July 23rd, 2010 by Hoopleton

Settling in is the hard part. But we made it, no worse for wear.

My bearings are still set to Chicago. The Midwest still my home country. I rarely realize how far south I am. The temperatures are high but I’m acclimated for summer. The insect swarms are new, so is the prevalence of greenery.

Mainly I spend my days scouring the job boards and staring at her who brought me here. I have, I think, come to understand how blessed I am. I feel her belly and the life growing inside and I think it inconceivable that I had something to do with it, no matter how small.

I’m changing. Growing perhaps. I can’t imagine my life before all this or how every event of my life didn’t lead to this. I look for time to write, but I’m happy to let the days slip by into memory. For the first time I feel as though I’ve made the world better than I left it and in that there is nothing but eternal gratitude.

The other day we drove to the capital building and generally drifted through the streets of Austin. The city is booming. The grid can’t contain it. Skyscrapers rise in days. Highways in mere hours. I imagine myself returning to Austin ten years from now and feeling like I’d never been here before.

It may be cliché but everything really is bigger here. The food is fresher. The air cleaner. The optimism of the West energizes every square foot. The promise of the New South drives every conversation. Johnson era liberalism mixes equal parts with fiscal conservatism. The economy is probably better here than any place in the whole of the United States of America.

But it’s still not Chicago. I doubt any city could replicate the factory thunder of the great Midwestern Metropolis. I doubt any city would ever want to. Life is slower here. Easier. Kinder.

I’m still getting acclimated. Still settling in. For now I imagine it’s too soon to tell.

July 5th, 2010 by Hoopleton

Yesterday we were in Dallas. Dealey Plaza. Five feet from the spot where JFK was murdered in 1963. It wasn’t what I expected. Smaller. Hillier. So condensed that it be hard to imagine that a second assassin would go unnoticed. Even so, all the talk was of conspiracy. Old men surrounded by children passing down paranoia like so many pearls of wisdom.

Texas has come a long way since 1963. Even in this economy. Construction is moving forward everywhere. Cities and towns are booming. In Dallas too, beyond the decaying shrine of Dealey Plaza there is prosperity. The industrial north has turned to rust and it is the defeated south that is on the rise again.

But they don’t lie. Stacy told me as much. The heat here is like nothing you’ve ever known before. Of course I’ve been in the south in summer even further, but now the temperatures seem so much more oppressive. Weightier. Perhaps it’s permanence that peaks my senses. Maybe my winter was just too long.

I tell Stacy that she brought me this warmth. She asks why I don’t write about her anymore. I’ve been so overwhelmed by having her I haven’t written anything in six months, I reply. But now we’re in Texas. I can write about Kennedy, our trip to Dealey Plaza, and the heat. It’s a start, isn’t it?

July 3rd, 2010 by Hoopleton

These pages have been quiet of late and for this I apologize. Changes come when you least expect them. Where once there was the incessant teletype of keys, today there is the rumble of a moving truck engine.

I’ve said goodbye to the prairies of Illinois, trading in the Midwest for the dusty roads of Texas. My life is in boxes. Packed and stowed into a fourteen foot Uhaul quietly roasting in the parking lot of a Super 8 in Hope, Arkansas.

We’ve been on the road three days. Out of Michigan, through Chicago, then down the Mississippi toward Texas via Memphis and Little Rock. Mainly there’s just the blacktop. Endless. Rolling by in clumps and patches. But we do stop now and then. I was at the Lorraine Motel yesterday and will probably stroll through Dealey Plaza tomorrow. Moving has somehow become an assassination tour. So it goes.

The South is still a stereotype for me. The history of the Civil War and Civil Rights. A dozen Johnny Cash ballads. Humidity, poverty and race. I suspect this will change in time, as we move further down the road. Further south. Further west. Further into an uncertain, but exciting future.

More tomorrow. For now back on the road.

May 20th, 2010 by Hoopleton

Divine digits graze over the backbone, pushing, probing, breaking down defenses till only the will to obey remains. And here we sit. Destitute. Inert. Unmoving. Stuck in fate. The future draped in uncertainty.

An undiscovered country lies just over the horizon, or so I’ve been told, and from here to there so many small steps. Too many small steps. Progress, the very idea of it seems comical.

But there’s forward momentum. But we are pushing on. Into blessed hope. So much hope that we sink to our knees, hands raised to the heavens.

All there is to say is God speed. Good journey. Be safe.

