It’s Going to Be OK

I sat, waiting, in the Big Room.

Around me were gathered about forty others, in the hardbacked plastic seats, under the blare of florescents.  Most were having side or group conversations, hushed, but I sat quietly to myself, waiting.  The Big Room was, naturally, the largest room in the rehab facility.  It was the only room that everyone gathered in at once.  We started our days there with roll call and would cycle back in a few more times each day for various large meetings and activities, and ended most nights there with, typically, something profound or at least an attempt at profundity.  This is such a night.

The hushed conversations come to a halt as the head counselor, Bob, enters the room.  He takes his time situating some papers on a small desk near the front of the room.  We all give him our full attention.  Bob is that rarest kind of person: a truly warm-hearted, immensely kind person who nonetheless is not to be trifled with.  Finally he clears his throat and begins.  “Tonight, folks, we are going to put you in touch with your younger self.”

Bob went on to explain that in a few minutes, another of the counselors was going to join us; I forget this counselor’s name, but she was one of the counselors who mainly stayed in her office and had individual therapy sessions, so her joining us at night in the Big Room was unusual.  Bob explained that she was going to walk us through an experience that was like hypnosis, but was not hypnosis, and this was going to be a special night for us.  Then the other counselor came in, and Bob turned the lights almost all the way off.

“Hello,” she said.  “I want you all to get as comfortable as you can.  If you want to stretch out and lay on the floor, please do, or stay seated if you prefer.”  I stayed in my seat.  “I want you to imagine a house you lived in when you were younger.  It doesn’t matter how much younger, just that it be a time before you started using drugs or alcohol.  Picture the outside of the house.  Now I want you to breathe as steadily, as deeply, as slowly as you can.  Picture the outside of the house and all its details until I speak again.”  Here there was a long pause.  “Now keep breathing just as you are. Slowly but steadily.  Please envision yourself gliding in toward the front door of this house.  Imagine you are a–”

 

I am in the kitchen.  It’s the kitchen of my childhood home, the one on Big Spring Avenue.  I smell the old smell, and the quality of the air.  I blink my eyes to make sure I am seeing this correctly.  I am seated with my back to the den, the open doorway that opens onto the den, and I am looking into the kitchen.  The trusty, dense and solid dining room table sits in the center of the room, just a few feet in front of me.  To my right is the open door into the playroom (later, the office) and to my left, the trash can and the corner of the kitchen.  In front of me and beyond the dining room table, there is the old boxy Frigidaire, the squat electric range, the closed door to the “back room”, and the cabinets, sink, the intense orange formica countertops, the paint on the cabinets so thick from multiple coats that I can see the bubbles from way over here.  But most of all, the wallpaper, the paisley-esque floral pattern that never seemed to repeat itself, the busiest walls in town,  all the swirling greens, yellows and oranges you could ever ask for.  I sit staring, agog, at a room from the dustbin of my mind, all the details intact, the sensory flash a blinding experience, like surfacing from beneath water which you did not know you were beneath. It seems that full minutes pass as I sit there–seemingly immobile–in silence except for the ticking hands on the Seth Thomas that’s above the trash can.  Then suddenly, I see him enter from the playroom.  He is quite young, perhaps eight years old.  He is a tiny little guy, and his bright blonde hair is almost blinding.  I do not take notice to what he is wearing, I am so focused on his face as he strides toward me: quite serious, bordering on dour, his skin so new and flawless, like aloe straight from the plant.  He walks toward the kitchen table with a purpose, without looking at me, then as he is directly in front of me, he turns to look at me.  The gravity of this moment is not lost on me.  He looks me in the eyes, the seriousness of him slowly morphing into steadfastness, then further into assurance, and finally, the corners of his lips turn up, and he is smiling.  Not grinning, and not smiling as though at a joke, but as if he was happy in some secure knowledge.  Then he opens his mouth to speak and his tiny voice comes forth. “It’s going to be OK,” he says.  I am unable to move or talk, but I know this statement makes me cry.  He smiles even bigger now and takes one step toward me.  “It’s going to be OK”, he repeats.  Now he steps even closer, and somehow climbs up onto my lap, even though I can’t actually see my lap.  He turns his head toward me and I can see he is now smiling the smile of the joyous, the thrilled, the exalted.  His little smile seems to go all the way up to the highest tuft of sun-touched blonde hair on his eight-year-old head.   He leans in close to me and through that gaping smile he whispers, “It’s going to be OK.”

Nowadays I share a lovely apartment with my partner, the best person I have ever known.  I have everything I could ever want, both material and ethereal.  I move through every day like it was a dream, even when they are hard days.  We listen to some good music, or read some good books, or lay and talk.  And some days, while she is in another room or out on an errand, I may be sitting on the couch when a boy runs down the hallway and jumps into my lap.  This boy is really here, in the here-and-now, and he’s glorious.  His blonde hair isn’t quite as shocking, but it is bright and fine and bounces on his head when he runs, and his skin is like aloe, straight from the leaf, and his eyes are that kind of blue that are only blue in pictures; when you look right at them it’s like you see right through them.  Many days he jumps on my lap on the couch and shows me some spot he has injured in his play; a brush burn on a knee, a scrape on a wrist.  The tears in his eyes are real, teetering there in the corners, wobbly, almost-falling down the cheeks.  “Dis gonna go down to the bone?” he will ask, or “Me am gonna die?”  I kiss his boo-boos as well as I can and gather him up into my arms as tight as he’ll allow, and I whisper to him, “No, honey, it’s going to be OK.”

