bring the noyz

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.
|