Feb 23, 2012 in Normal entries

The season seems to be changing right this minute. This is when I understand Haikus, how all the sorrow and joy and personal history of a person with a pen can be encoded in a few lines, a symbol or two about a plum blossom or the direction of the wind. I understand while old men stoop, carrying the weight of all these days that change; the blossom, the fruit, the colors of autumn and the barren branch.

Things I have understood from word of mouth or the written page; I’m not sure I know at all. The things I have touched or that have touched me, some of these I understand entirely. How a cigarette tastes on a winter morning, how the summer air shimmys to the cicada screech, the smell of leather and linseed oil in a baseball mitt, Rhubarb and strawberry pie in Early Autumn.

I haven’t buried Herschel yet. For two years his ashes have been sitting on my bookshelf. I don’t believe the ashes hold the spirit of the dog, but I think in terms of symbols and grand gestures just the same, and in this I have failed or have allowed my reticence reign, haven’t decided on the perfect gesture. Despite the rude things I sometimes say here, I have great respect for the range of beliefs that keep the human spirit rising every morning to face a new day. Jesus wept. He also laughed and raged and preached and grew weary and grew strong, and watched the figs fall and the sand blow, and in some respects were everyman and not a god apart. The story is as human as it gets. Haredawg wept too,

Some young man who writes poetry on this website left me a note in praise and lament of my passion for, I think, cigars and how he wanted a passion like that. Perhaps it is a vice, but I know what he means. I was reminiscing with my niece about my father’s second heart attack. She had been visiting from LA as a girl, there was a tornado, her first, and then her grandfather rushed to the ICU. My role in coming out was primarily to take care of her though it turned out to be something else. When her father was finally reached he came out too (he was in some small village in Mexico without phones or cell reception). One evening my brother and I were walking along the street where we were born, tall beers in paper sacks, and discussing something along the lines of “… if only he came from some passion, some vice, like he enjoyed a glass of scotch in the evenings, a fine cigar, crack and hookers, sky diving…” and we were melancholy. Up until his own second heart attack, my brother, a man of strong principle and ideals, enjoyed a glass of tequila and a cigar in the evenings; no crack or hookers or skydiving — though I did put that in there just to break the tension a bit. The other conversation that stuck was that he told me he had been considering not coming, he had just returned to LA from vacation, had all sorts of affairs to get back in order in LA; he just didn’t want to think of himself as that guy, the guy too busy to come to his father’s sick bed.

I think about both those conversations from time to time; the guy I want to be and the quality of life versus the quantity. I even think, sometimes, what a whiney bitch ass I am to cry about a bad back, a bad shoulder, an upset tummy, when both my father and brother have been through two major heart surgeries. I’m not always a whiney bitch ass in these thoughts, sometimes I’m a lucky sumbitch, blessed in some symbolic sense like the paraphrased line the father in Hair stole from conventional wisdom; It’s the smart folk that got to watch out, god loves an idiot.

I don’t know why, but the changing of the seasons always does this to me. I have my guess’s but they all seem a little lame; undeniable marking of time, the softness or harshness of the air as strong a memory trigger as baking bread, that even the planet itself must change and be accepting. These are fine guesses but they are a bit like a box of good dog ashes on my shelf, obscured and opaque with my own myths and desiring.

And to come back to earth, perhaps, if I were to think hard enough about it, this would the shame of OD closing its digital doors. This is my confessional, my confidant, the safe place to mourn, to slap and tickle, to haul coals to Newcastle, and drink with the miners. This is the place where I can muse without feeling stupid or redundant or obligated. I know, there is a web full of such places, but this one is mine. I was reading an entry from reader’s choice from a gentleman who had offered a few years back to buy OD, and though it was written as a business proposition, it was fairly leaking sentimentality. I think that’s why Bruce ignored the offer too. This website is nothing special, but it is also sacred much like the box of Herschel ashes. It’s not the thing itself, it’s the blood and sweat and tears we’ve put into it, the longing, the confessions, the hair and skin and gristle. The loss of OD would be like fifteen years of seasons changing all at once.

To the young man winsome for vices, make this your vice, embrace this place and use it as you will. Be that guy, be the guy who leaves it on the page.