She Took Me to Communion

The day my Mama died she took me to communion. I was eating, as we do when a loved one dies and we do not know what else to do. I was standing in the kitchen, the taste of potato salad a ghostly presence in my mouth.

The chalice was a stainless-steel pot clutched in my shaky hands. There was no wine. The blood of Christ manifesting as a soothing pool of pot likker holding a mess of collard greens. If the kitchen can be said to shelter and sustain, then this one was church. I could see it overlaid on my sore eyes. She was sitting at the organ, absorbed, smiling. For fifty-one years, she had played it for the church she grew up in.

The voice called, summoning us to the rail. I worried that we had no bread. She was unconcerned.

My shadow had not crossed the threshold of a church to worship in more years than I could recall. Yet to be there, that was the important thing. The kitchen ceiling raised up. Becoming warm wood, the cross on a wall of brick. Without knowing it, I knelt. The pot was too heavy for its size. I lifted the warm metal to my lips. Salt and iron. Green intensity as wine soothing the gullet. The taste of such a thing revealed to me the meaning of the term “soul food.” I drank, thirsty and grateful and knowing that we were loved.

I would no longer have the blessing of sharing that love with her as we gathered around the table that evening. I did know this: She slipped away peacefully. That is a blessing few of us receive. Far from home, tears trickled down into the greens upon my plate. I ate in a bit of funeral silence except for her voice whispering to me that someday we will all be home, and we can take communion.

A Brief Meditation On Account of the Dead That Sacrificed

Put down the drink
Set aside the coupons
Challenge yourself
To grasp tight
Sadness and memory
Of all the souls
Wrapped tight
In that freedom rag
You worship
And exalt
Without care
At the ruination
Of another’s arc
Cost paid by them
But extracted
By the powerful
And the delusional
Who cannot stop
Fabricating reasons
To carve more names
In the stone wall
Of our violent privilege

Cipher Lock on the Gates of Heaven and Hell

07162003
07222003
08082003
10302004
05??2009
08092009
02112010
03??2010
04??2011
05012012
06242016
07302016
04292017

The wheels crank and turn in the riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, that is my heart. Numbers scroll past the inside of my eyelids, grown weary of holding them open to witness the majesty and tragedy of the last fifteen years of life. Love, death, and heartbreak neatly condensed to digits as if that would provide some anesthesia or euphoria.

They do not. Not entirely in either direction of pleasure or pain. The numbers are signposts. Delineators of anniversaries never to be forgotten, some cherished, some dreaded.

Summer is the season of heat. The cipher transforms it into a hell broken only by the memories of love that somehow have survived amongst the ruins. Those memories, as water cupped in my hands brought to a trembling mouth that gulps to soothe the burning in my heart.

The wheels crank and turn. The code will be scrambled. With luck, the vault will stay shut long enough for healing to take hold. Healing perhaps will make the numbers add up to something.

Heart In A Box

August 18th, 4:36 PM. A few clouds, silvery light limns me as I write. I quite like it.

"Ten thousand words swarm around my head
Ten million more in books written beneath my bed
I wrote or read them all when searchin' in the swarms
Still can't find out how to hold my hands"

The music player surprised me with the Avett Brothers somehow knowing my heart ahead of time, they could foresee the future years ago, they must have. How else could they have known I would be delving into a box full of memories, heartaches and love this silvery-gray afternoon? My heart contracted and my throat tightened around a bolus of emotions, rough but not entirely unwelcome.

I was searching for photos. More specifically, CD's with photo files or a flash drive containing the same. I've been thinking about my twins lately, and I wanted to find the pictures I had taken when they were still in the NICU. Scoured my computer, the external drive, no luck so far. I thought that perhaps I had copied them off. I hope I did.

So it was a riffling through my desk, ransacking my briefcase, checking some shelves. I was avoiding the large box of mementos I had packed in my last move, but with no luck finding the right discs I knew I would have to open it.

