Old Home Movies..

Old Home Movies:
A dry mouthed symposium on optimism

Mother's day, 2011. I'd sat there, staring at the pages blankly for a large part of the morning, ever since the first rays of sun had tried, stubbornly, to push through the crowd of bleak clouds that hung over it like a latex mask. The sun came out, I grabbed a book, a couple cigarettes, and a bit of grapefruit. Nothing seemed terribly satisfactory and I was exhausted. Sleep had been eluding me for days and my head had been full of roving bands of barbaric thoughts all seeking to loot and plunder the recent treasures of my consciousness. I decided to try a glass of water, maybe even a Dr. Pepper, anything to give me some sense of real grounding in a world that, in every appearance, had gone and twisted itself absolutely sideways.

All this, still, seemed to no avail. My legions of active, positive, thinking did more to stave off the hordes. I'd always hated attrition conflicts too as there was no real, discernible, sense of victory. It was like a fifteen round fight that went to the judges. You still got to chalk it up as a win, but you didn't get that raw satisfaction of knowing you'd knocked your opponent out -- at least this time. I wasn't, entirely, sure what to do. I tried kicking off my socks, scattering the morning dew in bare feet, before kicking my legs up on patio chairs to smoke another cigarette. I decided to sit back, and simply see where the ride was headed; to get a grip on what exactly was going on. It was all about maintaining your focus and controlling this roller coaster high of intense heights and, seemingly, endless lows. It was the kind of feeling you might get from a heavy night of drinking, after spending six years in a dry spell. You could remember the old feelings well, but the deception of your tolerance, eventually, would leave you curled up over a bucket, trying to vomit out all the awful poison that somehow made its way into your body.

It was a lot like looking at an old home movie; the film, so dark and distorted, the camera jerking all over the place, and everything was all out of focus. The world had, somehow, slipped off its axis and left the rest of us listing to stay upright in our proper, evolutionary, position. At the same time? It was that same kind of thing that danced in through the trees like a lazy, summer wind. It was just warm enough to push a faint smile to the edges of your lips and really remind you that there were some things, even if it was only a few, that really were right in the world. I had the distinctive sense that, perhaps, I wasn't sorting out the vibrations right. Things had gotten all manner of intense, that was true, and nothing I did seemed to be getting things lined up. I'd been bitten by some kind of bug, an I just couldn't shake off its poison. Was that bad? It didn't feel entirely bad. It was some new, strange, kind of high. I'd handled a lot of highs in my time, so this should have been easy.

I just had to get a grip. Whatever was happening, whatever had happened, there was no stopping it now, so what was the point of all this senseless panic? I took a taste of history from my own lips with a languid sweep of the tongue and leaned back even further into my chair. I was determined to ride out this feeling, even if it turned my stomach upside down and filled my insides with all manner of fluttering and flapping creatures. What was it, exactly? What had happened? Was it simple fatigue? Exhaustion? Had I simply over-estimated what was going on? Could I even properly perceive events? Hell, I couldn't even sort it out. The whole thing had gotten lost in some thick, swampy, fog and I hadn't had the foresight to bring any kind of torch. All I had was a handful of questions and a small can of bug repellant.

Still, I couldn't argue that strange, surreal, sense of comfort that came rolling in like a faded jazz tune on a crisp, tropic, night. No matter what was going on, somewhere, tangled up all inside it, there was something good. I could almost hear it, that strange music, that seemed to come out of nowhere. It was distant at first, but present nevertheless; the kind of old horn that felt almost haunting when it first slid across your ears. It was the kind of sound that just seemed to get more comfortable though, the closer you got to it. The ragged rhythms petered out into slow melodies, the off-key notes became the gentle bass lines that stirred toes into a back and forth sway, it came floating in on a warm wind of jasmine and hope.

I could feel the violent surge in my stomach drop back to a dull whisper, and my mouth suddenly felt dry. My eyelids were heavy and my muscles groaned at the very notion of movement. I felt like some iron giant; that perhaps, in my tenure here in this chair, I had rusted solid and would never be able to move again. That, all things considered, didn't sound too bad -- as long as the music was still playing. I could survive on music, I was pretty sure; I'd always been a consumer of it anyway. Then it came again, that warm breeze. It was, oddly, out of place for this time of year, at that hour at the morning. It was warm and came rolling in from the south -- also abnormal for this time of year in Maine -- and, finding myself able to move again, I sat forward and lapped at it.

There have always been few things I considered "better" in the world than a warm, Southern, Summer's, breeze. It's the kind of thing the crawls inside your head like an old, home, movie, -- the good kind -- and gives you that very real sense of comfort; a knowledge that, no matter how raw the weather gets, everything will be all right in the end. I pushed myself out of the chair to follow it, my weary body groaning with a sudden command for sleep. I had the strange sense that it would be there; in that space between the worlds, where strange music and loud noise are often the same, where those distorted, home, movies find some sense of focus, that I'd find the cipher for this confusing fog -- and maybe a handful of torches to guide me home too.

It's these songs, these winds, that can be found anywhere. They can come in any shape, size, smile, laugh, or bit of affection. They can come in glasses, eyes, hands to hold, and words on a page. No matter how many layers they might, from time to time, be hidden in, they're there -- you've just got to close your eyes, stop looking so hard with your brain, and just listen to that slow, brass, sound. It'll guide you just about anywhere, as long as you've got the conviction to follow it, the dedication to ride out those strange and bizarre moments, and the ability to be satisfied with where ever it is you end up on the other side -- no matter what. Just remember, every once and awhile, you will have to sleep.


So, scatter morning dew from time to time, but don't neglect the art of dreaming either. It's there you can find all the things you might have never known you wanted.