brick by brick

week by week

or

how i spent my summer vacation

1.

isn’t it funny how time renders our words, and the beliefs they represent, meaningless? i know you meant it when you said it. i also know that you'd like nothing more to take it back. you're ashamed of feeling this way and its understandable. its understandable to want to be isolated and alone or at least removed from the faces and the words that control your past. its understandable to want to run from the memories that make you feel like a ghost. its understandable. realistic, though? god no. every dark night that finds you alone in your car or your bedroom, it'll be there. cold steel against your neck. it cuts and digs. but in the light, you wont be able to see any marks. you know its real, and you know it hurts. but its your cross to bear, silently and alone. there used to be a solution, a remedial solvent. but you burnt that bridge long ago. it was necessary. and even though you might just end up in a tangle of metal and tears, you had to do it. remember that: you had to fucking do it.

2.

its 2 in the morning. the sound of crickets and traffic mesh with cool air that sneaks in through your window. its beautiful and ominous and you sink into the bronze glow of your desktop reading lamp. you sum up your existence in spheres and circles. you say you want something else , but deep down, you don’t. you want to sit here, comfortably perched on the edge of disaster. the brooding sound of victorian piano plays soundtrack to this unfolding drama. and what drama it is. cast in bubbling shades of black and white, children turn into ashes. they burn and crackle and fill the air with a billowing black. its cruel but you find alluring. erotic. consuming. you want to run, to hide. but you cant manage the strength to break away. you cant even find the strength to look away. is this even real? you're numb and it breaks your heart. how did you become this? you realize that somewhere along the way, you lost something. but what?

3.

take a shower. try wash it off. you scrub until your skin is spotted with red blotches and angry streaks of white and pearl. but its pointless, you've found. you cant get the smell out of your hair or the taste off your skin. it adheres to you with a tenacious diligence. it grabs you and refuses to let go. and after awhile, you begin to accept it. this is you and it is a part of this. its not fair. its not right. or is it? if i could, i would grab you and hold you and rip at the throats of all who meant you harm. but i'm just a pedestrian in your battle for self-actualization. this is your war and, to me, its being fought on foreign ground. i cant do anything but watch and its heartbreaking, it really is. it really is. so please, promise me one thing: promise me that no matter how it turns out, you'll, at the very least, go down with all flags flying.

4.

how many weeks (days, hours, minutes) has it been, since that thursday when you came into my room and we talked about the vagaries of hiroshima? about seeing your home, your history, your heart replaced by a burning crater of heat and ash. when we talked about moving on without moving forward? because we (people like you and i) don’t care about radiation or living or dying. we care about surviving. and that’s the worst. survivors have the freedom to remember what it used to be like. survivors have the freedom to have their breath stolen by smiling faces on glossy photographs. survivors remember seeing the horizon inexplicably bec0me illuminated with an unforgettable splash of orange and red. and that’s just-oh-so paralyzing. so in the spirit of this symphony of regret, i can only say that i miss you.

5.

when we were kids, did you ever think it would turn out like this? did you ever think you would be so numb? so fucking apathetic, so pathetically complacent? did you ever imagine that you'd end up smoking your teeth brown or lose the ability to sleep to a combination of coffee and grief? did you ever imagine that you'd wake up every morning just to see your own hollowed, sagging eyes stare back at you? when we were kids, did you ever think that you'd end up like this? out here, alone and freezing. i didn’t. because if i did, i'd have never let it get this far. i'd have protected you like i should have, i would have saved the both of us from the both of us. but now, we cant hide. and while its so fucking nouvelle vague to pretend that this is what we wanted, i know you. i know myself. and this isn’t what we wanted. and while it means next to nothing, i just want you to know that i'm sorry.

6.

3 days and you're gone. to celebrate, i sit in my room and compile every sad song i've ever heard. i write your name on the cd and hand it to you. breakup or breakdown? somewhere in between. and when your driving down the interstate, hopefully it'll make you think. retrospectively. introspectively. something, anything. i know that i'm in love with a headstone and to your credit, you've never made me feel bad about it.

