lead my skeptic sight.

(i'll write something else soon, when i have something to say. right now, this says it better.)

on these nights
the only thing i miss
is missing someone.

I haven’t known many babies in my life. When you’re 28, single, and you work mostly nights, your opportunities for infant interaction are limited. So when I headed to Texas to visit my brother and his year-old twins earlier this month, I tried to soak in every moment I could.

As I played with my niece and nephew, I thought back to my own early childhood. Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t remember much – just an image here and there.

What I can remember are the sounds.

I can still hear my mother softly sing, “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,” as she tucked me in at night. The tones of my father’s rich tenor voice linger in my mind as he sang about Kermit the Frog’s “Rainbow Connection.” And the pluck of their guitar strings hums with a clarity undiminished by the passage of time.

When all else fades, I will hear those melodies. They capture something ineffable and true about this world that I’ll never be able to fully explain. But collecting the eight melodies of Earthbound comes close.

If you examine each aspect of Earthbound by itself, you’ll find a fairly standard SNES-era role-playing game. The mechanics are nothing too special, the plot is basic child-saves-the-world fare, and psychic powers stand in for magic. But when you delve beneath those surface factors, you find a wealth of unique attributes that make the game much more than the sum of its parts. The music is a part of that.

Within the first few minutes of play, the character Ness receives an object called the Sound Stone, along with instructions to visit eight locations across the world to “unite your power with the Earth’s.” Seems like your usual cryptic RPG gibberish...but it ends up making perfect sense.

Each location – also known as “Your Sanctuary” -- features a boss battle against a grotesque (often humorous) monster of some kind. But the monsters aren’t the point. The real reason for visiting these places is to use the Sound Stone to gather a snatch of a melody. And after those few notes play, Ness recalls a brief memory – a glimpse of his dog as a puppy, a whiff of his favorite food (as chosen by the player), or the sound of his mother’s voice.

That song is supposed to empower you. But it doesn’t. Not until the melody is complete.

When I first played Earthbound, I didn’t even notice each section of the song as it played after defeating the boss. My young and relatively untrained ears didn’t put the whole thing together. It wasn’t until I gathered the final tune that it all became clear.

Ness puts the Sound Stone to his forehead, and the notes you’ve collected suddenly make sense. It’s a whole song; each piece is actually one musical measure in an eight-part phrase. But it’s obscured by strangely atonal bass patterns and random arpeggiation. It’s as if the melody has to fight through Ness’ own memories to be heard.

Then the screen suddenly changes to a scene in black and white as, in his mind, Ness makes his way up a winding path to his home. There, he finds himself as a baby in his own crib. He hears his parents’ voices as they look on in wonder at their creation. He even sees his trademark red cap placed on his head for the first time.

During all of this, the melody of the Sound Stone changes from obscure and strange to beautiful and clear, simple and strong.

It’s the sound of a family’s love.

Throughout Earthbound, Ness has a strange relationship with his family. His father is entirely absent; he communicates only through phone calls and ATM deposits. Ness’ mother dispenses health-replenishing food and worry-filled advice in equal measure. And his sister’s only purpose is to act as a delivery girl, taking unwanted inventory items off your hands.

Yet Ness can actually become homesick at periodic points in the game, a malady only cured by a phone call or visit home. If left unattended, Ness will involuntarily skip turns in combat as he remembers his mother. It’s a strangely powerful way to impress upon the player the strength of love and memories.

After a brief journey through the dark part of his mind, Ness awakens newly empowered by each location he visited – each melody he found. Because what greater “sanctuary” could there be than a place where memories use music to express love?

My niece and nephew won’t remember me until they’re older. And my own memories will probably continue to fade. But music will always be a means of bringing them back.

And someday I might have a song or two to pass on – no Sound Stone required.

i'm too used to flying solo
there's a comfort in the ache
like the pain after a long run
i go as fast as i can take
cause longer days mean shorter memories
but every night i lie awake
a tiny bed below the mountains
can't hold the life i aim to make

there's times i sleep when i'm not tired
but i'm drowsy when i wake
and i put on my suit and say my words
but some days it's too hard to fake
i know there's few that have it better
don't need no pity for my sake
but one day soon i'm gonna hit the road
toward the life i aim to make

(wrote this earlier in the winter. still working out music to it. lyrics subject to change, because i suck at lyrics.)