It was among the very last boxes I sealed before moving. As I cleaned up my old house, I kept discovering the odd bit of physical memory, things I didn't want to discard, or couldn't discard. You know how it is when you move things that have been in the same place for long periods of time. Layers and strata develop. Chunks of memory form under the compaction of more stuff and time. Photos. Kids' drawings. Notes and cards and letters. Knick-knacks and curios. I had more than I remembered.

They all went in the box so I wouldn't lose them. The box itself had been set aside in a corner, resting there in the months since I moved. It was with some hesitation that I slid the knife through the tape holding the box shut. There was pressure, in my head and heart. I was hoping it wouldn't explode.

The Avett Brothers began to croon, the box opens, and into my hands fell shards of memory and love. I clutched to my chest artifacts from two pasts, one that will only be a future in my mind, and one of a future still developing. A small blanket, a picture or two of my son and daughter in the isolettes, drawings by my lovely Wee Lass, small crayon pictures scrawled with "I Love You Dad" in letters etched deep in the stone of my heart. Bits and pieces of my past youth and my Big Bro, all tucked away into 1.5 cubic feet.

The pressure in the box blew these fragile papers and relics up in a cloud, the words and images swarming around my head as I frantically scooped them up to contain them all. The world swam and blurred, liquid diamonds diffracting in my eyes. The papers, the pages, these miniature stelae forming the library of my history. Books beneath my bed? Jesus H., how did they know that? 

I never did find the discs for which I was looking. As I placed the things back in the box, they came to me as more books on the shelf. Books I am reading and still writing, because I know no other path to follow.

The box filled, I closed the flaps and pushed it away to another corner. Sitting there in the chair, I looked down at my trembling fingers. I clenched them, feeling small and sad knowing that, in some sense, I still can't find out how to hold my hands.

--
Lyrics from "Ten Thousand Words", by the Avett Brothers.

Divided by Zero (Pt. 2)

A man always falls back 
on what he knows best in a crisis
What happens when the crisis is all he knows?
A fresh Hell doubled, black and molten
washed away my feeble claims to knowledge

This time there was warning of sorts
raven morning shattered by phone calls
to wake the mummies we had become
suffocating sleepwalk into our clothes
through a wormhole into actinic pain

A swallows' breath of time we believed
this golden sun might attain perfect fusion
So wrong, its core burned out, air frozen,
I awoke staggering on a trail of tears
falling back into a box containing the sun

~In memoriam of him, half of my first light
August 8, 2012

---
The line in bold is from Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner. It makes one wonder what do we really know best?

Divided by Zero (Pt. 1)

The world will little note, nor long remember
what we said, did and cried there
But our hearts will never forget this life,
delicate china, tiny-pink, but not a doll
to be set aside and out of mind

Even the sun seemed reticent to shine
on broken hearts and bleeding souls
Shine it did, now and then, on faltering steps,
shaking hands and the small black hole
metastasizing at the center of our universe

Gravity drew me in, shaking hands grasping
a collapsar in casket form, miniature Taj Mahal
as reluctant gift to the gaping earth
Gravity fragmenting my porcelain heart
caught ever in the orbit of her new sun

~In memoriam of her, half of my first light
July 22, 2012

---
The line in bold is from Lincoln's 'Gettysburg Address.' A different memorial of course, but the sentiment struck hard on my heart.

Sunday Meditation #2: On The Problem Of Weeds

I look out my kitchen window at the riotous growth of the crepe myrtle in the corner of the yard, the almost tree-like bush resembling a prideful lion's head with its spray of mane-like branches.  The branches festooned with magenta blossoms.  The wild roses, like lion cubs, crouch at its feet, peeking their little leaves out from the protection of the myrtle.  It makes me smile and remember G-maw, my maternal grandmother.  She had a crepe myrtle in her yard, a large one, and I always remember that one as a tree.

