate thing I ever heard Pop say. I shook it. Is that really you in there? Yes. No going back.

Damn you. I'm the foolish impulsive one. Not you.

Three weeks ago today you made your selfish decision.

Am I angry? Yes. Angry with you, with me, with the whole freakin' mess of a world.

And sad. Mostly just very sad.

And very tired.

I'm tired of not having my first waking thought everyday be regular things like "Oooh Wednesday, today I've gotta. . . " or "Hurray it's Saturday!" and instead being something like "Tuesday. Chris is dead. And so is Curtis."

I'm tired of the empty feeling that comes and goes at seemingly random times throughout the day.

I'm tired of the sadness that covers me like my blanket when I go to sleep each night.

So I'm just not going to do it anymore. I hope.

This evening I had a revelation.

I realized you are with me as you have always been with me. As is Curtis. Along everybody else both living and dead that I love and have loved. Our lives, are characters, the very fabric of our beings are inexorably intertwined by our shared dreams and common experiences. We are parts of each other.

That is a gift that even Death is powerless to steal.

For me, and for us my dear reader, life goes on.

And it's you when I look in the mirror
And it's you that makes it hard to let go
Sometimes you can't make it on your own

-- Bono

Well. . .
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It is with a bemused sense of detachment that I first heard on the radio this morning, then read in the online edition of the Dallas Morning News (registration required, so no link to the article) that the Sprawl School District crumpled and caved to the pressure of a Federal lawsuit alleging they practiced censorship.

Practiced censorship? Duh.

That's not news to me. I quite vividly remember the Principal (although I can't remember her name, Mrs. Davis?) of my old high school censoring me almost daily by taking away my buttons (it was the early 80's) emblazoned with such catchy slogans as "Show us your tits", "I'm not as think as you stoned I am", or the classic "I promise I won't cum in your mouth".

I read that :

Plano students now have more freedom to pass out religious messages to their classmates at school, but their peers in other districts likely will not anytime soon.

The Plano school board last week changed a policy that is at the center of a federal lawsuit. Now students have several times and places during the school day to hand out materials.

Hmmm. . .

Are they being careful in what they wish for?

If you let one group through the door you have to leave it open for everybody.

Anybody know any kids in the Sprawl that we can get to distribute information on Satanism and other occult religious belief systems?

'cuz that would be really cool.

I wonder how many pagan pamphlets it will take before the powers that be in that fucked up part of the world start to reconsider their policy.
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Saturday afternoon I spent three hours making the fifteen minute drive from my parent's house in the Sprawl to Jon's house for your memorial service. I took the long and winding road.

I drove by the house where I used to live, where you became my parent's "Number 2 Son" and charmed many dinner invitations with your grace and wit.

I sat in the middle of the street and looked at it for as long as I thought would be prudent without making the neighborhood wonder why some guy was just parked in the middle of the street blasting old Rush songs out rolled down windows.

It's longer than you think.

I drove the mile or so from my old house to your old house. As I drove, I half remembered and half imagined dragging some crappy old vinyl LP record tied with twine to the bumper, watching with mischievously destructive teenage-boy glee as it shattered into tiny pieces bouncing along the concrete and asphalt.

I sat in front of your old house, looking at the window to the front bedroom that once was yours, and that you gave up for me that summer home from college when I was in need of a place to stay. I half remembered and half imagined being more than half drunk on the Beast, ripping through "Batguy" in that room full of smoke and teenage girls in whose interchangable arms we would inevitably fall.

Again, I sat in the middle of the street and looked at it for as long as I thought would be prudent without making the neighborhood wonder why some guy was just parked in the middle of the street blasting old Rush songs out rolled down windows.

I drove to the grocery store where we worked together and bemoaned missing many a great weekend party but somehow managed to have a pretty good time all the same.

I walked the aisles we once walked, stocked and mopped.

I wanderered up and down the beer aisle, wondering what happened to the Little Kings (big buzz, little bottle) that once was our favorite afterwork beer, whether it was three o'clock in the afternoon, eleven o'clock at night or seven o'clock in the morning. Four for you, four for me. Sometimes we'd share with Matt.

Eventually I wandered back up to the front of the store. I stood as best as I could recall in the exact spot where we met and our friendship began when one of us bummed a smoke from the other and you asked me if I liked Rush. It was the deli then, we were both bagboys on break. The store has been renovated and remodeled. As I stood there I hoped nobody was watching and wondering why some longhaired guy wearing a nice but kinda dirty and slightly wrinkled suit with a t-shirt was standing with his head down in the middle of the Floral Department weeping.

I drove by the high school and circled the student parking lot silently debating whether or not to get out and walk around while remembering times shared with you and with Curtis.

I decided against it. It was just too real, the emotions too raw.

I wound through neighborhoods across the Sprawl, past locations that felt familiar even if I could no longer remember exactly why, to the other side of the tracks. Eventually I found myself driving slowly past the legendary 1805. It did not appear to have changed. The people standing in the driveway did, so I didn't stop.

I drove past the park at the end of the block. Many weekends after midnight we could be found running around there, wide-eyed watching the tracers flow from lit cigarettes or chasing frisbees in the dark.

Mostly I just aimlessly drove around, without a real purpose or direction, listening to Rush and smoking cigarettes. Kinda like we used to do.

I drove with slow contemplation down the same streets and alleys we once flew down with the wild abandon of adolescence fueled with angst and sometimes alcohol.

