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of all the sins that i've committed, betrayal is one that i have not. if, or when there is a final reckoning, there will be black marks aplenty... transgressions are burned into the soul, to be remembered starkly at some godforsaken hour long before daylight. and, though there may be someone else within arm's length, at this time you are most truly alone... to face judgment, without sympathy. in the company of your one most ardent adversary: your conscience. of course, that's just me. or so it may seem. as fate would have it, my one remaining blood relative is my mother. there were but four of us, thrown together for our weaknesses and strengths, eccentricities or insights... or maybe because this is where the world put the ones bent into the shapes that were proscribed. for all of the stories of privilege and abundance and family that were handed down, all there really was amounted to these personalities... these souls. and the ground we stood on. brother-grandmother-cousin... gone now: suicide, great age, despair. yet, the one who brought me into the world... controlled by raging negativity, or complete passivity... and occasional flashes of possibility, remains my last responsibility. my parent. rarely, friend and confidante. since her sale of "ancestral" property to SlickWillie, all that's left is the house that my grandfather built with his own hands and enough dirt to give it a place to stand. Bill, who i have known for more than twenty years, have worked with, gotten drunk as a lord with, troubleshooted bizarre foreign cars with, and called "friend"... and am soon to adventure to the formulaOne race in Indy with... well, he's been busy. surreptitiously telling others that he will have that house. finally, calling her and making a bid. those he boasted to, eventually getting word to me. but not to my face, yet. the place where i was born. where i first listened to scratchy jazz on the radio. cut, bruised, broke and strained to help maintain. got shot point-blank with an air rifle in a firey argument with my kid brother. awoke to coffee on the woodstove, and SexPistols on the player. where my grandmother departed this life. maybe it's wrong to place such strong feelings on a "place"... when all of it is really just a temporary leasing of that which is never really truly "ours". but this... eats at my very core. eclipsing the bee sting on the bottom of my bare foot this afternoon. dulling the satisfaction of sweating in the swampy air of the garden... barehanded, rooting new plants in warm earth. obscuring the gift of air in my lungs, solidity underfoot, and thought in my cranium. there's gonna be a showdown. |
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