Cody Weber Art Retrospective — 2017
PHOTOGRAPHY
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
VAGUELY OMINOUS
WRITING
Charlie
I met him in the fourth grade, but we weren’t immediately friends. That would take a while.
He introduced himself as Charlie, nervously shook my hand, and said he had been dating my sister for a couple weeks. His buck-tooth smile lit up the living room and he expressed a love for old pop music. He said that his dad was a musician, too, but not a real one like my dad. He didn’t play shows or do anything with it, Charlie said, but he could play Blackbird by the Beatles and sound exactly like George Harrison.
I didn’t like him at first. He was too bubbly, too effervescent, and I mistook that as fakeness. After all, nobody was that optimistic. He was lying about something. And so I kept my guard up when he would come around. I would sit at my computer, wouldn’t say hello, and was just generally that standoffish prick that you see in sappy made-for-TV movies. It never did deter him, though. He would always introduce himself like he hadn’t told me that his name was Charlie and like I didn’t know that his dad played the guitar and sounded exactly like George Harrison when he sang. His effervescence never waned and that made me even more suspicious.
“There’s no fucking way he doesn’t notice that I don’t ever say anything back. What a fake jackass.” I thought, cynical as ever, even as a child.
My sister broke up with him a couple weeks later to date an athletic, popular boy and, just maybe, improve her social status. I felt bad for Charlie and remember seeing him cry outside of the principal’s office after school let out. I didn’t actually say anything to him, but I recall this as the first time I ever wanted to.
Charlie still showed up at my house a lot. This wasn’t especially uncommon. My house became the go-to spot for estranged youths and my dad took them all in the same way an old woman might take in stray kittens she finds underneath her porch. He would feed them, clothe them, and treat them all like his own kids. I would later discover that Charlie probably needed this more than most, but it didn’t happen right away. That would take a while.
One evening after school, Charlie saw me riding my bike around and approached me with a simple question.
“Hey man, why don’t you like me?” He asked. I never thought about it before that and his bluntness caught me off guard. I didn’t really have a response, so I shrugged. He continued.
“I think you’re a cool guy. Can’t we be friends?” He asked.
“I don’t think so.” I replied. I didn’t want friends back then, but I immediately knew that that wasn’t going to be a good enough excuse for Charlie, so I didn’t say much more.
“Is there something wrong with me?”
“No, man. There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“Then what is it? Why can’t we be friends?” I felt like I needed to think of an excuse, so I searched for any low-hanging fruit I could find. And then I stumbled upon it.
“We just aren’t interested in the same kind of stuff, Charlie.”
“Bullshit!” He said. “You’re into music, I’m into music. You’re into writing and drawing and so am I. We’re both creative weirdos that people don’t like. We’re more alike than you think.”
“We’re weird in different ways, man. You’re weird in a Pokemon, cartoonish way. I’m weird because I’m quiet. They aren’t the same thing.”
“So we can’t be friends because I like Pokemon?”
“No, not specifically because of that. That’s the only way I can describe our differences, though.”
“Fine.” Charlie turned around and walked inside my house. He would try very hard to change my sister’s mind, but it was no use. She didn’t want to be his girlfriend and I didn’t want to be his friend. I felt sorry for him, but I still wasn’t interested.
The next day, Charlie returned to my house and excitedly explained to me that he’d thrown away all of his Pokemon cards.
“Now we’re weird in the same way!” He said.
“Man, I didn’t tell you to do that.” I replied.
“I know, but so what? Can we be friends now?” I don’t know if it was just sympathy for the kid or if that was the moment that I actually realized that somebody wanted to be my friend without any ulterior motives. I suddenly felt like a huge asshole (and rightly so).
“Yeah man, we’re friends.”
The two of us were inseparable that summer. We started making comic-strips together, wrote stories until our wrists hurt, and even tried jamming a couple of times. I met his parents and, though very sweet, I suddenly understood why he spent so much time at my dad’s house. His father lived in a makeshift apartment converted from a small hotel room in town. His toilet was next to his bed and his bed was situated next to a table that housed a small stove-top and television. The only space of available floor was the small mat next to the door. I couldn’t imagine how one person could live in such an environment and simply couldn’t fathom two people living in it at once. His dad was friendly and meek, rode an old bike wherever he needed to go, and actually did sound a lot like George Harrison when he sang. He could play Blackbird. Charlie wasn’t lying.
His mom was a sweet, eccentric soul-singer and lived the next town over. She seemed to have her life put-together a little more. She drove an actual car, lived in an actual house, and had an actual job that she actually woke up and went to every day. But it didn’t seem like she spent a whole lot of time at home and Charlie was often left to his own devices. More often than not, he ended up sleeping on my dad’s couch.
I discovered my love of writing with that kid. He was so unafraid to just make stuff, so unnerved by the potential of failure or, worse still, making something that sucked. I don’t think Charlie really thought about art in those terms. It wasn’t ever about creating a masterpiece as much as it was just doing it because it was fun. Charlie’s art had a childlike whimsy about it that stuck around well into his adulthood and I attribute a lot of that to his ability to just love the process. Unlike me, somebody that was (and often still is) obsessed with the result, he didn’t even consider it. My favorite song he ever wrote showcases that whimsy perfectly. It’s called About Nothing.
Charlie’s dad passed away one morning before school. He wasn’t ill, it wasn’t expected, and the news hit Charlie like a sack of bricks. The two of them were very close and I noticed an immediate shift in his personality in the crater that his father left in his heart. Gone were the days of his bubbly effervescence. He was downtrodden, sad, and though I tried my best to be there for him, I knew that there wasn’t anything that could fill that hole up. It was something he would have to process on his own. We distracted the sadness with art the best that we could, but I noticed that his characters were all a little more jaded than they were prior to his dad’s passing.
And that’s when his mom told him that they were moving away to a city in Iowa called Ames. They needed a new start, she told him, and there was simply more opportunity up there than there was down here. I helped Charlie pack his boxes and he cried all night in an empty bedroom. The next morning, he was gone and our friendship fizzled out.
He found me on MySpace a few years later and we reconnected. One morning, back in 2012, he called me and we talked for six or seven hours straight. He told me about his life, how he was a full-time musician bumming it around on people’s couches. He said he had a band called, “Morning Sex and The Good Weed”, but was most excited about his solo record. He said he even got signed by a label up there and that people were really responding to his stuff. I was very happy for him. I was relieved that he didn’t give up like all my other friends had done at that point.
“Hey man, if you are ever in the area hit me up. I could probably get you a show.” I told him. When I hung up the phone, I smiled and realized that his effervescence had made a triumphant return. He was exactly as I remembered him before his dad died. A year or so later, I heard that his mom had fallen down a flight of steps and died. I tried finding him online, but MySpace was long gone by then and he didn’t yet have a public Facebook. There was no way to reach him. I thought about Charlie a lot and hoped that he would somehow find a way to reach me.