7.

in this city - now your city - there are endings and sometimes beginnings. so what is it, what are you here for? to find your ending or to pray for a "new" beginning? 500 miles away from everything you've ever known, have you found yourself in that mess of romantic urbanization and cosmopolitan idealism? you work a couple jobs and you tell me that you're happy. happier than you've ever been. happier than you could ever imagine. but we both know know that those words are just a finely sharpened dart that you've fashioned and thrown at my chest. its ok, sweetheart (can i still call you that?). its ok. time hasn’t yet spoken but i've got a feeling - a gut feeling - that things are gonna be just fine for you. and really, i hope they are.

8.

its seven twenty four am and raining. summer is over and done. The smug incalescence of june,july, and august has faded into memory. and thank god for that. because for me, it was never a matter of heat or humidity or days that loom aimlessly and long. no, it never had anything to do with the sun. truthfully, summer days have the tendency to give way to nights which produce southern ghosts – misty names steeped in history - that beg us to not forget. The past manifests itself in flashes of grey and white that briefly emerge amidst the dark and the crickets and the sound of the frogs and misamistic haze that collects in the bottom of these ageless and nameless valleys. ancient. unrelenting. a confederate cause, a union disaster. well, not exactly. not precisely. but close enough. for me, this was a summer of reproach. the pangs of regret that rose and fell in my stomach were unrelenting. i tried my best to be inhospitable, but that’s just not realistic. that’s just not feasible. someday, someday soon i am going to have to find a way out of this nostalgic penitence. because you cant keep living like this, haunted by the thought of a war hundreds of years old and hundreds of miles away.

9.

i'm going to take it back. this plane has been on autopilot - or pilot less - for long enough. hopefully there is still enough time to pull up, time to escape the dirt and rocks and houses that are expanding in expanding in the cockpit window. i know there is. i can feel it. and while impact - explosion, disintegration, end game sexiness- holds a certain sentimental propensity, it is here i draw the line. at allure. once in awhile, its alright to spiral away from rationality, from responsibility. but be careful, amateur explorer, be careful of going too far, too fast. i wont become another de soto. i wont rush headlong into romanticism without thinking about those around me. i wont become the conquistador that never was.

10.

i've got a bottle of stolen pills and not a lot to lose. or at least it feels that way. and when i fall into the black, its feels just a little better than alright. i'm so close to where i want to be, but this isn’t reality. the night unravels into incomprehension and worse. this is disaster, this is so fucked up. i keep saying that i'm alright and, really, i am. but every once in a while, it just feels so right to sink my claws into the screen and take a real short peek inside. the house is in order, the table is set. its years of thanksgivings and christmases and birthdays encased in a ball of glass. the snow is coming down and its too picturesque to be real. that’s right, its not real. but this disaster, it is real. i wake up ashamed and sick and the odd feeling that maybe, just maybe, i've let myself down. setbacks are a part of life, but this? please god, never again.

11.

remember flying above the clouds? do you remember being high with anticipation. do you remember how great it felt, when that same anticipation was superseded by reality? on that white sand, do you remember watching that endless azure rise in front of us? thinking that nothing could ever be better than this. fast forward, one year. again, do you remember being similarly high on anticipation. do you remember being let down? thinking that nothing could ever be worse than this. when anticipation is bulldozed by reality. because, if you don’t, i do. what a difference a year can make. but each day since then, its gotten a little better, hasn’t it? you gave your speech - your excuse- with a brandenburg symbolism. i didn’t buy it at the time. i don’t know if i do now. but i do know that sometimes, just sometimes, you do need to tear down "that" wall. and i’m trying – really, i am – to salvage whatever i can. the first step to becoming a sophisticate, i suppose, is trying.

12.

for the first time in a long time. for the first time in a long time. for the first time in a long time. say it over and over. the first time in a long time. the first time in a long time. the first time in a long time. say it. it feels good, to finally say it and maybe, just maybe, believe it. for the first time in a long time. for the first time in a long time. for the first time in a long time. say it. feel it. follow the contours and depressions with your hands. think about it: four months became eight. two thirds of year. two thirds of year that largely represented everything - imaginable and not- going horribly, horribly wrong. two thirds of a year in which everyone was telling you (i) to chin up, things will get better. you (i) wanted to believe them. but you (i) just couldn’t imagine it. but now, for the first time in a long time, you (i) can. for the first time in a long time, you're (i' m) ok with how it all panned out. not happy. not distraught. just ok. and that feels better than you (i) could ever imagine.

