Strange Trip Home

"I hate this stupid rain" ~

"It can't rain all time" `

'Neither stars in the sky nor drops in the sea, 

Could be traded for happiness or the love of life, 

For such a thing should be cherished like a rarity, 

And should not be given up over struggle or strife, 

Cradle and hold it in the place that love lies, 

Keep it safe, keep it warm inside of your heart, 

Capture it even the every tear that one cries, 

For once inside you this feeling should never depart, 

And tossing it away once is like going suddenly blind, 

Without this emotion the world would be in eternal night, 

And only sorrow at its loss would you then find, 

Until you recover that tiny beacon of radiantly shining light, 

Yes neither the great oceans below nor bright starts above, 

Can ever amount to the feeling of happiness or love.' < - A poem titled 'Cherish' I wrote in high school.  

Found an excerpt from my old college journal,  'Florida's sun raped me today . . . . you know you are really, really, sweaty & sticky, when you can ring out your wallet and it drips to the floor.' 

That wasn't the only thing that dripped to the floor in my college days. Mostly tears. 

My hiatus/vacation to Mobile nearly broke me emotionally this time but it also awoken a spirit I'd lost for 9 years. 

I used to have the dreamer's heart of a poet and it's been severely dulled over the past couple of years, flaring up occasionally, but not nearly as passionate as in my college and high school days with so much hope and love but rather than giving it to others I know I only gave it in slashing cuts of passion to one girl. A girl who even 6 years after not seeing her face an old friend came out to LA and asked me how she was doing . . . as if we were still together. And if that's the kind of impact it had on someone else, I guess I know how deep it impacted me. 

In retrospect, what a waste. But in introspect I wish I would have done more back then, it's cliche to look on your past and remember how naive you were, tedious, but if I were the man I am today back then I can think of only one scared shitless little girl I'd like to say hello to look her into the eyes with the ghost of the future and say 'beautiful, I promise, promise, it gets better…it really gets better'. Not for 'our' sake, but for life's. 

Maybe so she'd know all her pain wasn't in vain and that I actually did make something of my life, not much but much better than staying trapped in your hometown moderately cranking out a 9-5 in order to make a moderate paycheck to take home my bitters to a wife I'd of married too young when the spark has died dulled and grey occasionally flaring up but not as passionate as those first 2 years.

But after crying for nearly 8 hours and having little spasmodic flare ups of memory and writing like I did in high school and college I realize that nostalgia and memory are powerful things and not to be fucked with. And I was fucking with them, taunting them, like ghosts daring them to haunt me. If you ever want to fuck with an ex-lover stare directly into the lens in every photograph that you take, that way when say 8 years later they open up a box of memories, every scrap of faded photograph, every poem, love letter, . . . looks like your staring right through them. 

When you pull a knife from a young girl's wrist and toss it across the room in a fit of panic, sync your breaths like drum beats and whisper in her ear 'It's going to be okay, I love you' and mean it, it's a frightening thing to revisit 8 years later.  Just a scrape otherwise this anecdote would end in a hospital visit…but frightening none the less. That little fit in my life has been wild and I had forgotten almost all of that entire almost 2 1/2 year period. I've only remembered a few episodes from high school and college most of it is a 100% blur . . . but this box cracked open every memory I'd ever blocked from resurfacing flooded back, even the banal ones like the pair of shoes my friend Elizabeth was wearing at the hotdog stand when I ran into her when I first started dating my high school girlfriend at the football games we only went to as an excuse to see each other (cause we hated sports). Every nuance, drop of rain, haircut, kiss, hand holding, smell, smell, bullet hole in the ceiling (true). Like a vietnam vet standing at the wall and seeing the name of an old friend shot down. PTSD. Sounds silly but if I had it it'd be in the form of a very fragile, very small, blond woman whose name I can't even bare to write in this journal now. It took so many forms in my college one. I guess you can't put a bandaid on your past. I've made so many mistakes. I'm happy I'm making less in my present and growing more and more brave at this little section of existence in the universe called 'my life'. 