In 2014, he did, in the form of a Facebook message.
“Cody! Dude, this might be weird but I was wondering how close you are to Fairfield, Iowa?”
“Charlie. Dude, how the hell have you been?!” I was flabbergasted. We hadn’t talked in so long and there was so much I wanted to ask.
“I’m good, dude! Could you get to Fairfield tonight? I have a show at The Arbor Bar tonight.”
“I will be there.”
It was an easy trip. The Arbor Bar was roughly three blocks from my house. I remember seeing that gap-tooth smile from a distance and he greeted me with the kind of hug that you can’t give somebody without a whole lot of love. He killed his set and played, “About Nothing” after I requested it. Afterward, we spent the rest of the night outside swapping stories. I was blown away at his ability to recollect things I’d long forgotten about. He even remembered my birthday. Before I said goodbye, I bought all three of his records and offered him a place to crash if he ever needed it.
“We should get together and make some shit together sometime. I’ve missed the hell out of you.” He said and I agreed.
“We definitely should. But…hey man, there’s something I gotta tell you.” I replied.
“What’s up?”
“Well, remember when we were kids and you threw all your Pokemon cards away so I would be your friend?” He chortled and shook his head.
“I’m super fucking sorry about that.”
“Oh dude, it’s no big-” I interrupted him.
“No man, it is, and I’m really sorry.” We hugged again and I said goodbye.
This process repeated itself almost exactly in 2016. He showed up to the Arbor Bar, he killed his set, he played About Nothing for me, and we talked for the rest of the evening outside. The only difference was that we would actually make a plan to record.
“The rest of my year is pretty busy.” He told me.
“But let’s get together in January?” I agreed and went home after purchasing another one of his records. His bubbly, hippy attitude had rubbed off on me and I was suddenly optimistic about life. Charlie had a way of doing that to people.
That was the last time I ever saw him.
That January, Charlie took his life in the early morning hours by laying down in front of a train. I was supposed to pick him up less than a week later, but I would never get that opportunity. As brightly as he appeared in my life, he made an exit for the final time.
I was in Nebraska when I got the news. I kept seeing “RIP CHARLIE” posts on my Facebook feed and wondered who the hell died. As I scrolled down the page, I saw another one of those posts, but that one was accompanied by a photo. My heart sank. What the fuck is going on? I messaged every single one of our friends until somebody replied with the news. It wasn’t even real to me. I was so sad, so angry, so disappointed that we weren’t going to see one another ever again. I cried in that hotel room all night long. When I woke up, my swollen face was glued to the pillow. And then I wept some more.
Charlie was sincerely the sweetest person I have ever known. It pains me to know the darkness that lived underneath that and I struggle with it often. Of all the people I’d ever known in my life, I suspected Charlie to be depressed the absolute least. It never even occurred to me to ask because he was always just so fucking happy. His happiness rubbed off on anybody nearby and he was always looking for the good in everything. Oftentimes, he didn’t even have to look. Charlie could just glance over at something and instantly discover the good. I was so jealous of that, so envious of his ability to just be content despite the bullshit.
I dreamed about him last night and that compelled me to write this little piece here. I miss him a lot and I wish he would have called me. I wish he would have told me he was sad. I wish I’d have planned to pick him up a week before I did.
He’s gone now and that’s just something that is. No good to be found in it, I’m sure of that, but I bet there would be if that kid was still around to examine it. If there was any good at all, Charlie would find it. He probably wouldn’t have had to even look.
“Supersonic superman is frozen and I don’t think he likes the path he’s chosen. Sometimes I feel I’m cryogenically frozen, but I don’t care the pot my flower grows in.”
Miss you, buddy.
Ex-Steps
I was driving back from Pennsylvania and was almost home. The sun was well below the horizon and there were recently plowed cornfields on either side of me exposing the state’s receding hairline under a harsh white moonlight. I could see the finish line after a grueling thirteen hour day of teary-eyes and an empty passenger seat that only rivaled the silence in terms of what made me more sad. My hand crept over and turned the radio back on. I thought to myself, “this is what it feels like to be totally defeated,” and carried on listening to the same loop of an NPR broadcast for the third time in a row. It didn’t matter much. I wasn’t paying attention. Anything to blot out the silence.
Defeat doesn’t have a bottom.
I was nearing Macomb, Illinois when I noticed my headlights weren’t as bright as I remembered them being ten minutes prior. Then my interior lights all suddenly disappeared and the NPR broadcast finally died out. I pulled the car over to the side of the road and welcomed the silence like a child welcomes a needle from the doctor. I slammed my fists hard and intently into the steering wheel and screamed obscenities at the top of my lungs. Why, I asked, did the car have to fuck with me now? You, too? I wondered. Defeat continued to wash over me.
A little old man answered his door and tried to jump me. No dice. He offered to give me a ride into town and told me the story of taking his wife home from Germany after some war.
“62 years and counting, young man.” He told me, then asked what the hell I was doing in Pennsylvania to begin with.
“Same story you’ve probably heard ten million times, man.” I said.
“A girl?” He asked.
“Always is.”
He told me that persistence was key, said that his wife said no a thousand times before she ever said yes. Told me not to give up. I stayed pretty quiet after that.
I got the car towed home and had a series of tests run on her. Turns out the alternator was fried out…again…for the third time since I’ve owned the thing. And so I’ve been car-less for the last week or so. It’s not an enviable position to find oneself in and I’ve had an absurd amount of time to just sit by myself and have conversations that, if audible, would have likely forced my family members to commit me.
They weren’t even particularly paramount thoughts either. Borderline obsessive, but not especially important. I thought about pop music. I wondered when the 808 became a fashionable drum sound again. I wondered if the sudden wave of 80′s-era synth was a precursor to a new grunge period. Maybe I’ll turn on the radio and understand what I’m listening to someday. Maybe the zeitgeist would roll back around toward something I actually enjoyed. In due time. I will have my flannels ready (and my sour disposition never left, so I’ll have that going for me, too).
I thought about the man my mom used to be married to. He was a permanent fixture in my life from the ages of ten until my mid-twenties and then he just disappeared. The two of them got divorced and my mom eventually remarried to a very sweet man that I appreciate sincerely. I remembered bumping into that guy at a concert this summer and having a conversation with him in the same way that one talks to a stranger. It was weird. Several years had passed by at that point, after all, so maybe it was an accurate way to talk to one another. His imprint was certainly indelible on me, though, and I thought about that a lot this week.
The first time I ever drank whiskey was after I raided his cabinet as a curious pre-teen. I remember how it burned my throat, how I swore that I would never fucking drink Jack Daniel’s again for as long as I lived. I always thought there was something more to being drunk than there actually was. Like some magic door was going to open and it would make me more confident, more social, and more fun to be around. Mostly, back then anyway, it just gave me a stomach ache. I still think back to this experience every time I go out and order myself a whiskey on the rocks. It was his drink of choice and it became mine as well. Had I raided my own father’s cabinet, had I explored his endless treasure trove of Busch Light instead of my step-father’s cabinet of various hard liquors, I wonder if I would have instead grown an affinity for shitty beer. You become yourself in the smallest, most trivial moments and you never notice unless you examine it under a microscope.