Eating Apples in a Blanket Fort

Gravity Works

It’s so exciting, watching a baby, a baby on the edge, just into the toddle, the toddler on the edge of everything, getting into everything. He must be watched constantly, and it is exciting and boring at the same time, this monitoring as the child tries, assays, everything over and over. We have developed a restraint. We call it a high chair and bundle the baby off to it. It looks downright medieval, this highchair with its belts and its sliding, lipped tray table that pins her into it. The baby, so encumbered, writhes and wriggles, all ampersands. We have learned to throw things onto the tray, distractions. Often it is cereal. It is almost always Cheerios. Why Cheerios, cheerless Cheerios? But it is, and the baby immediately responds, gasping and grasping, O-ing for the little o’s. They are like little stem-less keys, all thumbs, that he then inserts into any and all holes, tests the fit (nose, ears, eyes even). Even as we begin to remember something about the hazard of choking, choking hazard, the kid has found where the Cheerios work. The mouth, yes, that’s the ticket. And the child will commence to push all these buttons of oats down this open hatch. Then what do we do? We have played the Cheerio card. The baby looks up at us intently, a brown study of crumbs. And then we do it; we do it even though we know we shouldn’t. We dig deep in our pockets and withdraw our keyring. Now here is an authentic choking hazard, but we are at our wit’s end, too tired (and we can’t leave her worming in that high chair) to go look for the oversized toothy teething keys (pastel colored, soft-edged), designed and marketed for this very moment, when we are about to serve up our real keys. The keys spread eagle on the tray. Instantly, the child attempts to unlock this mystery (the empty vessel he is—ears, nose, mouth), scratching the tabula rasa of his still-soft skull. Suddenly, the baby leans over, off to the side of the chair, and drops the keys. They fall, make a confused clatter on the kitchen floor. Then the baby does this: she looks at us. She looks at the keys. She looks at us. She looks at the keys. Us. We know what we are to do, what we will do. We pick up the keys and place them on the tray once more. And immediately they are once more on the floor. Again with the looking. Again with the picking up and the dropping. This can go on, it seems, for hours. “Gravity works,” we cry out. But for the kid it doesn’t. The next release the keys might drop up. The keys are key as they fall. As they fall they open for us, they open us (if we can just get past the tedium) to possibility, that space to wonder about wonder.

You Would Not Survive a Vacation Like This

So.  That was a pretty insane trip home (and lots of other places).  I’m not even sure where to begin.  This may end up being a ridiculously long and disjointed blog entry.  I apologize in advance.  If it ends up not being extremely long and disjointed, I will come back and delete this intro, and you will never read it.

First, I should like to thank my family (Dad, Mom, Sister) for their various forms of hospitality and much-needed displays of unconditional love.  Yay human spirit and the familial bond!  I feel pretty damn good about my family.  You guys rule!  And thank you to all my friends who made me feel as if I never moved away.  I am blessed beyond belief with deep, intense, loyal friendships!  In addition, a big frowny face to those who I had to miss on this trip (most notably, loyal blog reader and renowned Muse, Cory.  Little does she know, my next trip home is going to be so all about her, she will have to call the cops on me. And the truly lovely Mercedes, whom I am unabashedly smitten with.   Also, on-again-off-again blog reader Tiff, who I had *promised* a certain something to…well, next time, ok???).  I was stretched a little thin to do and see everything and everyone I wanted, but it was fairly satisfying nonetheless.

My Zany Itinerary

Let me just show you the zaniness of where I’ve been the last week and a half.  I am going to include tomorrow, as I go to Pittsburgh tomorrow for a work seminar.  Here’s where I was, for the most part, the last ten days:

3/25: Erie, PA/ Carlisle, PA
3/26: Carlisle, PA/ Asbury Pary, NJ
3/27: Mantua, NJ
3/28: Brooklyn, NY/ Newark, NJ
3/29: Manhattan, NY/ Mantua, NJ
3/30: Mantua, NJ/ Carlisle, PA
3/31: Carlisle, PA
4/1: Carlisle, PA
4/2: Carlisle, PA/ Erie, PA
4/3: Erie, PA
4/4: Pittsburgh, PA
4/5: Pittsburgh, PA/ Erie, PA

And I aint even tired yet.  Bring. It. On.

My Newville Tour

Early on in my trip, I had a little extra time to kill early in the morning, and I drove into Newville (the small town I grew up in) and walked around the town for the first time in many years (I have been there plenty as of late, but not actually walked around).  I took some pictures of major landmarks in my life, also making sure to get a few pictures of some of the places that have played large parts in some of my blog entries.  Here is a bit of a pictorial tour of Newville:

My first house, 66 Big Spring Avenue. My bedroom was the top two windows on the right of the picture.

The big enchilada….the childhood home.  Most famously portrayed in this blog entry right here.

I have been trying to upload the famous picture of my mother and I admiring my grandmother’s garden, but I am having some trouble, so here is a link to that picture on Facebook. And here is a picture of that back yard area today:

One of my most popular blog entries ever was “The Fruit that Ate Itself“, about me being bullied in a local church yard.  I snapped some pics of that area in current day:

The church yard itself.

The line of trees is where the dreaded swingset and slide had been.

The Senior Center where the "fight" ended. Those are the bushes I flew through in the climactic moment.

If you’ve read my blog entry “Down the Rabbit Hole“, you may be interested to see this cellar door on one of my childhood neighbor’s homes:

OK, so just a few more pics here, but not related to any previous blog, just some Seth-historic stuff:

The very spot where I got on a school bus for the very first time.

This was my corner when I was a crossign guard.

Friendies

I had almost too much fun with friendies to try to sum things up here.  I’ll hit some highlights:

I surprised Kate with my presence not once but twice, and she lost.  her.  shit. each time.  First, Michael and I surprised her at her house:

It was also on this visit that this picture of Michael happened:

A few days later, I was strolling through Carlisle wasting a few minutes before picking up another friend, when I came across Kate and her family at the local eatery The Green Room.  As I was leaving them I took this pic of Kate, her husband Matt, and their son Dylan:

Let me just take this moment to say, as I was strolling around Carlisle that night, I was struck by just how freaking cool of a town it is.  Those of you who still live there, please do not take it for granted.  First, it is totally adorable.  And such a great pedestrian town!  And for a relatively small town in central Pennsylvania, it is arts-friendly.  Open mic nights, free music, poetry readings, public displays of photography, and on and on, are quite common.  The area known as the square and the surrounding blocks are humming with a vibrant intellectual life (not to mention some fantastic cuisine).  Please partake of what the gem of a town has to offer!

