Competition

“Looks like we're gonna make it -”

I startled and nearly dropped my bottle.

“Oohh sorry, I forgot you probably wouldn't hear me coming...”

“How convenient,” I offer along with a wry glance to acknowledge her poorly executed attempt at concealing amusement.

Our conversations are rarely without consequence. There are times when we simply convey textual information, following the script word-for word, but, hardly ever does it lack some sort of context...or is it pretext? Something, some sort of knowing that surrounds and transcends our words. Her eyes stay on mine forever and a day. Sometimes I look away, in disbelief, and she stubbornly beckons me to believe anyway.

From a lonely patch of paddock fence we have a side view of most of the action, stick figures in black velvet helmets, mounted and roaming about, some with game faces ignoring all but their sheer concentration, some constantly in need of a parent's or coach's reassurance and some with parents in need of someone to fuss over, most but not all are adolescent females. The horses and ponies catch a snack when their humans provide the leisure of standing still near fencepost weeds or slip the occasional starlight mint, otherwise heeding commands via reins and boots. This is the day. Fifth-wheel rigs have hauled man and beast to this place to compete for ribbons and honor.

“How 'bout your group? I just got here...” I ask after a couple sips of water in as many minutes.

“Not bad. Not sure how many placings to expect since they're a young group, but it's experience and they seem to be having fun.”

I take a deep breath of sweet summer evening country air and turn towards her.

“Remind me, did you ever train?”

She half-smiles.

“Thought about it, but...ihh...it's a lot.”

Another sip to buy time, or let her finish her thought, seeing as I'm not sure what to do with that just yet.

I glance back to find her in a slightly agitated nostalgia. “Seems you're just glad to provide rides for these kids.”

“I am,” she finally smiles convincingly. It's amazing how much that smile can say, and a little unnerving at how much of it is beyond me. Yet some things are beginning to make sense. Usually in a barn setting you have families who own horses that their own kids ride and some own more and let out ridership for a fee, or else the trainer owns and lets as such. But here's this gal who owns quite a number, at least a dozen, but never charges for kids to ride.

“May I ask you something?”

She turns toward me deliberately that curious smile. Whether I'm unnerved by that act or just by the fact that I'm pressing in to her life with the next question, I am still unsure.

“So...when....” which fades into a sigh as I look the other way.

“Yyyyyyyyyyyessss?” I can hear the smile. I take a deep breath and bellow it out.

“If this an appropriate thing to ask, how do you choose which kid gets to ride?”

Her smile brightens and brings her eyes into the act as a pair of luminescent blue hounds following a scent into my depths. She breathes deeply and looks away, into her head, as though life itself depends upon the accuracy of her answer, despite the fact that we had stood around and talked many times throughout the weeks, about the weather and our crazy schedules and getting called to work at all hours, and now we stood in a paddock next to a corner of the ring.

My 1984

The summer started with my first June VBS* as a “teen” and ended with a back-to-school-retreat right before I started 7^th grade and was a wonderful buildup to my 13^th birthday, well, except for when the whole family got a stomach bug on the 4^th of July.

Still the radio did everything right, well, at least once I had shed some of my inbred prudence and decided to live a little. As I rigged up the AM/FM section of an old console hi-fi in the garage I got my first taste of Springsteen as he danced in the dark (with googley-eyed Courtney Cox in the vid to boot) and then later on wondered why Peter Wolf was into the same thing as he belted LIGHTS OUT…UHHH HUHHH...and who can deny the foreboding edge of Billy Idol’s eyes without a face?

It's important to remember that my family never bothered to get cable when I was younger...so, instead of the MTV perspective that my peers had of the summer's hits, my imagination supplied all the visual interpretation, and in those days I couldn't have been more inspired by life all around.

On all those rides to and from teen activities I realized that not all popular music was really far out, as Cindy Lauper pointed out with her timeless time after time, which as my blonde-haired crush Jenny pointed out was the number one hit at the very moment he worked the controls of the church van’s crappy AM radio…countless boomboxes turned heads whenever Prince’s guitar announced that doves were about to cry, and then not long after that those funky drums calling us to go crazy. One time I was riding with Mom and from a nearby vehicle heard Steve Perry crooning to his Sherry about how their love holds on…I looked and this dude was cranking it up to get me to look so he could make a face or something, just to mess with some kid on a warm evening.

Then there was my special assignment…Mom decided to treat Dad to an early birthday gift and have me install a new stereo in the truck. Finally…not only the best system we owned (FOUR speakers!) but the cab seemed to resonate those songs perfectly, even with only about 10 watts total power and the fact that the word subwoofer hadn’t been invented yet. I'll never forget how good those Cleveland area stations sounded when we took a camping trip up near what was then Sea World. But most of the time I just listened in the driveway at home. Dudes from down the street would ride their bikes around and stop by and we would talk thru the window about our favorite tunes and artists…I remember telling Matt Goecke that I was into Billy Joel, an in the back of my head I was thinking of the all-vocal For The Longest Time.