That man scared me in a way that my own father never could. Where my dad was a bleeding heart, the kind of guy that found it difficult to even raise his voice, my step-dad was bipolar and prone to bouts of extreme aggression. You never knew what you were walking into when you stepped inside their house. That man was either the kindest, sweetest, most intelligent man in the room or the biggest asshole you’d ever meet. There was no middle-ground, no in-between, and I spent years walking on eggshells until he walked into the room with his trademark smile or that empty, far-away look that always gave him away. When I got older, I had a certain sympathy for that. I imagine that it had to be exhausting to be so extreme, and I knew that it wasn’t really something he could even control beyond numbing himself. It eventually became a very sad thing to see. But as a kid, as a young child, I remember just hating it so much. It gave me a whole new respect for my own dad (even with his shortcomings). I always knew what to expect with my father. He was (and is still) the same person. He’s consistent.
Sometimes I fear being that way myself. Like maybe that man’s uncontrollable emotions bled out into me, too. I think about the manic highs, the extreme lows, and I can sometimes feel myself experiencing them (albeit in a much less extreme fashion). When I’m feeling good, everything is wonderful and nothing can hurt me. When I’m feeling bad, everything is awful and nobody can save me. In me, too, there is no middle ground. I try to stay conscious of it. There’s no blood there, you know, and I’d like to believe that you can’t just catch emotional extremes from some dude your mom randomly met and married once. But I did learn about nihilism through him. I did learn about Jack Daniel’s and blues music and exactly how not to treat a woman. Maybe I subconsciously learned how to only feel things in black and white terms. I sure as fuck hope not, though.
My dad’s on his way over to help me install a new alternator on my car. I’m excited about that in many ways, the least of which being the potential to climb on out of my own head and distract the ghosts that live in there. I’ve grown so tired of this cynical nature, but I am not quite sure how to quell it. I can’t really control the way I think or the things I think about. It isn’t some conscious effort and, in fact, I think that the times I find ways to repress my cynicism is only ever consciously to begin with. Whatever is happening behind the scenes is still cynical as all hell. I’m not really curing anything, not improving myself beyond the surface level. Still in the kiddy pool. Still don’t know how to swim.
I keep telling myself that the first step is learning how to love myself. But what happens if that just isn’t possible? What if I don’t vibe well with me? What if we don’t connect? Can I learn to love somebody that I don’t just naturally have an affection for? What do I do if I can’t?
you stay in my fingertips
i spent my afternoon scrubbing your blood
out of the backseat of my car. there was
a welling of fluid formed in the creases
of my eyelids and i can still see the
faint impression of the red stuck in
the creases of my fingertips. it was
kind of fucked up, really, how sad it
made me to watch you disappear again
and after a solid forty-five minutes
of scrubbing and drying, scrubbing and
drying some more; i got most of it out
and i silently sobbed to myself in
the front seat of that old car
as it hacked and it wheezed
and I hacked and I wheezed
and the two of us were alone
in there, in that white coffin
moving toward a home that
wasn’t much of a home at all
and when I got there, i couldn’t bring myself
to walk inside. so i didn’t.
i sat there until the sun disappeared
and didn’t really know what to do with myself
so i went with my sister and took pulls
off of a large bottle of red vodka
while her friends tried to console me
even though i never expressed
how sad i was. when i got home
i couldn’t bring myself to go in
and i spent a little longer
in that old white coffin of a car
staring at the red in my fingertips
wondering if that was as close
as i’d ever again
be.
Aquaphobia
We went to the community pool after closing hours and I was asked what I thought prompted my irrational fear of being underwater. And I thought about it for a second, but couldn’t really say for sure.
Then I remembered.
My best friend in the third grade was a popular boy named Joe. I only make note of his popularity because it was in such stark contrast to how alienated I was at school. Far back as I can remember, kids didn’t like me much. I was too shy, too weird, I had wheezy lungs and eczema running down the length of both arms. I wasn’t particularly athletic or cute or outgoing and I mostly kept to myself in the back of the room. One day, Joe was assigned the seat next to me and we became very good friends for the remainder of that school year. To this day, Joe’s house is the only house that I ever spent the night at beyond my own. He was my first good friend.
So fast forward six or seven months. It’s Joe’s birthday party and he invites all of his friends. The house was full of popular, athletic kids from wealthy families and we were all congregated at Joe’s pool to start a scavenger hunt. I distinctly remember watching everybody talk to one another as I sat on a little chair against the railing, desperately wanting to be part of the conversation but not knowing how to introduce myself. This would become a major theme in my life, but this is the very first time I actually remember doing it. I was nervous that the other kids weren’t going to like me, or worse yet, be outwardly mean to me. Children can be vile, after all, and I was just small enough that I’d have been an easy target. So I just stayed back and listened as Joe’s dad explained the rules of the aforementioned scavenger hunt.
I was excited about it until I discovered that one of the clues led you directly to the bottom of the pool. I MIGHT have been a hair or two above three and a half feet tall and that pool was a good five feet at it’s shallowest point. Worse yet, I didn’t know how to swim (still don’t, by the way).
So we were all standing up there and I see the clue at the bottom of the pool. Nobody else does. My first instinct is to go and tell Joe, but he’s the head of the congregation and they’re all searching on the deck like little idiots. I wanted to scream.
“Dude, I see it. There’s a plastic tube right there. I can’t swim so you have to go get it. But go get it!” Instead, I stood at the edge and watched, hoping somebody would see me standing there and follow my lead to the bottom of the ocean (or pool, whatever, might as well have been the same thing).
Next thing I know, I hit the bottom of the pool and scrape the tube with the underside of my feet. I look up and see a group of kids pointing and laughing, patting the tallest one on the back, and try to reach the surface. I can’t. I flail my arms, kick my legs, contort my little body upward, but to no avail. I’m stuck there at the bottom with the clue in the black tube. I panic, get a lung full of chlorinated water and panic even more. This was the first time I ever thought that, just maybe, I could die. The kids were still up there, still patting the back of the jerk that pushed me in.
Joe’s dad eventually jumped in and saved me and the kids all stood around as I vomited an endless stream of fluid from the chair I never should have gotten up from in the first place. This might have well have been the gallows, because now not only was I the lone weird kid that Joe inexplicably hung out with — now I was the weird kid that almost drowned and threw up at Joe’s party.
The result of which was damn near instantaneous. The popular kids there outright ignored me until the parents disappeared and then they all took their shots at me. Some talked about how stupid I looked at the bottom of the pool. Others talked about how loud my asthmatic breathing patterns were. And a few just gave me a few looks that said, “I don’t know you, but I know I don’t like you.” Eventually, under the pressure of those kids, Joe too turned on me and started chiming in with them. I held my own and dealt with it the best I could, but I eventually had Joe’s dad take me back home.