-----------------------------------------

the sky is the very same shade as the ground
the snow in the air muffles all of the sound
i do not feel lonely, though no one's around
and i'm waiting

to tell you this
a last first kiss
it's you i miss
that's all

but truthfully, what i just said is a lie
the future is harder to see than the sky
i can't seem to close or to open my eyes
and i'm waiting

to tell you this
a last first kiss
it's you i miss
that's all

but how can you miss someone you've never met
did i already see you or did i forget
i walk in a whiteout and i'll never let myself go

can't see a thing but the mountains are near
drawing my gaze through the hope and the fear
the beat of your heart is all i can hear

and i'm waiting.

i bought an extra pillow the other day
because i can't sleep unless I'm clutching

something

i tuck the blankets under my chin and cross my arms
as if i'm about to plunge down a water slide
the kind that i hated as a child
because i forgot to cover my mouth
and felt as if i were being flushed down a toilet
which is sometimes what sleep is like
and sometimes what waking is like too

there is more to the pillow
it yields to an embrace
but only so far
before there's nothing left to squeeze
and your arms are sore in the morning

but the alternative is







maybe i should head to texas

words can't explain what happened.
but words are all I got.

some folk might see a waste of time in 'em.
they don't look past the surface of things,
too busy with the What to find the What For.

power.
there's great power in words.
don't need no dragon blood to know that.
the shapes a mouth makes can lay a body low
or set a flame to a kindled fire, even on the coldest of nights.
they can call down salvation and glory
or lash a heart like a cat o' nine.

yeah. words got power.
but they got no say in the matter.
can't help what they are, words, or what they do.
ain't but futile devices, noises and nothings.

unless they got a voice.

and sometimes

This is how I broke your heart.

-----------------------------------------

I wrote about you once before, almost exactly two years ago. You remind me of autumn, of red leaves and frost and lingering, lengthening evenings. (Your smile says more of summer, of brightness and warmth and daylight. But I never knew you then. I never will.)

So I wrote about forgetting. And I did my part. I just didn't account for yours.

-----------------------------------------

It was your eyes, mostly. You never looked at me, because you knew what it would do. But I held you close that night, your golden curls woven through my fingers and your lashes on my cheek. And I kissed you, and I looked.

And you didn't look away.

Here's the part you don't know about: My heart broke first.

I couldn't bear it. Because I saw beauty there, and kindness, and the shaping of a helpless joy. Like a dying man in reverse, I saw the rest of my life flash before our eyes.

And I knew it didn't belong to me.

-----------------------------------------

So my heart broke. It grabbed my tongue and wrested words from it, words that even now I cannot comprehend. I will not. They are too painful to consider.

They did the trick.

-----------------------------------------

You have a new heart now. You need one, of course, to shine as brightly as you do. And as your helpless joy is shaped by another, you must be brighter than ever.

I broke your heart to save mine.

I just didn't expect you to break it again.

if you want to know what it's like
then don't go to bed
learn how to cook
watch the red and the blue
and share your joy with the dawn alone

sleep in the sunlight
and travel at twilight

speak to all you read and never see
give your words away
and take them from those who know you least

see your love before you
and name its beauty
and never hold it again

close your eyes
and listen to the light
listen to the warmth and the cold
and the pain and the impossible
and clench, and cry, and burn, and shine
because you don't know how to stop.

it's like that.

I went to the theatre alone.

I kept the ticket in my pocket. I didn't know what else to do with it. I had bought it on faith, and that didn't seem to be enough, but I clung to it anyway, if only to prove to myself that I tried.

I went to the theatre alone, but I met myself there.

I had stood above the entrance, looking down at the bright-lit tree and the bright-faced people and the wintering city outside. I wore black and wine and I sang. I was good.

I entered the theatre alone, but I met others there.

I took my seat on the wrong side, examined my ticket, and sheepishly moved down the row. I stood to allow the young couple passage. His hair spilled over the tops of his ears, and her shoulders glowed with beauty. The ticket's empty seat sat between us, a barrier separating life from life.