My brief time with Burke was spent in some fairly intense conversation that may, in fact, make me think about my life differently.  Oh, and Johnny Depp is a fucking sellout.

I spent some truly hilarious time with Jenny.  Jenny is quickly becoming a Major Friend.  (if her name is unfamiliar to you, this was the last woman to be an “official girlfriend”…and if my hunch is true– that I am a lifetime bachelor– she may go down in the history books as the last woman to be an official Seth girlfriend…what a distinction!).  Anyway, I sure do love this woman.  She has the special ability to make me laugh until I am worried about my health…without saying anything. She has a non-verbal humor akin to Kramer.  She can just look at me and I lose my shit.  Here we are, loving life:

Of course, you know I saw Michael, and it resulted in a moment of hilarity that I am pretty sure you “had to be there” for, but we decided that Merle Haggard had at one point recorded the “classic” song “You’re Gonna Make Daddy Fart (and Momma Aint Gonna Be Happy)”.  I still laugh when I type that.

Mary and I had one helluva time trying to find parking in downtown Harrisburg—notable because it’s usually not THAT hard.  Sure, those few blocks in the very center of town are tough, but we were unable to find ANY spots on the street ANYWHERE.  When we finally did park (in a garage) we ended up just hanging around Strawberry Square , when in fact we had intended to go to the Susquehanna Art Museum. I’m still not sure in the least how this distraction occurred, but we had a blast.  But the major news from this venture is that Mary has OK’d some photographs of herself!  You may or may not know that pictures of Mary are quite rare.  She just hates pictures of herself, and of course I love taking pictures of people, so this is a friction.  Plus, she really is one of the most exquisite women in existence, so I always feel as though the world in general is being deprived of some joy by the absence of Mary pictures.  When I take a Mary picture, I have to show her, wheneupon she then either insists on immediate deletion, OKs the picture for my own personal collection but not anyone else’s eyes, or (the most rare) OKs a picture for online distribution.  So here, lucky world, are 4 new Mary pictures:

That's the back of Mary's head in the lower right.

Staying at Dad’s

It is with much chagrin that I realize I did not take a single picture of my papa and me on this trip. *sad face*  Nonetheless, I must say, spending time with my dad just gets more and more pleasant as the two of us age.  It never stops surprising me how we continue to grow into friends (while he retains his essential papa-ness).  He is one cool dude and we somehow never run out of things to talk about.

This also marked the first time in recent memory that I have stayed at Dad’s for multiple days without my sister also being there.  In this sense it was entirely unique.  The last time I stayed at my dad’s by myself for more than one night was way back when I was still drinking and on-again, off-again living there.  So this was new, and really, really great.  In a lot of ways, it felt like a true homecoming, learning how that house and I interact when I’m a grown-up, and sober, and left all alone with it.  Turns out we get along just fine.  And I sleep magnificently in my old bedroom.  But it’s tough getting used to that shower again.

Hey Rosetta!

I’m gonna really have to shrink down the Hey Rosetta! story, or I’ll be here all day.  So, in summary:

Here are pictures from Paul and I’s show in Asbury Park, NJ.  It was a fantastic time, both Paul-wise (Paul, thanks for helping me see that not all my close friends have to be women!) and band-wise.  Really, one of the more satisfying concert-going experiences I’ve had.

Then, I made an audible call and went to see them by myself twice more over the next three days, in New York City (more on NYC later).  Long story short, I ended up basically knowing the band.  But they started talking to me. I suppose when you are a band that is really famous and successful in Canada, and then you come to the states and are playing bars where most of the people are ignoring you, and there is a short fat guy with gray hair jumping around and screaming your lyrics, when he shows up to your NEXT show in a different state, it is worth taking note.  So as I was taking this picture of the chalk board advertising their show in Brooklyn, a few of the band members were walking out of the bar and saw me and introduced themselves.

Because shows like this entail a lot of waiting around (if you insist, like I do, on front row) in small bars with no “backstage” area for bands, as well as lots of changing-out of gear between bands (not to mention trips to very small bathrooms), the two shows in New York would prove extremely fertile ground for me talking to the band.  This went way beyond my previous “thank you, your music has meant so much to me” that I’ve been able to give other bands.  This was basically a getting-to-know-you situation.  Specifically cellist Romesh Thavanathan, lead guitarist Adam Hogan, and violinist Kinley Dowling spoke quite a bit to me and I was definitely on a first-name basis with them by the end of my second New York show, and I’d had a chance to speak to every member of this six-piece band.  Certainly, this was fairly incredible, but also….in some ways, not as great as you’d think.  Parts of this experience were awkward.  I may blog more about this at some point, just because it was pretty intriguing (ever have your favorite band watch you as they are playing?)  But don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.  It was an amazing experience.  Here is a video I took of “Red Song” at Union Hall in Park Slope, Brooklyn, followed by a few select pictures of the New York shows:

I also managed to snag handwritten setlists off the stage two of the three nights.  Here are scans of the setlists:

So now, for the benefit of probably just myself and maybe Paul, here is some Hey Rosetta! setlist discussion:  on the first setlist shown, Bandages was skipped.  On the second shown (from my thrid concert, Manhattan) ‘Bandages’ and ‘Red Heart’ were swapped in position (as were the two songs where a swap is indicated, ‘Yer Spring’ and ‘Welcome’…and talk about a way to open a show!  “Lions For Scottie” into “Welcome”!)  Here are all three setlists for shows I went to this tour:

Asbury Park, NJ

1.  New Goodbye
2.  Yer Spring
3.  New Glass
4.  Bricks
5.  Another Pilot
6.  There’s an Arc
7.  Seeds
8.  Red Heart

Brooklyn, NY
(reconstructed via this photograph)

1.  New Goodbye
2.  Yer Spring
3.  New Glass
4.  Bricks
5.  Another Pilot
6.  There’s an Arc
7.  Welcome
8.  Red Song
9.  We Made a Pact
10.  Seeds
11.  Red Heart
12. A Thousand Suns*

*’Bandages’ is on the setlist in the 12 spot, but ‘A Thousand Suns’ was played.

