The Green Lodge tracks in the snow of my subconscious

My first memory of Don Henley’s video for “Boys of Summer” was that I almost always turned the channel when it used to come on MTV.  I had seen it in its entirely and it was a series of pictures that I didn’t understand.  I didn’t get why a young couple running on a beach in the summertime was in any way engaging, especially for four minutes.  In fact it was downright boring to me.

It would be close to 15 years before I bought Henley’s “Building the Perfect Beast” (because I dug the album’s other single, “All She Wants to Do is Dance”.  But when I did I kept running into “Boys of Summer”.  It’s tale of a love come and gone and all that you need to put behind you once you’re well into manhood, once you have a few grays and have taken it on the chin in love enough to know that you can’t always have what you want.  And when you do get it you can’t always keep it. 

I remember once, standing in a kitchen in the dead heat of a Brooklyn summer, making my Express Paella while she made gumbo and rice and beans at the same time in nothing but panties and her T-shirt.  I was young enough to believe that such snapshots overruled the tornado coming toward us, one which made the sweetness brief and bred anger and resentment for many years.  

She has a child now, and a spouse somewhere else.  We remember ‘us’ fondly but we know that we can never be back there again. 

Coming out of Target yesterday, a very different man than I was back then, I heard Henley’s opus playing through the mall speakers.  I understand it now, as I seem to be on a road where the loss comes before all the happiness.  When you’re stripped down to basics it’s your memories that matter most. 

“I thought I knew what love was/what did I know?” Henley sings. 

Those words haunt me today, as it feels like I fell through some wormhole and woke up in some other version of my life where all the devil have turned to angels and where all my heroes are just people ruled more by faults and fears than anything else.  The truth is that the only thing that’s changed it the way I see it.  I love regardless of facts and disagreements.  I know that roads intersect and then go apart.  I can’t have my summers of yesterday.  I can’t live in them forever because they’re just seasons.  And seasons always change. 

I remember a winter night in Brooklyn long ago.  On one hand it was a great night.  I raised a cup of Belvedere with Mase from De La Soul.  I danced with a very tall girl whose legs could have choked the life out of me.  And I got drunk for free in a crowded room full of entertainment media’s finest. 

There was a good hour and half towards the end that was kind of foggy. I found myself wandering the room with a point-and-shoot, snapping pics of whatever and whoever caught my fancy.  Someone who I thought of as a little sister was there, as was my best friend, as were half the people I knew.  But when I exited the party early on a winter Sunday morning, staggering the multiple blocks to my lodge, I felt like I was missing something.  As a matter of fact, it almost felt like I wasn’t there at all. 

The morning after, while recovering from a category two hangover, I ended up at a brunch where I introduced myself to a woman who I had already met the night before.  Before I could apologize she told me that it was ok. I was drunk, but I was cool, just doing my own thing.

But it bothered me. 

When I made the physical assessment of my life everything seemed to be in place. Sure I had less money than I’d had in the years before, but I was making my rent.  I was still going out nights.  And I’d occasionally meet a woman who interested me.  

But I wasn’t happy.  

This wasn’t some out loud declaration.  But it was something I knew.  I just didn’t know what to do about it. 

So I retreated from the world, hiding in clouds of smoke between mirrors.  Once cable went out I did the piracy thing at a local coffee shop.  I wrote two books under a pseudonym.   I got a 9 to 5 hoping that I’d get promoted so I could hide behind a desk.  But my boss refused to give me a desk slot.  

“I don’t want you to stop writing,” she said.  But that, however foolish, was exactly what I was trying to do. 

Being God, he was onto my plan before it was fully executed.  I went out for orange juice and Excedrin and fell into an abyss.  

The days and months ran together.  I woke up in different places, as chauffeur and nanny, as dejected and betrayed friend, as healer and the afflicted.  Each room was coated with kerosene.  Each step I took was the spark from a match.  It all burned, and kept burning. 

