Nashville, TN

This is what my life is like & I bring it with me. Cormac McCarthy’s The Orchard Keeper. A Winged Victory for the Sullen & I am looking up the word: coruscant. I am enamored w McCarthy: Through the leaves of the hardwoods he could see the zinc-colored roof of the church faintly coruscant and a patch of boarded siding weathered the paper-gray of a waspnest. I pull into East Nashville & park in the parking lot of The Turnip Truck & go inside where I find things I am familiar with & put them in a basket & happily pay for them. The  check-out woman calls me honey & baby & tells me her children won’t eat McDonalds & she is proud of them. I am proud of them too. I love her in a way I love my sisters or a cousin or a brother. I send a picture of the storefront artwork, an orange & yellow, blue & red mural painted on tin, to Melanie. She is always with me. Every experience infused w her spirit. I want her approval. I want her to be proud of me. I want Mary to be proud of me. It’s not stifling like I thought it would be: Love. It’s Freedom. I can travel anywhere I want. I can go wherever I choose & they are w me. My decisions weighted w their judgement, not with what they know, but what I know. I pull into East Nashville & The Felice Brothers’ cataclysmic The River Jordan is playing: Fuck the Louvre / Fuck the House of Blues / Fuck my whole career / you don’t want me here / Let me know / where my loved ones go / its not fair to keep em hid / tell me what I did. Each day I feel more like my father. I smell like him. I am closer to him now than ever before. He is living inside of me & I am reeling. I am moving closer to something on the other side of this life. I want to know what it is. I have always wanted to know what it is. I want to not be afraid. & not just in death. Perhaps I have to reconcile fear on this side of the veil? I am tired of being afraid. Of worrying what people think of me. I can never know. & what difference does it make? I stopped lying a long time ago. 13 or 14 years ago? I can’t remember. That’s the thing. It’s not the drugs. It’s not the booze. Those were the choices I made after I decided to tell a lie. I thought I was fooling the world, but it mattered not what they thought of me, just the same as now. & besides, the truth was always revealed in one way or another. I had to live w myself & I couldn’t because I knew the awful truth. & so the symptoms persisted & grew worse. I have seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Mr Sorrow crouched in the corner of The London Motel. Trees moving in the darkness with branches like long hands. The realm of resistance. The place where sleep is chased away & inhabited by many beings & djinns. A whole realm of others. Anyway. They persist in the light. & they persist to try to prevent me from sleep. For some reason… I put blankets on the floor. I still only inhabit the bed in the final hours of morning. My hips & shoulders ache. I have seen specialists & doctors & they are always late & they shrug w their decision while I sit & wait & wait. I’m leaving Nashville today. I watched a video of Mary reading before bedtime. I ate spicy fried chicken crushed w paprika & I became overwhelmed with what’s to come. The kindness of strangers. The fear of telling my story. The fear of failure. It’s raining in Nashville & there is no sun & the streets are wet & move slow through the seventh story window. Soundless. Dreamlike. I opened for The Watson Brothers last night & only one woman was listening. She had octagonal glasses like the women wear in Upstate New York. I went over to her & thanked her. I like your glasses I told her. I’m from New York she said. The owner howled when I sang Teenage Wasteland. I was always wasted.