I sat in the theatre alone, but I met the drummer there.

He hammered out beats with stick and brush and hand and wrist. I could see him better now than then; the days of a decade lay in the grey of his hair and the size of my waist and the eyes of us both. But we traveled, he and I. We were younger and we were older and the music was the same, ageless.

I closed my eyes in the theatre alone, but I met her there.

I was a fool. I was out of my depth, and she well knew it. I just wanted her close, and I didn't know how to tell her. I was bumbling, honest, desperate, fierce, shy, strong, loving. And she leaned her head on my shoulder and the scent of her entered me, filled me, warmed me.

I opened my eyes in the theatre alone, but I met the song there.

I have forgotten the music. It used to fill me like her scent, but they both belong to others now, and I can only look on, absent, as they live on. But I saw the name of the song, and for a moment, I remembered. And I held the brass, deep and vibrant, in my hands again. And I expelled breath, and polka dots appeared, and I moved my fingers, and moonbeams shone. And I sighed, and was glad.

I left the theatre alone, but the song goes with me. I hope it never leaves.

A strong late summer breeze met his face as he opened the door. It passed between branches and shook leaves with a firm but gentle force, and he welcomed its embrace as he walked down the path, avoiding the fallen, shriveled plums that littered it.

He didn't know where he was going -- only that he felt like driving. Most nights that was enough, especially when it was by choice instead of by necessity. He had read somewhere that, if you stood at the South Pole and faced away from it, every direction was north. This was like that.

He plugged in the device as he settled into the driver's seat, turning the volume up. An electric guitar melody, rhythmic and thrumming, began to spill from the vehicle's speakers. He rolled down the window and sat for a moment, enjoying the feel of the wind. He turned the key. The engine quietly roared to life.

He'd have preferred some company. He thought about the friends and acquaintances he had allowed himself to lose as he drove. He thought about the times when he could have asked any number of companions to join him on a quick run to the fast-food joint or the gas station or the 24-hour grocery store. He now made these sojourns by himself, and sometimes that was okay but sometimes it wasn't. He wasn't sure which kind this was, but he allowed as how it might be a third option: he felt lonely but enjoyed feeling it, like stretching out a muscle hours after a long run. The soreness was sharp but pleasurable.

He turned the volume up louder.

"Tonight bright stars
Are shining for you.
Oceans and big clouds,
Deep midnight blue."

He pressed the accelerator and thought of the day when he would sing that for her.

He cradled the boy in his arms, feeling the softness of his cheeks as they listened to the band rehearse. Any son of mine, he thought, had better learn to appreciate jazz. And bluegrass. And Chopin. And good music in general. He turned the boy around to face him a moment, their noses touching as he regarded his father seriously. Who cares what he likes.

He deposited the boy in his grandfather's lap and walked across to the ladder where she was hanging decorations. She smiled down at him as he climbed up each step until they were face-to-face. Her arms snaked around his neck as her eyes, green as an ocean, locked onto his.

"I love you," she said.



He opened his eyes a squint. It had gotten dark. He fumbled for his phone on the nightstand next to him to check the time, then rolled over and closed his eyes again. But hers were gone.

He once heard it said that every plan was a tiny prayer to Father Time.

Maybe that's why he didn't make plans. He and Father Time were not really on speaking terms. He preferred to think of the future only as much as the present required him to. It made the connections he didn't form, the friends he allowed himself to lose, the life he saw others living but that he could not find himself, all seem easier to bear. If he made no grand design for the next month or year or decade, then no matter what happened, he would always be surprised. Pleased. Content.

The truth was, he had no concept of the future. Perhaps he lacked the mental acuity to envision it. He could not conceive of any existence other than the one in which he presently found himself. To pretend otherwise was silly, fruitless, puerile.

His possessions, however, told another story. Stacks upon stacks of comic books, their covers creased and worn with repeated use and travel. Novels of brave deeds and biographies of braver ones, of heroes and villains and those that refused to join either camp. Stories of far away lands and dangers both real and imagined. They draped the walls of his room in wonder.

Yet as he read, he never pictured himself in the places of the characters. He had no part in such adventures; he was an observer, not a participant, not even in imagination. The journey of his life, he posited, must surely be better than the ones of which he read. Because it would belong to him.