I couldn’t stay in any house long enough to pick up the remote and get comfy.  The Hail Marys that used to win games made a habit of falling short.  I’d stopped drinking long before. But the problems continued.  I prayed and I meditated and I changed it up, but I kept ending up covered in ashes.  

I kept dying, like a cat who couldn’t count.  But just when it seemed like I was about to flatline, lightning came down from the heavens and jumped me back into Purgatory.  I just didn’t get it. 

Then one day I found myself under the rubble of myself, bound and gagged and sedated by hidden enemies who no longer cast a reflection.  I fell into that lifeless vessel.  And then his eyes opened.  What I saw was a world I had never seen before, but one that had been there all along. 

I walked miles upon miles soaked in soot. Then I came to a river.  The boy I expected to see in the water’s reflection was gone.  What I saw was the man I had always wanted to phone me from the future, to tell me that everything was going to be ok. 

I used to be afraid of the fire underneath my cool surface.  I was scared that it would scar me if I ever let it rage out of control. Then someone dropped a live grenade into the furnace within my chest.  But after it went off I stood there, still in one piece, without a single burn.

I had tried to incinerate every trace of myself.  And yet I still was. When I turned back to the road I found a fork in it.  I could go where I’d be done. Or I could go back the way I came and see if it led me to the same place where I started.

I never got back to the brownstone doorstep I had pined for. Instead I found a village of those who had walked the same trail.  Time is a mystery wrapped in a riddle of self.   I guess I figured it out when I was supposed to and found my way…home.  

I remember being 13 and coming home from school to find my bedroom window forced open.  I didn’t have to be a genius to know that someone had broken in.  But I still found myself studying that unexpected opening, as if some unseen clue might reveal itself now that I, the room’s occupant, had returned. 

The refrigerator in the kitchen was wide open.  The gallon of my favorite lime drink was laying on the floor but sealed, proof that the thief had stopped for a bit of a refreshment on his way out.  The TV and VCR were gone and my dog, who normally could be heard barking in another state, was locked in a room where someone he knew had placed him, looking like he’d just gotten up from a nap.  

I wasn’t afraid and I knew what to do.  I leashed the dog, went up the block with him and found a cop.  The cop got on the horn and there was a wagon full of backup ten minutes later.  I knew the place was empty but the cops did their whole gun-out-check-every-nook and-cranny-act until they came to the same conclusion.  

They dusted for prints but never found anything.  It was a quick in and out job.  Crack money, or rent money.  But not much else.

I’ve tended to view thievery as a kind or art, a complex puzzle.  How do you find you way through a closed door, or a room without windows to get what you want? How do you get in and out undetected, without leaving a trace?  

It was a Rubik’s cube that infected my taste in everything from movies and music to clothing (There’s nothing like stealing something choice off a thrift store rack and getting it for next to nothing).  It got under my skin, and eventually into my work. 

My childhood home was burglarized three different times.  What they took was never recovered.  No suspects. No witnesses.  Were we out in the ‘burbs somewhere I might had wondered if we’d been hit by a ghost.  The truth, however, was far more simple.  It was most likely someone we knew. 

I’ve always carried a short list of culprits in my head.  Enough of the dudes I came up with in neighborhood had caught cases or been in and out of juvie.  All of FFC knew me and my dog.  But when it came to narrowing the list I never wanted to point a finger.  

We had insurance. Life went back to normal.  Why bother?  Isn’t that usually what happens with us and ‘things’?  Once they’re gone we give up the revenge plot and just let them go.

As I leave the towering inferno that my life became for most of my 30s behind, I’m trying to dismiss blame and suspects as much as I can.  Over the course of living and learning the truth has come out about many a buried thing. As I tried to get to the bottom of myself, to rebuild, the dogs of curiosity and circumstance unearthed secrets and lies from prior seasons.  

Other cogs in the machine sabotaged my own. Jealous girls remade the world to keep me from various other Juliets.  Betrayal erupted from once peaceful soil seemingly without reason, then with more motives than I could count.  Not unlike those cops more than 20 years, I came to understand that any further investigations would be too little, too late.