“At least there’s nobody here to make fun of me or laugh as I drown.” I probably thought.
And that’s the story that I told at the pool last night. I kept it short, excluded the more revealing pieces of the narrative, but the meat and potatoes were there. The only reason I’m telling this story here right now is because it prompted a few questions beyond my fear of water. Firstly, what would have happened that day if I’d summoned the courage to be outgoing on that chair? What if his friends would have accepted me had I not been so shut off and reserved? Even if I’d gotten pushed into that pool and the story played out the same way and only changed after the fact; like what if his friends were concerned or friendly to me after that? Would I still have such a fear of water? And even more important than that — would I find it as hard to communicate with people now? Maybe this day, a vivid one that I remember so strongly, was absolutely crucial to the development and road I eventually walked down.
Maybe not, too. Maybe I was just friends with the wrong kid and I put too much stock in the experience. Maybe it doesn’t hold any water at all.
But maybe it does, too. Wouldn’t that be something?
Poems & Poets
you can either be the poet or the poem
and here’s the catch:
nobody wants to fuck the poem and
nobody wants to love the poet
you can’t be both, but you have to be one
or the other and that’s just
how it is and it’s just how
it has always been.
making the mistake is dire
(and you will make it over and again)
each method with it’s own
caveats.
two poets don’t work because they talk too much.
everything is a story to us
the napkin with the salt spilled on it,
an old man sipping on his coffee at four-thirty in the morning
the way the light creeps in like it doesn’t
want to be seen, it’s all part of the narrative.
when a poet loves another poet, they talk
so damn much that the moment passes
without much consideration until then
when the desperation sets in after
the love wears off and you’re left only
with a body beside you that doesn’t
set your soul on fire, and make no mistake
you don’t set theirs on fire either
and they both wake up wishing
that they were the poem,
but they aren’t and they
can’t be. it’s just the way it is
and the way it has always,
always been.
two poems can’t love one another because they
are so busy with themselves. it’s a game that
nobody ever wins, but the meantime is so
much fun that nobody is worried about the
ultimate consequence (and the oddest part
of all this, really): when you love a poem, especially
if you long to be one yourself,
to be loved and doted on and
written about with fondness and
appreciation and gratitude
when it inevitably doesn’t happen that way,
when the only words written in stone
are etched in a languid dialect
that nobody can read (especially you)
you become the poet and
there’s no going back
from that.
nobody wants to fuck the poem and
nobody wants to love the poet.
that’s the way it is and that’s
the way it’s destined to
always be.
if i’m ever proven wrong, i will
definitely write it down
then again, maybe
i won’t
maybe i won’t need to
lord sure as hell knows
by now that I’m
pretty god
damn tired
of being the
poet and
never the
word.
Eric Orwell
George Orwell’s real name was Eric Blair
which means he intentionally chose
the name George and probably thought to himself,
“god damn, Orwell is so much prettier than Blair,
jesus christ i hate my fucking name”
and that has never
made a god damn bit of sense to me
What kind of man chooses George Orwell over Eric Blair?
how can you trust a writer that does
something like that?
I have a hard time
reading his books with that
knowledge in tow because
I can’t get my head
around the fact.
The other night, we were all sitting in a hot tub
discussing our favorite pen names
I said that I loved the name Ernest Hemmingway
but couldn’t ever get into his writing
because it felt like he spoke to the reader
like they were dumber than he was and
even though that was probably the truth
it felt condescending but i really
liked his name a lot, though.
And then I mentioned the thing about George Orwell
and everybody looked at me like I was an idiot
“Only you would take issue with something
like that.” she laughed, but never said
what pen name she enjoyed the most
or what names she didn’t like even
as my step-father smoked a cigar
and my baby brother had nothing to add
because he doesn’t read and was
missing prime video game hours
to cook in a warm tub of water
with us.
it’s little moments like that where i know
i am hopelessly irrational and then
to further add to the case
i glanced over at the laughing girl
and felt my heart literally drop
into the conduit of my
stomach and dissolve
in the vat of acids
pooled there.
what kind of man chooses George Orwell over Eric Blair?
well…probably the same kind of man that
chooses to stare way too long
at a blinding, burning
light.
how can you trust a writer like that?
it’s probably why she has such
a hard time with
it.
I Said, “Yeah, Anytime.”
there’s no magic combination of words
to snap life into the ideal, so
instead of ruining the moment
on a fool’s errand,
i say nothing
and i think
wow, i’m really glad that
you’re here right
now.
and oddly enough,
that’s when it
is.
Sunspots
the morning sun crept in
through a slit in my curtains
and rested against your skin
like it was meant to shine
in just that way
like it was birthed from the center
of an ambitious star and knew
exactly what its destiny was
and maybe, i thought to myself
laying there, pins and needles
fingertips calloused and
my jaw clenched tight
itching eyelids, i thought
that just maybe
i was supposed to wake up
at the exact moment I did
and maybe that was my
destiny, too? after all
the star was so sure and i
was so sure and there was
this instant paralysis
as the orange illuminated
a small sliver of you
and how jealous i was of it!
to be all over you like that
the milk of morning washing your skin
highlighting these exact points
against the blackness of
the bedroom;
you were there
and i was there
and i couldn’t move
and i couldn’t breathe
and i couldn’t look away
and i stayed there like that
until the sun moved an inch over
and the room got all dark again
but i never did fall back
to sleep, you know,
because how could I?
there were small blots of light
stuck on the inside of my eyes
and if I blink hard enough
even right now,
i still see the orange glow
and these exact points
of your sleeping
majesty
i sigh, i laugh
i’m fucking crazy
i’m fucking crazy
and i’m so
fucked
now.
Pittsburgh
2:18 AM. The paint cracks and peels off the walls and the whole place smells of cigarette smoke and hope. I have never felt so present as I do when you’re beside me. It’s like the whole damn world opens up and closes in at the same time. They turn lung and they’re black and they’re new and they’re infinite and they’re infinitesimal all at the same time. There is nobody else, there is only you and me and the cigarette smoke and the hope and it’s so fucking beautiful in there no matter where we find ourselves. I find myself, though, over and over again. It happens when my hand brushes up against the small of your back, when my face rubs against yours and when your long strains of brown hair blot out my vision and I’m left blind and breathless. Infinite and infinitesimal all at the same time. The world opens up and closes like a set of old storm shutters on the side of some abandoned building in some forgotten town. There are no other people. There are no other houses. There are no other rooms. There is only you. There is only me. There is only cigarette smoke and hope.
The paint cracks and peels off the walls. The city comes to life and so do we.
Motivation
My train was supposed to board at 10:59 AM so, true to my habitual nature of being chronically early for things, I showed up there more than two hours before take off. I met a nice old man that was on his way home to his wife and a grumpy friend that was sick and tired of hearing about said wife.