13.

new places inspire new feelings, but in the end, its the same cold reality in the same old shell. the waters have slowly begun to recede and i gradually wish less and less for things to be the way they used to be. but is it wrong to recognize that this place used to be so much prettier? the filth, the poverty, the pain - it wasn’t that bad, was it? it’s hard to separate the aesthetic from the artificial. they say hindsight is 20/20, but honestly, retrospection cannot (will not) replace the fact that this life – this experience – is little more than cause and effect. convenience be damned. i wont beat myself up anymore because, quite frankly, i cant. I can accept that time is irrational, nonlinear, confusing, unfair. i’ll always remember that i did all the things i never thought i’d do (with you), but you can’t hold it against me if i burn all your pictures.

14.

today, i saw a man die of a heart attack. it was in the middle of the city in the fat part of the day and everyone just watched. we all just watched as this man – nondescript and alone- struggled briefly to hold onto his life. he fell to his knees and then onto his back. and then he was gone. his eyes were closed and the wind blew his tie over his face. the concrete sidewalk around him was covered with cigarette butts and fast food wrappers. i remember putting my head down and thinking about this man. i thought about how he would never get to see his daughter on her wedding day, how he would never be able to stay up late at night and remember the way his wife stole his breath twenty years ago, how he’d never get the chance to wake up on a beautiful saturday and take in the blue of the sky and the crispness of the air and the balmy taste of ephemerality. but mostly, i thought about my own death. would it be like this, with people watching helplessly and curiously and largly unaffected? would i die surrounded by the urban squalor of 21st century consumerism? and then it hits me: my future is just that- mine. you’re no longer a part of it and i don’t really care. In fact, i’m glad. because sweetheart, you fucked up – and its ok because, really, we’re still just kids. we're just kids in this huge, confusing world.

“Maputo”

You gave me a name, my reluctant Portuguese father
You painted my complexion in that sun kissed brown, my reluctant Portuguese father
You mapped my destiny, my reluctant Portuguese father

Lourenço Marques, Lourenço Marques, Lourenço Marques

And in return, my reluctant Portuguese father
I chose millstones and broken teeth over you
I chose dirty orphanages and a dismembered youth over you
I chose the sweltering heat of isolation over you

Lourenço Marques, Lourenço Marques, Lourenço Marques

Because, my reluctant Portuguese father
Your odium
Your arrogance
Your gall
Left me with the cauterizing decision between abuse or nothing at all

Lourenço Marques, Lourenço Marques, Lourenço Marques

So as it goes, my reluctant Portuguese father
I take the salt that's in the air into my lungs and remember:
I tore myself open on these ancient beaches
I painted the concrete with steel and blood
I watched night after night sink into nightmares of despondency
This leviathan that became reality – my reality – is all your fault

Lourenço Marques, Lourenço Marques, Lourenço Marques

I hate you, my reluctant Portuguese father
This collage, this colloquium:
Tangled bodies and fading colonial alcazars
Faceless ghosts that dragged themselves through these streets
Is the symphony that drives my hate for you
My beaches are empty, my city is choking, my bloodline scarred
I don’t want to say your name anymore

"cops"

it's a hot summer night
and the red and the blue dance in frenzy of light
two men stand like like pillars of salt in the street
they're poor and they're black and they both say they have the HIV
one's dressed like a woman but you can see he's a man
the other has been stabbed in the arm and he's mad
they both claim they're in love
and though its hard to see, maybe they are
but they seem so desperate, and covered in sweat
the cops, they just shake their heads
and wonder how two beating hearts became this

30,000 feet in the air. Suspended by technology and - unthinkably - steel and plastic and impenetrable glass. Crane your neck, look down. Through the emulsified strands of wispy clouds set against a backdrop of unimaginable blue - do you see it? The contours of the earth, the microscopically nondescript rug of green and brown, the checker board patterns of agriculture and history. Dots of towns and places. Places with doctors, preachers, murderers, mechanics. Do you see it? Do you really see it? America, panoramic. Comprehensive and sweeping. Your eyes tell you that’s its unlimited. Your brain tells you its not. The world stretches out lazily before you with intimidating beauty. 30,000 feet in the air, time and sound are meaningless. A ceiling of azure that masks the black above. Do you see it? Can you feel it? Panoptic. Moving. Heartbreaking.

