Walking In The Weeds

Sometimes I just miss the way things used to be. I can accept that things change, that people change, and that places change. But letting these things, these people and these places go, is just something I don’t want to do. I dont think I can. The tide’s eternal tune

I packed my bags and grabbed my keys Friday morning  to drive the miles in between so that I could pick up my brother and sister from school.  They didn’t know I was to pick them up. I decided to pick up my sister first at the junior high I used to attend.  I parked by the front doors and waited for the Friday bell to ring.

  As I waited I looked at what I used to know. I forgot how the mountains looked from the playground, how the fields extended towards the highway… the long grass full of snow, and the sky painted colors of the cowboy cliché. How I’d watch all the pretty horses from my classroom window. The warm feeling of being inside while a storm was raging or the wind blew tumble weeds across the pavement and basketball courts. I recall how the raindrops on the bus windows would race one another as we drove through canopies, past farms, fields, and wire fences.   Dark sky and grey highway lined with yellows and greens. If you drove fast enough you’d see a pallet of colors that made you feel like you were spinning ‘round in the fall leaves. It was like somethin’ sacred, you know?   We live “in the country”. From the lines on the highway to the ripples in the fields, the pebbles we’d kick up on our way home to the wild flowers that lined dirt roads. You just wanted to breathe it all in. You knew the sun was still shining when you closed your eyes.I loved everything about where I lived and where I was. I had friends I could sit on fences with and talk to for hours. I had friends I’d walk dirt roads with and pick wild flowers with. Rivers we could sit by. Highways we could photograph. Trails we could walk.   We could part the long grass and stain our jeans and white t-shirts with dirt. Or walk home with sand on the cuff of our jeans and sandals from the lake.

 I always slept with the windows open in my bedroom during the summertime when it would be too cold to sleep on the patio. In the morning I could see the curtains blowing. I could smell the lilacs and the thick perfume of pink on the flowers. Blue Rodeo or The Wallflowers would usually be playing downstairs in the kitchen or I’d tune in for the top 40 on the Kix Brooks show while waiting for the water to run warm in the shower.  Just to be there, in a place I called home muddled me, like wine or a breath of freedom. And this was my reality.  I never knew how long it would last. How many more mornings I’d wake up with no worries.  When I would wake up those mornings (and even now) there’d always be a wonderful face that would ask me what I was going to do for the day and I’d always give my usual “ I dunno”. This never bothered me. There was comfort in what I did know, the same things that I probably took for granted at times.

  It all came back to me Friday as I waited for my sister. Where had the time gone? I asked myself that and again it was a “ I dunno”. I watched the front doors of the school. I remember I felt as though I had so much to prove when I first walked through them. It was a new beginning. A new school. I was scared to death but it was a choice that I had made and entirely on my own.  In retrospect, I don’t know how I picked up the nerve to move schools. I did it without having any intention of looking back. And I never did. I met beautiful people and shared beautiful things with them. It changed my everything. It was a very good year. I recall algebra being a challenge, and one I overcame. It was another obstacle, one that terrified me. I remember being sneered at upon showing my concern for my math mark at my previous junior high- the one I chose to depart from. “You’re never going to get it”. And my math teacher just laughed at me. I remember a close friend marked one of my math quizzes and told everyone what mark I had earned after I had asked her not to. “ How do you fail that?”. And it became a joke. One of many. I became a joke. I just didn’t find it funny and I felt as though there wasn’t one person who got me or someone who would at least ease the “humor” and make me laugh for a change. So I moved. And algebra didn’t change… but the people and my feelings, because of these people, did. That year I was offered a spot in the advanced mathematics program in the high school I was to attend in the fall. Highest mark in algebra. It meant a lot to me. I’m sure you’ve had an experience similar. One of those experiences that you look back on and you’re completely satisfied. You’d go through it all again if you could, even the jokes. In a heartbeat. 