These days I myself have become a thief of sorts myself: copying and pasting fragments from the lives of others into my own collage, a document of past/present/future that seeks to explain what it’s was all about from my POV.  And I’m reacquiring a future someone put in their pocket when they thought I wasn’t looking.  

This time it’s not about things returned. It’s about a return to possibilities.  If it’s for me to have I’ll have it again.  I’ll tear down locks and steels walls to crack the case and make the switch and walk away with the name-engraved prize.  This time I won’t wait for anyone to swoop in and save me.  This time I’ll find justice on my own. 

My uncle Porter is 93 years old.  He wrecks a car every few years but doesn’t drink anymore, goes to church every Sunday and reminds me whenever he sees me that he thought I’d grow up to be taller.  But those aren’t the reasons I’m writing about him.  I’m writing about him because of his garden. 

My great grandmother’s house burned down in the 70s.  And Porter built a small house of his own from the ashes that remained.  It was more like half a house, really, a two-room spot with a slanted roof.  But outside every summer was enough planted produce to feed a small family.  Whenever we returned from Powhatan, VA, a country town about an hour away from Richmond, we’d have bags full of fresh tomatoes and green beans, all birthed by the work of his hands. 

Over a year ago I was given the gift of an aloe vera plant, one of the first I’d ever owned.  There was something about the day to day regimen of watering it and putting in the bi monthly sticks of plant food that I enjoyed.  I believed in its growth. And it bloomed.  Soon one plant became three, even with the regular use of the plant for healing wounds and facial scrubs.  And it’s still got growing to do. 

For the past few months I’ve found myself in another place, another house where I do work.  There the planters and pots have mostly sick and dying things.  So I’ve decided to give them some life in my time there.  As I cook, herbs and veggies make the most sense.  I’ve always wanted to be able to go out back and just pull some basil out of a pot, or dig up a few potatoes or onions in the harvest months for a big family meal that all can enjoy. 

I often feel like this need to grow comes from something beyond myself, a sense of ancestral spirit guiding me through tough times.  As so many things are changing, and so much has died, there is true joy in seeing the new sprout forth from the earth.  I can only dream of what it’s like when it’s your child that comes into the world, something light years beyond the fruition of created work.  As I get older and for the first time feel that strain in the knees or the wear of a walk too long or rest too short, I understand the pride of parenting, in the many forms it takes.  Life goes on without you.  It’s your job to make sure it grows in the right direction. 

While I have done my share of shampooing, massaging and the occasional emergency painting of toes, there are just certain lines a straight man doesn’t cross.  Make-up is one of them.  

I remember once, years ago, standing in my bathroom doorway transfixed by an exes application of the “smoky eye” technique.  Watching her trace and layer as I studied her all but standing on her toes, I saw that she had become her own canvas, a face of her own design. 

It made me think of a bedtime moment I had with my Pops when he showed me the image of an Egyptian woman applying makeup to her face. 

“Who would want a girl with all of that stuff on her face?” I asked, at ten (or maybe 11).

“Someone you’ll want to marry,” Pop laughed.  

The words might as well have come from Obi Wan himself. 

It was this morning, while in mid-rant about Gwen Stefani, that I Youtubed my favorite clip of hers, No Doubt’s “Underneath it All”.  My favorite images comes in the final minute or so when she lays in bed before the camera, completely make-up free, proving that her pale blonde beauty can stand alone, free of all the accessories.

In more recent times it’s become a rite of passage to watch women put on their armor.  The most fluid of them become different characters with each day or week.  Others have the same process memorized: the same eyeshadow, blush and lipstick finished off with a splash of a fragrance suiting sense of self.  

It is these characters that seduce us men everywhere from the water cooler to lunchtime bistro to the bar at the local discotech (aka “The Club” for those of you in this century).