But there were other things on this trip home; some awkward visits with friends, some amazing visits with friends, some breathtakingly peaceful moments, some other frightening gems from the past I'm not putting in this journal, and some introspective moments that made me just laugh myself stupid.  

My old high school make-out spot is no longer their. A shaved ice stand that used to be in parking lot in front of a thrift shop called "Tuesday Morning". 

The theatre where I saw my very first movie is being torn down. 

I trespassed on the condo where I used to go to the beach many summers. 

I visited 4 states this trip, a bar show with a  band called 'Baak Gwai' (Chinese for "White Trash") in Mississippi, ate at the world famous "Palace Cafe" in New Orleans, drove to the beach in Florida . . . and of course my home town Mobile, Alabama. 

The smell of the weather is something you don't find in LA. Moist but filled with the breath of so much wildlife. It brought most of the memories back. I've been gone almost 5 years, it's fine. I was away for College. I don't want to move back. But this is the first time I ever got truly nostalgic, not longing for the past but truly having a deep introspective understanding of where I came from. I found a series of poems and short stories I'd wrote in high school those were wonderful to re-read. I found copies of my college journal that has some of the exact thoughts from this journal I started writing only about 3 years ago…so it's good to know my heart hasn't changed too terribly much. 

I don't go to church anymore, I threw out my old Bible an an old Salvador Dali book I found in my memory box, If their is a god I sincerely doubt he's associated with all the painful memories I have from that book. Truth be told I'd fell in love with a girl who didn't believe in god, when I lost her, I gave up the religion all together, the logic of 'evolution' and various the scientific and intellectual principles didn't come to play in my life til much later. I gave it up on the pure gut reaction of the only pure feeling I'd ever had came only once. And I have only felt a glimpse of it once, in one other girl. Sex is fun. But a girl that could level you with her eyes. Whose smile just made you floaty and woozy and whose laugh made your spirit orgasm are almost one in a billion or maybe just one. But also one who could make you cry for hours with just one memory. Even the simplest one, like an argument we had once about shoes, I can't remember what for. She once cried for hours over a haircut she'd gotten, that memory makes me laugh. But my god, I'd literally buried every thing in this box…as if until I opened it this chapter of my life didn't even happen. It's frightening. There are no real echos of it anywhere else in my world. Not online, not in my circle of friends. I still have one thing from that time in my life, a bag which I use every day whose memory has transcended that time, cause I've had so many stories with it. 

Fear comes in the most unusual of packages. But in my memory box I was determined to face it head on. And I feel emotionally violated. Even something as simple as a high school yearbook makes me cry like a little bitch.  

'I am slain' - Hamlet.  

There is a scene in the movie "The Crow" where Eric Draven grabs the face of the villain's eyes and shows him all the pain he caused and he experiences every moment of Eric's pain of his wife dying after being raped. Opening that memory box felt like that moment. It's it's the best analogy I can give to describe my emotions because if I could shake your hand and you experience that flood, drowning of emotions of not just a girl but literally every nuance of your past that shaped you in one flood, down to that little artist Erin who sat behind you in 9th grade science all at once…your heart might stop. My hands are literally shaking typing this.  

'There's something I want to give you . . . I don't want it anymore . . .' 

I've changed a lot since then. Matured. But in a lot of ways I'm still an emotional train wreck. But I guess we all are or otherwise spoiled by life experiences that can only be described as banal. I may have had only one moment that sucked the life out of me…but most people don't even get that one. So I'm grateful. 

Other than crying like a bitch at night when no one could see me and having really weird dreams. This past trip home was amazing with amazing visits with my brother and friends I'm extra grateful for.  

'wilted'

I'd thought of what I would do if that little girl lost appeared in my life again. I remember one day after I moved to college I told her I wouldn't be able to fly home (a lie) bought a plane ticket home during the hurricane called her mom and told her not to pick her up at school and while she was waiting in the parking lot, lost and lonely I snuck up behind her with a white rose and she stared at me as if she was staring at a ghost. I'd probably faint.