Just as an illustration of the sense of place and community something as simple as biking can give you:

So I’m riding home from school on my bike a few moments ago and I pull up to the Huger-Blossom intersection; both of these are 4 lane roads so its a big intersection. Traffic is bad so I pull to the side and hit the crosswalk button. Then I look over and another guy, prolly in his 40s or 50s pulls up on his bike. He looks at me and smiles a knowing smile at me crossing on foot over the crosswalk. I shrug and smile back.

That would’ve been enough to demonstrate something you don’t normally get in cars.

But then he shouts over to me, “I hate this intersection!”

“Me too!” I shout back.

“I always pull up like this otherwise people won’t let you cross.” he says.

“Yeah, I normally do too,” I say. “But today, traffic is real heavy. Once I get to the other side I use the bike lane though.”

“Oh, I cruise across the intersection then get on the sidewalk. I hate getting splashed in the bike-lane.”

I laugh. “Doesn’t mind me too much.”

The light turns green and I walk across as he bikes through the intersection and then swerves onto the sidewalk. I do the opposite. I am going a lot faster than him so I catch up.

“Not too bad over here!” I shout as I pass.

“Yeah, but they need to clean it up!”

“Yeah, for sure”

And I’m gone.

I may not see this guy again but we both shared something. Something personal, something mutual.  The humaness of it was refreshing.

And so it goes.

Its incredible out here, sitting in the dark on the front porch, listening to the rain and watching the lightning.   The sky is lit from the city, giving it that incredibly ominous aura that fits well with the sound of the thunder and rain. In front of me a large spider ignores all of the commotion and is building a nice web.  Frogs are croaking loving it–they are partying the night away, croaking like there’s not tomorrow.  That would be a funny joke if they were dayflies.

So, while I’m out here in the dark listening to the rain…I feel like I should have some deep thoughts. But I’m all deep thoughted out today. Yes, it does happen, believe it or not…and my writing becomes more relaxed and casual–like this I suppose. So instead of trying to come up with something wonderful I am going to just sit here and enjoy the night and toss ideas around for my pieces.

Alright, so I’ve got all sorts of material now for three peices: a memior/personal essay entitled “The Pedestal,” which is about me overcoming my overwhelming sense of pride and trying to understand people; an essay/experience peice on what it is like to first start drinking and some contemplations on why people drink; and a lyric peice on a sense of place and locality.

Hmm, for my personal use, here’s what I got in scenes to work with for the three peices.  First, for the lyric:

• Going to France and the whole foreign experience
• Discovering the Riverwalk–and ppl being friendly there
• Walking to the Vista–and just around town
• Biking for a whole day (which I did today) and how you get a sense of space much more acutely that way, interacting with cars and whatnot
• Getting to know the main places of town–seeing what is here and what people are doing as opposed to staying inside
• Random conversations with people I don’t know–like this random convo today with a guy because I overheard him talking about Wheel of Time
• Sitting out here right now watching the thunder storm
• Spending time in coffee shops
• Darryl asking “what is the most important thing you could change right now to make your life better” My response: “Spend more time outside.”
• My notes on lawns.

That should be plenty of material for that one. Now…lots of material to mix up and play with for the other two pieces as well…not sure which will go with which exactly. For those who are really upset about me drinking and whatnot, go ahead and stop reading here.

