Return to Humboldt

MM rented us a van to drive down, which made more sense since our car's tires are bald and about to pop and the IRS just can't seem to deposit our tax return no matter our increasing desperation. drive down took 10 plus hrs b/c of stopping extended 2 times (once riverside park in grants pass, once in crescent city). at last we arrive.

at airbandb in bayside and the smell at night/morning is so long ago familiar that it aches. there are mirrors reflecting and refracting into hallways and corridors*. here we are at breakfast at X which used to be called Y which was where we ate when M and I were pretending we weren't a couple in summer of 95 so her ex didn't kill us; here's the loggia at the Minor Theater where M and I sat after our first benign coupling (her in a b/w pixies t shirt) saying 'we both know it didn't mean anything' except now I'm yelling at our son to calm the f down. here's the Plaza in full farmers market mode w/ organic nut pastes and whatnots. here's patrick's point state park and the memories of M and I getting married there, making everyone meet us there, making everyone walk out to wedding rock; here's the memory of going there in the july before our wedding to scope it out; here's where Darren and I camped that night after my son's namesake died. here's redwood park which triggers the memory of the photo I had of CR there w/ her beau at the time who we called 'hair guy' months before she and I got together, where I went for a run or two w/ J prior to apparently turning into a giant asshole. Here's the coop where M's ex works and where we all stop for sandwiches to see him. Here's me in the car w/ DMG (who went to school w/ me and lived in LA when we were there but lives in portland now and who worked on my movie) driving and SB (who shot/coproduced my movie) en route to the Avenue of the Giants so all 3 of us can run the 1/2 marathon - all 3 of us in various states of transition, transfiguration, repair. Here we are running late, stepping forward, the air charged w/ past/present, moving, running, going, not stopping.

*the corridors contain: my first arrival, 26 yrs ago, me moving in to apartment w/ CR 25 yrs ago and working at the American Deli (RIP) while not going to school b/c I was someway or other going to be some sort of artist (though that only manifested by me reading Henry Miller's oeuvre and writing in my journal); me moving to the Beverly House a yr later after CR and I broke up and she moved to Portland; me and Matt and George moving to the 11th st house a yr after (and where M sought me out  to talk when she and not-yet-ex were in death throes); me in the shack behind 11th st house the yr after; the house on Grant Ave 6 mos later; the death of my son's namesake on the side of the 101 near Moonstone Beach; the film department at the college; a couple romantic dalliances that were defining in several ways but that share the DNA of those-people-want-nothing-to-do-with-me-ever-again which suggests I was an asshole; the summer b/f my last yr when i worked floor camera at tv station during the olympics w/ Joe S who in some manner sold me bill of goods about LA and AFI but maybe he didn't really know who he was then; the projectionist gig at the Broadway Cinema; this creeping sensation of nobody knows what I am going to be/do and boy won't they be sorry; and so on and so on, all humming at once around every corner, pulsing with some varietal of cosmic wisdom or dumbfuck randomness. 

Rejection & Renewal

today is the 22 yr anniversary of the death of my son's namesake. he was driving back from his mother's funeral in Portland and fell asleep at the wheel 10 min from his house in McKinleyville, CA. (Margaret and I started dating shortly afterward and said if made it thru the hazards of being in a relationship in college and one day got married and one day had children, the boy would be named after him.) The last thing he said to me, in the foyer to our classroom on the 2nd floor of the Theater Arts Building, in a rush to get to Portland, the news of his mother's death fresh on his face was I'll be okay.

I got rejected for a job I wanted. granted still a day job (ie not filmmaking) but one that at least would intersect w/ my creative training and background. The sting was primarily ego-based but enough to mostly ruin the weekend. Late Sunday I started to think that maybe it was a gift, this not getting the thing I wanted, this transformative opportunity, this second chance to rise from the ashes and chart a course forward. That it was the pursuit of the job that was more important than the job itself (esp as relates to how I value my own self and voice).

It hasn't been confirmed but a rejection from a very selective film program I wanted desperately to attend is imminent. Getting in would have been a game-changer for my next movie Sister/Brother (which starts shooting this Spring).  When I got picked for the second round back in August, I had a few weeks to get the screenplay in shape and I did a line by line rehaul. In a sense that was the gift of advancing, not the perceived end goal. I am making the movie regardless.

