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Journal

The chalky white garage door; spokesperson for all the croaking, screaming, discontent machinery of the house. The microwave would take its place, but that would come later. The chalky white would come off onto my hand if I touched it. So as a kid, and still today, I always expected to retract an albino hand if I touched a pale wall, or a picket fence. It was like a contagious disease, the whiteness.

The doctors wore white, as one would expect from doctors. I was just a kid and I didn't want to touch those pasty white gowns. I could never see where the pockets were on those until the doctor wearing one would put his hands in them if he wanted to look extra professional.

I asked one of the pasty gowns something before a particular operation. I asked why. It said, "So that you will have time to procrastinate later in life." I didn't know what this meant. I do now.

My careers sprouted and withered sooner then other kids. Around seven or eight. I've never had any need to remember dates. I remember that at an older age I was so elated at passing the driver's test that I misplaced the memory of my own birth date. The officer looked at me strangely. He was eating a Twix. He made the elaborate background check with one hand. Maybe this was one contributing reason to why I hate slow eaters.

I stayed up late at night or contemplated deeply while my mom vigorously scrubbed me in the bathtub. The warmth was a sedative, and drinking the filthy water must have caused some brain damage, but still I started contemplating my very existence back then. At least that is my first memory of it. Kids would later poke fun of me about it. They still laugh when I suddenly switch from a funny opportunist, to a calculating perfectionist and expect them to accompany me.

Music was my first outlet. My dad took me downtown without explanation. I didn't ask. He led me into a dark alley and up a flight of stairs to an oak door that had been scratched and mangled by kittens and such. We entered the guitar shop and there was my first sight of David, my future guitar instructor. I still to this day do not know why a Guitarist of his caliber was in this small town. He was a burly guy, and kept getting bigger even as I grew. He died before I got to see him shrink.

David led me to a small, miniature guitar with but four strings. I sat and he told me to do some amazingly simple exercises. I did them. His face revealed nothing. Next thing I remember I was outside and pressing my ear to the door. I heard something about a "gift" being discussed so I thought I was in for a surprise. I loved knowing about upcoming surprises.

My dad came out and there it was, on his face; the first and only time I've seen him truly proud of me in every degree of life. I was his incarnation, only better. He gave me a Twix and told me I would start immediately.

Playing was never a problem. I could play anything if it was taught. But David wanted to teach me how to read. It was another language. Today I can't even imagine not knowing where to place my fingers when I see a G or a D chord.

We would practice in the back room of his guitar shop. It was always illuminated slightly red, with a black curtain instead of a door. Periodically a customer would enter and David would hear the bells. He would get up and I learned to just continue playing. He could analyze my mistakes while selling a guitar at the same time. Even from the other room.

Later, David would move to another town and a guy named Tom would take his place running the guitar shop. My dad took lessons from him in the Mandolin and the Banjo and a couple other instruments. Tom would kill himself in the stall of an Exxon bathroom years later. But we didn't know that at the time.

One day after a lesson I was browsing through the store while my dad was writing out the check and talking with David about Segovia, the first world-renowned guitarist. David had studied under him as a matter of fact. I looked in rapture at one of the small books. It was called Manuscript Paper. Today it's called "Music Paper" or "Score Pad." This one had a picture of the classic quill and ink on a bed of deep red velvet. God knows why it was velvet. I just liked the cover. I still have the cover taped to my wall.

That night I sat awake simply writing down the notes. Playing with them. Manipulating them. I was still sharing a room with my sister and she threw down pillows at me and my flashlight. Even though I was under the covers, I suppose it just made me look like a furry, glowing nolle on the bed.

Later, manuscript paper would become obsolete because my dad would buy a computer. At first it was just a primitive music notation program. It was called Dr. T's Music Software. No Joke.

Slowly we advanced higher and higher until I was equipped with a thousand-dollar piece of digital bliss technology, and a two-hundred dollar piece of music notation software. It was usually four-hundred, but my dad taught on and off at the university in his field, Industrial Hygiene, so he got the faculty discount. My friends could never understand why my dad's title and college major had nothing to do with Dentistry. They thought it was just a heavier type of Dentistry, like you can buy those "industrial-size" boxes of Tide when you go to Sam's Club.

My dad would, as a form of obtaining compensation, commission me to warp one of his beloved Celtic songs beyond recognition. Occasionally he would get his "group" to play some of them. The harmonies I spun were complex and difficulties emerged. His group was novice. They still are, bless their hearts. I remember the sour notes drifting through to every crevice of the house to this day.

I was about to enter high school by this time. Me and my dad would attend, regularly, the concerts at the CAC (Creative Arts Center, an extension of WVU). In one concert, I remember a lady, whose name now escapes me, was conducting a choir and small orchestra of high school students. Despite the intimidation I felt from the students (because of the upcoming transition from highest in the hierarchy to lowest), I still looked endearingly upon the conductor who surely must have had to put up with a lot to make the students cooperate so well. I asked my dad to get her University mailing address and I dispatched a score and recorded tape (from the computer) of one of my pieces. She liked it a lot and wrote back a recommendation that I start taking lessons in a new community-outreach thing that the University was experimenting with.