The weeds, too, that desecrate the planting beds ringing my house, they remind me also of G-maw.  Not for any direct resemblance, no, but only the absence of weeds in my grandmother's presence.  She was a gardener, with a plot behind her house in which she grew flowers and tomatoes and other beautiful, tasty things to eat.  She had little patience for weeds, mostly.  She often tended the large, impromptu garden that sprang up behind my boyhood home, on a patch of land bordered by the neighbor's houses.  Many good things came from that plot, and G-maw helped them grow.  She was formed in a time where it was necessary for you to grow the things you ate, because if you didn't you might not eat.

The garden of my youth, the flower plot of my grandmother's home, has begun to fade somewhat under the pressure of time.  Fade is perhaps not the exact word, as I sit here and contemplate the setting sun. Blurred or softened is perhaps a better choice.  A view through thick panes of glass abraded by sand on the winds of time, the memories achieve a certain glow on the screen of my mind.

I remember the weeds, also, as I look out the window.  The weeds have grown fast and thick this summer, fattening their stems and fleshly leaves while I wasn't looking, or was distracted by the noise and clatter of the modern world.  I see the weeds, and I feel unsettled, because I know I have let some things get away from me.  Weeds are something my G-maw would have taken care of, right away, as she often did when she was still of this mortal coil.

Me, I dither too much, crow mind distracted by the shiny things.

I stand at the window and sip my glass of tea.  Silently, I send up a prayer, a request, or maybe just an ethereal "hello" to my G-maw, asking her to come visit, offer some advice.

There are weeds around me, G-maw, and I want to know what to do.  You knew what to do, always.

Dog Days of the Soul

I once was possessed of the notion that I was a tough guy.  Not in the sense of looking to get into fights, or crush beer cans on my forehead or any such nonsense.  I thought I was tough that I could take anything the universe could throw at me.  It was a conceit that sustained me for quite a long time in my life.  The shame of it is that it was simply not true.  The universe, as only it can, disabused me of that notion in a manner most violent, then kicked me while I was struggling to stand up.

My Big Bro has been gone two years now.  I thought of him today, and realized what it was that had been nagging me a little since mid-July.

Remembering him reminded me that, really, I'm not as tough as I like to think.

Remembering him reminds me that I am human, as was he.  Beautiful, sad, flawed but ultimately worthy of love.  

This is a gift worth far more than being a tough guy.  I remember you, my brother, and rejoice in being human.

What Do I Know About Love?

I have written often of love in these here annals of Irish Gumbo.  It is a theme I return to, again and again, because it vexes me and fascinates me and ultimately, is what I seek in life.  So I sometimes believe myself to be quite the learned one when it comes to the underpinnings and effects of love.  The danger in that is I may start to believe that I know a lot about the subject.  And the danger in that, is I will come to believe that I have nothing left to learn about love.

Fortunately, this is not true.  There is much dross on love in the blogosphere, but there is also pure gold.  I was reminded of this today, when through the good graces of a friend I was pointed in the direction of posts most delightful, on the subject of love and writing.  They were touching, sad, beautiful and elegantly uplifting.  They were written by That Gentleman's Lady on her blog It's A Funny Old Life, one I am glad came to my attention through comments on the Gumbo.

I recommend you read these:  How I ended up visiting a tree and The blackest of inks. Please pay her a visit.

It's amazing.  It's serious good.  And I learned something new about love.

Fell From The Sky

The trip home took about an hour, when it usually took a quarter of that, and you weren't on my mind when I slid the car to the curb two blocks from home.  Sumbitch freezing rain and snow generally made a mess of things, and do you know this is the first time I've ever had to abandon my car?  Ever?  Hope it doesn't get towed.  Tomorrow is going to be a bitch getting out.

Where was I?  Oh, right, "parking" the car.  I resolved that I would have to leave it, so I grabbed my briefcase and lunch bag, the telescoping ice scraper, and stepped out into the snow.  The squeak of it beneath my boots set my teeth on edge.  Nothing for it but home.