 My new friends-  they were like me. They didn’t care what I had or what I didn’t. They didn’t know why I was new and I didn’t know what was old.  And that was okay, too. It was a matter of time, a short time, I might add, when people started asking me if I remember what happened  in grade five during “that field trip…”or  “this one pep rally…” and of course, I was never there to say “I remember”.    Graduation came last June and we toasted to the end. And “I remember.”

“Here’s to the nights we felt alive.”

It was bitter sweet, like just about everythin’.

 It’s just kinda hard to be logical about life… rumor has it that there’s a sequence to it. I can understand this sequence but it can be generic. Not all of us find the love of our lives in high school or leave home at eighteen or marry at twenty five and vacation to the gulf of Mexico in the summertime.    There can be a sequence but for me I’d rather not pursue one consciously. Let it happen. I think of what has happened and it’s  like I’m on this train, or I’m driving my car, but it won’t decelerate even when I’m pressin’ on the brake. I’m driving through these moments. They’re all there in their moving clips, and still frames. I just want to unroll my window, or stop the car, walk out and just admire one of them by stepping back into it. But I can’t. My window’s stuck. The brakes don’t work. I’d even jump out but my door’s busted, too. My train’s just moving way too damn fast. And it hurts ‘cause I love it all so much. All the photographs and all the faces and places. I love them all with all my heart and it hurts to just wave it goodbye. It’s like loving someone and having them say “well, it’s been nice meeting you”. That’s it? Wait. Why?  Was it something I said?It’s like that lover that left you. Change can be like that.

You stand like a fool in the middle of the road, tumble weeds around you, your hair’s  blowin, too, the mountains by your side. And they see you in their rearview mirror. It starts to rain on you, and you’re soaked to the bone. You’re “praying for the glow of a break light.” So you can run. So you can catch up. Fleeting hope. They see you in their rearview. But they don’t stop, they just keep on driving and you’re still standin’ there. Classic fool. The wheels just turn and there’s no sign that they’re goin’ back for you. Like a lover that drove off without you… you can run after that car down that dirt road but you’ll run out of breath and you’ll fade like the tail lights of a cottage you’d pass in the middle of the night. So you kick up the dust and it gets in your eyes. Nobody’s lookin’ so you don’t have to lie. It’s not jus the dust in your eyes. It’s time and dust in a bottle. The sand just keeps runnin’ on you, and though you’d like to try, you can’t flip the hour glass over.  It’s not asking much. Just more time in the fields with the sun in your hair, more times to enjoy the love you share.  The thrill of living.

But our thrills change, change happens, moments escape you and you see them leave you down the road. What do you do? Chase them down? Try to keep up? Follow the tracks? Or just keep walking in the opposite direction, occasionally looking behind your shoulder- not for that car- but to admire the road?I think the latter would be best. I think you’d get farther. And you wouldn’t end up where you started. What do you think? You’d be somewhere else altogether. 

We can ask ourselves why things have to change and we can ask ourselves where the time has gone, all on the behalf of this change and time we speak of- and it’s not a bad thing. It’s a soul thing.  I think these so called emotions that I’ve recently tried to put into words is my way of  soothing my fears of what is to come. I never knew then and I don’t know now. I never will.  But I do know that I’d do it all over again.  I can miss the way it used to be and I can cherish the past, and I can let it move me, and I can strum about it, but I can also use it to push me forward- and it does, inevitably. I’m just not sure if I want to be swept up at such a pace.  I don’t mind moving at all, it’s just the pace.  The seasons roll by and youth slips away. It’s the pace. 

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  “Had a talk with my old man, said ‘help me understand’. He said ‘turn sixty-eight, you’ll renegotiate. Don’t stop this train, don’t for a minute change the place you’re in and don’t think I couldn’t ever understand. I tried my hand, John, honestly, we’ll never stop this train’”“Once, in a while, when it’s good, it’ll feel like it should. And they’re all still around, and you’re still safe and sound. And you don’t miss a thing ‘til you cry when you’re driving away in the dark singing ‘stop this train, I want to get off, And go home again, I can’t take the speed its moving in, I know I can’t. ‘Cause now I see I’ll never stop this train’”.