Thursday I went to see the Pixies. In that weird sort of bookending that only music can seemingly do recalled seeing them 28 years earlier in Atlanta at the Roxy on October 15, 1989. Standing here in the recent present watching them made me think of the small tiny person I was then, a senior in high school, the broad deficiencies and wants that consumed me then. How I wish the me of now could go back in time, telling him not to put focus on such meaningless things. That made me think of the broad deficits and wants that consume me now. Is someone coming from 28 years in the future to tell me something similar? something like this:

Light can conceal as much as shadow can reveal. Things break one way, things break another. You'll be okay.

Today on my lunch break I ran up past the Duniway Park Lilac Garden, up Terwillger Blvd, on the path that circles the hospital where I had 2 brain surgeries, where my son had a fetal MRI when he was in utero to help them get a better look at the mass in his chest that was changing shape week to week, when we didn't know if he would live or die before he got to us, or shortly thereafter. The sun was out and the sky was blue. It was crisp and clear. My app told me when I finished the run but something inside me told me to keep going.

on synchronous stingings

I've been reading and loving The Unwinding by George Packer - non fiction about the end of many precepts and certainhoods in US mythology to put it generally, which may sound dull but it's a fantastic read. Last night I at last got our (almost) 6 month old F to sleep finally and headed out to the kitchen table to read the book and enjoy a beverage, as is my wont while my wife got our 2 yr old N to sleep, prior to our nightly ritual of sitting on the futon and starting one in a cascade of endless Law & Orders and me falling asleep w/o fail 20 minutes in every time.

On page 241 I read about the ascendency of a NC congressman, seen and framed through the eyes of a NC businessman attempting to affect change via biodiesel, and came across this passage which involves said congressman-to-be being tended to by his father in a remote place after being stung multiple times by yellow jackets.

This naturally and immediately suggests to me a whole line of internal inquiry about what to do if/when my son is ever stung by a bee/yellow-jacket/hornet/other. Will he need and EpiPen too? Will he be one of those stories about allergic kids who swell up 3x in mere moments? Will the sting be his undoing? (note: don't be alarmed, these are all the healthy normal thoughts of any parent, sensing/anticipating peril around every corner). I felt blessed we hadn't encountered such yet and was somehow confident we wouldn't cross this bridge for many moons.

This morning we headed down to the river to check out the boats b/c it's Fleet Week. This is when some boats come up the Willamette River and park and allow the unwashed masses to come aboard (note: this is one of those things I would never ever do w/o a kid. It wouldn't even cross my mind. however the calculus of daily decisions is supremely altered w/ children in that going somewhere you don't have any actual interest in going trumps the catastrophe of staying home b/c at a minimum you won't have to look at the laundry/dishes and see them as some tacit reminder of your failings.)

We made it on to one boat, which was fine and neat and made me glad we went. Other boats had long 3 hour waits which we could not endure so we walked around the promenade, around the booths at Saturday Market (on Sunday) and past the not-yet-running-b/c-it's-10-AM carnival rides behind miles of chainlink.

We were standing at one chainlink bit, attempting to encourage N to walk for awhile since I'd been carrying him for probably a mile's worth of distance - now feeling it burn in my chest, arms, legs, in particular b/c I made the ill-informed last-minute decision to wear flip flops instead of the hassle of shoes upon leaving the house - and he was not interested, urging me to carry him instead.

And from nowhere, he began wailing in pain and we looked down and saw a stinger sticking out of his neck. A bee.

Moments later I am carrying him, the sun beating down, him screaming in pain, my flip-flops clap clapping on the walkway, trying to decide what to do - back to the car? find a first aid tent somewhere in the swell of the Rose Festival grounds? He can't stop crying, he can't stop touching his neck. And I am suddenly pulsing with fear - part particular to parenthood, part particular to my own stripe of dark worst-case paranoia - b/c we don't have an EpiPen. (But why would we?) And: Is this just coincidence? that 14 hours prior I was reading about stings and feeling blessed that N had never been stung? What are the odds? 

And: Will this sting be his undoing? 

We made our way to salvation, hearts slowing, N brave as hell. And I was re-presented this seeming
perpetual lesson: The lack/loss of control is a fundamental component of this whole enterprise.