It was while walking up the hill, on the main street that intersects mine that I first thought of you.  Well, not a thought so much as a feeling, if I am being accurate.  You know what reminded me of you?  It was the streetlights, in the snow.  The glow from them seemed particularly yellow, each surrounded by a flickering ruff of snowflakes tumbling through the air.  Trudging up the street, I felt a warm surge of deja vu course through me, and I looked up into the light, and there we were, trudging down City Park Avenue that one winter where we got a lot of snow and we were both in our teens.

Do you remember that, my brother?  You with the Miami Dolphins toboggan hat, and me wearing that ski jacket.  I think it was the one that made us look like the Michelin Man after a roll through through the remains of a campfire.  Man, that jacket ended up dirty.  That's what we got for delivering newspapers while wearing it, and generally behaving like adolescent males do.  Which is to say, with vigor and boisterousness, but rarely with common sense.

But we didn't need common sense, did we, Big Bro?

That's what led us to wander out in that snowfall, you and me and Carl.  Was it Carl that was with us?  I think so.  We ambled down Johnson Avenue, over to the avenue, making snowballs and trying to hit streetlights.  We all tried to catch flakes on our tongue.  And walking down the middle of the street, because there was no traffic!  Rebels, we were!

I remember walking up to Vick Street, no real destination in mind, and on the way we looked up into the ocher sky, not really watching where we were walking.  We stopped near a streetlight, and one thing that still sticks in my mind after all these years, is standing there with you in that sodium vapor glare with back lit snowflakes cascading down before us.  I remember that quite well, brother.

That memory, those snowflakes...you came back to me tonight, as I shoveled off the walk in front of my gate.  I paused briefly to rest, and as I did my gaze wandered up to the streetlight across the road.  The shape of the light, the yellowy glare...and snow drifting down like flakes of memory from the sodium sky.

I closed my eyes, a little upwelling of liquid heat making me gasp against the cold wind.  I heard, or thought I heard, the faint squeak of footsteps behind me.  For a few precious heartbeats, I was home again and we were walking down the middle of the road, secure in the knowledge that we would catch some snow on our tongues, and that we would live forever.

And you do, my brother.  Because my heart still beats, you do.

Scent of Our Archaeology

Sighing deep, the aromas inhaled
curl around a memory trigger
firing bullets of the past

Heart folds around the impact as
radiators emit the smell of toast
and us, back when the world was young

Aroma of adulthood rising from the glass,
and desperate swallows drown the sting,
to disinfect the past, or bring it back

American Diwali: Requiem

Blood of our veins
was not turmeric and vermilion,
ours the waters of a different ocean
all flowing into singularity

They light the lamps
dress the courtyards
while I light candles
in the closets of my mind

Buttery glow as they chant
I whisper prayers to you
mineral tang of salt and sea
the currents that carried you away

This Festival of Lights, good over evil,
I wonder, will you return? Somewhere
along the Gulf Stream in my heart,
or melding with the Ganges of my mind?

They light their lamps
I light mine (and yours), to see
your ashes a rangoli on the current
Lit brilliant by the diya of my heart

-----

The Gulf Stream and the Ganges River are thousands of miles apart, but it pleases me to think they intersect in the form of souls.

----

In memory of Big Bro, out fishing the cosmic sea.

Broken String

Clash played on the stereo,
teenage wreck party long ago.
He sat, girl in lap, laughing
as I mouthed the words.

Coolness was his light,
Basking in it, my lot.
Heard him saying
"That's my brother"

Affection just made it
through the buzz blanket
wrapped around my head:
In that moment, I belonged.

Clash on the stereo tonight
all guitars and sneers
and me mouthing the words
to his picture in my head

No beer tonight, too pathetic,
Besides I want the clear memory
of him unvarnished, unaltered,
of that guitar in his hands

Mouthing the words again,
theater of the mind lit
by his crooked grin and
woodpecker laugh.

I know the songs,
"Know Your Rights" with guitar!
and by all rights, my brother,
you should be here

Touched by madness,
Loved by gods and mortals,
a vibrant broken string
uncoils in my heart.

In memory of my Big Bro.

Monday Sunshine: Haiku

Cold breath, crescent moon

Leaves drifting down, heart slowing,

warm, dreaming of you.