February 21st, 2010 by Hoopleton

I feel the rain. And the sun. And the moon. I feel the snow on my face. I feel the wind against my back and the dead leaves under my bare feet. I feel the grass and the trees rising around me. The clouds parting. The lightening coil with an explosion of terrible harmony writhing against the heavens.

These things are hardly immaterial. They are untoward signs of rejuvenation. Or is it reconstitution? Perhaps birthing. It doesn’t matter, our language is too imperfect, but back on point, it’s a beginning most definite.

I am only slowed by my uncertainty. I still have no real notion of what a man is, the examples I’m allotted are mostly defective. Broken and violent. Bestial. Carnal. Ferine. What has made them this way? Flawed design or illicit tampering? And in this equation what is my sum total? Am I the aberration?

Because I can feel?

Because I am overwhelmed by feeling?

Because the feelings that overwhelm me are too much?

Too much for my body?

Too much for my soul?

Too much for my spirit to repress, reverse or revile?

Because I love?

Because I am loved?

Because I have love?

Because we have everything to hope for?

Because we have meaning?

Because we as a single jarring atom have a greater meaning than the soft rhythm of a bouncing, gyrating, whirling string of energy.

And since all that has passed will come again and again I feel the replete wholeness of all that was and everything that may be. Forever. Into the sliding dark. And the sun. And the moon. And the organic entirety of celestial habitation. Choirs of angels. An orchestra of resplendent green, living agony. Until the stars rupture and only radioactive dust lingers within the cathedral gates.

Not, mind you, that I am at all closer to knowing what a man should be or to what a man ever was, but I’d like to think that gender is as meaningless as any word, the Word, spoken by any prophet or god or profiteering preacher that ever walked the Earth. And only in this do I find the certainty to let go of all my burdens. To feel. To laugh. To cry. To be the animal capable of grace, of place, of self-awareness.

To be this, as I am, as we are, this is rejuvenation. The prodigious incarnation of creation. The spark of life. The totality of genesis. Lingering for always. Right up till the falling, collapsing, foundering of the bright blue sky.

February 14th, 2010 by Hoopleton

Not a day goes by that I am not supremely grateful, as truly we should all be, that Jennifer Aniston is a bright, constant fixture in our otherwise dark, dank, depressing world. Thank God for Jennifer Aniston. It’s all right to say it. To stand up out of your seat and shout, thank God for Jennifer Aniston! Go ahead, print can wait.

Feel better?

You feel better.

Jennifer Aniston is not unlike a patron saint, or if you prefer a more classical archetype, a sort of demi-goddess. Except, whereas in ages past lesser gods were charged with mundane tasks such as ensuring a good harvest or warding against demonic possession, Jennifer protects us from the complete collapse of American civilization.

We dwell in horrid times. The economy is stagnant. Our standing is in sharp decline. Two wars abroad drag on without end. Taxes and deficits rise. Our roads and bridges crumble. Climate change and a lack of forward thinking threaten to undo what meager standard of living we’re able to achieve. The President we elected on the fragile hope of change has proven himself little more than a mediocre politician whose real powers seem only to lay in his ambition. The opposition built against him is little more than a feckless mob of sophists. Society teeters on the brink as mass violence and acts of legislative discrimination fill our headlines daily.

If it wasn’t for Jennifer Aniston and her constant, unending torrent of personal front-page disasters we as a culture might very well lose any and all will to continue. We’d fall into utter despair. Mass suicide would sweep the nation. We’d have nothing to distract us from the bottomless pit of agony that is our lives.

Terrorist plot to destroy a flight into Detroit? The deficit hitting a record $1.35 trillion? Iran developing nuclear weapons? Huh? Wait. Did you hear what John Mayer just said? Brangolina adopted another child? Management tanked at the box office? Poor Jennifer. What were we talking about? OMG a Friends rerun! She really did have great hair. Poor Jennifer.

Yes, it’s just that easy.

Maybe one day, long from now, when these times of trepidation have past and people look back with wonder as to how any of us could have ever possibly survived such ordeals, Jennifer Aniston will finally receive the love and recognition she so desperately deserves. Statues will be built. Shrines. Maybe entire basilicas. And the people, in a collective voice that will shake the very foundation of Heaven, will shout, thank God for Jennifer Aniston!

Or, more likely, she will be forgotten. A footnote in history. Forever remembered as a second-rate sitcom actress that was once married to the husband of Angelina Jolie.