As I drove, I thought about and remembered that place where. . . that time when. . . that girl who. . .

And in a rare moment of clarity I had an epiphany: I am cursed.

Despite my well-known sheer comtempt, utter disgust, and complete revulsion with the Sprawl, you have cursed me to somehow love it.

I am cursed to forever love it because it forever binds me to you.

You bastard.
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I don't know if I can take it
I'm not easy on my knees
Here's my heart you can break it

I need some release, release, release

- Bono with The Edge

I have come to accept death as an occupational hazard. The students at the school where I work typically have serious medical needs and long term health issues. That is why they are students at my school. They are the kids we are designed, trained and equipped to serve. They get sick and die, or a seizure may seize and take them in the dark of the night. It happens. Typically about three times a year. Probably five or six times if you factor in the former students.

And when it does, it is never easy. On occasion it may be seen as a blessing, because a child whose body and mind were horribly warped by disability and disease has been freed from the physical bounds that confined them.

But it always sucks.

You go to the funeral and you weep. You hug the family and you say goodbye to a wonderful young person whom you knew intimately and loved deeply as you tuck their memory away in that little place that always causes you to smile slightly when you visit.

Another scar is etched in your tired and tattered heart. Then life goes on.

I've gotten used to it. Like I said, it happens.

But this. . . this is something beyond the realm of my comprehension. That death would come by their own hand so suddenly and unexpectedly to two of my oldest and closest friends is an unfathomable concept. Yet it happened.

So my dear reader, I pray that for the near future you will bear with me and grant me the indulgence to continue to use this forum as an avenue for coming to tears as well as terms with these things that have happened.

Curtis' death was a crippling blow.

Crippling yes, but one from which I was recovering. Another scar, this one a little bigger and a little deeper, is etched in my tired and tattered heart and life goes on.

But Chris. . .

Oh Chris, my brother my friend! What the fuck were you thinking? What the fuck were you doing? What the fucking fuck? Fuck fuck fuck fuck motherfucking fuck.

Chris, when your resolve was steeled, when you pressed the cold barrel of the .357 against your temple and slowly squeezed the trigger, it was as though the bullet exploded out of your head and flew squarely into my heart.
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Any escape might help to smooth
The unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe
The restless dreams of youth

- Neil Peart

This afternoon for the second time in barely as many months I must travel up the modern American Mississippi to the soul-less heart of the Sprawl. Again I travel to mourn the loss and celebrate the life of another of my oldest and closest friends suddenly struck down by a dormant cancer that woke up and went "terminal in the amount of time it takes for the bullet to leave the barrel and enter the brain".

Words fail to describe just how much it fucking sucks.

I have acknowledged, but not yet accepted Chris' death. Holy fuck man, like many others, I'm still grappling to come to terms with Curtis'.

Far too many recent days of gray have slowly faded into the black of a sleepless night.

This afternoon acceptance will force itself ever closer with every mile I travel. At the memorial on Saturday evening I have little doubt that the grim reality will hit me like a brick in the face.

Words fail to describe just how much it fucking sucks.

Suddenly --
You were gone
From all the lives
You left your mark upon

I remember --
How we talked and drank
Into the misty dawn
-- I hear the voices

We ran by the water
On the wet summer lawn
-- I see the footprints
I remember --

-- I feel the way you would
-- I feel the way you would

Tried to believe
But you know it's no good
This is something
That just can't be understood

- Neil Peart

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I dreamed I went to Chuck E. Cheese's wearing a sparkling sequined rainbow colored gown, a plastic yellow tiara with a large rhinestone diamond in the center, and purple patent leather pumps. I played ski-ball, and argued with a small boy who tried to steal my tokens.
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From the Department of Lost Irony: The news networks repeated use of dubya's new catchphrase, "culture of life", while giving round the clock coverage to the dying and death of The Pope and Terri Schiavo.

Papal Deathwatch 2005: As a fan of huge fan of The Daily Show, I loved the 18+ hours of non news coverage by all the cable news networks about the not yet dead status of The Pope after the initial false death report made them all look foolish. I was a little disappointed that FOX News had the restraint not to splash PAPAL DEATHWATCH 2005 on the screen with a catchy little metal guitar riff and explosion sound effect when they went in and out of commercial breaks.

Not that this is really related but it kinda is in an indirect way: Tom Delay is a dickhead. He is a giant festering pus-oozing phallus. I realize, my dear reader, that we all are quite aware of it, it comes as a surprise to nobody. It just feels good to say.

Thank you, that is all for now.


* another future winner
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Through the fish-eyed lens of tear stained eyes
I can barely define the shape of this moment in time
And far from flying high in clear blue skies
I'm spiraling down to the hole in the ground where I hide.

If you negotiate the minefield in the drive
And beat the dogs and cheat the cold electronic eyes
And if you make it past the shotgun in the hall,
Dial the combination, open the priesthole
And if I'm in I'll tell you what's behind the wall.

There's a kid who had a big hallucination
Making love to girls in magazines.
He wonders if you're sleeping with your new found faith.
Could anybody love him
Or is it just a crazy dream?

- Roger Waters

SAULSBERRY, Chris W., 37, died Monday. Services 6 p.m. Friday, Chapel of the Good Shephard (McNeil's).

(from the Thursday, March 31, 2005 online edition of The Oklahoman)
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