Curios and the Man

Spiny Norman peers down at me, the same Mona Lisa grin he has held for years plastered on his face. I say plastered, and its quite the joke. He is made of plaster, you see.

Spiny Norman is a little plaster gargoyle that occupies the top right hand corner position on my bookshelf-entertainment center combo unit. A cute little thing, he was given to me many, many years ago as a gift. He had no name when I came to possess him. Reckoning that this lack could not remain unaddressed, I cast about for a suitable moniker. Inspiration came in the form of Monty Python's Piranha Brothers' sketch, featuring 'Spiny Norman' the hedgehog. Eureka! 

As I said, Spiny Norman has been with for years, through four job changes, one layoff and intense personal turmoil. He even survived a fall from the desk, losing only few small chips and having one chunk glued back in place. The lines are faint, and the smile is intact. Hmm...not unlike myself, methinks.

He also shares the shelf with a few other artifacts sifted from the sands of my life. As of this writing, from right to left, the other occupants are: small ceramic sake bottle; antique clear glass bottle, also small; antique folding ruler with brass hinges; one rubber stamp of my architects' license seal; leather bound hip flask; small ceramic pot with lid; a photo of my daughter at one year old; and a photo of my first son, days old in the NICU. The shelf below all that is occupied by more photos of family and a small amount of books. These artifacts, they comfort me.

The sake bottle is speckled light gray, painted with a stalk of bamboo and leaves rendered in blue. A former colleague of mine gave it to me as a parting gift, upon finding out he had been let go from the company. A nice man, he was. I wished him well.

The glass bottle I found on a building site I was inspecting. It was uncovered during the excavation of some foundations. It appears to have been hand-blown, with bubbles in the glass and a slightly crooked neck. There was even a tiny bit of cork remaining in the top. My best guess is that it contained medicine, or perhaps liquor.

The folding rule belonged to my paternal grandfather, and was given to me by my father. It has brass pivots and a deep honey brown patina from years of use and old shellac. My dad remembers his dad using this tool, and it was well cared for I can see. My grandfather could make a lot of things with his hands, the by-product of having learned about five different trades in five decades of service to the railroad that employed him. I wish I had even a fraction of that ability, and seeing that rule gives me inspiration.

The flask is stainless steel, and it is engraved with my initials. I was given this as a parting gift, also by a former colleague, but this time I was the one leaving. Fortunately, it was by my own volition, and it touched me to know that someone cared enough to mark the occasion with a gift. I have yet to put whisky in it...it looks too nice for me to use!

The small ceramic pot I acquired at a crafts fair, some years ago. It was made by a potter/ceramicist from the Seattle, Washington area. The exterior is slightly rough, blackish-gray in color, and has a lid. The inside is glazed a deep, brilliant red (Chinese red? Vermillion? Not sure.) and I have been meaning to fill it with pebbles. The potter also made some exquisite vases, but the pot was what I could afford. I find its quiet humbleness to be attractive. I would have liked to buy another, but is a small shame that I misplaced the potter's business card and cannot recall his name.

The photographs speak very well for themselves. Family members, some still of this earth and others off the mortal coil, I find it very comforting now to have them with me. Pictures like these used to weird me out. I could never shake that feeling of being watched, and I have always been a creature of solitary inclinations.

Things do change, as we cannot escape the dynamics of a universe in motion. With all the terrible tragedies and magnificent joys I have experienced in the past few years I have also come to like having the company of the people and things that contribute to the work-in-progress that is Me. My ego is finally letting go of the notion that I am a rock and island. I do know for sure that I cannot make all of this life by my own energies. The pictures, the objects and artifacts serve as touchstones imparting their own invigorating vibrations. When I need regeneration or a reminder of the love that built me*, I fill my cup at the curio cabinet, and know that love and strength are found in many places.

Relics. Artifacts. Mementos. What contains the love that built you?

*Paraphrased from "I Should Be Born" by Jets Overhead. A song most excellent!