Manhattan, NY

1.  Lions For Scottie
2.  Welcome
3.  Yer Spring
4.  New Glass
5.  Yer Fall
6.  There’s an Arc
7.  I’ve Been Asleep For a Long, Long Time
8.  Holy Shit
9.  New Sum
10.  Seeds
11.  New Goodbye

Encore:

1.  Bandages
2.  Red Heart

And now, for the record, the sum total of Hey Rosetta! songs I’ve seen, including the two acoustic shows I saw last year:

1.  Red Heart–5 times
2.  Bricks–4 times
3.  I’ve Been Asleep For a Long, Long Time–3 times
4.  Lions for Scottie–3 times
5.  Bandages–3 times
6.  New Goodbye–3 times
7.  Yer Spring–3 times
8.  New Glass–3 times
9.  There’s an Arc–3 times
10.  Seeds–3 times
11.  Seventeen–2 times
12.  Red Song–2 times
13.  We Made a Pact–2 times
14.  Another Pilot–2 times
15.  Welcome–2 times
16.  A Thousand Suns–1 time
17.  Yer Fall–1 time
18.  Holy Shit–1 time
19.  New Sum–1 time

Mom’s/ Sisters

So my mom now lives with my sister, which makes visiting everybody much easier!  It was quite nice to see everybody all at once!  In the same breath, however, I must admit it made me feel as though I did a poor job of paying ample attention to everyone.  When you are seeing a gaggle of loved ones all at once for the first time in a long time, it can be a strain to give equal time.  I think specifically of the nephews, who I love uncontrollably but whom I was not able to give the sort of attention they are accustomed to receiving from me.  When it came down to it, my mom and my sister were the center of my focus (not to mention the antics of Pumpkin Latte).  Don’t get me wrong, I had a lovely time!  I guess I’m just feeling some guilt, cause those boys worked up a good amount of anticipation for my arrival and I almost certainly dissapointed.  That being said, the time with Momma and Sis was marvelous. LOTS of laughs, and a new momma/ son tradition: I claim her and I are going to do the Jumble together, and then I end up freaking out over how amazing she is at it, while I add absolutely nothing to the process (she really is amazing at the Jumble).  Also, I “T”d my sister, which always rules.  A brief but incredibly heartwarming time.  Some select pics:

Sister and Pumpkin Latte, as she was taking their picture

Sis, Me, Mom

New York

The New York trip is another thing I shall have to gloss over, or I’ll be writing this blog entry until next week.  I did what I typically do: I drive right into the city, pay a thousand dollars to park, and just walk around.  I usually have very little plan other than one or two fairly simple goals.  This trip’s goals: see sunrise from inside Central Park, and buy a New York Times from a newsstand and read the whole thing from inside a midtown Manhattan Starbucks during the morning commute hours.  I’m not sure why I wanted to do these things, but once the goals were in my mind, I could not seem to let them go.  I accomplished both, and although being in Central Park during sunrise was magical, it was not easy to get any great pictures of the event, due to the vast amount of:

a) Tall trees, and
b) skyscrapers

These things blocked the view of the actual sunrise rather effectively, but feeling the world come alive from within the park was quite joyous.  Here is the best picture I got of the sunrise:

I spent almost two hours in the Starbucks, enjoying my latte and an incredible issue of the NYT.  I suppose for a moment I felt as hip as I’ve always suspected I am.  It was a quality time.

I spent the rest of the day wandering around, taking pictures, eating, even napping briefly in the tranquil section of Central Park known as the Woodlands.  I also visited, for the first time, the Central Park Zoo, which was a lovely treat.  Here is some video I took of the Sea Lions being fed (and putting on a little show) followed by some pictures:

Sunset, Brooklyn

Me in Central Park

Some Things I Learned

1.  8 months is not long enough to forget how to get around (but it IS long enough to cause some occasional navigation confusion)

2.  When you are a single man in your 30s who moves away from everyone he knows and doesn’t visit home for 8 months, a surprising amount of people from all demographics will just straight-up ask you about your sex life.  This is fodder for an entire blog entry at some point that will be in the form of a “rant”.  FYI, nobody need worry about my sex life, mkay?

3.  You may think where you live is boring, but leave it for a little while and then come back; you may just find it’s really cool.

4.  There are really hot ladies everywhere.

5.  Don’t tell people you got fat.  You may think it will make your fatness less awkward, but it makes it moreso.

6.  Things change.  Buildings get knocked down, businesses change their name, streets get re-directed.  Accept these things as a natural course of existence. (reminds me of a Hey Rosetta! song:  “The schools that we went to have all been closed./ And all of my teachers are dead, I suppose.”)

7.  You can walk further than you think you can.

8.  If you move and your sports allegiances change a little bit, you can just kinda keep that to yourself on your first few visits home.

9.  As you leave places you have stayed for just a day or two, remember to gather all your various “chargers”.  We have a lot of chargers in this day and age.

10.  Family and friends really are the best things in the world, even if saying so sounds cheesy and cliche.  Fuck it, it’s true!

I Almost Forgot…

Today is my 8 year sobriety anniversary!  The original purpose of this vacation was for me to have off and see my loved ones leading up to the big day.  (I just have to complete my anniversary tradition of watching “Dark Days” on the anniversary itself)  So…yay me!  But also…yay you!  Thanks everybody for putting up with my horribleness when I was horrible, and then helping me live such a satisfying and fantastic life in my sobriety!  What a treat, to be able to celebrate the week leading up to it in the way I did.  And how neat is it that I almost forgot today was the day???  That must mean life is pretty good.  I love you, everybody!