We got to talking and I didn’t realize how much time had passed. Suddenly, it was 11:30 AM and Amtrak still hadn’t arrived. “Weird.” I thought, but my previous experiences had me halfway expecting it. It was, after all, true to the habitual nature of them being chronically inconvenient. But then the clock struck 12:30, 1:30, 2:30, and then 3-fucking-30 and still no train to pick the three of us lonely motherfuckers up. Now, all three of us were grumpy. We had places to be and it seemed stupidly far out of reach in Iowa when, at worst, we should have at least reached the windy city by then. I was starting to worry that I would miss my connecting train in Chicago when the Zephyr finally pulled around the bend at around 4:15 PM. I grabbed the conductor’s attention and asked him flatly.
“Hey, is there even a small chance I’m going to get stranded in Chicago? I really can’t take the risk of that happening.”
“No, sir! Not a chance. We already got you a new train to board. It’s waiting for you now. You’ll just have to hurry once we hit Union Station. Your seat is #38, up the stairs.” He gestured upward and I felt grateful that all hope was not immediately crushed. The grumpy old man, wise beyond his years, turned to me and gave me some sagely wisdom.
“Hey boy,” He said. “You need to raise hell if you miss that train. They’ll walk all over you if you don’t.”
And that’s when we hit Chicago. I ran a mile across the station with nearly 90 pounds of camera gear on my back only to be stopped by a large dude wearing an Amtrak uniform. I was already so fucking sick of seeing rude people in stupid outfits.
“We’re at max capacity. You’ll have to go to the front desk to board the next available train.” He lazily gestured into the distance and wagged his chubby finger around so much that he wasn’t actually pointing in any specific direction.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Front desk, sir.” He wagged.
The front desk was somehow even worse. Once I made it to the front of the line, after the endless sea of defeated people had conceded, I found myself openly scoffed at by this rude little man in a stupid little Amtrak uniform. This weasel at the counter seemed to revel in my predicament and every time he chuckled, I found myself just a little more angry. I tried to explain.
“I paid good money to make sure that I arrived on time. I asked the conductor and he told me with assurance that this exact situation would not happen. It has and it’s unacceptable.” He responded by laughing. I felt my face flush.
“We’ll put you up at the Mariott, sir.” He kept saying it over and over like some dumpy hotel was going to be more than enough of a consolation for my woes. It wasn’t. Then he’d look at me and pontificate; the same routine every interaction. It seemed like he couldn’t say a single sentence without laughing at me. The last one was the straw that broke the camel’s back and I saw red.
“I don’t want a fucking hotel, you smug cocksucker. I want to leave Chicago. Make this right and quit laughing at me.”
“Well, what do you want us to do about it, sir? The train left.”
“Not my problem! I’m not moving from this line until this is figured out. Get me a plane, get me a bus, I don’t give a shit. Make it right. I better be in fucking Pennsylvania by sunrise and I’m not leaving this god damn spot until you make sure that happens.” I couldn’t believe how loud and angry I was getting, but it felt righteous. After all, the company had broken their promise and I was wasting my time in the city I most despise. There wasn’t a chance I was going to stay in Chicago even a minute later than I had to. The people behind me bitched and moaned. I ignored them, instead choosing to mean mug the shit out of the smug little man in the Amtrak uniform.
That old man’s advice proved rather potent because I was on a Greyhound less than an hour later. Admittedly, I felt a little bad for getting so angry with the little weasel at the counter, but I couldn’t help myself. I had places to be and I wasn’t going to let some stupid bullshit get in the way of it. The bus was packed to the gills with other people and nobody could get an ounce of sleep on that ride due to it. I enjoyed the smoke stops, though, and the view was pretty. The sunrise was a bright orange and pink sherbet swirl. I wondered how it looked in Pennsylvania.
It felt pretty damn good to be so motivated like that. I have historically not been very assertive in my existence and I’ve been taking steps to change that. I am choosing to chalk this experience up as me having turned a page.
The photo above was taken in Cleveland and I was promptly yelled at for taking it.
“No pictures!” The driver said.
“Too late!” I thought, but said nothing.
Hey, you gotta pick your battles.
The Grand Degradation
I spent a good hour last night trying to remember the names of a few people I went to school with to no avail. I don’t know why I started doing it, but there I was; laying in bed and trying to recall the names of people I haven’t thought about in probably fifteen years. It was fruitless. Those names have been forever wiped from the chalkboard of my mind. How strange it is to be on the other side, those unimportant details that somehow define me now; leaked away to a complete nothing, a slow drip from the holes in my ears. It seems like I was a nineteen year old punk just a short time ago. It doesn’t feel like nearly a decade has passed. I occasionally look at the calendar just to make sure it really is the year that I think it is. When I go to buy cigarettes and the cashier asks for my age, I actually have to think about it for a second. It seems like I was just crashing on couches and sleeping with strangers and making mistakes that carved these mountains from the tundra of my spirit. They stretch upward toward infinity and I’m permanently stuck on the other side. I look in every direction and try to remember the blurry faces; the landscape of before that would surely appear alien to me today. If one cannot recall, did it ever happen to begin with? Was I there? Was I really?
That’s the thing. You don’t actually ever remember an experience. You only recall the last time that you remembered it. Memory is kind of like copying a VHS cassette over and over and over again. It’s a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy, a slowly degraded loop repeated ad nauseam for as many times as you recall. The image decays more and more upon each copy. The colors shift, the details fade, artifacts appear in faint lines and then distend like a starving belly until you can no longer see your toes. Suddenly you can no longer remember the little things, the seemingly inconsequential and trivial details about an experience. It’s a subtle deterioration and the mind is powerful enough that you can go your whole life without ever noticing the small changes. Was the wall white or gray? Did the flesh taste of skin or blueberry? Who was there? Were you? Were you really?
No one can ever say for certain. But can you remember what your toes looked like back then? Can you remember the faces? Can you remember the names? A copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. A sad loop that never ends. The grand degradation. The mountains stretched beyond infinity. Who was there? Were you? Were you really?
Cells
from a single cell
with no symmetry
to obtaining the eyes
of its mother
the next generation is
ever different and
always the same.
Hunter’s Lodge
You could almost the smell the dried, stale blood in there. I peeked around the corner halfway expecting to the see the ghost of a long dead hunter, his thick and calloused hands clutching the frame of the dusty, mostly-forgotten walls. I pushed the door open, though, and was greeted only by thick cobwebs and the corpses of emaciated spiders. Taxidermied deer lay in rot on display, its majesty watered down and lips now drooping heavily toward the floor. He looked surprised to see us there, like it was the first sign of outside life for thirty years or longer. The hunting license stapled to the wall said that it expired in the summer months of 1977. There were Polaroids stapled next to it of a man and a woman dressing a set of dead animals. They looked happy. The animals looked dead and you could almost still smell their blood in there.