Lucero - Rebels, Rogues, & Sworn Brothers

The great American South, a mixture of romantic cultivation and sagging despondency, is both panoramic and castigated. The south is a place of antiquated lore and warm evenings haunted by the phantasms of an oft-ugly past. It’s the geographical area where whisky nights and Baptist mornings butt heads with an uncommonly alluring ferocity. It’s a culture rich with gallantry but stained with a history of detachment, melancholia, and defeat. And so, the music that comes out of the South has always possessed, to one degree or another, an aggrieved grittiness – endearingly downtrodden and tepidly hopeful. Boom or bust, but don’t you dare let your dreams intersect with your substantiality. Such legacy has spanned and defined the careers of musicians ranging from Robert Johnson to Johnny Cash. It’s a conundrum that reaches back to the reconstruction era: a historical study of perpendicular values and heart wrenching realities that have a tendency to be voluptuously beautiful.

Today, we label this genre with a variety of ubiquitous terms: contemporary bluegrass, alt-country, southern rock, cowpunk, folk country. But this legacy – of pain and pride, torture and redemption – has set the stage for an escalating series of tensions among those vying to assume a place with the hollowed names of the past. And with good cause, it would seem. Is the future cradled in the arms of Ryan Adams and Gillian Welch’s synthetic dissymmetry or will it manifest itself in the cornbread huskiness of groups like Old Crow Medicine Show and The Drive By Truckers? Or will the “future” emerge from somewhere less contrived, and undoubtedly, less heralded?

Lucero, which means blazing star in Spanish, has been poised to grab the reins of contemporary alt/country since their 20001 self titled release. The past 6 years has seen the Memphis area band – spearheaded by singer/songwriter Ben Nichol’s fractured vocals – release an able-bodied discography of textured and non-cyclic music. Lucero has a reputation for continually deconstructing and remobilizing their sound in order to create distinctly separate albums. 2002’s Tennessee was vociferously less linear than Lucero, 2003’s That Much Further West was littered with masculine guitar riffs and Replacements-esqe antipathy, and 2004’s Nobody’s Darlings was an enigmatic self-pitying, and - ultimately – guts and blood rock and roll album. Which brings us, finally, to 2006 and the band’s upcoming release of Rebels, Rogues & Sworn Brothers.

Immediately upon Lucero’s precursory internet release of the song “I Can Get Us out Of Here Tonight,” pundits were conflagrant with the fact that – gasp - the band would dare create a song with semblances of Bruce Springsteen’s patented Asbury sound. Simply put, Southern music should be too proud to stoop to level of incorporating recognizable, East Coast nuances. Imagine, then, these same critics’ surprise when they heard the rest of the album – undeniably swollen with Boss-styled keys and Nichol’s vocal delineation leaning increasingly towards Springsteen’s oral stylings.

Before we delve into the specifics of this reemphasized Lucero, however, we should first examine the causal reality of any band or self-respecting artist who chooses to meander into the axiomatic and uncurbed musical world of the seminal Bruce Springsteen. The blunt reality of the situation is that any incorporation of the Asbury sound – whether it be bright keys, bluesy song architecture, or the “larger than life” vocal delivery – can’t be a bad thing. The Boss acquired his pseudonym by being, well, the The Boss. Nearly infallible in scope and monumental in size, Springsteen invigorated an entire generation.

With irony, then, Lucero has reinvented the southern sound by infringing upon the local sound of a place that is, both literally and figuratively, thousands of miles away. Rebels, Rogues & Sworn Brothers attacks the listener straight off the starting block with “What Else Would You Have Me Be.” Seconds into the album, guitarist Brian Venable’s muscular riffs are intersected with irradiated keys and Nichol’s torn vocals. Away we go. “I gave you everything I stole/Then you stole your heart away from me.” The song sets the stage for an epic of an album, a metaphorical barn-burner that is touchingly heartbreaking. Because, despite its east coast swagger, Rebels, Rogues & Sworn Brothers is southern rock. Lost loves, blue collar daydreams, empty bottles. The second track of the album, “I Don’t Wanna Be The One,” displays a similar operational mechanism: Drummer Roy Berry’s drumming provides a thick backbone for the band’s bulky brand of grain alcohol fueled musings.

