It is also dedicated to my Mother and Father, my Brother, and my Grandparents.
This begins in 199-whenever. Autobiographical memory can start as early as ages 3 or 4. Memory loss can start in the mid-20’s, with effects increasing into the 30’s and 40’s. Alzheimer’s, an incurable, degenerative, and terminal disease, is associated with, among other things, memory loss. It is generally diagnosed in people over the age of 65, although it can occur much earlier in the form of Early-onset Alzheimer’s which accounts for approximately 5-10% of all Alzheimer’s patients. I am old enough to have my autobiographical memory intact and I do not currently suffer from any type of Alzheimer’s and it is questionable if I ever will because the disease is not hereditary and everyone is at risk. That being said, there is a chance I may one day be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, so I’d like to write this before then, because the following is based off of memory and nothing else. It should be noted that this is MY memory, this is they way I remember things, so do not be surprised if, in some strange way of preserving those close to me in my mind, some things I write are not entirely true. And we proceed…
“I’ve been gaining, gaining strength.”
This is true. It’s like a freight train at full speed. It is a law of motion. It is gravity and inertia. “Objects at rest stay at rest. Objects in motion stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.” I am not peaking. It is a steady pace. A long desolate road. But I’m not driving on the road, I’m building it. Sometimes when I pull up to that stop sign I don’t even shift into first gear. I keep it in second because I’m afraid of losing my momentum. The last statement is obviously fiction, because as poetic as it would be to give something like momentum extreme power, my biggest concern at that stop sign is not my momentum, it is the well-being of my five speed transmission. So I shift into first and regain momentum.
“I’ve been gaining insight into who’s choking and who’s selling lies this week.”
Those actions are so foreign to everything that I know. Your branch didn’t fall, you sawed it off. Swiftly and tactless, I might add. You are the hands around the neck. I was only there for the neck not the hands. Yea, it’s selfish. But my opinion on the subject only exists on this page and whoever reads this will never be exposed to any other story. So I guess under this spotlight, I win, which is convenient, because no one ever asked my opinion on the subject and I doubt they ever will, but I know what was said next to her hospital bed that night and sometimes I wish she’d heard it.
“A golden watch that should be mine.”
When will you get to pass down your golden watch? When will my name end up on a wall? Is that even what we want? I know it wasn’t the physical aspect. That was rightfully yours and somebody ripped it away from you. You still haven’t sold me on this being about a watch. I’ll resume later.
“I think of the faces trapped in lockets.”
Like the one that left alone. I learned a lot of things about strength from you. Undoubtedly an example of strength and resolve. Like a rock. And an equal example of weakness and fear. I noticed that you passed it down. I live with it. I’m writing with it right now. Which is why this subject will continue to stay unwritten. Next paragraph.
“That golden watch that should be mine.”
It has to be a metaphor. The golden watch could mean a lot of things. It could mean that you doubled your capability, ambition, and brutality to defend it. Besides it being a watch, I think it is a symbol for a lot of other things that were taken away from you that you had the rights to. It’s not just a watch. It’s a family. It’s not just a city. It’s a family. You can always have a watch and you can always live in a city, but you can’t always have that sense of family and it seems like losing the sense of family is worse than losing the physical family. That should have been yours.
“When I feel like I should leave, we disagree.”
When adults were children their fathers used to rake the leaves into a big pile so they could jump into them. When the kids were done playing in the leaves the fathers would put them into trash bags for the trash men to pick up the next morning. It is not until the adult is mulching up the leaves with his 22 inch lawn mower that he realizes a pile of leaves has not been present in this yard for many years. This isn’t such a big deal because no children currently reside in this house; it is just striking how fast time went. But it is a juvenile thought because we all know time isn’t fast or slow, it is just time, just seconds. Just as some parents fly flags or yellow ribbons when their sons go to war, some parents stop raking leaves when their sons become adults. Some children become adults and some go to war and both of these options frighten parents and most of the times the parents and children disagree. They agree to disagree and disagree about nothing.
“I’m told to stick to my convictions and commitments, say thanks for the two weeks before you leave.”