And any minute now, his ship was coming in.

you once wrote about how you use crutches.

Not, like, metal things
that help you walk.
I'm talking about

flaws
excuses

the things you point to when things go badly.
or even when they don't.

you have this idea
that you could fix everything
if you wanted to
which makes it easy not to bother.

you cling to that
you wrap yourself in your shortcomings
so that if you fail
you know why
and how.

it makes you feel like
you can control something
even if it's something bad.

but I've got news for you.

you can't fix everything.

you will fall.

you will not be better than everyone else.




but you gotta try.

i just saw
a picture of your face
an image i once envisioned
every time i closed my eyes
it left me gasping for breath
drowning in the memory i made

and i remember your scent
and how it lingered on my clothes for days
and i remember the songs i wrote but never played
and the thoughts i thought but never spoke
and the life i never told you i wanted

and i flail in the flood of you

the you that i dreamed

the you that did not exist

the you i will always love.

I haven't written here in a while.

It's not that I haven't had things to write about. I could have, if I forced myself. But forcing myself has never been a way for me to produce my best writing.

My best writing always seems to strike when I least expect it. She likes to sneak-inspire me, clutching me from sleep and pulling me close in an embrace of words until my brain is buzzing and my fingers are shaking as I type.

Writing without that never seems as good. I guess I miss her when she's gone. And she's been gone for quite a while.

-----------------------------------

I have a small black notebook. It's partially filled with old, incomprehensible scribblings from when I served as a ward clerk. But it also has a few verses, random lines of thought, moments when inspiration didn't clutch at me so much as brush past me on a busy street. Many of them come from the creative writing class I took in college, an entry-level course I considered somewhat beneath me (call it curse or blessing, but I can produce iambic pentameter as easily as breathing) but which had a greater artistic effect on me than I anticipated.

The notebook, which I used to take around with me to school, to work, to church, now lies mostly blank. I take it out and look at it sometimes, but she doesn't seem to live in there any more.

-----------------------------------

I had a dream a couple of nights ago. I don't remember much of it now. I wrote seven words on the back of an envelope on my desk when I woke up: "Bookstore scene. Star Wars book. Holding hands."

I think she wanted me then. I think she was trying to reach out to me, trying to tell me to get my fat ass out of bed and come to her, trying to give me a gift that I'm not sure I deserved. At least, I seem to have refused it.

I wanted to write about that dream, and that scene. I wanted to narrate it, to flesh out the characters and emotions a little, to try and describe the comfort and love I experienced in that small gesture of taking a woman's hand in mine and knowing, somehow, that we were feeling and thinking and living the same thing at that fictional moment inside my head.

I think that's about as close as I can come tonight. Maybe that's close enough for now.

Maybe she was the one holding my hand.

If a dream is a wish your heart makes, then my heart is seriously messed up.

Either that, or I've been watching way too much Buffy.

You know what, it's probably both.

If what I can sense with my senses is all there is to life, I'd be pretty unhappy.

I do more than see, touch, taste (too much of that one). I think. My boy René got that one right. And I feel. And you will never tell me that the things I think and feel are not valid, that they can be callously tossed aside or ignored or treated as anything less than what they are: proof of Life, and More Than Life.

Sometimes I have these moments where... I dunno, they're not out-of-body experiences... but they're just moments where I realize that the me I see, the meatsack in the mirror, the biped with the opposable thumbs wearing the Green Lantern t-shirt -- that's not really the Me I am. And I feel like Me is looking out through my/his/our eyes and everything becomes not quite there, and Me is just inhabiting me for a little while before moving on to someplace else. And then it suddenly becomes too much to take, the idea that I'm living this life on behalf of this other organism that is fundamentally identical and completely different and I think, if I could just get out of this me-ness and see that other life, just for a second, that I would change everything forever.

And I know that has all sorts of religious undertones (or other implications regarding my sanity, or lack thereof) and that's really not where I'm trying to go, exactly. Smarter people than I have got this sort of thing down to a science, quite literally -- several of them, in fact.

But I'm still here. And I still feel. And most days that's enough for me.

Henley knew it, and Madiba learned it.

I am the captain of my soul.