For David

For David 

I tried to find solace and comfort listening to music on Wednesday after I was informed of David's death, but it was a futile exercise. The news brought me to my knees and overwhelmed me. My mind was flooded with bits and pieces of memories from our youth and my brain began to mentally catalogue the countless mutual rites of passage  that we experienced together. What we learned about life and love and all that other stuff in between , we learned together. After all, he was for all purposes more a brother to me than a friend. I knew his house and backyard better than I knew my own. I always assumed that I was welcome there and ,like it or not The Millers had a third son in me.                                                                                I was always impressed with David's curiosity about everything- science, chemistry, model rocketry, race cars, mechanics, electronics and of course music. All of these things at such an early age but music was the thing that sealed our bond. When we discovered that , it gave us both a sense of direction and power. We played and sang together side by side for fifteen years or more and, to make things more interesting , we even found                                                                                       time to fight over the opposite sex.     

  Although we stayed in touch we did eventually each go our own way.

You know, college and all. Work and such. We went separate ways not intentionally but incidentally.  We made new friends that weren't mutual friends because we were pulled in two different directions. For a while David tried his hand at acting with Slidell Little Theatre and sang in a Barbershop Quartet too. I believe I was the very first patient he examined as Dr. Miller O.D.  when he happened to be showing me his new office on the day his equipment finally arrived. 

  I guess marriage changes a person. Having children does too. It is a natural progression though and David eased into the role of husband and father with his usual confidence. By its nature marriage alters existing friendships and different priorities emerge but David was always David. He was  a performer and a risk taker to boot. A pattern in his behavior became apparent as early as elementary school to me.  I admired his confidence and his willingness to get on the stage in Junior High and in High School whether to play or act. As far as his romantic conquests are concerned David confided in me often and he opened up to me about everyone and everything during long and protracted midnight drives in his car on the streets of Slidell. Maybe he didn't realize it at the time but in addition to listening I was also mentally taking notes. Let's face it , he knew how to get the girl.  Was he a Romeo? No I don't think so. But a charmer? Absolutely. Likeable and funny. I salute him for his game and I will admit  now that I was often jealous of it in my teenage years. No big surprise there.

  I still don't know where he got the notion that skydiving was a worthwhile endeavor but he tried that as well. And fishing? That was news to me. 

 Over the past two decades David and I had very little to say to one another. At a class reunion a couple of years ago, we barely said two words to one another the entire time. I'm prepared to say that it was my fault in that ,in this day and age with technology the way it is, I could have made the call and reached out to him. We could have spent a day together showing pictures of our kids and reminiscing about band bus trips and rock star ambitions from our past. We could have done it face to face easily.  Thanks to social media  I was instead able to piece together his life as a dutiful husband, proud father and  doting grandpa from afar. It was a laudable end to a well spent life and I was happy for him. Whether he thought about our friendship much in his later years I don't really know. 

  I recently was watching a television program and one of the characters said something that hit me and in hindsight I think It was because it perfectly described my relationship with David.

The dialogue went something like this.

" You knew him for a long time."

" I guess you could say that, but it would probably be more precise to say that I knew him a long time ago."

 In the final analysis I knew him only for a portion of his life, maybe half. The rest of it I experienced from a distance. But that half that I knew was essential to my own growth and happiness.

David Miller and I fought like brothers at times and then reconciled in like manner. I'd like to think in the wake of his death that he ultimately cared about me the same way I cared about him.

It was solid but unspoken and unchanged by years. 