And so began the last days of my music. I took lessons once a week, sometimes more, for three years. I did get better but I somehow stopped listening when music appeared in my head. The music stopped being an extension of me. It was at my fingertips. I didn't like that. But that's how music is. It is isolated among the arts.

Along with the untimely death of my musical career, went my father's maternal pride. Maybe it is just that he doesn't like showing it now, or that I just don't hang around long enough for him to express it. Whatever the case, I took up other hobbies.

I had quit Boy Scouts long before. It was too strenuous and the people could never sit down. I considered this as a result of them taking examples from their parents, whose back pockets always maintained the perfectly symmetrical circle of a container of snuff. I never understood if this was the actual reason they didn't sit down, because they could have always put it in another pocket. Once I bought a container of beef jerky that was purposefully shaped like one of snuff. My parents confiscated it. I never saw it again, nor was I given money again without specific instructions.

So, with the quitting of Boy Scouts, and then Music, I had decided I was denying the masculine side of me. I took up my old habit of bike riding through the neighborhood. The place had a distinct smell to it. Every house had a chimney, every back yard had abundant wood stocks, every porch had friendly neighbors whose mouths would smile warmly while their eyes would seem to glare at me as I rode by in my specialized Rock-Hopper. It was called that too. Rock-Hopper. It could never really live up to its name, but it was a good bike. It was fun just to idly glide faster then other people.

We lived near a main road and a VFW. Veterans of Foreign Wars. It was a club that was designed to let the veterans of foreign wars hide their experiences and worn out stories in amber liquid and then stumble around the parking lot looking for a corner to piss in. Luckily, I never encountered one of these revered veterans. I never encountered any drunks, and there were many bars around that neighborhood. My friend Chris did, however, encounter a couple. Later in life, Chris would accidentally hang himself while trying to get high.

There was a school of martial arts across the street from the VFW. Occasionally, while bike-riding, Chris and I would witness an intoxicated man being restrained by one of the black-belts while another black-belt called the police. Meanwhile the students would sit obediently in their meditative position, watching their Sansei from the corner of their eyes. It was a glass-enclosed dojo, so the trophies could be displayed along with the talent of the students. Chris and I decided to join.

There was a Kimono Dragon in a giant cage. It was the first thing I saw upon entering the studio with Chris. It was a small, dense dojo and people scurried about. We felt a certain pride in not having to bow in the presence of the black-belts. After we joined that all changed, of course. If we met them at the store, we bowed. If we saw them at a basketball game, we bowed. If we were in class, we sure as hell bowed. Severe consequences resulted from dishonor.

We approached the Sansei. He was a big man with a protruding stomach. It was a solid looking stomach, however, as if he had a big clay bowl under his white outfit. He was eating a Twix. The first thing we did in our first class was spar with the Sansei. It was tradition. I'm not sure, but I think I'm the first one to ever get a kick off on him in the first match. It was too his back. I felt proud, in spite of the fact that he floored me nanoseconds after I executed the masterfully planned kicking maneuver.

We learned some Chinese, and learned how to block and punch with your index finger's fingernail exposed, instead of tucked under with the other fingers. This made the fist tighter and less susceptible to buckling under the strain. I would break my hand two times before I realized the importance.

The first belt was not hard. Tying it was a pain. Nobody ever considers that in joining a dojo you have to learn to tie things. I wouldn't learn how to tie a tie until I got my first job as a telemarketer. God knows why you need to wear a tie in order to deceive people over the phone, but I supposed that it helped with the rapport. Karate reminded me of Boy Scouts.

I persevered through until I was about to test into the orange belt. I quit. Testing was long and tedious. The black-belt test, allegedly, took more than 14 consecutive hours of testing to attain. I don't think I could sit in a chair and judge someone for 14 hours. So I quit before the test date arrived. Chris didn't. I was sick of my masculine side. Chris wasn't.

My parents were getting at me in the meantime. They considered it my fault that my church was rejecting me on the grounds that I wore all black exclusively, and that, in every Sunday-school lesson, I was the only one to question whatever the teacher said.

"Here on the surface is heaven and here in the dark, icy water, this is hell. We are like life preservers to the people, you see? We need to--"

"Hold on. Are you saying that if we don't get out to the other five and half billion people on this earth that they will all sink down into that waters that is essentially the burning fires of eternal damnation?"

"That question has been posed many times. Let me--"

"It's a simple question, Mrs. Keith. Yes or no."

And that was how it was. So they subtly kicked me out. I resolved to explore other religions. Since my dad bought that computer for my music, I had been using it for other things such as the Internet. I can remember the first chat I ever entered. It was with my friend Brad. Brad is still alive.