Monday’s Song: Fleet Foxes, “White Winter Hymnal”

White Winter Hymnal
by Fleet Foxes

I was following the pack,
all swallowed in their coats
with scarves of red tied round their throats
to keep their little heads
from falling in the snow.
And I turned round and there you go—
and Michael you would fall
and turn the white snow red as strawberries in the summertime.

 

Audio Poem from “This is What is Invisible”, #12 of 12

As a reminder, I am posting an audio version of each poem from my new collection, “This is What is Invisible”.  This is the twelfth and final posting, and it’s called “Air”,

Air

When I try to think of all the things I’ve done,
try to review things perfectly like some wireless Victrola
and all that comes through are voices, the laughs,
the smell of the air, the weight of the air,
always the air and people talking
and in my sleep beside me I feel your weight on the bed
although I never loved you—not properly—
and other folks’ dogs padding through houses
waiting to be fed and slurp from the big red bowl
by the fridge—
when I try to remember all the places I’ve gone
and the marvels I’ve seen
I get the taste of the crisp soda in a tiny, tinny mouth,
the sun, the clouds, big things everywhere,
friends who are strangers who speak slowly
and with care,
things I said wrong, things I did wrong,
people I knew,
the breath of people and their spit flying in minuscule orbs
as they rant, my righteous anger,
the rain like tin pellets on the roof as you worried,
worried about everything—
when I attempt to measure as a distance
the places, the clearings, the rustling firs
the concrete porticoes with that tickling wind
or the paint-peeling balconies
and people’s eyes always looking, expecting,
expecting a certain thing from me or them
or the air in between us
as if sprites might emerge from a silence,
as if suddenly neither of us had been wrong,
as if I were not pretentious and they not insipid
but we always were, we always were,
and I always liked drinking cold cold water very fast
and driving, driving everywhere
passing other cars, slamming on the brakes,
all everywhere passing and stopping
and I never should have accused you—
the moments pass suddenly into shadows,
they always have and they aren’t going to stop,
you’d do best to listen to your breathing,
listen to her breathing, the dog’s,
and do.
I see children, too, waddling like huge lobsters
they’re your children—not mine—
oh those children are always hungry
even their hands are hungry,
under the blankets like dolls
looking at you in the half-lit doorway with hungry hands,
listening as their breath escapes into shadows.
What was that, just then? Ah, what it always
was, a moment, a breath, a just-barely.

Videos taken on my recent trip home

Cold Clothes interview, Part One

The following is intended as a fun writing exercise for myself.  If you’ve been reading my blogs from the very beginning, you’ll remember I did something quite like this about 7 years ago on my very first OpenDiary blog.  This is going to be a “fake interview” with a somewhat fictionalized version of myself, which is being conducted by an entirely fictional small arts magazine called Cold Clothes. If you read the old OpenDiary one, rest assured, this is a completely new edition of this.  You’ll see I have tagged the entry as both “memoir” and “fiction”–and that’s why it is so fun for me!  I am playing in a semi-real world (specifically a semi-real Carlisle) and with a version of me that both is and isn’t me, and there will be no cues for what is fiction and what is memoir. And put up with the early conversation about “art”–it’s just to make the reason for the interview believable.

Cold Clothes brings you Part One of it’s planned 12-part interview with Pennsylvania bohemian Seth Dellinger.  As our magazine has only a circulation of about 231, we are “simul-publishing” the interviews on our website–www.coldclothes.com–as well as Dellinger’s blog, Notes from the Fire.  And since we are a very irresponsible and erratic publication, we make no projections as to the frequency of the installments.  Now, Cold Clothes managing editor Rufus Paisleyface’s Part One of the interview:

I first meet Seth Dellinger at an outside table at his favorite Carlisle coffee house, the Courthouse Commons.  It’s an early autumn day, but Dellinger doesn’t seem to know it yet: it’s jacket weather, but he’s still sporting just

Dellinger outside the Courthouse Commons coffee shop in Carlisle, Pennsylvania

a t-shirt and shorts.  A few times throughout our conversation, he appears to regret this wardrobe decision.  He orders a tall caramel latte.

Cold Clothes: So, here we are, on a sunny afternoon at an outdoor coffee shop, and you appear to have quit smoking?

Seth Dellinger: Yep.  And yeah, if this isn’t the perfect time and place for a smoke, what is, eh?  But I had to quit, you know?

CC: Why?  Lots of your peers haven’t seemed to give it up yet.

SD: I think smoking always seemed to effect me physically a little more than most people.  I had a diminished lung capacity almost immediately after picking up the habit.  I’d be laying in bed and I could feel my heart beating in my head.  I mean, here I am, a 31-year-old guy who’s been away from drugs and alcohol for years now, who likes to be physically active and moving around and doing things, and I’m feeling my heartbeat in my head.  I didn’t like that.

CC: Does any part of you feel that as a drug and alcohol free non-smoker, your validity as an artist has been breached?  A lot of creative types hang their hats on the guttural experience of “use”.

SD: (laughs) So true. Certainly one doesn’t need to have ever used any drugs or mind-altering substances of any kind to make quality art, but I do think you need a sizeable well of life experience to be any good as a creator, and the folks who have always shied away from substances tend to be the same people who shirk a lot of life experiences, although this is certainly not always the case.  Let me say that again: this is certainly not always the case.  And yeah, sure, at first I worried I’d be called a “sellout” or, worse, a “straightedge”, but then I just thought, you know, I’m totally clean because I used things so much I had to stop or die, which is more badass than most of these smokers and drinkers can say.  I’m still badass.

CC: Has if affected your creativity?

