Shrieks from Paradise, Correspondence&Rails#19: Dear Reverend

The Bard of Bettie Naylor
Royal Blue Grocery
Hippie Town, USA

Reverend J.S.Woolery
Between Trouble&The Blues
San Marcos, TX

9/7/14 2:40 PM

if the blues don’t kill me, boys I’ll never die
-Steve James

Sir-

We will live to see stranger things than our own mortality. The worst horrors and petty piss-ons of life are just a drop in the cup compared to our blues. But our blues has made us strong, if not resourceful.

They play the worst music here at Royal Blue but it’s my office away from home so whaddiyagonnado?
Kids today don’t understand that this music sucked when it was popular, when we were young men and believed in things like love and strength. Adam Ant and the Cure, Destiny’s Child-this was the shit blasting out the winners’ sports cars as we brazenly and bitterly stuck our head into the wind on the dirty streets of our hometown.

But enough of that ballyoo, I want to know what happened. I was riding high this Spring and heading into summer I thought I had said goodbye to the blues forever. I was falling in love, had poems accepted to several zines and even lectured at Texas State. Ha. I thought I had it whipped, Bud. What I presented to the CTWP that day was true; I believed it. I won’t say that I don’t write. My worst day is heaps better than my best day before, but I’m choked with grief and loss and I mostly just sideline it on the roof with cheap white wine until the sun sets and I can drink the Boss’ Vod.

I’m no fool. I never could have dreamed of the life I’m living now. I’ve become everything I wanted to. There is still so much to do but the view is grand. And still I find-those same old problems-a kinghell dissatisfaction with everything and everyone, a pack a day habit and a monkey on my back.

I guess this shit’s supposed to make you strong. And it will. But I carry it with me, J. All the loneliness of the world. And I’ll never live down that I have become exactly like my old man. Bitter and closed but never able to stave off a hypersensitivity that the Buddhists strive for but the Western man just smokes away and bides his time the best he can.

The Western Man is fucked. Don’t get me wrong I am a feminist. I was raised by women. But the frontier is closed. There’s nothing left worth killing except ourselves and the jury’s even out on that one.
The point of this letter Reverend is to say that it hasn’t gotten any worse but slightly better, until we’re attacked by it, this silent stranger within, who wants to choke all the joy out of the life we’ve built and fought and strived for. This motherfucker wants to burn it all down and worse, he’d love to sit down at the feast with you and make sure you don’t enjoy a second of it.

That’s not the point either, Reverend. We isolationists should do well to welcome the Harvest, celebrate the razing of fools and give cheer even of the ruse that once had us spellbound-mistaking a silly girl’s game for love. But let’s face it the real mistake is in thinking that there is anything that will save us. We don’t need saving. We’re doing better than our Fathers and if they could they would tell us that we did good. They’re proud. My point is that all mindfuckery and subterfuge, all draining dross and styrofoam love has only brought us closer. I believe it and I’ve got to. My days are filled with nothing. An abyss that I will fill up with letters to friends, poetry and Creative (or otherwise) Non-Fiction.

I won’t be coming around on the idea of togetherness. Because it doesn’t last and it never felt right even when it did. I believe in the road and I believe in the work. They were only in the way of the work and every heartbreak paves the way. Every disappointment, every ridiculous lie we hung onto is one less thing in the way. Did it hurt? Better believe. And does every day. But for every thing I’ve lost I’ve found myself. I’m with Rollins on this one. Folk music pisses me off and I’m counting down the days until I can go dark on the social networks. Get down on Vonnegut time. Surpass these zeniths of hatred and coast on a plain of dispassion.

The terrible summer has ceded. Time will do away with them and leave me with my pain. If I can’t get any work done at home then I’ll setup shop out here at the cafe and crank out another angry missive to my Friend, the Reverend.

Stronger,
Trainer
Royal Blue Grocery
Austin, TX

 

Shrieks of Paradise, Correspondence&Rails#10: Dear Butch

And so it goes. ‘Twas ever thus. A pound of flesh and an eye for an eye on the too-small working class streets of my first love has made a war of my heart. What a waste. And what a dumb decade we spent in the pent-up rooms and shut-down shacks at the corner of nowhere&oblivion. It’s a wonder we survived at all.
There’s nothing left to do but take our Crown. Don our coat of wounds and crank the twitching hours into a masterpiece of pain&resistance. Resistance would’ve worked. It could have been the way but now the body gives out and the mind grows tired of the chase.
We won’t need their paper-thin platitudes of false love anymore. Nor their comradery.  Nor their praise, pride or prize for half-bravery.
We have starved to the truth long enough. Now let us feast.

Welcome to the mountain chain.
Yr Brother,
James