The two of us walked around the abandoned lot for a good twenty minutes or so. She didn’t share the same enthusiasm that I did, but this one was different. Everything seemed so in tact, so perfectly placed, so intentionally designed that one had to wonder its story. What happened? Who died and left this place for us to find there, deep in the Appalachian mountains without a sign of civilization as far as the eye could see. I wondered about the hunting, the smell of fresh gun powder as the sun gently lifted over the horizon. I wondered about the dead animals, the way that the sunrise would have shined through their morning breath, or through their ribcages once suspended from the tall pines. I imagined the coffee and the conversations and the solitude. And I imagined that the man who owned it must have himself perished between that late summer of 1977 and now. I wondered who owned the property now, if they lived nearby, if they were going to carry on the tradition and meet me there with a shotgun in tow. I wondered if I, too, might be suspended from the tall pines before the day was over. I was probably being hyperbolic. I definitely survived, lived to put pen to paper and pen this narrative.
The abandoned houses here are all like that. Doors aren’t even locked. There probably isn’t much need, I suppose, considering the considerable effort it took to get to them in the first place. There probably aren’t a whole lot of weird people in these parts. Probably not a whole lot of people at all. So we wandered around and I looked at everything without disturbing its original position. I could still smell the blood. And I wondered about the stories.
But the walls didn’t speak up.
Aggressively Nice
The road turned gravel just off of the highway. If there was any gettin’ to be got, it stood to reason that it was going to be in the vast expanse of the mountains. But as we continued down the road, the gravel turned dirt and then, finally, the dirt turned into some halfassed combination of rock and dirt. Worse still, we hadn’t seen a single house in what felt like an hour, neither abandoned or settled, and I figured that turning around would likely be far more precarious than just sticking on it. We’d already made it this far, after all, and the road had to be constructed for some reason. Right? It wasn’t just going to disappear on a cliff and that be the end of it. It had to dip out in some community, just had to, and that’s where we would find all the abandoned stuff we’d traveled all this way to see.
But it didn’t, of course, or else I probably wouldn’t be sitting here writing about. Instead, the road just grew more and more dangerous. My car had a harder time navigating on it. And eventually, when it felt like we’d exhausted both of them, I turned the car around anyway.
Big Rock, meet ol’ Betsy. Get acquainted with the exhaust.
My muffler dragged on the ground like caveman knuckles. The car roared more loudly and with more gusto than I ever even expected her to be capable of. And the two of us were stuck on the edge of a mountain with no cell-phone service.
My first idea was simple: Rip the damn muffler off and deal with it when we got back into town. I’d done it before and it seemed simple enough. All I’d need was a screwdriver and a set of long, bony arms that could ease their way under the engine to detach it. I had the arms, but I didn’t have the screwdriver. I searched and I searched and I searched, but to no avail; I didn’t have anything even resembling a screwdriver and the bolts were far too tight to take off by hand (I tried). That idea was promptly scrapped.
My next idea was to say fuck it and drive the car out anyway. I’d ruin the muffler, but what was an exhaust if it had the two of us stranded anyway? I could suffer the consequences once I found my way out. That sound, though, was disgusting and loud enough to sway my decision away from this. And just in the heart of transparency, I feel like I have to admit that I really don’t know much about cars anyway. I was actually pretty worried that my car would catch fire and I’d be the cause of a national emergency.
So instead we just left the car where it sat and walked uphill in the direction that we came from. All told we made it nearly four miles before we found a stray property with an address on it. I never saw a house, but there was a sign that might as well have been the gates of heaven itself. From there, I was able to contact my aunt and she was able to find us.
Her husband has a rich knowledge of these mountains. He knows where all the good stuff is, knows how to effortlessly climb and descend them, and he immediately knew where my car was from just the description of the road that we were on.
“This is one of the places I was telling you about.” He said.
“You found it!”
We spent a while back at the original location trying to engineer some kind of system that would suspend the broken muffler high enough to get out. The first set of ropes snapped, but we eventually figured it out, and we were all back home again just in time for dinner. I’d figure it out in the morning.
This morning rolled around and my grandpa helped me find a mechanic some ten or fifteen miles away. Betsy roared and screamed as I glided downwards toward the town of Clarksville with an exhaust system rigged up by ropes and string. I shuddered at the damage this was going to do to my wallet and pulled into the shop with half a mind to follow through with my original plan and just rip the damn exhaust off myself. It’d certainly be cheaper. Instead, I rolled into the shop and watched a guy with a thick mustache gently weld the exhaust back into its original location. All told it probably took him five minutes.
“Thanks for getting us in.” I said.
“What we do I owe ya?”
“Nothing at all. And it’s non-negotiable.” The whole southern hospitality thing still amazes me. It didn’t take him a long time, sure, but he did fix my car and I felt like I owed him something for his effort. Still, the man with the mustache refused and I was heading back toward the house with a subdued Betsy and her reattached muffler.
Lesson of the day: The backroads of Arkansas are different than the ones back home in Iowa. They are more precarious, they make less sense, and they will rip your god damn car apart from the bottom up. Stick to the main roads and see what you can find from them. If you feel the need to walk one of these roads, pull the car over and hoof it.
All’s well, though. Let’s see what we can find today.
Malignants
The disheartening thing is all the development. Multi-million dollar Wal-Mart homes perched against the mountain ranges like tumors jetting out from the landscape. There were rivers and views blotted by them as giant semi-trucks delivered pieces of new houses and new tumors for the mountainside. History had been completely scrubbed from the towns and villages and were replaced by the front pages of Modern Living magazine. I was out of my element in every sense of the word. The air was cold and uninviting; the homes were brand new and the cars in the driveways all had freshly washed and detailed cars. The flat lands of Iowa shifted to these peaks and valleys that didn’t make a damn bit of sense to me. One could drive in a seemingly straight line for thirty miles or more and end up back in the town they started in. They could drive up one side of the mountain and pop up in another like they had the ability to warp and bend space itself. It was disorienting in a lot of ways.
It snowed back home today and I’m quite glad to miss all of that. It’s cold here, but it’s not snow cold and that’s a benefit that isn’t lost upon me. The two of us eventually did find some old abandoned houses, but even the ones we discovered lacked that sense of mystery that makes me enjoy this in the first place. One house was abandoned due to age and a crumbling foundation. The gas station was abandoned due to fire. Two seconds inside any of these places revealed more than necessary and there is a sense of magic that is lost when you immediately know the cause for its demise. I’m convinced that that’s the real reason you don’t ever see a cause of death on a tombstone. It’s not because it’d be in poor taste or that nobody wants to remember the way that their loved ones kick the bucket. No, I’m convinced that it would just make cemeteries a whole lot less interesting. It’s more fun to imagine your own stories. Sometimes it’s better to not know for sure.