Marriage, Cohabitation and The Romantic Myth

    I was raised to believe that marriage was a sacred institution and a lifelong comitment once entered into. Of course having now been married twice myself and now single for many years since, it still amazes me that anyone bothers to go through the legal steps of tying the knot.  Its not really a permanent knot though. Its more like a slipknot. From what I've read recently, traditional marriage is on it's way out. Its being replaced by simple cohabitation that provides all the benefits of marriage without the legal entanglements. But still it seems to me that this arrangement carries with it it's own  complications of the emotional and financial kind and ,although both parties are affected, I believe that women have the most to lose in "playing house" with "live- in" sex partners.
    Cohabitation is a fancy term for what my mother used to call "shacking up." Despite the warnings about bad reputations that follow women in such arrangements, females today see it as their only opportunity to avoid spinster status. But why do men agree to these types of living arrangements? Its obvious to me that today's younger generation has accepted the premise that marriage is at best a short term proposition, something they learned from observing the world around them. God and Community still figure into the equation sometimes but I think I have zeroed in on why young women and men embrace the concept of cohabitation as a replacement for legal marriage. Each gender has their own reasons though for buying into it.
   Why do men get married or cohabitate? It helps to know a little about men and what motivates them to do anything. One of my core beliefs these days is that men are basically pigs -selfish and opportunistic. Before the criticism starts I will qualify the statement by saying both genders suffer from imperfections of character and basic human frailty. I know that.  Young men, however,  have a lot to prove to themselves and to their peers and that is where the trouble starts for young women.. There is a  collective rush that men experience in their twenties and thirties to confirm their manhood and sexual identity.through identification with women and  the conquest of them sexually.. Its nothing new and nothing that women don't know about men. In today's society however, women store that information in the back of their mind and disregard it. I liken it to having an alarm clock that keeps trying to wake them up to the truth but with them constantly hitting the snooze button to avoid reality.  It leaves them easy prey for opportunistic men. Few are real con men, most are just leeches looking for validation from willing women. Men basically desire five things from women, (1) access to "long term, no- strings- attached" sex, (2) satisfaction of their need to spawn children that will perpetuate the illusion of their own immortality, (3) to confirm their sexual identity to their peers and to the world,(4) to provide a mother replacement figure that will care for them just as a mother would and (5) for financial support in part or in full.. This last reason is actually the number one strategy for men in their quest to enter into a no commitment sexual living arrangement. Its the males task however to convince the female that it is all for love and nothing more. Meaningful companionship is way down on a list that men reluctantly admit even exists.A.man will promise commitment to a  woman until he doesn't want her anymore..In a cohabitation situation this can be awkward at the very least and devastating at its worst. Women suffer most when living arrangements go bad. But lets say that it is a marriage situation after a period of cohabitation. Statistics say that people who cohabitate as a testing period begin with negative attitudes about marriage in the first place.will generally fail at marriage, leaving the woman abandoned still. Young couples convinced of their own infallibility will enter into the arrangements because they believe, mistakenly, that living together, and certainly marriage, will assure loyalty, stability and sexual fidelity. Of course , neither arrangement provides any of those things.
    Why do women cohabitate with men or seek marriage? There are five reasons that occur to me -
(1) The fear of being alone and dying alone. Having been in a bad marriage before myself, I can honestly say that there are worse things than being alone and one of them is being trapped in a marriage that has gone bad. Marriage never has nor ever will provide protection from being alone, and frankly ultimately everyone dies alone. It is not a couple's activity. (2) the belief that there is no Prince Charming waiting to appear. There is no Mr. Right for them that is the perfect fit so they settle for the one that pops into view and who quotes, most convincingly, romantic babble purloined, not from great Romantic poets, but from teen sex movies and raunchy sitcoms. (3) to address the maternal instinct in the absence of a child. Some single women get pets to care for, others find a husband to raise as a child would be raised and domesticated. On the down side though, cohabitation results in unwanted children from careless, casual sex and children change the equation dramatically. In "temporary" relationships women pay the price for casual sex and men flee with no real responsibility except to their own conscience.(4) the need to feel loved even in the absence of deep feelings or real compatibility.(5) the need to prove their desirability and worth to their peers and to the world. As I have indicated both genders share the need to participate in certain rites of passage. Unfortunately those rites lack a sense of permanence for both sexes. Relationships and living arrangements and attitudes about true romance are seen as nomadic and serial in nature. Again women suffer the most from the phenomenon of serial cohabitation and multiple marriage. Ironically their worth as an acceptable mate for any man is lessened after so many temporary mates.
    My beliefs about cohabitation and marriage ,and any pairing off of people with one another, come from observation-empirical rather than hypothetical. Experience has tainted my belief in true love and romance. I see the word romance as a substitute for emotional self preservation, more of a biological need than any mystical state or some soul tie to another. Arguing against marriage is like arguing against religion. Traditional teachings are difficult to abandon because they are reinforced by cultural myths taught by institutions. The institution of marriage reminds me of that phrase, "what is and what should be." Men enjoy this new phenomenon I think but women need to stop hitting the snooze button. Women should learn to discern the difference between infatuation, lust and the survival instinct of the opposite sex, Hasty decisions can result in long term misery.