There’s nothing better than those arresting moments when woman as woman makes her entrance, the sway of her outward assets moving at varied speeds and swings, depending upon intent.  The right heels, the right dress, the right scent left on cheek and neck after even the most innocent embrace, and it’s easy to see why the dudes that have it give it up like there’s a gun in their face. 

Those moments are great for beginnings, for the song’s intro.  But what gets me across the bridge is what lies underneath.  Can she break you down in sweatpants and an an office tee, free of face paint?  Does the erection feel just the same at 4am when she’s got crust in her eyes and breath that reeks of the garlic and ginger combo you served up six hours before? 

She can work it.  But does she live it?  She can wear it.  But can she strip it?  What matters to me is what it look like when it call comes off, when she’s standing at the threshold twenty years after her “perfect” and making me want it more than any vixen in bikini and g-string.  

It’s in you all.  Have you lost it? Can you find it? Do you even know it’s there?  If you don’t, then we don’t.  Peel back your layers and take a look in between.  What do you think?

Inspiration can come from the strangest of things: some as vast as the neckline on something strapless, others as tiny as T.I.’s lady in wait.  The spark for this piece is the latter, a single line from rapper Crooked-I’s verse on “Hammer Dance”, the new single from the acclaimed all-star quartet known as Slaughterhouse. 

The line: “In these LA times, I wake up on one/ house shoes and coffee/knowin’ the paper gon’ come”

While I didn’t grow up in a “coffee” household, the Sunday paper was an institution, whereever I was.  I remember clearly seeing (at different times) my mother and both my father and grandfathers: stripped down to their boxers, nightgown or raggedy t-shirt and sweatpants, as they sat perched on something comfy, slippers or bare feet as crucial accessory for the scene, indulging in this family ritual.  

Combined with the added aroma of something brewed with real beans (or herbal bag) and you’ve got the moment most men and women take just before the week begins, to get their heads in order.

I think it’s because I worked in publishing that the newspaper part was quickly switched out for something else: novel or memoir, movie or DVD, a food project of  some kind made of one or two.  I remember walks to the corner bodega the Brooklyn of Spring in flip-flops, sweatpants and my old Morehouse gym shirt in search of OJ, the occasional French(or Italian) baguette, some fish to broil and, if I was lucky, a ripe mango or cantaloupe to make it all go down sweet.

While most of the world squeezes out a quiet Sunday every once in a while, I’ve been deprived of mine for a minute.  It doesn’t work the same in hotels, or other people’s houses.  It doesn’t feel just right when you do it in sneakers and jeans.  It doesn’t satisfy the same way when it’s not your beverage or choice, or when she’s talking about nothing but herself and blowing your morning high in the process.  

It doesn’t work when the cyclones are rearranging your work in both lives sleeping and awake.  I’ve gotten used to the restlessness.  And maybe that’s why Crooked I’s line struck the highest of chords with me. 

Am I waiting for certain creative ventures to bear fruit so I can get off this island? Of course I am. Am I missing such Sundays of past, walking through their already written scripts in search of residue to fill my pipe because the earth of my new world is still finding stability? Yes. Do I know for certain that the past is a rather brilliant prologue for the opus to come? Check.  But….

I still miss the ignorant rantings from my neighbor beneath me. I miss the scent of a woman on hand-stitched yarn.  I miss the taste of Veuve and Pulp-Free naranja chasing down baguette french toast sprinkled with roasted shallots and lamb bits.  I miss the chill coming in through the screen door from the ocean, the dried flecks of salt on my skin from the morning ‘swim’, and Stevie proclaiming “Visions” on the Imix.   

Each morning, at eight, I spend thirty minutes in this private Idaho of mine, before its off to the grind of saving myself (and the world as an unexpected benefit). It doesn’t always come with croissants or croquettes.  But it’s nice enough when the bus driver says ‘Good Morning’, or when the solo shrimp and grits comes out just right.  Ain’t no houseshoes on the front lines of covert (r)evolution.  But I make do, until I can leave phaser and saber in the drawer for a while, and take my Sunday mornings off the sacrificial altar…as they are most definitely worthy of the long wait.