• Watching other people drink before, like when in France or at the first bar I went to (where I didn’t drink)
• All of the material and whatnot from my 21 and Sober peice
• All of the tastes one is not accustomed to when you don’t drink–the bitter and the raw
• Ben Forney’s quote I’ve quoted far too many times at this point
• Nathan convincing me to drink my first beer–and the incredibly pleasant conversation that resulted over it
• Cultural gaps and simple knowledge one doesn’t know–like not to hold the beer in your hand or that asking to buy someone a drink is a major come-on
• Night at The Whig eating tacos, drinking beer
• Playing GameCube with Nathans friends–oh and the guy’s bug infested apartment
• Going to the liquor store for the first time
• The incredible “twinge” reaction of judgment
• The lack of a sense of balance and responsibility–and how this originates from the setting of boundaries
• Drinking through the bottle of Absolute with Kayley–playing halo and whatnot–realizing the value of alcohol in simply relaxing a tense situation and feeling a comraderie
• The “sophisticated” tastes–spending a weekend with Marty and Darryl and the wine they let me try as well as the gin–which was disgusting. Discovered that yuengling is good though.
• Night at Bull Market, letting Dane make me drinks, really coming down to earth with that one, making conversation, talking about all sorts of stuff…felt like I belonged after I’ve already been gone.  Was really cool…old employees there, and Paul. Let Dane make me his special cocktails and we took a shot of tequila. Then I walked home from the Vista
• Dude, the incredible number of bums around the Vista…is crazy…I gave one a dollar…but I can’t do that…I am running really low on money…lol
• Then the big one: went to Five Points last night with my roommate…took notes on the whole experience in my phone…quite a lot of notes actually.  Quite an interesting first night in five points.  Lets just say…I’m not sure if everyone sees some guy strip and get in the fountain on their first night out…good material though. Lol.
• A sense of self and integrity when among the people you aren’t used to–yes you still retain this if you do it properly.
• Also, some thoughts on the type of people I want to be around, which I’ve been thinking alot about lately.

Yeah, so I think thats about it for now. I’m very much at peace. I feel fantastic.  Really happy about how things are moving.  Kayley and I are on good, even great terms.  I am quite happy with the changes I have made. I am getting lots of work done.  Lots of interesting people are around. Getting out a lot, spending a lot of time outside.  Getting in shape (man my thighs are killing me after biking all day!). Roommate is pretty cool.  Money is tight but I’ll manage. Job going well–is really interesting. Freelance stuff coming along.

Yeah. I feel fantastic. Now, I am not on drugs. This is just me, plain old me sitting on the front porch typing away, enjoying the moist air and the tapping of the rain on the gutters.   Lovely indeed.

This is a piece that was written for my Creative Nonfiction class, Spring 2009 semester. It is considered a Lyric piece. There is a good chance I’ll use this in my applications to grad school so any comments are appreciated.

I saw a bird today; it separated from a flock poised on a parking garage above the crowded city street where I sat, my toes tapping the brake, longing to see green. The bird broke from a random pattern and floated softly to fall upon the lamppost to my right. It caught my eye and seemed to shutter for a moment, either finding something strange in my gaze or merely brushing the morning dew from its feathers.

Another living thing, I thought.  Not human.  How odd.

A horn shattered the moment; the bird was gone, replaced by a new kind of bird delivered by the man in my rearview mirror. I grimaced and eased onto the accelerator.

Driving is a simple thing when you do it every day: automatic and instinctual. It makes me think that perhaps nature was a bit forward thinking in providing us such capacities to numb our senses, multi-tasking so that we could think of other things while our bodies took us to our destinations.

It’s not the same when walking through the woods. Once, a long time ago, I spent a whole week in the mountains hiking through a segment of the Appalachian trial.  Sixty miles, seven days, everything you need on your back. Every day the most reckless (or maybe just more fit) of our crowd would trudge on ahead while my friend and I maintained a leisurely pace, soaking in the dense forest as we walked. On one day we hiked over an entire mountain. At the top I saw why people went to mountains to gain wisdom. The world stretched before me; I felt like I could reach out and gather it into my arms.  At night we slept in hammocks. The stars were so bright that the leafy branches above me seemed to contain a million fireflies hovering in the cool night breeze.

