bring the noyz

From the very beginning let me make one thing perfectly clear: I am not writing this now because I want to do so, I am writing this now because I need to do so.

Please consider this a compulsion for catharsis, if you will.

As I write this a party rages on. . . okay not exactly rages, but there is very definitely a party going on behind me, at the home of an unknown neighbor.

(i love you too!!!!!!! - The Wife suddenly appears, leans over me and types as she comes out to say tell me goodnight before she goes to bed. Her final exam is Monday morning. Monday afternoon she will be finished with nursing school. Yeah! But until then, the remainder of her weekend will be full of textbooks and notes about things nursing and medical concepts that I vaguely understand although her vocabulary remains as foreign to me as another language.)

Anyway. . .

Although I remain grateful that you take the time from your busy life to read my humble ramblings, right now I do not write now for you, my dear reader.

(sorry, I could not resist the pun of the homonym)

This rambling is addressed to you. Although it has been many months since your last visit, believe me my friend, I have not forgotten. Still, I thank you for taking the time to once again visit me within a dream.

As I write this and the party behind not exactly rages I am sipping on a Moosehead, a leftover from last weekend's celebration. What once seemed so luxurious and exotic to those who came of age through experience if not yet legally when these guys were kings, now seems only a fitting beverage to pass an evening with a drink and friend. Like always, I raise it high and pour some out, "to the brotha that ain't here".

You bastard, you would should have would have been here. But you chose a different path.

In a way, you always did.

Last night you came by for a visit.

Last night as I lay sleeping, The Wife and I came by the apartment you and I once shared. Except it wasn't exactly our old apartment, such are the ways of dreams, but rather a combination of many of the apartments where we once lived and celebrated our little victories.

As we walked up, you were walking out the front door with your arms full of record albums. You placed them down at the end of the sidewalk in the parking lot out front. Around you lay stacks and piles of your other possessions.

You greeted us and embraced us warmly, as you always did. I asked, "What are you doing?"

"I'm having a garage sale!" you replied with your trademark enthusiasm, "Except, I'm not really selling anything." You must have sensed my puzzled look, "I'm giving it away."

"A garage sale? Giving it away?" I queried. "Are you moving?"

You paused briefly, and then answered in a tone of voice that suggested more of a jestful riddle than a reply, "I will be leaving soon." Forever the intellectual prankster, you frequently answered questions with that tone of voice.

Then a clap of thunder from the night storms interupts. I glance at the clock. 2:30 am or so, it's time to get up and check on The Boy. I do so. I gently turn him over, tuck him back in under the covers and tell him I love him. He does not stir. I quickly and quietly return to bed.

Time obviously passes, how much I do not know. Again The Wife and I approach the old apartment that is both ours and all the other ones from that era. Your stacks and piles of stuff are diminished but still there. A few yards away at the end of the walkway the front door rests open.

The Wife and I enter. It is comfortable and familiar but the feeling is not right. As I stand in the living room, The Wife walks down the hallway and turns through your open bedroom door. She exits as quickly as she enters, calmly turns to face me and says quietly, "You don't need to go in there."

No, I don't. My perspective shifts and I briefly see through her eyes what she has seen.

You were right, you were leaving. You have left. Your bloodied body remains lying on the beer stained and cigarette burned carpet.

Thunder again. I glance at the clock. The alarm will go off in about ten minutes.

Now it don't take no freakin' Freudian psychiatrist to interpret the symbolism and meaning of that dream. No sir, not by a longshot, so I will neither dwell on nor describe it at present.

I will say this though my friend, I was and remain surprised by such a visit.

I should not surprised. You both remain frequently in my thoughts if now only occassionally in my rantings.

But still I was.

It was not so much your presence that was surprising, it was the power of it. It shook me from my sleep as much as the thunder.

So now tonight I sit outside in the cool of the night's breeze listening without a hint of irony to The Remembering.

I pop a Shiner Bock, raise it high and again I toast. . .

To the brotha that ain't here. . .

In the days of summers so long
We danced as evenings sang their song

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