SD: Not really.  Now, as before, I’ve not completed any major work that was at all worthwhile (laughs).  But I actually find myself writing a lot more, but the quality downgrades at the same rate as the volume of output, so in the end, I have the same amount of usable material.  I did have to postpone getting together with Duane (Miller) to work on an album we’ve been kicking around for a year now.  I found I wasn’t ready for collaborative work without a smoke yet.  I’m very comfortable writing at home in my own apartment in front of my computer, but the thought of kicking ideas around in Duane’s studio without a cigarette kind of terrified me.

CC: I was under the impression you’d been doing collaborative work with Rothman Hogar very recently?

SD: Well, yeah, but that’s all correspondence work.  Rothman (ed. note: Hogar is Dellinger’s frequent “best friend” and occasionally his “nemesis” artistically.  The two have a long, storied friendship which both are hesitant to talk about.) is currently a writer-in-residence at a university in Norway, and we’re collaborating on a screenplay via e-mail, so it’s still basically solo work because I’m alone while I’m doing it.

CC: Has Rothman’s absence changed the nature of the artistic life here in Carlisle?

SD: Only in the sense that a friend’s absence changes the dynamic of that group of friends.  Since Carlisle’s rise to prominence in the East Coast art scene, there’ve been plenty of personnel changes around here, but the core group remains the same and the general aesthetic remains the same.

CC: OK, now that we’re talking about it, take us back and tell us about the “rise of Carlisle”.  How did it happen?

SD: I’m sure you know that’s not the softball question it appears to be.  There are a few differing versions of how it happened.  Personally, my memory of the first national art media coverage was when Mary (Simpson) and I wrote and produced a play at the Cubiculo Theater here in town that built a slow media following: first the local papers, then the regionals, then the niche national publications, until finally it got a blurb mention in The Atlantic.

CC: That play was Conceited Eagle.

SD: Yep.  Eagle still largely pays my rent, too.  After it’s blurb in The Atlantic, a few regional theaters asked if they could put on a production of it.  Every year it circles a little further out.  This year they’re doing it in Fargo, Kennebunkport, and Denver.  It’ll never make me rich.  It doesn’t even pay the utilities.  Coneited Eagle exactly pays the rent, more or less.

CC: Do you harbor any hopes it will ever go “big time”?

SD: What, Broadway?  Yeah, it’ll probably make Broadway some day, and it’ll play for 18 shows and star someone unusual, like DMX.  I probably won’t like it.

CC: So what made Carlisle become a hotbed of artistic work, rather than this just being the unlikely story of an independently produced play?

SD: It’s almost impossible to say how these things happen.  There were just a lot of us in the right place at the right time.  Some folks interviewed Mary and I about the play a few times, and we mentioned a couple of friends we had–visual artists, musicians, writers, etc–and occasionally they went and interviewed those friends of ours, and people started getting into their stuff and interviewing them, and it was one big cycle.

CC: How famous do you think you can all get?  Could this become a cultural phenomenon?

SD: No way.  The Carlisle scene is bound to stay culty, for a couple reasons.  First, none of us are really pop artists.  I’m mainly poetry.  Rothman writes everything but it’s all very avante garde.  Mary’s a painter.  Jarly (Marlston) is a sculptor.  Duane plays space funk.  Tony (Magni) draws wads of meat.  I mean, c’mon.  The kids are never gonna flock here!

CC: Ryan (Straub) plays some fairly accessible singer-songwritery music.

SD: haha, true, but we’ve been trying to talk him out of it.

CC: How important is it for art to be accessible?

SD: That all depends how accessible you want it to be.  If you’re going for something you want everyone to understand and enjoy, and you end up making something daft, dense, or confusing, then I’d say you’ve certainly failed.  But it doesn’t have to be simple to be accessible.  Charlie Kaufman makes movies lots of people love, including myself.  They’re never going to make a hundred million dollars, but there are lots of fans.  I think it’s just about making what you set out to make, making it play on the level you wanted it to.

CC: Can you give me an example of a time you think that translation has failed?

SD: Sure.  I think Jonathan Franzen’s much beloved novel The Corrections is a failure in that vein.  He seems to want to be writing a really complex, codified novel like Pynchon, but he ends up writing it like a Grisham book.  It was an Oprah book back before Oprah started picking surprisingly good books.  It reads really strange because you can literally see Franzen trying to be dense but it comes off as populist.  It’s like beating off with a limp dick.

CC: So, back to the Carlisle movement: how important is the “group” aspect here?  Would any of you be successful without the group?

SD: We’re not the Beats, if that’s what you mean.  For the most part we participate in different mediums, we have different outlooks, are at very different spots in life.  Mostly, what we create does share a certain tone, a base idea of grit, or the grime of life, but we’re also not afraid to uplift.  You’d be hard pressed to find a photograph with more than three of us in it at any given moment.  I’d love to play up the idea of a group, or movement, because people love that story, but really it’s more like a loose group of friends who are all creative types.

CC: How many of you have been able to quit your jobs?

SD: Most.  But we quit our jobs with the trade-off of living uncomfortably.  We’re not rich.  We’re barely living off of what we do.  Remember, you’re interviewing me for Cold Clothes, not Rolling Stone! (chuckles)  A few of them still labor for their money.  Jarly still works (for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation).  There’s not a big market for original sculpture right now, but I always say, a decade from now, that guy’s gonna be so rich he won’t even remember where Carlisle is!

CC: OK, maybe we’ve got ahead of ourselves.  Let’s go back before Carlisle.  Tell me about growing up in Newville, a small town about 20 miles from here.

SD: Newville is a very idyllic, perfect little shithole of a town.  It was an ideal town for a boy to grow up in.

CC: haha…um, explain?