The album steadily picks up steam. The following two tracks, “San Francisco” and the aforementioned “I Can Get Us Out Of here”, sparkle and balloon with triumphant idiosyncrasy. You start to get the feel that Rebels, Rogues & Sworn Brothers is like an 18 wheeler being ghost ridden down a mountain. Try as you might, this baby aint stopping. And then, BAM! The album comes to a screeching halt with, perhaps, the worst song Lucero has ever produced. That’s right, the unthinkable metasizes before the listeners ears with an unfortunate and long-winded buoyancy. For lack of a more incisory phrase, the track “1979” is simply awful. It’s the longest song on the album and almost painful to listen to. Venable’s guitar is completely overshadowed by the use of off-kilter keys and Nichol’s ridiculous lyrical musings. For that matter, his attempts to be nostalgic fall flat on its face. “It was 1979/Just skin and bones/Your favorite dress/motorcycle boots.” He is obviously trying to conjure images of a lovelorn boy and the former but not forgotten apple of his eye, but the final product seems to better describe a skanky whore ala Courtney Love. And then, just when the song seems that it can’t get any worse, the track is lit up with a cheese ball synth and Skynard-style ballad guitar.

The “1979” detour is, luckily, just that – a detour. The ensuing songs, “Cass” and “The Mountain” rebound quite nicely. Both tracks are quirky and addled with hickish lyricisms (specifically in “The Mountain” when the ever-humble Nichol’s promises to “Buy a mountain for me and you”) and swampy guitar/bass interplay. The eighth track, however, is the highlight of the album. “Sing Me No Hymns” is furiously gutter, uncouthly and powerfully despondent. At around the 2:30 mark, Venable, bassist John Stubblefield, and Berry work with each other to gradually build a wall of sound that falls in a sonic crescendo before giving away to a recklessly intense guitar solo. It is here, specifically within the closing solo, that that Rebels, Rogues & Sworn Brothers climaxes. But fear not, because while this is where the album peaks, it does so only in terms of song tempo, not quality.

Out of the four remaining tracks, “The Weight of Guilt,” She’s Just That Kind of Girl,” “On The Way Back Home,” and “She Wakes When She Dreams,” “On The Way Back Home” is the most memorable. Perhaps the most emotionally touching Lucero song since the self titled’s “Hold Fast,” it’s eloquent in a retrospectively gentle way. The composition of the music, coupled with Nichol’s vocals, creates a multicultural sadness that pours on the heartbreak without being melodramatic or trite. It very well could have been the send-off song of the album and, most likely, it should have been – because here, the band’s emotional side is boiled down to reveal a basal core of personal, yet less-than-unique tragedy. We all bear the burden of second-guessing our youthful decisions. Such introspection is part of getting older, part of assimilating and developing the collective retrospection known as “experience.” Ultimately, that’s what makes the song so great.

One gets the sense that for the members of Lucero this is their only chance. Their hope for future success relies on their ability to capture what drives them. The question, then, becomes: what drives Lucero? They write of hometown Memphis with equal parts disdain and affection. They speak of their travels on the road with similar sense of wariness. In many ways, Nichols seems unsure of himself and his purpose. In his songs, he constantly fights the urge to give up and wash his inabilities away in the metaphorical bottle. But throughout it all – the trials, the tribulations, long nights on the road – the band maintains its frank and simple outlook on life. Sure, Rebels, Rogues & Sworn Brothers has a couple less-than-memorable songs and one really terrible one, but at its core, its hardworking, gritty music. Music lovers around the world appreciate Cash and Johnson not so much for their individual musical output or the varying nuances they assumed throughout their careers, but rather for their ability to capture a specific reality with startling accuracy. It may have not always been the prettiest or the most congenial, but it was painted in the broad and unforgettable strokes of brazen regionalism. And that, above all else, is what made American bluegrass/country/southern rock so undeniably powerful. On Rebels, Rogues & Sworn Brothers, Lucero has recaptured that magic in a way that grabs your chest and steals your breath.