Almost forgot about the time I could get Dr. Demento by fluke one Sunday night…see, in my home town we only had so-so radio until after I moved away and so the atmosphere (and God’s sense of humor…) had to create a path for anything cool to come through, in this case Rock 104 WXKE out of Ft. Wayne. So, even tho I had heard novelty acts before I had never come across a wealth such as the Doc, and thankfully I had a tape rolling for most of it…especially for a moment I could have never seen coming…Bryan Bowers' one and only Scotsman *sigh*. It was late at night and there I am in my room laughing the hiney completely off my body…thing is, telling the guys at church about it got wayyyy more laughs than when I let them hear the tape; chalk that up to experience.

Then there were the minor hits no one remembers…ever heard Glen Frey of Eagles fame talk about his hot female neighbor, the sexy girl? And then there was this silly bubblegum retro spoof thing called They Don’t Know which turned out to be my introduction to Brit comedian Tracey Ullman. ON Imeem.com I just found a gem I hadn’t heard in 24 years…Rick Springfield making light of how his name sounds like that of an aforementioned legend from New Jersey. Oh yah…

So, there were countless moments that highlighted my introduction to adolescence during that summer as I constantly adjusted my brother’s old ten speed and observed the fairer sex from a safe distance (especially the gal a couple doors down and a couple years older - she hardly acknowledged my existence as tho she'd actually invented that form of torture...). The music had a way of bringing out the things in life I didn’t really want to face, namely, romance…some of the more soulful numbers, as the late great Dan Hartman dreamed about her if he couldn’t hold her tonight…what’s a body to do when a chorus like that just kinda pulls it out of you?

After that retreat and my birthday it was on to a new year of school…as I sat on the bus one afternoon I pictured myself entering a tunnel that would be the teen years. I had heard people say they’re hard and confusing and I spose I was coming to terms with that.

Heh, one the rising hits at that time was prolly my all-time favorite from Hall and Oates, out of touch, out of time…there it is, just as sure as I’m writing a windy blog about it a million years later.

*Vacation Bible School - a staple of children's Christian education, mainly in Evangelical circles and usually conducted during the summer months.

An Ode to Gravity

Gravity pulls stuff tow'rd Mother Earth
The bane of folks with generous girth

Yet, gratitude we owe for such a gift
That God bestow'd to check random lift

This man and beast alike both do share
Bound to soil for which we take care

And floating o'er trees such ease would bring
O how men of all ages have dream't such a thing

Yet sans terra firma's unseen grip on matter
Waste on the outhouse ceiling wouldst splatter

Even that so would we ever adjust
When our senses on gravity lose their trust?

Gripping on handrails to traverse the town
A lady dons barrel 'oops: "These tame me gown!"

Still it seems we have little reason to fear
For, the force always comes 'round year upon year

And as long as the Roy'l Court pays the right fee
We shall stick to the ground, which is all right by me

fit

because it's a mixture of desire and disgust
because this is the logical conclusion
because we feed off each other
because we give more we take more
because we are
because we can never figure it out
because we get closer every time we try
because this is how we untie each other's knots
because it's nasty as a sour apple

The world is dead

As we pile into the truck cab on Sunday morning
You ask me how I'm feeling...are you sick?

I say no I'm not sick, I don't feel anything
I'm dead...the world is dead, all is numb

So we go on to church with all the other dead people
Some say hello and some go about their way

Later on you ask me why I don't talk to other kids
And I can't really give a good answer, not now

But if I could it would go something like this
Because there are times when the world is dead

Johnny and the other boys always seem happy
They play with other kids and don't know why

Most folks don't step away and take a look
But then, some of us are always a step away

Being a step away is a catbird seat when things go well
Yet a prison cell when you just can't get a groove on

It is the latter times when the world is dead, because,
People have agreed that being uninspired equals lonely

Especially for those who don't consciously become such
Although it has a way of leaving a cavernous void within

So the world expires and green foliage yields gray stone
The lush banquet table withers to dry cold toast

You can't stop it and you can't change it
Because the world is dead, until further notice

plasma

visceral eruption
all heaven exploding

fireball screams
consumes us both

lethal heat envelops
anion satellites

expelled from orbit
of planet atom

surging raging
passion devours

wild free unstoppable
yet so divinely ordered

life's very fluid
pulsing within us

molecules bombard
why don't we make some

new unique substance
radiant true love

Life is not

Life is not worrying that the pastor's wife will see your kid with a finger up, inside, or anywhere near his or her nose.

Life is not shielding yourself from certain forms of mass media, from certain personalities, from certain racial groups, from certain lifestyles, or whatever, JUST BECAUSE that's the good person mold that has shaped you.

Life is not concern about how well someone else's house is furnished.

Life is not just what YOU make of it; it's also what you allow others to help you make of it.

Life is not staying in an unhealthy relationship because you're insecure or feel it's your duty to start what you finished.

Life is not always what you think it is.

Life is not - in the biological sense - guaranteed.

Life is not grabbing all you can while you can.

Life is not necessarily jumping out of the way before you sense lightning may strike.

Life is not in the truest sense, after all, a thing, but rather, a Who.