Now it’s nearly seven years later and the only route I travel, day after day, involves nothing but concrete, plastic, and metal.  I wake up in my cozy little apartment and travel down sidewalks, avoiding the dew-filled grass, to sit in my car as it takes me far away. I step out in a cathedral of concrete where I leave the car to sleep while I’m gone. I walk down paved paths to monstrous buildings of brick, glass, and metal. People are the animals, buildings are the trees. Trees and birds have become like weeds and insects, pests to be casually noticed but mostly ignored.

I had another instance, once, camping with a friend up in North Carolina. There was a lake that, in the dead of night, we walked through the dark to examine. As we drew near the distant sound of crickets melted away and all sense of feeling withdrew.  It was not a lake we approached but the manifestation of infinity. The perfectly still lake, in that perfectly quiet night, in that perfectly distant world—one could not see where the earth and sky began. All was black expanse of stars. I had a feeling and a thought: life could be about this.

I don’t have time for that anymore. But I have not forgotten. When I walk in from my car at night sometimes I pause and look around, longing for a coherent world. At first I only find patches of grass and isolated trees. But then, for a moment, this noisy world will fall quiet and the feeling will return. I look upward and see the stalwart and undying figure of Orion, always looking down over this world we have both possessed and created. Perhaps, I thought, we have missed something in the course of our busy lives, our crowded history. This is God, and we no longer see her. All we have is concrete and birds and humans; that’s it.

I remember the smell well. Gasoline and fresh cut grass. The smell hangs on my shoulders, overpowering the sweat. It makes you feel unclean.

I have spent a good amount of time outside in my life–at least relative to what most people do nowadays in America.  I’ve felt the sweat of hard work on occaision. I’ve camped dozens of times in my short life, sleeping in everything from large tents to hammocks. I’ve spent a week in the woods with nothing but what I can carry on my back. I’ve used a hole in the ground for a bathroom. That’s more than most people can say around here.  In many ways I feel just at peace in nature as I do around my computer. Both are essential parts of my ever paradoxical life.

How then can my mother say this: “I know you’re not a fan of hard work or anything…” while referring to helping my father with yard work? Why was I resisting?

As I lifted logs from the edge of the enormous lawn out to the edge of the weeds I couldn’t help but get the sensation that we were fighting some sort of war. We’d been fighting it since I was little. Back then the forest was on the edge of our driveway, teeming with all kinds of life, blocked off with webs of briars. The forest was practically at our doorstep so that at night you could hear the frogs and crickets playing their love games just out of sight. Slowly we beat that forest back with clippers and chainsaws. We pushed and we cut. We ravaged and we destroyed. Ten years later we had hollowed out a large space for a good sized circular garden, which we surrounded in wired fence and dictated the plants which could grow there. The rest we killed violently with chemicals.

Time went on. Large Catapillers were involved, of the the sort with hydralics and diesel engines. Now the whole space next to the house is covered in a nice bed of grass. It is the size of a soccer field. But the kids are all gone now and no soccer is being played over there. It is ok, the whole lot has been domineered and subdued. Now on the weekends all the efforts of my parents must be put into mantaining this carefully crafted kingdom.

Why must everything humans do seem like war?

Cultivating and tending a yard is like submission. It is not being in nature. It is a constant battle against nature. Everything must be in the place that you want, most of it arbitrary. Grass in the lawn. Beyond a certain line, no grass–this is bush territory.  Also, no grass within a few feet of the tree.  To keep the grass at bay we put down little pieces of tree bark. It is all so frustratingly not nature. It is the suburban jungle, nature as a well ordered array of only the pieces of nature that we dare be bothered with. Hard work? Yes. Nature? No.

Here are three clips that I’ll be using for a lyric piece I’m working on. Comments are appreciated.

The Bug

At my feet a little bug crawls across the weathered and faded brick, peeking into each crack, its tiny antennas blurring, searching, feeling. His legs are a blur as he moves from one brick to the next.

What are you searching for, little one? where do you crawl so diligently on this summer morning?

He runs into my shoe and halts, feelers touching the unusual rubber monolith for a moment before stumbling on around, his little shell body always moving in that staggering, longing line–as if there is some lost treasure of his that must surely be nearby.