SD: It had that quintessential “small town” feeling, that sort of close-knit Thornton Wilder thing that makes you feel comfy and safe and free to ride your bike alone all over town at a very young age, but at the same time, it’s a shithole.  It had seen it’s best days.  It had abandoned factories, forgotten corners of the town where the streets quite literally had no name, drainage ditches full of standing water, back alleys with weeds growing through the pavement.  But despite all this, I never found anything sad about it.  My childhood eyes saw all this blight as a great story.  I loved thinking about Newville’s past, what it had been like as a boom town, what those men in tall hats from the black-and-white photographs would think if they could see it now.  It filled me with a deep sense of time very early in life.

CC: How did your family end up in Newville?

SD: Well my grandma and grandpa Cohick–that’s my mom’s side–lived in the area.  My mom grew up on their farm in Oakville, an even smaller town a little further out.  I suppose at some point in time they sold the farm and moved to Newville.  I know Gram worked for the dress factory in town that was shuttered right around the time I was born.  After my parents were married they must have moved to Newville to be closer to them, although I don’t know those details for sure.  Isn’t it strange the questions you never even think of asking your parents?  Dad’s family was from closer to the river (the Susquehanna), the Mechanicsburg, Wormleysburg-type area.  It’s odd to think about, because my parents are divorced now, and Mom left the area, but Dad still lives in Newville, a place he’s not actually from.  It’s weird how life moves you around.

CC: And here you are, living in Carlisle.

SD: Well yes, but there’s not really a difference between living in Carlisle and living in Newville, geographically.  It’s like the difference between living in Chelsea and living in Greenwich Village.  And I suppose there’s barely a difference between where my dad’s parents raised him and where he ended up.  It’s all south-central Pennsylvania.  But I think it’s just neat how life picks you up, moves you around, and sets you down.  Sometimes it’s a lot more dramatic than Mechanicsburg to Newville.

CC: Did you enjoy your childhood?

SD: Listen friend, if you didn’t enjoy your childhood, you weren’t trying.  I fucking loved it!  I mean, sure, there’s plenty of sadness in childhood.  In fact, about half the poems I wrote in 2004 were trying to figure out why childhood seems so sad.  My childhood certainly wasn’t more sad than anyone else’s–in fact, it was probably happier–but I think as children we just haven’t learned how to deal with the truths of the world yet, and we’re very tuned in to the way things feel.  The passage of time feels quite acute to a child.  Boredom feels very acute.  Unfairness, not getting what you want, not feeling loved at every moment–these things take a lot of years to get used to.  And thank goodness we do get used to them, thank goodness childhood doesn’t last forver, because until you get your emotions and reactions under control in the early teens, you’re essentially useless.  But anyway, despite and maybe because of this deep sense of feeling, childhood is an amazing, magical time.  It’s this same “blank slate” idea that makes us so emotionally sensitive which also makes the world an extraordinary place to a child.  “Puddle-wonderful”, as Cummings called it.  Try as I might in my adult life, I’ve never been able to acheive the kind of free-form imaginitive play I had as a kid.  And that’s the thing:  I do try. I mean, I live by myself, I don’t have a job, I’m single and no kids.  Some nights, when I’m home, there’s nothing to watch, I’m sick of the book I’m reading, and I don’t feel like writing.  I look around my apartment and think, I should play.  And why shouldn’t I?  There shouldn’t be anything wrong with a grown-up playing.  So I turn everything off, make my hands into guns, or my golf bag into a dragon, or any number of things, and I give it a go.  But it never works.  My hands become hands again way too quickly, and the golf bag always looks much too much like a golf bag, and I just end up putting on a Radiohead album and pretending I’m a rock star, which is play to an extent, but it’s totally useless grown-up play.  It’s more about commerce and culture and self-glorification than childhood play.  I always remember this essay I wrote in 12th Grade english class about childhood play, and how my teenage life was really missing my childhood play.  That essay is still one of my favorite things I’ve ever written, because in it, I described childhood play in such a luscious, compelling, chunky way.  I could never write about childhood play like that nowadays.  It’s like my 18-year-old self was still tenuously connected to my childhood self.  I still had a visceral notion of what it had been like.  Not so anymore.  Nope, nowadays remembering childhood is like watching a movie through a bedsheet.  I can’t imagine what it’s like when you get older still; it must be like that childhood happened to somebody else entirely.

CC: Were you a social child?

SD: Reluctantly.  Which is another way of saying “no”, I guess.  I was pretty much terrified of people I didn’t know.  In fact, I was more scared of kids I didn’t know than I was of strange adults.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I had friends, but it was a long process for me to feel comfortable with them.   I had much more fun playing by myself, controlling all the plot points and characters.  But most of it comes down to fear.  I was one of the most scared kids around.

CC: You were scared of other children?

SD: Absolutely.  In both the theoretical and the very concrete sense.  Theoretically, I was afraid no one was going to like me, that I wouldn’t be understood, that I’d be ridiculed.  Concretely, I was literally afraid other kids would end up beating the shit out of me.  I’m not sure if this just came from being a short kid or not, if maybe it came from somewhere deeper, but it wasn’t until perhaps the age of 14 that I stopped worrying everyone wanted to hurt me.  It had nothing to do with my home life: my parents were not violent or physical.  I got spanked a handful of times, very civilly, very by-the-book.  Sometimes I think I just got born with a “scared” gene, and it’s been the major story of my life, overcoming it.

CC: Did you get in many fights as a kid?

Dellinger, age approx. 2 years, admiring one of his grandfather's sweet potatoes.