It was called the Red Dragon Inn. The sheer joy of having a response over thousands of miles was elating enough. And now, I had found a room where I could role play as anything. I picked the title "DragonMage." In there I was introduced to the longest standing relationships of my life. Most of them were Pagans. I decided that all role players were probably Pagan. I became a Pagan. This was before I was even sure on what the classification actually meant. I joined a local re-enactment group called the Shire of Misty Highlands. Most everyone there was Pagan. We had fun beating on drums and intoning spells and rites and blessing and such. I ended up worshipping the Egyptian god Thoth. He was the god knowledge, intelligence and enlightenment. I found out that Pagan is a very loose term.

The primary function of this group was to reenact medieval battles, or to simply dress up in the modern-day equivalent to medieval armor and bash each other with blunt, sword-looking sticks. It was an art, I was told. I couldn't fight because I was fixated on the idea of using a katana, the Japanese weapon of choice, a smaller version of the sword. I actually had to use a boken, which is the compressed-wood equivalent. The leader of this group was John. He was a devout Christian. He taught me how to use the boken and introduced me to various self-help books on the topic of violence and efficient killing with the weapon. I learned fast.

Poetry in motion, as I heard it described on a documentary I rented from the library. The Librarian asked me if I was experienced in the subject, as she fiddled with the 10-year-old computer system. I said, "Kind of. I suppose that by now I'm the equivalent of a black-belt." I pictured myself restraining a drunkard.

I aspired to enlighten myself as much as possible in light of my new god. Conveniently, the recommended thing to do, as a new inductee into the Pagan religion, was to try to get acquainted with the religion as much as possible. I started researching.

Meanwhile, my dad was slowly coming to realizations about the places I was journeying off to at night. The titillation of being a nocturnal-dweller died fast. Before he found out fully what was going on, I had already toned the enthusiasm down to a minimum. I quit going to the Shire meetings. And after a while, I imagine, they took me off their role call.

My father lectured me on various things. I remember him saying he loved me afterwards, however. I still wonder if that was the first time he said it, or the first time I noticed. My mom came a couple minutes after him and asked me if I believed in God. It wasn't a question. It was more like a plead. She had tears in her eyes so I lied. "Yes I believe in God mom. Don't worry this is a phase. Happens to the best of us." She liked that. It holds to this day.

It dawned on me, over a period of six months or so, that Thoth might not be the best God for me. It might be that he lost his power after the Egyptian concepts gave way to Christianity. I considered worshipping a more popularly accepted god, but the idea of a god as an almost tangible item disagreed with me.

There are subterranean depths to this city. Few people know of them. They are spray-painted and gritty, but rich with a variety of scum and villainy. And in the midst of all this chaos, I was introduced, for one night's duration, the concept of worshipping multitudes of gods at the same time. There was a term for it. Hare Krishna, they called it.

It was like an underground society, although they made many unsuccessful efforts to invite people downward. I guess the whole idea of going "down" to worship was undesirable. I was reluctant at first and wanted to turn back, but Misty, the person I was diving into this with, was adventurous and romantic. We would later make love on the highest building in the city. We stole the key to the roof when the janitor wasn't looking. It was luck. We didn't know which key was which.

I found the meditation and mantras particularly appealing:

"Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare.
Hare Rama, Hare Rama
Rama Rama, Hare Hare."

Every word meant God. This was called the Maha Mantra, which meant Supreme Mantra. It was intended to liberate the soul from the body. I remember the Astral Projection I learned in the Shire. I felt sagely.

It was my Senior year in high school. During my allegiance to the Shire, I had once tried to psychically extend my vision to the future and pick out my future wife. I walked out barefoot into the warm night air. I always loved warm night air because everything can be felt. I thought it was ideal environment to psychically connect. The stones of the porch were dry and rough, as if threatening to scrape the skin off my feet if I didn't pick them up high enough with each step. The grass, in great contrast, was warm and moist, like an afterglow.

I closed my eyes and let the wind move through me. It was not a trick I had picked up in the Shire, or from that old, dead god, Thoth. It was something I had learned when jogging at winter. I found that if I imagined the wind going through me then for some reason I stopped feeling the biting cold.

I thought I saw her in the distance. I could have sworn I saw her in California, with black, inky hair and blue eyes. Yes it was all coming to me. My breaths grew shorter. She was eating a Twix. She was an artist. My feet were sinking into an overly saturated portion of grass. I didn't want to compete with my future wife. And I knew I would never be an artist. And if I was, I could always quit.

The month before college would start, I would meet Sarah. She had long, wavy golden-brown hair. I thought that she had natural highlights in the front, but later I found out that she had dyed them. She was from this small town like me. She didn't know about the underground society. She had golden-green eyes. She was an artist.

Ah well, I never did like inky hair in the first place. And I've got blue eyes; why compete? On our first date we went to Arby's and I bought her an apple cake. I would soon learn that anything can happen if I gave this girl something sweet. The cake was wrapped in tin foil. At the end of the date she presented me with a perfectly symmetrical tine-foil heart. She had shaped it while I was in the bathroom. It was perfect and condensed.

She would later make another one in Studio Art class, and confuse the two. I would tell her, "I think you have your hearts mixed up."

It was about this time that I started writing poetry as another outlet. Life became meaningless unless I got to write about it. I wonder if that doctor retired.

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