 

Intervention

We put her in the ground today.
It was her destination all along.
Dictated by rebellion, determined by desire.
never realized or fully rendered.
Assisted by the belief in her own invincibility.
Convinced of immortality by her reckless pleasure
with no immediate consequence.
And peers who cheered her on and gave her validation.
While she herself bore the scars and wounds
of those less daring and free.
She bled for the sins of all who witnessed her glorious decline.
Her inevitable demise.
Her happy death.
Those who watched and smiled.
And did nothing...
Nothing to lift her up.

And what were we to do?
Those of us who stood above her today
The cowardly disciples of her self destruction.
Those of us who cry and ache and suffer her departure.
We stand  today with blood dripping from our hands
while crimson pools form at our feet.

My One True Love

When she is gone
then will I cling to you
I will turn to you
and fall apart
And crumble into nothing
Yours to reassemble
Yours to redefine

I will come to you for comfort
And hold you as I held her
I will call her name as I look into your eyes
and beg for your forgiveness of that sin.
Each kiss upon your mouth will be a Judas kiss
With each clutched hand and every passionate embrace
your sense of self will wane, as you become my consolation.

I will drain the life from you, solely selfish sustenance.
All for the sake of another, who you will never be
And wish above all else that you were somehow her
She who stood alone and loved without condition.
For all those things she was to me
You then will take her place
And I will be your newborn child.

Your breath across my neck
recalls her tender touch.
Recalls her sweet perfection in a world too far beneath her.
Your words ring so familiar, still remind me of the lips
from whence they first were spoken.
You will assume that thankless task of washing her away.
while striving to be what she once was.

I am the more to blame for never letting go.
More than you who settles for what is left behind.
Of me and my devotion to a memory just removed..
Acknowledged in advance the sacrifice you make
It is more than I should ask
of a faithful proxy...of a silent surrogate
of my  new and one true love

His War With God

His war with God began that day
when the thing he loved the most was taken
without reason, without purpose
his faith in the Invisible compromised
his pact of allegiance tested beyond its limits
A battle cry of anguish
from a loss too great to bear

There would be no deliverance from a heartless Universe
And there would be no forgiveness
from a servant so thoughtlessly betrayed
His God had drawn the line of loyalty
and love...and in that moment
a new enemy was born with hatred and resentment
of a God who went too far

 Unrelenting sorrow laid upon his shoulders
haunted by young laughter now committed to the grave
echoes of a life so pure and new
innocence extinguished
and snatched from loving arms
a sinless child struck down
by his God who looked away

Now bent on retribution
retaliation in kind
A holy war designed
against His fond creation
a loaded weapon filled with grief and pain
pointed at the head of God
recipient of undeserved adoration

The question oft considered
why pain is heaped upon the head of good men
and mindful servants
to break them , to test them
the answer was too simple
There was no God to blame
All then becomes so clear

His failure to intercede was due to nonexistence
 excuses insufficient for some elaborate design
 a figment of imagination from a being in denial
All misery and darkness must be carried on his own
God's everlasting silence is God's judgment of each man
In the mirror lies salvation, his weapon misdirected
and now turned the other way

A Crooked Tree

I visited the spot where we first met and fell in love.
I noticed that the tree there had grown much larger.
An annoying observation. A crooked tree so large.
Returning even later I resolved to cut it down.
And with an axe I did so.
providing temporary solace.

Gathering the remnants of the trunk and limbs
I carted them away to my backyard.
And whittled them into manageable pieces
placing them together and then lighting a match.
The fire burned for hours leaving only charred remains
and smoke that drifted in the air and burning my eyes.

Later in the week I happened by the spot once more
expecting only modest evidence of my crime.
Instead I met with utter disbelief the self same tree.
The crooked tree renewed. Larger than before.
Its branches and canopy almost filling the sky
stretching out its healthy bough
brushing my face as I surveyed the massive wonder.

I will cut it down again today and as before tend the burning embers.
the cremated corpse of such a large and crooked tree
And as I leave to retrieve my axe, a thought occurs to me.
I will cut it down today...and probably tomorrow...and the day after that.

To Vanish

I am fading from the world
and walking through it's walls
smashing into pieces the windows of heaven.
washing the earth from my feet.
gazing up into the clear and starry blue
to cross the bridge of doon.

counting down the seconds and the minutes
of what used to be.
floating
where memory and reunion collide
music falls to silence having lost it's power
falling and passing through the floorboards
bringing down the house of psychedelia

shedding love and hate
doubt and certainty
forgetting joy and regret
uniting with the air to vanish
when all of reality slips away
and finally
there is only me.