SD: No.  One or two, really, though the one was very, very terrifying.  It was this kid Shawn Wilson.  He was one of the baddest ass kids in Newville.  Like, you did not fuck with Shawn Wilson, even at the age of seven.  And I was in this church yard one day, this church yard that was a few blocks from our house on Big Spring Avenue.  I used to go there to play all the time.  They had some swings, a really big lush lawn, and even a small topiary maze.  Of course now, as an adult, it looks like a shrub-lined walkway, but at six, seven, eight years old, it was a topiary maze.  I was there playing by myself, and Shawn Wilson shows up.  At first, he played with me, but then for some reason he pushed me to the ground, got on top of me, wouldn’t let me up.  Of course, I cried immediately, did a kid version of pleading with him, but my fear just fed his aggression.  So he got a bit sadistic on me.  He let me up, but he wouldn’t let me leave.  I’d try to walk toward my house, and he’d run in front of me, knock me down again.  It turned quite epic.  I remember, what seemed like hours into this ordeal, I managed to escape, finally getting onto the sidewalk, y’know, that sign of civilization, and having this immense feeling of relief wash over me.  I felt like I had barely survived with my life.  That’s a moment from my childhood I remember with precision clarity, that feeling.  It’s poignancy is not diminished because I was so young at the time.  I felt like my life had been spared.  That’s a heavy feeling for a kid.  I ran the two blocks home and breathlessly told my mother the story.  She was a substitute teacher at the time, so was often home during the day.  I breathlessly recounted my ordeal.  She was concerned, of course, and very motherly to me, but must have been unconvinced of the epic severity.  I remember wondering why she wasn’t calling the police and giving me some secret grown-up medicine and calling the local news.  And the few times I’ve recounted this story to people over the years, I’ve gotten the same reaction. You see, you can’t ever actually make someone feel how you felt.  It is important to remember this when making art, too.  You can only get them really, really close, and then only if they’ve felt something similar before as well.  I will always be disappointed by anyone’s reception of this story, because I still get worked up thinking about it, over twenty years later.  I probably shouldn’t tell it anymore.  Oh, and Shawn Wilson?  He’s dead now.  A few years back, car accident.

CC: So now you’re the only one who remembers.

SD: Yep.  I’m the only person with the memory of that childhood fight.  And I like it that way.  Shawn Wilson may have grown up to be a different sort of man than the evil bastard who held me hostage in that church parking lot, but I’m still happy to not share anything with him, not even a memory.

CC: What else were you scared of as a kid?

SD: Just about everything.  I was scared of moving things, very much.  Motorcycles, horses, trains, amusements park rides.  I still won’t ride amusement park rides or horses.  I still haven’t conquered everything!  But yeah, fast things.  Bugs, snakes, the sky, night time.  Death was a big one.  I thought about death a lot.  My grandparents.  Rain.  You name it.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t unable to leave the house, or quivering like an idiot any time I was in public.  I’m sure there are plenty of people who had as fearful childhoods as I did.  I learned how to act through most of it.  Sure, I was still scared shitless when our parents would take my sister and I to, say, the Newville Fair, but I gradually learned how to hide it.  Well, hide it the best I could.  It was still no secret to those around me that I was mostly terrified.  But the acting is a skill I’ve really refined in my adult life.  While the fear is mostly gone from me, I now use it to disguise foul moods, sadness, worry.  I could be afraid I’m dying and hide it from everybody for a long period.

CC: Were you creative as a child?

SD: Sure.  But I never had one of those big moments you hear a lot of people talk about.  You know, I knew the moment I opened “Where the Sidewalk Ends” that I was going to be a writer or My parents rented “E.T.” and I knew in the first ten minutes I was going to be a film director. No, I never saw art that compartmentalized, and I still don’t, or at least, I try not to.  As a kid, I just knew I liked things that used that creative part of the brain, that idea that you can laugh or cry or sweat because of things that aren’t really there, or aren’t actually happening.  I was always drawn to that, and to the depth of emotion you can allow yourself to feel at these things.  I was always amazed by those depths.  Also, I remember losing my breath a little bit the first time I saw those little lights along the aisle floors in a movie theater.  That looked like real-world magic to me.

The Seth Dellinger interview from Cold Clothes will be continued!

Friends 4evah

I spent a good deal of time today with two friends of mine who nourish my soul greatly, but neither of whom I get to see nearly often enough.  Those friends would be Tasha and Michael, and I am in such a tremendously good mood now due to my time spent with them.  A few notes from the day:

1.  Today was the first time in 2 years I’ve spent any time with Tasha’s daughter, Milaina, and she is awesome. She is very much her own person, with quite a mind of her own.  She’s gonna be a handful.  Soon.

2.  Michael gave me a swivel office chair she was getting rid of, and it is amazing!!  If you push yourself around in a circle just a few times, and then take your feet off the ground, it will keep spinning forever and ever!

3.  Tasha is a comedic genius.  At one point, in LeTort park, Milaina had a little tiny leaf and was pretending to paint my nails with it.  Tasha just casually says, “Leaf Press-On Nails.”  Then later she made another pun that was truly incredible, but I forget it.

4.  We went shopping at K-Mart, which seems to be a running theme in my life lately.  There, I learned, through her clothing selections, that Tasha is 70% evil.

5.  Michael’s mom mysteriously showed up at her house for a brief moment.  I sure do like her!

6.  So many of those crazy ‘coincidences’ kept happening with Michael and I that there was surely some sort of universal force at work there.

7. Michael and I wound down the afternoon playing each other some of our current favorite songs and videos.  (we’re big fans of exposing each other to new art/media).  I ended up tearing up 3 times during this session.  it was rather incredible.  Of the new things Mike showed me, I’m really still stuck on this song, “Feelin’ Good Again”, by Robert Earl Keen.  Do yourself a favor and look up the lyircs and print them and follow along:

By the end of the day, I also ended up loaning her one of my Billy Collins poetry collections (see pic of her waving it around, above).  Hopefully I’ve actually put another Billy Collins fan into the world!!!

8.  Tasha and I argued about Dane Cook, and she made a face like this:

9.  I beat Michael at a game of tic-tac-toe and immediately got cocky.  I then beat Tasha at a game and got cockier.  Then Tasha schooled me in two successive, very quick games.

10.  Michael and I drove around for an hour and shared.  Alot.

11.  Tasha and I came up with yet another million-dollar idea:  mattresses with a thin layer of grass on top of them.

12.  Tasha to woman at coffee shop: “How big is your big one?”