I know you, I say. As a child I called you Roley Polly and poked you so that you’d roll into your tight little ball then flicked you off the sidewalk. Did that help you get where you are going?

The humid morning air is thick and putrid today, smelling of wet grass and exhaust. It is hard to breath. I too am searching, little one, staggering in crooked lines down sidewalks, checking every crack for what it is I need, for something I may have lost.

My senses hit only brick and steel. Across a pond a janitor rolls a large plastic cart, gathering trash from little green bins. The rumbling noise mixes with the crash of the fountains and echoes off the buildings. In the distance a train shrills and the first sounds of traffic add their distant hum.

Where am I supposed to be today? What is this place, that I sit here staring thoughtfully at tiny crawling insects? Is this what I am looking for? Is this home? Is my heart buried beneath the rippling black water?

I uncurl my shell and try to move my feet but they are encased in rubber. I slip them off and curl my toes, relishing in the movement. I slip off their soft white casings and place them hesitantly on the cool brick. It is smooth and chill. My feet are shriveled and white. The two get acquainted, my toes hesitantly feeling the cracks in the brick, searching.

Where do I place my feet?

The wind ripples across the pond and I feel a brief mist on my legs, tickling my ankles. it is not a new sensation but I cannot grasp the memory nor the meaning.

But the city awakens and I am fearful. I must hide.

A fly lands on my hand as I lean to slip my socks on, as if to say “please stay.” But then I feel the back of my thighs itch and realize it was merely a distraction for the bloodsuckers. On the benches on either site, people have come to sit. I close my eyes and stuff in my headphones to block out everything, hiding again, my cowardly and instinctual defense.

———————

The Squirrel

A moment later I begin to walk, feeling the rhythm of my feet dancing in the lengthening shadows.

Stop. A squirrel stares. Three feet away, poised. Its head tilts quizzically. I feel I have made contact. This is another being. It sees me. I see it. We know each other. What does it want? Its glare seems to ask the same. A moment of tension ensues. She must sense a mutual need–she steps forward hesitantly.

this close I see its fur is sparse and ruffled. its paws have little claws. Its nose wiggles incessantly.

I smile in greeting, offering reassurance. Unsure of the sign, she dodges around the tree, grasping its wizened texture, ready to climb to safety. But it peaks around the other side, curious. I am still standing, watching.

She comes down a little closer, perhaps thinking that my hands in my pockets will reveal a morsel of food. At the foot of the tree she steps forward and pauses expectantly, her eyes penetrating me, her front paw lifted, quivering an inch above the ground.

What would you like? Would you like to be friends? We can climb trees through the day and dance across these rooftops, looking for bits of food to hid in our little knot in the tree, passing the days in the carefree motion of nature and seasons.

I take a step forward and she runs off up the tree. Some other time then little one?

—————————-

The Statue

Giant man of stone, where are you galloping so diligently on that horse? Your tag says you’ve been here since 1965. That is a long time to be carrying that torch. You grasp it so hard in your hand, afraid that you might lose it–or perhaps that it might go out.  Blessed fire warms us all before the wind conjured by your haste snuffs it out. You cloak waves behind you and it looks like you might lose it. You are naked but for this simple cloth; did you forget to dress before you ran to your silent, never moving duty?   When will you reach your destination?  When will you be done? Encased in bronze, you’ll carry this torch forever, never to pass it on.

Your face, my giant torch-bearing friend, is what gives it away. You’re looking behind you. I see you regret your lot. Your face is creased with worry as you peer over your should, as if to wonder if anyone will follow, if your light will be any good at all.  I see you and understand. I too have this torch I have conjured up to light my way. I insist, however, that I will not be frozen in regret as you are, never moving, always standing still.

Nametag:
The Torch Bearer
Presented to the
University of South Carolina
By the sculptress
Anna Hyatt Huntington
1965