Poor Jennifer.

January 31st, 2010 by Hoopleton

I can’t bring myself to remove the coffee cups or fix the covers on my bed. I sit on our couch and read my old journals thinking about the trips we’d take. I smell you in the cushions, I see your shadow thrown down against the floor. I dream about reversing time again, if only for an afternoon. I’m not doing well today. I can’t seem to breathe since I saw you last and the pain is getting more intense. I don’t know my worth. My place. And my imagination runs screaming. I’ve never had darker thoughts than this. For me. For you. For us. I won’t live without you. I know that now. My heart may beat but I won’t be the man you know. I’ll drift without purpose. Aimless. Undefined. Empty. Shattered beyond recognition. Weak. I’ve given you all my strength. To protect you. Help you. Set you free. Until you return I have nothing left.

January 26th, 2010 by Hoopleton

The temperature drops to well below freezing. The sky is the same overcast steel grey it’s been for weeks. As the train follows the track into a sharp left turn I can feel the wheels shift slightly. I imagine them slip. Six cars full of evening commuters falling off the elevated platform, tumbling into the street below.

This is not the same day that it was yesterday. So many todays and never a tomorrow.

That’s just the way it goes.

For a hot minute I’m lost in the rhythm of the tracks. The idle chit chat of the women sitting behind me. Of the nearly undetectable static churning out of the intercom.

We’re in week three and I feel like I’ve known you for years. I almost, nearly, miss sleeping, eating, functioning as, I would think, ordinary people do. I like that you never drink the coffee that I buy you. I like your hands warm.

No, this isn’t the way I wanted us to meet. If I had it my way we would’ve met when we were children. So we could’ve grown up together. Been innocent together. So that I could’ve always been writing of you. Dreaming of you. Being of you.

I want your head pressed against my shoulder when I fade to sleep tonight and your eyes on me when I wake in the morning. I want you here on this train with me. Buried halfway between imagined catastrophe and the ambient noise that consumes me.

And I fear constantly that my passion for you will push you away from me. Will overwhelm you. So I take a step back and again find myself alone. Missing you. Craving you. Desperate for you.

The train pulls tiredly into the station. Sparks explode and people gather at the doors. As I grab my bag and button my coat I glance back hoping for some trace of you. But instead you smile, kiss me on the cheek and say goodnight. So I step outside, braced against the steel grey cold.

January 24th, 2010 by Hoopleton

It always seems to get colder when you leave

Me, standing on the sidewalk, hands in my pockets, my collar turned up

I can’t imagine it’ll ever get easier to watch you drive away

Even years from now with countless days behind us

When I’m grayer, you freer, bound ever tighter together

Then too the sun will go out of the sky

Then too again the cold will rise

You, my dearest most cherished friend

I wait and wait and wait

January 22nd, 2010 by Hoopleton

It was true but only in that the lights had all gone out and there was nothing else to be done but to feel for the walls in a mad attempt to find the exit.

So I crossed the floor, the biting taste of wine still on my tongue. It was exactly as I had imagined it. Nothing in the black beyond a faint blue glow emanating from off the surface of the hardwood, coiling as if steam.

I thought of her immediately, trapped somewhere as I was half a world away. I thought of her hands. Her long nails. The precious scars on her forearm. Her probing eyes. Tussled hair and the silence of everything that lay between us.

I called to her and waited. And waited. And waited.

Of all the little dyings none was worse than this. My voice snatched up and tossed down broken against the wooden floor.

I shook myself and imagined the city crumbling down around us. Walls enveloped in explosions of dust. Firestorms. The smell of burnt paper. Ash coming down in waves.

I thought, beyond this happening there must be others now, of similar, possibly, I dare hope, exceeding grace.

But all there was, was the rough surface of the wall and the absolute absence of her. Black and a faint blue glow emanating from off the hardwood.

I stood without moving. Numb to everything but my pulse and the thoughts of a future that remained stubbornly out of reach. And so I brushed the dust off my shoulders, paused and began again.

Long ago there was only the shimmer of trees and the groundswell of earth rising up from the trenches of the sea. In that place we were together free from all sin. You looked at me then and ran your fingers across my cheek. All that was of you and all that was of me. Corporeal being and celestial hymn. There we were free, caught up in the garden of paradise, no walls, no floors, no bounds of flesh.

This too I remembered. Broken of spirit, bathed in darkness, longing, yearning, pleading. This too was me.