Seperations/Departure for the Higher Harmonics

Saturday and Sunday it rained. Friday bode hot and humid, with patches of cloud and brief, intense sunshine. Now, after two months of practically Mannerist sunshine and intense humidity, comes the rainy season. The year has not been deficient in rainfall: we have had, all this summer, periods of intense, soaking rains. In Roma, two counties away, the rains washed up and over the banks of long dry creekbeds and arroyos, flooding towns at the edge of the South Texas plains. Here, an intervallic morning of sun and clouds is quickly superseded by the welcoming sight of dark clouds on the southeastern or eastern horizon. Thunder disperses the quiet afternoon; the cicadas chirp louder and louder, as if summoned by the greater tocsin of rain. The grass moves. The smell of fundamental earth and rain. And then it does rain, for about thirty or forty minutes on average before moving away, leaving the sky white with anvil cirrus and a vast deep powder blue along the horizon. If it is closer the sunset, the sky becomes dusky brown and yellow at the edges, the filtered light passing through a higher layer of city haze and dust. The rains can be always expected to arrive either thirty minutes noon, when the depressingly intense heat is at its zenith, and last till sometimes long after dinner, obscuring the sunset in swaths of grey, or crimson, pink or violet. Monday of last week I noticed the sky got brilliant golden and red outside. Something told me to investigate. High in the eastern sky, against a backdrop of icy silverish rain, was a rainbow, deeply colored red by the rays of the setting sun, whose initial arc began in the south-eastern corner of the heaven and moved back up along the meridian of the sky, or close to it, it seemed, back down to the deep powder blue of the north-eastern sky, dotted with slanted castles of cumulus dropping sheets of inky rain. It was a sign. Being careful not to point at it (pointing at rainbows is bad luck), I took it as my own personal vindication of hope. Immediately afterward, as the rainbow faded in the sky, I thanked God for the rainbow. In Jewish halakha there is a blessing for the rainbow:

Blessed art Thou, O Lord our G-d, who remembers His Covenant with His people.

The covenant being of course the one in Gen 9:8-13, in which the Lord explicitly states His will to never again harm the Earth and its inhabitants. Personally though, at least for me, it is a sign that the tribulations which have marked my life these last years have finally come to an end. Now is a period of transition–though not as turbulent as the one which has late passed me–a time of renewal and forward movement. Similarly, it is a statement as to the nature of how I have lived these last couple of years. There have to be profound changes, as there have been, a continuous moving forward to better and brighter things. I know I have recieved signal graces from both my friends, who want to see me in a better place, and God Himself, who has broken down walls and barriers for me. 

Ever since the hurricane ended CJ’s presence at this house has placed us in a difficult situation–primarily in terms of actually living with a fourth person in this house since the death of my grandfather back in the early part of last year. At first the difficulties were small ones: several towels went missing after the debacle of the hurricane, and CJ, being the typical 17 year old girl that she is, decided to most of them to dry her small body and short haircut after her bath. Then they became more substantial, as time went on. After a sudden rainstorm, she found a small dog running around the neighborhood, stirring up trouble for the other dogs, and brought her inside the house. This naturally stoked the ire of my aunt, who had been pressing my little brother Paul and my mother for payment of $150 for some bond money that she had given to my mother to get Paul out of jail. Meanwhile, CJ’s relatively new skills as housekeeper and cook irked both me and my mother. I tried to stay away from the house most of the time to avoid having to be reminded of the house’s now blank and sad looking appearance. Then one day, about the 11th of this month, my aunt brought our absolutely intolerable neighbor over to gossip and complain as she usually does. Her two daughters, my cousins were there as well. When she heard the dog, whom CJ called Star inside the house, she stormed in and berated me for having her inside the house. As I was already tired of her immensely condescending attitude of CJ, Paul and my Mother, I got defensive. I had a verbal altercation with her, after which she threw a water bottle at me.  For the first time in my life, after years of being held down, I told her to “shut the fuck up”. The neighbor, absolutely astonished, was agape as I lost it right in front of her. She went back inside to yell and complain at CJ that Paul needed to pay her back as soon as possible, her greed naturally knowing no logical end to anything, and threatening to call the police, as she did earlier most likely for harboring CJ as a runaway (she cannot be such a thing, she freely left the house of her own accord). When I intervened again, saying that if she wanted to get paid she ought to call Lennard, she took a bottle of insecticide to apparently spray on me, but then her daughter intervened and told me to calm down. She was physically intimidated by me; she of course would have been unable to deal with me, as I am both bigger, taller and stronger than she was if she had indeed chose to physically attack me. It was all a very harrowing ten minutes.