The houses are all just far enough apart that it leaves me confused about whether or not I like the area. There are certain things about it that I find outright beautiful. I love the mountains, love the weird birds that bounce around more than they fly, and the tall pine trees that loom over those beneath them like bad news. I like the thinness and crispness of the air and the way that people genuinely seem to mind their own damn business. But what seems to be lacking due to this is that sense of community that exists elsewhere. Whether it be Keokuk, IA or Washington, PA or a number of other communities I have either visited or lived in for a short stretch of time — they all had a unique identity and sense of community that I just don’t experience here. The homes are too far apart for that, the towns too far and few between. Then again, I could be totally wrong about this. I’ve only been here a short time now, but there is certainly a disconnect that I’ve been experiencing here that I don’t typically experience elsewhere. The old curmudgeon in me loves the distance between people. The hopeless idealist finds it a little lonely. And so I oscillate between enjoying the area tremendously and being left a little sad just a short time later.
There was certainly more development than there was anything else on the route we found ourselves on today. In a lot of ways, I suppose this is a good thing. It means that certain parts of the country continue to expand. It means that there are new homes and new stories being written every single day. It means that nothing is truly stagnant as far as the eye can see. But it comes at the cost of losing something. What that something is still feels a little bit nebulous, but I’m sure it’s on the back of something. It doesn’t come for free.
But the views do.
Cows & Consciousness
I sip on my morning coffee and watch the cows drink from the watering hole. Steam rises from their bodies, ice has formed from the dew on the grass, and the sun arches over the bend. A little relief for all the fenced-in wildlife, but it isn’t intentional. The sun and the universe doesn’t care about the animals. It isn’t thoughtful or careful or vengeful or anything at all, really; it just is. Care is man-made construct not too dissimilar from the fences that line the farmland out here. It’s no different than the gas stove or the cars we drive or the idea that the sun looks as if it’s shining because it gives a shit. It’s all chaos with little-to-no-meaning outside of what one subscribes to it themselves, but it sure is a pretty site. I’m envious of the cows. None of them look out of place. They don’t appear to have existential meltdowns about the prisons they find themselves living in. They don’t look at the fence with anger or wonder what lies outside the barrier of it. They just drink from their watering hole and exist with what little space they have available. Up until their date with destiny, at the slaughterhouse with an old man and a shotgun, it all seems pretty damn enviable from my vantage point. And even after all these generations, all the cows and all their gallows and still; not one of them is aware of the reality. They don’t appear to be cognizant of much at all. And that, too, in many ways, is enviable.
People are too aware. We are often two or three steps ahead of the place that we find ourselves presently standing in, always wondering what’s to come and what has been and what the meaning is to either. We know the cost of living and the debts that still have to be paid. We know the fences well, are intimately conscious of the fabric and the infinite space outside of them. It makes us all feel very small and insignificant. We see the stars and know that they are long dead. We know mirages for what they are and very rarely fall for them. It’s impossible for a human to just be. We’re too aware of ourselves. I’m jealous of the cows.
The coffee has been sipped on to completion. The cup is empty. My morning cigarette has been smoked down to the filter. The sun has come up and the day is new.
And They All Look…
My car breathed a sigh of relief as the mountains eroded away to hills and finally to back to the flat-lands that it’s accustomed to. My car radio drifted in and out of reception with some low-voiced man talking about the plight of man and the second coming of Jesus Christ. “Any day now,” he proudly exclaimed and forewarned. “The nonbelievers will have their day of reckoning. All the beautiful Christians will float away to a paradise above and the world will be left to the devices of all those degenerate sinners.” I was just as excited at the prospect as he was. The world would be a whole lot more fun, I reasoned, without them. So come on, baby Jesus. Do your thing. Come on down and take them away.
The roadside was littered with police tearing into stranger’s cars and ruining days. Every mile or two and you could see the headlights, the people sitting on their hoods, and state cops neck deep in boxes and suitcases. Some were likely guilty, some probably weren’t, but it made me so unimaginably uncomfortable. I hate seeing things like that. And even though I had no reason to worry or any drugs on my person, I still kept a very close eye on my speedometer as we inched our way through Arkansas. This was made all the more apparent as we came across a man in a Lexus getting his car rifled through. He looked like a consummate professional; hair perfectly quaffed and wearing a suit that looked like it cost more than my car. The police were unwavering in their pursuit and weren’t casting judgments upon whose vehicles they decided to search. There was no judgment. You could look like me and expect to get searched and you could look like that guy and expect the same thing. Philosophically, I found this to be relieving in a strange way but I didn’t appreciate it as much in practice. It just made me paranoid. I didn’t inch my way through Arkansas above 65 MPH the entire way.
We arrived in Texas a few hours later and it was a welcomed relief. The air warmed and the sun came out to blot all the state pride in the form of flags and slogans. We arrived at our destination, a small suburb of Dallas called Fairview, by sunset and slept well that night.
I’m not having much luck finding things to photograph down here in developed USA, but I’m enjoying that southern breeze. It’s something magical to feel a seventy-five degree gust of air at the tail end of December. It was a perfect contrast to the housing districts and business centers. I feel slightly out of my element here, but I’m appreciative for the experience either way. In truth, I’ve done quite a bit of videography since arriving here, but I haven’t taken a single photo. There just isn’t anything that’s catching my interest. And that should have been expected in a city that’s experienced such explosive growth over the last couple decades. But it never did occur to me that way. I always naturally assume that all of America has these abandoned gems if you look for them. As it is presently, I’ve learned that that is not always necessarily the case. Sometimes, it’s all about the right now. If it’s abandoned, it’s destroyed. The land is too valuable. The streets are paved real nice. Everybody has perfect teeth.
New Orleans is next on the list. Once upon a time I lived there, so I know exactly what to expect. I know there are gems there. And the trip winds down from there. I’m experiencing a degree of loss as the days accumulate and the funds deplete. Each day marks a day closer to the end, and that end is in sight, too, coming up real close. In a couple weeks I will be back in the cold wastelands of the midwest. I will be opening gifts with my family and there will be snow and it will be cold and I will miss this time dearly. Forever thankful for the experience, plotting and scheming ways to get back to it and do it all over.
If I could just do this kind of stuff for the rest of my life, I could find happiness. My heart is in the places I’ve never been. We play hide-and-seek and sometimes, if I look hard enough, I find it.
My heart sure as hell ain’t in the snow. It isn’t hiding there.
A Writer First
I’ve been writing things down for as long as I can remember. The word was my first real love, the thing I did to express myself creatively before the music, the photos, or the videos came into view. I will always consider myself a writer first.
