lone ranger

Halloween is a night where people put on someone else’s clothes, someone else’s face, someone else’s persona, light up their imagination and walk around begging as if it was there own. Yes, I have celebrated. For years I celebrated until the paint of the mask had burned into my face, until the wings on my back wilted and I could barely walk, until the polyurethane pants with painted on logos that made me look like a cowboy only in my own mind fell to shreds by the wayside. I have worn costumes and masks and carried false weapons. And yes, when you saw me I was laughing. Then one day my legs gave out and I could not see. The batteries on my flashlight had worn down and I found myself out and about in some strange neighborhood.

I cried.

My dad had dropped me off and now I might never get home. So I threw off these coverings, threw down these clothes and let loose the candy I had collected. It was not night. It was not dark. I was neither out of my neighborhood nor lost. The earth rotates like a lollipop handed to us by a kindly old woman. The clouds swell like a grey towel and then dry. The moon is only a reflection of what is true. In the heart of the sun a fire burns. Thoughts are flung together to be refined and made real. Power is released. It radiates out and cleans all it sees. The clothes we wear, the masks are of our own design. Drama feeds the imagination. Without it we warm and brown in the glory of our real bodies.

We never need be dark and cold. We are touched by the eternal. We never need to die.

Hanna furnaces of the Great Lakes Steel Corporation, Detroit, Mich. Coal tower atop coke ovens (LOC)

One time, in reality any one time, I chose to quit something, to change majors, put down an instrument, let time flow by as if it were endless, gave power to the voice in my head that cared more about comfort and protection than the one that wanted to excel and go for it. When I accepted that someone did not, could not, would not love me. When I turned in C work hoping for a B. When I allowed myself to hitch up with someone whose wagon was not headed in the right direction. When I did not return the truly romantic letters. When I was unwilling to sit in the dark and stay there until the heat and pressure turned me fully into something called diamond. I wouldn't change them all, wouldn't need to, just one, just one safe and easy moment and the rest would have told me, would have taught me, would have created something wholly different from the person I am here. Somehow I would be stronger.

Washington, D.C. from Arlington Cemetery

The sky vacillated between blue and grey. As if the war that took place, that split along these lines would be argued again today. As if it would never be finished. All around, the memorials to the nameless dead and the singular heroic, those who survived the battles, drooped in shadow, a little more sullen and dark and dirty each day. Always, a new statue going up, a new battle to honor, a new class of remembrance. Not long before we build one for those newly dying. This is Washington, this is Arlington, this is Alexandria. Among the various upstart communities, the Townhouses, the planned and gated, the malls and metro stops, all well laid out, there is always the dead, the honored, the terrible price of our current predicament. In any moment of construction, we must always plan our memorial.