Yes, Rebels, Rogues & Sworn Brothers bears a tangible amount musical of similarities to Bruce Springsteen. Above all, Springsteen’s legacy will be his everyman honesty. And it is here, that Lucero shares the most in common with the legendary boss of Asbury Park. The search for true candor in music has become something of cliché. Every slick A&R rep trumpets the next big thing as possessing an uncommon sense of honesty. But honesty, like all humanistic virtues, cannot be forced. It can simply be created. Impossible to pinpoint with accurate description, it falls into the category of "I know it when I see it." And here, you see it. Or, rather, hear it. Throughout their career, Lucero, has earned the right to hang in the rarified air of legends past and Rebels, Rogues & Sworn Brothers is merely a reminder of such.

I Wanna Be Your Friend

You’ve probably heard the saying (or a slightly altered version thereof) “The biggest difference between a conservative and a liberal is that a conservative doesn’t mind being called a conservative.” The phrase, almost always a product of a plucky GOP supporter with the bumper stickers to prove it, is usually accompanied with a toothy grin and luminous eyes. It’s almost as if the self-proclaimed and self-exalting “conservative” has found the cure to cancer or got to the bottom of the riddle known as Stonehenge. And in their minds, perhaps they have: Finally, once and for all, the great debate between conservatism and liberalism has been boiled down to its true essence! Centuries of rich ideology and humanistic thought melt away to reveal the basal core of political thought. And that truth, of course, reads is the simplest of terms: conservatives are unabashedly and righteously adroit while liberalism is bogged down in a world of self-loathing and uncertainty.

If such a phrase, however, is to be seen as truth, it must be examined as such. And this is where it gets the situation gets sticky. Because here, where catchphrase collides with empiricism, problems and inconsistencies boil and erupt. But before we delve into the trepidacious realm of dispelling myth and unmasking wishful thinking, it is important to first appraise and define the words conservative and liberal.

In its historical, American political context, a conservative is an individual who subscribes to conservatism or the political philosophy that calls for the limitation of federal government, supports fiscal responsibility, and opposes radical change to the various governmental and societal institutions. Conversely, American liberalism is generally in favor of a larger federal government, wide-reaching social mechanisms, and a cardinal belief in certain rights that are seen as unalienable.

Here, however, is where problems first arise: In the current political landscape, these lines are almost always blurred and smeared beyond recognition. This enigmatic indiscretion is especially applicable to those who fall into the conservative sect. When an individual describes themselves as a conservative, it can mean subscription to a plethora of different – and rarely overlapping- value sets. Americans pigeonhole themselves as conservatives for a variety of reasons: pro-life, in favor of staunch fiscal responsibility, belief in the intersection of Christian and political values, pro-gun, in favor of tough criminal legislation, anti-terrorist, anti-progressive, anti-immigration, pro-business, afraid of taxation, in favor of increased military spending, in favor of increased global trade and interventionist foreign policy, belief in natural law, belief in marriage between a man and a woman, disbelief in the conundrum of “situation,” anti-labor, a proponent of rural idealism…

Get the point? The list could go on forever. In fact, the Bush Administration seems to be making a conscious effort to transform the word “conservatism” into “utopian.” In the Administration’s eyes, conservatism is the great cure all: it can be evaluated and defined on an individual basis and diverse as it may be, all “conservatives” can gather under one flag. Obviously, such an outlook is preposterous: You can call a duck, a cow, and goat “barnyard animals” but that doesn’t mean that they are the same organism. Similarly, many so-called conservatives have nothing in common with either each other or the ruling party – outside of an artificially implemented hate and misunderstanding of those scandalous and un-American liberals. Simply put, the word “conservatism” little more than a convenient way to categorize a wide body of ideologies that, at least for the Bush Administration, pays tremendous political dividends.