As a child, I used to read the dictionary for fun. It was a way to expand my vocabulary (and in many ways, doom me as a pretentious asshole for the rest of my life), but I mostly did it for the learning exercise and the fact that I could use the words I learned in my journals. I did the same thing with useless trivia (of which, at twenty-nine years old, my brains is now completely full of); and I discovered that I could use those facts in my writings, too. I could draw parallels to them, could call back to them, and use the words I learned from the dictionary in new and exciting ways to explain my positions. By the time I was eight or nine years old, I thought I had it all figured out. I started to read some of the classics and studied The Catcher In The Rye like an English major studying for his final. I never paid close attention to the plot specifically, but rather the way in which the story was written. How did the sentences flow? Where did the punctuation make sense? I would take paragraphs of that book and stare at them for hours. There were answers in there somewhere and all I needed to do was decode the sentences and melt them down to a singularity. I did this with every book I ever read back then (and still do). Walden, The Great Gatsby, Huckleberry Finn, whatever. The subject matter and authors were largely irrelevant. I wanted to know HOW they did it.
My grandma Weber was the first person to take notice of my interest and she devoted a large part of her life on educating me further. She would proofread my stories and show me the things that I did right and, more importantly, the things that I did wrong. Why did you put a comma there, Cody? That’s a run-on sentence. That sentence ends strangely. This idea needs to be explored. There were many late nights where the two of us would sit at her kitchen table and just write until our fingers were sore. I’d write stories about dinosaurs and athletes and time travel and anything else I could conjure from the ether. My grandma usually wrote cute stories about love and family. The important part, though, the thing that I hold so dearly even to this day, is what would happen when we were finally DONE writing. My grandma was so insistent that I actually read my words back to her. I used to think that this was because she genuinely liked to hear my stuff (which I do believe is also true). But looking back, I can see now that she was mostly teaching me about proofreading.
One thing I’ve noticed about my own writing is that I oftentimes disregard the standard rules and methods. A sentence isn’t supposed to begin with the words And or But? Why the hell not? Sentences aren’t supposed to end with a preposition? What for? I like short, choppy sentences and long, elaborate ones that seem to trail on forever. I’m guilty of changing tenses mid-paragraph. In some strange way, I think this is a small tribute to my grandmother in the form of rebellion to the things she originally taught me. She’d get so annoyed when I’d end a sentence with a preposition or cut one off before it was ready to end. Sometimes I will do these things and I can physically see her in my mind shaking her head disapprovingly.
“Why do you still do that?!” She asks.
Writing is the only thing I do that gives me a sense of guilt if I ignore the impulse to do it for too long. It’s the only form of art that I do that is 100% for me exclusively. It calms me down, centers me, gives me a sense of clarity where nothing else does the trick. It’s not that I don’t consider myself a photographer. Or a musician. Or a videographer. It’s just that I consider myself a writer first.
And I think there are a few novels stuck in my fingertips. They’re waiting to come out. They’re there and I’m always cognizant of this fact. The goal is to get them out.
So far, no dice, but I’m confident that it will happen eventually.
Planes & Plumes
The days take longer to reach peak temperatures here than they do back in Iowa. I woke up this morning, rolled out of bed, started a batch of coffee, then wandered outside for the most important cigarette of the day. The dew on the yellowed grass had frozen over and shimmered through the steam of my breath and the smoke from an unevenly lit cigarette. I could hear the city of Dallas rustling in the distance, an infinite number of cars traveling to and from it in an endless motion. The neighbors next door jumped into theirs excitedly and I smoked and I sipped on my coffee and I looked over at my own car sitting there inconspicuously. I thought about all the places it had taken me. I thought about the 600 towns in Iowa, the Rockies out west, Ozarks down south, and all the trips to Pittsburgh to hang out with a girl. She wasn’t the reliable queen that she used to be. She sputtered and puked up plumes of smoke. She stalled on hills and barely got through that last stretch of mountains. She still gets me to and from, still got me to Texas, but I’ll be damned if the whole thing isn’t just a little more stressful than it used to be. Maybe she needs some tender love and care, maybe the issues are small and can be worked out and maybe she’s just nearing the twilight of her usefulness. Either way, I feel indebted to the little white beast.
The sun won’t warm the horizon until four or five o’clock. I will wear my coat in the meantime. My car will sputter and puke up its plumes. But I’ll get there, to wherever, and I will enjoy the warmth for as long as it stays.
There goes another plane.
Take That
I wake up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This city has become a strange sanctuary of sorts and the east coast smells of black licorice year round. My eyes are matted shut and I curse at the Gods for such an obnoxiously grating allergy to the most common house pet in America. I can’t stay anywhere for too long or I face the burdensome consequences of cat dander on expensive furniture. In some way, I suspect that this is a microcosm of my whole existence but I might be drawing parallels in places that they don’t necessarily belong. After all, I’ve been guilty of that in the past and I’m nothing if not painfully self-aware of that fact. No bother, though, because there’s at least a small sliver of chance that I’m drawing an accurate line from this to that and it’s that hope that I’m not wrong that keeps the fires burning. Keeps me warm in the wintertime. That kind of thing.
I was supposed to head home today, but I decided to stay and enjoy a few more hours before the inevitable melancholy kicks back in. Consequences be damned. I flip a finger toward the sky and dare the universe to do something about it, and it sure packs a wallop. My throat feels as if there is a small rodent clawing at the vocal folds. My eyes burn from the fire of that aforementioned chance and my lungs inflate and deflate like an old car engine revving up for the first time in many moons. I can hear them grind away, churn, and send an infinite stream of mucus from the heart to the holes in my face. If my ears could sneeze, they probably would, too. My body betrays me and the Gods laugh. “Take that!” They say.
There is something strangely enviable about this position, my disposition, those times where there isn’t much clarity but you feel such a strong compulsion toward that faint light in the distance. These are the times where life really happens, when it slaps you in the mouth and forces your knees to buckle under its gravity. Bukowski said that how you walk through the fire is what matters most and I agree with the sentiment. My feet are charred after long treks on glowing interstate, but I’d like to believe that I’ve made my way through them with some amount of grace. For all my faults, of which there are a ridiculous amount, I can at least take a little pride in knowing that I can make things happen. I pull adventure from the creases of my skin and stretch them out as an already painted upon canvas. It’s a map toward the soul, x marks the spot of the heart, so and so forth as tires meet road and skin meets skin meets skin again. A masterpiece. Magnum opus. Whatever.
I’ve journeyed to the tops of mountains and to the gulf coast and back up the mountains in a car that seemed content to sit in its place forever. I’d have none of that.
With that finger pointed upward toward the sky, toward the ever expanding universe and to the laughing Gods sipping whiskey with all the great writers and artists I’ll never slip beyond the shadow of — I bask. I sulk a little. I bleed it out.
I begin the process of concocting the next adventure and unraveling that next map. Point me in the right direction. Or don’t.
I’ll find it either way.
MUSIC
WREN — White Puzzles
An Electronic Album By Cody Weber
Joy? — Synonyms
JOY? is an internet band featuring Cody Weber in America and Ein Astronaut in Germany. We’ve never met in person.
ETC VIDEO
BEHIND THE SCENES STUFF
2017 was the both the best and worst year of my life. Simultaneously, somehow. Here’s to 2018.
-Cody Weber