The first thing I did afterwards was call my Mother before she did. If there is anything that my aunt has done before in order to absolve herself from any negative involvement it is to proclaim to anyone and everybody (her silly housewife friends, or younger cousins, whom she talks to all day on the telephone) that she is a victim, and therefore is worthy of their support and attention. I was practically in tears and my Mother was infuriated that her sister, my aunt, had decided with absolute abandon to even attempt at hurting me. She said to her later, “You know, he lifts weights. He’s a very big guy. Why do you think he helps you to remove branches from the garden on his off days? What were you thinking?” And she replied that all she wanted was her money, that that was the most important thing for her at the moment, and that was all. And of course this is to be completely expected from my aunt, as other entries in this account have shown. Once a lying, stealing bitch, always a lying stealing bitch.

 This compelled me more than ever to leave the house. My bags have been packed ever since. I said to my mother after she came home from work, “today is the last day she will ever set eyes on me ever again.” My aunt, naturally called me overgrown and a sick faggot, which of course is laughable and aside from the sick part, absolutely true. My other aunt very wisely stayed an absentee to all of this. Now I am thinking of places to stay, and am saving up capital for moving. 

I was depressed for two weeks. Only now am I beginning to realize my potentials again. Lennard said to me in a chat a couple of days back that he doesn’t know how it is possible to survive under the conditions, both abstract and physical, that I have survived under for years. I said to him simply that I didn’t know either, and that even though most of it killed off whatever hope I had for myself outside of anything purely reasonable, it has made me stronger, faster, and definitely more good-looking. Ryan, whom I spoke to for the first time in two weeks yesterday, said I was moving up and out. Now, as fall approaches, I am confident my little escape plan will work. And then, when I am far away in the mountains, away from all those inbred little battles with my family and with the world, I will laugh and laugh, knowing I freed myself from everything that had held me back. It’s daunting, but it can be done. And I am now making it happen, very very gradually.

Hurricane/Birthday

This past week was harrowing. First came Hurricane Dolly, the aftermath much worse than we originally anticipated. I am one year older, one year wiser, one year less sure of myself and more sure of uncertainty ahead. I feel miserable. The weather is oppressive, especially now that the two great chinaberry trees that once graced the backyard are now just mud covered stumps. And above that is a hot milky blue sky, unforgiving, washed out by the heat and humidity. For a whole week now we have been without cable TV, the electricity flickering dimming when we do laundry, the night air filled with the stench of foul-smelling mud and buzzing, disease-carrying mosquitoes. I completely forgot the day after the hurricane hit was my birthday, and spent most of it picking up branches and laying them out in the street, up to my ankles in mud and dead branches. 

Our house relatively survived the onslaught of the storm. Screens were blown away from the windows and tossed into the neighbor’s yard. The streets flooded and the water went as high as the sidewalk (we are high up off the street), but did not come any further than that. The rest of the evening we lit candles and ate meagerly. Most everything of the little we had in the refrigerator spoiled and had to be thrown out. Consequently, by Thursday night there was little left to eat. Paul’s girlfriend CJ, by reason of a distressing situation at her parents’ house, came to stay with us and brought food on Friday. Scott, having already sent me as much assistance as anybody could want or need, graciously sent $100 to me, which I bought groceries with. Now Mom doesn’t have to worry about not having food in the house for the beginning of August, which I bless and praise Almighty God for. This month was unreasonably long in its duration, it seemed. However we are not out of the woods yet: this past week my aunt, angry at her not being paid by my little brother ($200 for a contribution to his bond) called in anonymously to the police, informing them that CJ was here at our house, and asking that Paul be put back in jail. She called on me at an early hour to yell and complain (like she does whenever she feels cheated out of money) saying that my own Mother is irresponsible and careless. However I know exactly why she did what she did–she has done this before with people who make the mistake of asking her for money–and in this situation she not only used her cunning to frighten and fatigue my mother (who has enough things to worry about) but malice, to intimidate and threaten like the lawlyer she is, not only me, my mother and Paul but also CJ as well, who has done absolutely nothing to hinder Paul’s legal defense. Lennard, naturally, is concerned over the legality of the situation, but she has nowhere to go. And I can’t let her leave, no matter how much my aunt protests. Needless to say, we all have not been on speaking terms with her since this all began. 