On the other side of the coin, then, we have the liberals. While “conservatives” can be almost anything, “liberals” are distinct to the so-called conservative sect via 4 very specific characteristics: pro-choice, in favor of soft and over-indulgent social programs, their upper-crust elitism, and a generalized sense of shame for what America has become. Of course, liberalism is every bit as socially and ideologically dynamic as conservatism but, somewhere along the line, a large portion of the American public was fooled into thinking otherwise. It’s easy to dislike your political opponent when you paint them in the unfair light of conceited aloofness, baby killing, and unable to defend greater society against the evils of terrorism and domestic crime. Eventually, however, the fragmented and illusionary cohesion of the conservative voting sect will have be forced to turn onto itself and then the same slurs used an excuse to malign those on the left will be used to attack each other. It’s a short-sighted and worldview and it will end, as they say, in tears.

But there is a deeper and more disturbing problem with the current trend of fashionable pigeonholing among the American population. This is a country of doers and thinkers, people who believe that if you believe it, you can someday achieve it. We are a gigantic, diverse nation with voices that exceed standardization. We are a nation built on hard work, optimism, and – gasp - compromise. After all, the reason that both parties have such a long and storied history is because of their ability to each come up with dynamic answers to dynamic problems that are passed through the mechanisms of mutual concession and accommodation in order to produce a workable product that benefits as many citizens as possible. To lose that tradition in favor of black and white partisanship would be disastrous and politically distasteful.

Alone, the political doctrines (or in this case, the adapted political doctrines) of conservatism and liberalism will falter in their attempt to solve the myriad of problems that face the United States as it marches into an uncertain future. But together, they stand a chance. Each party has its admirable qualities and each party has gaping, Hindenburg-esqe problems. In a society that preaches majority rule with minority rights, compromise is essential. After all, how are we supposed to spread democracy around the world if we cannot secure it, in both theory and practicality, at home?

Trepidation on the High Wire:
Cannibalism and Broadened Horizons

Chapter 1: “Jesus Christ”

The phone pulled me reluctantly out of bed. It was an iron-ore grey morning in October, cold, wet, unremarkable. The rain circumspectly fell from the sky and collected in shallow pools accented by the red and orange of the fallen leaves, monumentally ablaze in final throes of photosynthesis, a decaying yet historical testament to a season now fast fading into memory.

“Hello?” I said groggily into the receiver.

On the other end of the line was my mother – a veteran of five children, a failed marriage, and a lifetime of hard work. Her voice was planar and without emotion.

“Hi. Your father died this morning.”

I sat up. My mom has always had the tendency to cut to the chase. She doesn’t dawdle in pretext or salutation.

“Jesus Christ....What? How?”

“In his sleep. A heart attack. Probably never knew what hit him.”

“Poor bastard, “I said. “I’ll miss him. I guess its good he went in his sleep. He had absolutely no tolerance for any sort of discomfort.”

“I know,” she said. And then: “Things weren’t always the best between you two, but just try to remember the good things. When are you coming back?”

“I don’t know. When is the funeral?”

“Sometime soon. Just try to get a flight and come out here as soon as possible. We all miss you,” she said and hung up.

And with that, my day began. It was true that my father and I had not always had the best of relationship. I blamed him for a lot of things, a lot of really bad things. My father was selfish, insincere. He said the right things but never had the courage or intention of following through. I blamed him for my parent’s divorce, I blamed him for my mental instability and I blamed him for making five children and then deciding that fatherhood was a part time job. Most of all, however, I blamed my father for the fact that I woke up every day with a pit in my stomach, feeling worthless and deadpan and vacant.

I got out of bed, sat down at my desk, and looked out the window. It was funny that my mom commented on my oft-capricious relationship with the man I called father. Well, less funny than sad. I have never seen people fight with each other the way my parents did. I can remember being woken up at 2 in the morning to find my dad laying on the ground with his head split open. A victim of one of my mother's infamous sneak attacks, he was spluttering out a string of curses and threats that, even to my inexperienced ears, cut through the air with a mutinous, if not wholly mordant sophistication. I can also remember the night where my father stood over my mother with a bloody phone in his hand – the phone bloodied because he, of course, ripped it from her hands and smashed it on her face. Seeing my mother helplessly lying on the floor – a tangled heap of hair, and tears, and blood - should have awakened the valorous ideals of gallant protectionism. Maybe I should have burned red with anger and come to my mother’s defense; maybe I should have burst into action with a heroic yell and became a two-fisted tempest of youthfully intrepid courageousness. Instead, I prayed for God to save us, or at least, save me. After all, didn’t both my parents deserve this unhappiness, this despondent and violent sphere of life? They picked each other. They didn’t deserve to be saved or forgiven. And anyway, who was I to choose sides? Nature had done that for me: my father was stronger and to him went victory.