This is now a sacrifice. It is a young war. Sometimes sons go to war after their fathers go to war and when the sons become fathers their sons might one day go to war and the cycle is perpetual. Sometimes the sons die at war and unless a family has several sons or the family has only daughters, the cycle ends there. Sometimes the sons keep fighting forever and so it has been throughout history, sons go to war and fight to one day see their sons go to war and fight. Sons might like war but I don’t think fathers with sons do. It is the sons war now. Our war.
“I’ll only be out half the night.”
I remember loving that house. I still love it. From a very young age I told myself that if I had the opportunity I would purchase it. There was always so much life, so much pride. We are proud. We are strong. We have plaques and medals proving our value. And if life is split into day and night then as sons we have guided others through the night like a light from above. Half the night. I still can’t stop the goose bumps when I hear the song. I think it’s something you have to grow up with. The houses you moved into after I didn’t love as much. Or at all. There were no memories there for anyone involved. Don’t blame the houses, it was our fault we let them slip away. The train yard were we would watch the trains go by. Watching football on Thanksgiving in your living room. Christmas morning in the family room. The way you always unbuckled your seat-belt when we entered your neighborhood. We let those memories slip away and time took them from us. Time took them. No. Time is not a giver or taker, it’s just time. It’s just seconds.
“You know my city’s got simple ways of keeping me coming back.”
When the sons go to war and live they will come home. They may not be the same as they left and this saddens the fathers because they were once that son that changed at war. The mothers and daughters don’t understand. Maybe if the son is the first in his family to go to war then even his father will not understand because not every father goes to war and not every son goes to war. The ones that do go to war have to come back. They are not told how to go back, only to go back. “How does this work?” a son might ask his father. Nobody has an answer. You will return to your home because for years and years and years you thought everything was so complicated and chaotic but when it is time to go home you go because of the simplicity. Not everyone that wrote a letter was being selfish. Maybe some people really are proud. Maybe you really did leave some people behind and they miss you. Maybe some of the letters are not written out of vanity. Maybe these are the reasons you go back. Maybe not.
“So slow to respond that we left you behind.”
You might think you left the others behind when really they will leave you behind. You have gone away and everyone else is right where you left them. Still learning, still drinking, still fucking, still remembering, still getting high, still laughing, and not one of those times do they think about you. And if the young girls write you letters it’s only to fulfill some sort of personal obligation they feel… or it gives them a certain satisfaction as if their letters are making an equal sacrifice just because they’ve traveled as far as the recipient. So if the letters that they wrote are making the trip and the sacrifice and they wrote the letter, then in some small way they are also sacrificing. False. It is the same. It is the same for the young girl writing her Navy boy who is stationed in Jacksonville. And it is the same for the young girl writing her Marine boy who is stationed at Camp Pendleton in California. And it is the same for the young girl writing her Army boy who is stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. And it is the same for the young girl writing her Air Force boy who is stationed at Sheppard AFB in Texas. And it is the same for the soldier overseas. However ignorant or soul-less that may sound, I think we’ve all become numb to it. There has to be an end to justify the selfish means.
“We never gave up we just turned our attention and that’s exactly where you stay.”
You would never know it by looking at it but that vacant space was once alive. I swear it was once alive. There were colors and sounds pouring out of it. Now it’s empty. Empty just like the room felt two and a half hours away. I swear we were once full of life. Now it’s like staring into a black hole. You are looking, but nothing looks back. There’s nothing to see here and nothing gazes back at me. I try so hard to hold onto the memories that I love, but I’m realizing that they are being replaced by a shell. It’s not that I’ve given up, there’s just no point in looking back. The past is gone. The present is now. The future is not yet written. I can only be concerned with right now. I can’t disagree with what has happened but I still argue with it because I’m discontent with the outcome. What a strange argument. I can’t not believe in the past.
“Waiting for your train to make its debut.”
Food for thought: Camels do not store water in their humps as is commonly believed. The humps are actually a reservoir of fatty tissue. Concentrating body fat in their humps minimizes heat-trapping insulation throughout the rest of their body, which may be an adaptation to living in hot climates. The camel is the only animal to have replaced the wheel (mainly in North Africa) where the wheel had already been established. The camel did not lose that distinction until the wheel was combined with the internal combustion engine in the 20th century. We are not the camel. Yet. The camel bleeds the sand from my fathers boots. But mine is still red. I don’t remember everything. I remember understanding the sacrifice. I embrace the sacrifice because I am a son and not yet a father. I don’t remember anything.