Now that the summer is over I need to start thinking what I’ll be doing with myself in the fall. I am so desperate to get back into school this spring. I am not sure of what to do, but either I am going for an option of continuing education with an online university or moving away, the other good solution, to a place outside of the area, or continuing education here. This is partially based on nostalgia, and partially based on desperation, the driving cause, it seems, which usually pushes me in the right direction. I went to the Travel Information Center with CJ and there I found some brochures all about the Big Bend. I am now looking forward to moving there, God willing. I have put off so much and now things just can’t be helped. What I do not want is to have a situation where I am simply depending on others for assistance, as in past situations (namely with Ryan), where I did nothing afterwards. And it is so easy to be simply lazy that it’s infuriating.

I must admit that I’m still pretty wet behind the ears at life. I can profess nothing but what I have taught myself, and to paraphrase a piece by Peter Garland, “I have had to learn the simplest things last.” 

I don’t think I’m meant for an intellectual crowd. I can’t discuss philosophy or religion (people are just calling it belief nowadays), but I think I can hold something up in terms of just talking things out. I’m glad I don’t have the disadvantage of living in a large city because there are so many people who live their entire lives in enclosed spaces, with enclosed ideas and images, things they read in magazines, or learn from their “insider” friends, or something like that. Peter was all about that and it got tiring and frustrating just attempting to relate to something that hermetic. I used to think that hermeticism was a good thing to have, but I am beginning to discover its drawbacks. 

I miss Cameron. I miss talking to him late at night, when he was bored and couldn’t sleep, and when I was just being silly, looking for someone to talk to late at night. He was so much better than, say talking to Ryan (and I am missing our late night conversations, badly). The schedule was good for a couple of weeks: late afternoon calls to Scott (now they are planning sessions and Q & A), and then Cameron (someone more local, someone I could possibly spend money on). I haven’t seen him since Monday last, when he signed into Meebo for a short while to apologize for not calling me on my birthday, when the reality was I had no phone service and practically forgot about it. He told me he thought I was awesome and that he was sorry for not being more open. Then, calling me sir (I hate that term), he said he had to leave. I haven’t seen him since. I hope this isn’t an epilogue because he has become just the best friend a boy like me could have. Most of my friends now live in other parts of the US (Scott is local in the down-home sort of way). Ah, the liabilities of having the Internet as a means of social communication.

And never mind that 90% of this entire region is completely isolated from the rest of Texas–not even the snobby startup businessman on my Twitter could give a damn where I lived in Texas–even though I live in practically the same state as he, speaking perfectly good college-level English, for that matter. There is so much prejudice living here–not racial, or ethnic, but rather socioeconomic and technological–Texas is a wonderful place to live and work, but believe it or not, there are so many things wrong with just a handful of people who make the decisions, cast aspersions and judgments, make incorrect assumptions, based on the socioeconomic history of a people in a certain region. And this guy on my Twitter is a prime example of that “irrational exuberance” we were warned about in the 90s which has now has become the bane of socioeconomic progress. It is a very serious cultural problem we have to now deal with, and I’m afraid I don’t think we have all the answers for a solution right now. When someone not local asks me what I listen to, and I say the names of various artists and composers, a couple of them laugh and are astonished, and some have that puzzled look to their faces: “I thought it was all Tejano down here.” No, it is not all Tejano down here. This thing has bugged me for the last couple of months and I’ve been meaning to write about it in depth for awhile. Now, in the early morning hours, it seems appropriate to do so. I just wish I could have someone to listen to me while I discuss it.