But what did I do to deserve this? I was merely a product of the lottery known as genetics, an innocent bystander with the sleep still in his eyes. I was a fucking kid, unable to wrap my mind around the images that played out in front of me. Looking bad, I’m glad that I was the only one of siblings old enough – or perhaps, curious enough – to witness these debacles of bulk domestic pollution.

Unable to think of a more relevant way to mourn the death of my father, I walked over to my desk and sat down. Still in my boxers, hazy and slouching under the weight of the early morning and the almost unreasonable information I had just received, I opened the bureau drawer and began splitting a Swisher Sweet. Carefully, I sliced with my fingernail and gently pushed out the tobacco inside. I licked the savorless casing, the taste of artificial cherry and low quality tobacco flat against my taste buds, and depressed the paper down onto my the face of the desk. I broke up the weed into crumbles of green and red hairs and daintily lined it across the middle of the paper. I folded it over and, using my fingernails, began horizontally creasing the cigar husk. Roll, lick to seal, roll to tighten, lick, tighten, lick. Gently burn the newly formed cylinder and render it finished. Within five minutes, I held the final product in my hand. Rolling it counterclockwise between my index finger and thumb, I lit the blunt. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Repeat. This ones for you, pops. For better or worse, they guy was my father. And despite his faults, I loved him.

After reducing the blunt to an evil smelling stub, I rubbed it out on my desktop ashtray. The smoke grouped and formed a cloud around my ceiling light. I sat back in my office-styled swivel chair and gazed out the window. Still raining, the day was listlessly dull in a comforting sort of way. Cozily uninspired, today was the sort of day meant for mourning. It was seven thirty and the road in front of my house was thick with rush hour traffic. The people on their way to work made me think of my own job: an assistant editor for a trade publication on the flatware industry. While insignificant in scope, it paid the bills. I had long given up on the romantic ideals of importance and prominence and instead settled for the more pedestrian auspices of survival. That’s life, that’s how things work. We can’t all be heroes, right?

Today, however, I would not be going into work. If there is one good thing about your father dying, it’s that you don’t have to go into work. I called my boss, a pudgy middle-aged woman with a southern twang named Suzanne. As far as bosses go, Suzanne wasn’t too bad. She talked a lot and referred to herself in the form of third person pseudonym – she had a tendency to say things like “looks like ole Suze messed the bed on this one” or “I’ll be whipped if Suze didn’t hit the nail on the head” – but other than that, she treated me with an endearing sense of professional reassurance. The phone rang once, twice, three times.

“Hello?”

“Hey Suzanne, this is Michael,” I said in an intentionally morose voice.

Her voice instantly brightened.

“Hi, Mike. What’s up?”

“Well,” I said and let the silence hang pregnantly in the air. “My dad passed away last night. I think I’m going to need some time off work.”

And then, less than punitively:

“I’m sorry about the timing of all this. I know we were going to have to cram for the upcoming-“

Before I finished, she cut me off.

“You don’t worry about a thing. Go home, take some time, do what you need to do. These things are tough to get through. I remember when my mother died, I struggled with it for weeks. Just keep us posted in how long you’ll need and we’ll take care of the work around the office.”

Which was, really, a generous office considering I worked in a profession defined by deadlines.

“Okay, Suzanne, I probably wont need anymore than a week, but I’ll let you know anyway,” I said meekly into the phone.

“Buh bye and good luck with everything,” she said.

I hung up the phone and canvassed the room in my dope-induced stupor. I listened to the rain peal against the window. It was almost rhythmic, rurally beautiful in its subtle manner. I looked over at my bed lustfully, tiredly, and decided to sleep just a little longer. Sure, I had things to do – like make plane reservations, pack, dig out my tattered black suit – but those could wait.

As I dozed off, I could think only of sleep's dexterously majestic ability to put life on hold.

*[This is the first part on an ongoing novella.

Additional chapters will be posted intermittingly.]*