St. Elmo's

The small coffee shop sits on the corner of two small streets in an out of the way neighborhood called Del Ray, in Alexandria, Virginia. This coffee bar holds your usual collection of college students, elderly, and the outdoors-eco-kids that seem to always be displaced from Colorado. The constant sound of keys dancing on a laptop, the conversation’s politically loaded and rising in intensity, fill the air with the ambiance that you drive ten minutes out of the way for. Occasionally looking up you watch this twenty something woman-slash-girl, clearly marked as an American in her soft skin and gentle face of a life lived in the relative comfort of the States. She is setting up a small stand and mike, her guitar rests in the corner. The room waits in some anticipation for what must be another aspiring artist low paying Sunday gig. Oh, how wrong we were to place such insignificance in her. Pages turn in my book with the slight wisps and another paragraph of notes flow from my pen before the music starts. I am not even sure when it started but glancing up I saw her, eyes closed hunched over an instrument that was nearly as big as she was, power flowing from the rhythmic movements of her arm, chased by the softness of a voice that seemed to call out to the crowd for recognition. I look back down and continue through another page or two, and notice that some of the sounds that I had traveled for have stopped. Keyboards are silent; the conversations one at a time have stopped. My eyes again return to the woman, the softness of her voice echoed with the fierceness of the guitar she sings a story. The room is a washed in the rhythm that she he is making with the force of her very being. The past disappears, as years of conditioning and memories created by trauma and repetition are lost as we find ourselves entrapped in the cleansing of our very souls. For that is what the absent of a past or future feels like, the instant erasing of all possibilities leaving you there in that moment free to feel and explore the very sounds that are now echoing through the audience. We cannot move, we cannot think, we are just in jubilee. Her eyes open and the spell is broken, the music slows and stops, reality sets back in, she is human. She pushes back up her long sleeve t-shirt and runs her hand threw her short dark hair, the gentle slapping of her flip-flop on the stool even stops, she smiles and thanks the crowd.

The room returns to normal and the keyboards start to tap, and the conversations start up again, slowly with some hesitation. Everyone in the room knows that they were mistaken in their judgment of this women, though none have yet to realize the full impact of what just happened, it would come hours later, for most, when they were quietly preparing for bed and searching for the peace of mind that helps with sleep, when they will recognize the pure tranquility they had found for those few precious moments in the coffee shop in Del Ray that evening. No one had the chance to properly thank her.

I should not post this

I have found that the demons that I once thought conquered are still there waiting for me to slip. The same dark nights that used to haunt my nights are finally returning to haunt my days. Where has the resolve, the strength, the steadfastness that was my very trademark gone. Where will the life choices take me.

Haha almost eight months to the day I wrote a passage about a girl. Well I think it is about time to write another. This one is so different from anything I have tried before, and I am not sure what to do. I am just not sure. And it hurts to know that she might be absolutely sure and it is me that is screwing with her. The peace of the mountain air descends from the slopes down to my very balcony, breathing deep. Where will it go. So the girl, well for the first time in my life I am calm while I am around the girl, but the price I pay is domesticity, I am now staying in and running out of things to do as she does not share with me the same desires for drugs, sex, and rock and roll, a horribly missed used quote but the only way to describe her complete lack of a desire for a night life at all. (I write this knowing how shallow it sounds, but it is just the outward display of some inherent difference, the difference being some level of content that i am incapable of sharing.) Leaving me with the sense of missing out, of an incompleteness, yet at the same time when I am around her I do not desire any of those things that in the past would have had me moving so fast. I desire to go back to war, I desire to have an impact on the world or at least to have greater control and power than what I have now. I must harness all the energies that I have to continue down those paths, and how do you ask another to join you on paths that are and must be completely yours alone.

What scares me the most is that I will miss an opportunity for happiness and completeness because of my very fears. Because of all the training and conditioning that I have set in place just to survive will not allow me to feel the nessesary emotions that it will take to keep her. I am not quite certain which way it will end up but in the end I will be forced to make the decition and act it out in a manner that will be weak and childish to the nth degree.

Eulogy for Polo

I thought it would be different now; I thought it wouldn’t hurt as much. Half way around the globe men and women are pursuing our nations national interests, and implementing policy with a rifle. They are tired, worn, and most would rather be here; yet with a consistency that should make you cry, they will never leave, or quite. They are tough in ways that most will never truly understand.

Many psychologists would agree that distance and time can fix most things, as well as lessen the impact of almost any event. Last night, this abstract idea that I had held as fact, came crashing down around me. On a rooftop that overlooked most of downtown DC, two blocks from the Verizon center. I was having beers and bullshiting with the low-end political aids that scurry around the real administrators in the Old Executive Office Building, though most would just say they work at the White House. The irony was absolutely complete when my phone rang during a heated conversation of how much it would cost to build more F-22 or fund a new infantry battalion. How is anyone supposed to be prepared when the real cost is measured and paid.

My roommate called and my phone started up the annoying Gnarls Barkley song. Answering, I immediately started to tell him what the plan was for the next couple hours. When I was done speaking there was an awkward pause, nothing more, followed by “Polo is dead,” two breaths, “he was killed by an IED.”

The world stopped moving, people stopped talking, all actions and senses ceased. No more words were exchanged on the phone, just silence. The phone was still open and on when I stood up and walked away from the party on the rooftop. No one looked at me, no one noticed. The shock wears off much quicker than you want. In fact, I found myself trying to hold onto the void that shock can create; knowing that this is so much better than what comes next. My pace picks up as I move faster and faster across the roof and down a hallway of wooden fences towards a door. I do not know why I am headed this way but I need to leave. The anger builds with the pace and I am not sure why pain and anger come together but I do know that both demand that every part of my body feel the same pain in proportion to the rest. So I strike out at the wall, punching and punching. I kick in a portion of the wooden fence and slam the beer bottle that was still in my hands to the ground. Now I can feel the pain in my hand, the throb of the forming bruise, the emotional fury subsides and I regain composure now that I can feel the physical pain. As if the physical can and should overshadow the emotional screams that rushed through me.

I returned to the party, only partially aware at the stairs of confusion as I reached for ice to sooth my hand. My friend asked “what happened to your hand?” and in the only way I know how to deal with the absurdity of the situation, “It picked a fight that it couldn’t win with a brick wall, stupid eh?” As I wrapped the ice around my hand I went and found another beer, and rejoined the group, forcing myself into some pattern of normalcy before I could break away and be alone, as I wanted.

Polo, there can be no lasting tribute for you. A man, a child, a friend, an atheist Chaplin of the highest order. How do I write of a man that knew more about life than I do. How do I say some words that he would have accepted as just and honest, how do I make reconciliation with a man who was my better. There are no words, nor diction that can tell you of this boy-man. Life is meant to be tasted and enjoyed the invigoration of the living, this will be Polo’s testament, he truly drank from the well of life, where I, and most are but merely spectators of this cosmic play. The verse he added was much too short. The streets of paradise are lined with his friends, whom all remember the smile and charity of Polo.

May you rest in peace, we are coming, please wait for us, we will be along shortly, my friend.