“I think of the faces trapped in lockets.”
I think of them too. Not familiar faces. Faces that I don’t know and never will. Faces that no one in my family knew. Sometimes I’m curious about their names. I no longer reek of innocence but I am not yet bored and tired with monuments. I fantasize about having my face in a locket and my name on a wall for some young boy to read and maybe he’ll even touch my name and wonder who’s son I was. Or maybe a young woman will see it and she can romanticize about finding herself a young soldier to elope with and pester and argue with because she‘ll never understand that his life is not a movie scene. It must be very Shakespearean to be capable of thinking those things. Unfortunately there was nothing poetic for those names and faces when they were more than just names and faces. Whatever caused their names to be etched into that wall was actually the exact opposite of poetic: frank and to the point. Deadly. Misunderstood. Malnourished. Weary. Deadly.
“That golden watch that should be mine.”
Poetry sucks. It is sad and depressing. Full of hidden meanings and random phrases of bullshit. Unfortunately, sometimes I find myself trapped in a mindset that is similar to poetry. I’d like to get away from that for this part. Let’s be frank: everyone’s favorite thing about letters is that you can say whatever you want, however you want, in whatever tone you want and the best part about it is you don’t have to listen to any response. You say what you want to say and that’s it. Nothing poetic or artistic. You either say “I love you” or “I hate you.” What would I write in my letter? It would be easy to say “I hate you” and very typical to say “I love you,” but I have to say something different. Or maybe I’ll just say nothing. Maybe not.
“Standing in the path of photographs soaked in air.”
It is hard to argue with some things and I’m slowly realizing this. It is hard to argue with the past. It is hard to argue with a photograph. You lose. The photographs don’t change, you do. Some Native American tribes refused to let the white men photograph them because they thought they lost part of their souls when the pictures were taken. Now we all know goddamn well this is a ridiculous and, for a lack of better words, an utterly fucking absurd claim. But maybe it’s not all untrue. When you become a father and you look at photographs taken of your childhood, when you were a son and only a son, I think you realize that you’ve lost pieces of yourself along the way. Then you look at photographs of when your growing son had not yet begun growing and you realize that he’s lost pieces of himself as well. Should the photographs make you sad? Why do we cherish innocence and naivety? Because fathers wish they didn’t bleed sand and sons won’t know the difference until they are fathers and then they will become saddened by the photos just like their fathers were. The cycle is perpetual. Sons and fathers bonding over old men’s wars. Some things cannot be taken and some things you give away, but cigarettes are just cigarettes and this picture deserves a frame.
“We’ve never taken larger steps before.”
I’ve been told that the tone of my writing is despondent. I have to say that I disagree with that. Although at times I can see clearly where someone would think that, I feel like I should defend myself by saying that the majority of things I write are riddled with positivity. It is not my obligation to identify this as the writer, it is yours as the reader and if you can’t identify the positives then I think you are the one who is despondent. The despondent one just looking and searching and digging and clawing your way to more hopelessness. Praying that you are not the only one that feels so alone. Hoping that someone else is more hopeless than you. If anything I’ve ever written comes off despondent it probably has more to do with my extreme disinterested in what the reader gets out of my writing. Or my extreme disinterest with what is considered “literature.” Or my extreme disinterest with conventional writing standards and correct grammar and sentence structure. Or my extreme disinterest that some how, some way, dead soldiers became fourth page news. But no, I’m the despondent one because I don’t write love songs to girls. I am not despondent I just refuse to fall into any societal black hole. The world is fucked but I am highly optimistic that we are doing unbelievable things for ourselves. I think you know what I mean by “we.” Nobody even noticed this.
“There just clothes; your just a voice.”
I plead the fifth here. Silence is not golden. Silence is ugly. I believe silence speaks volumes and I have more respect for the men that keep quiet than the men that speak out. Fuck it, you would never know the difference anyway.
Yours truely,
WW
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