Road To Mare Tranquillitatis

An invisible highway rushes on, and today your earthly remains will join the traffic. I remain land bound, too weak to follow and choking on the tears of shame. I will miss you.

When you left for good, it was to knowledge that I turned for comfort, as I often do. As if the tomes and the maps could bring you back, or make me understand why you had to leave. This time it was an effort doomed to failure, unless you count the sheer accumulation of data as success. Pardon my bitter laughter, but as much as I like a good, solid fact this time data may as well be vapor for as long as it lasted and as hard as it was to grasp.

The maps tell a very different story than the one I have written in my heart, the epic first recorded when you were born, and I followed, young lives becoming our Iliad and our Odyssey. The conceit I carry would make you laugh, of that I am certain. Maps. How do you map a surface that is restless and liquid? One that refuses to stand still?

The Spaniards “discovered” the Gulf Stream in the 16th century, using it as a highway for the ships carrying plundered gold from the Americas. Ben Franklin drew a map of the currents in the 18th century, all scratchy lines and sepia tones. Mr. Franklin’s map is in stark contrast to the digital satellite constructs I came across in my search, looking for that map of you. The bright colors writhed hallucinogenic across the screen and my eyes swam in my head. From tears or fatigue I do not know, but I smiled to think about old ink and Day-Glo posters and how these ends of the spectrum were the very essence of my memories of you.

Colonial powers used the mighty unseen power of the current as a road, and I cannot escape the comparison. This complex Ouroboros of upwellings and boundary conditions carrying life and salt over the swallowing vastness of the ocean is probably the perfect place for you now. The things you will see, at home with the fish and waves. I long to follow, but stand here on the shore, watching and waiting for courage which seems to have abandoned me.

Did you know the moon was full, five days ago? Of course you did, you have a spectacular vantage point I am sure. It was hypnotic and I spent some time staring at it through the naked branches of lonely trees as I walked through a chilly evening. The limpid breeze traced cool circles on my cheeks, lost in reverie. G-maw was there, too, telling me about the moon as we looked through her binoculars and the small telescope I used to have. She liked the moon, and could name some of the craters and seas. I still remember Copernicus and Tycho and Sea of Rains, their Latin names unfamiliar on my tongue. I stood still in the faint glow of streetlights as a memory surfaced, like Nessie in the murky loch of my mind. The big faintly blue smudge on the face of the moon, just right and up of center, that one is the Sea of Tranquility. It saddened me to think you may never have sailed those waters.

Speaking of waters today would have been your forty-sixth birthday, my brother, and it is today that your ashes will be cast upon the face of the Gulf Stream, by your beloved wife and in the presence of friends. I regret that I will not be there to see it, alone in my shame and timidity. Your loss weighs heavy on my mind and stayed my hand from making my way to join them. Know that I love you, my brother, and I hope that you forgive me my weakness.

Scientists say that the Gulf Stream carries the maximum amount of water in the fall, so it is fitting that you will be a passenger in this time of cold velocity. Brother, I bid you farewell, and pray that the current you loved to fish will carry you to your own Mare Tranquillitatis.

Sometimes...

...the things that I want to say, that need to be said, cannot easily be put into words...

...but at least I'm not writing alone...Slainte, one and all.

OH MY BROTHER*

Oh, my brother
Won't you stand here beside me
We shall carry each other
And should your soul grow weary
And the strength leave your bones
Oh my brother
I will carry you home

I lost a lot of good intentions
Deep in watering eyes
Crystallized blue
There's a whole lot of fear
That kept me here
I know fear ain't nothing new to you
Fear ain't nothing new to you

White on white
Hospital eyes
Should have been there
Now I know
And singing this song's no way to say goodbye
But it's the only way I know
This is the only way I know

And singing this song's no way to say goodbye
But it's the only way I know
This is the only way I know

____________________

*"Oh My Brother" is a beautiful song, written by Robbie Schaefer and performed by Eddie From Ohio on their album "I Rode Fido Home". Do yourself a favor and check it out.

Original Guitar Hero, Unplugged

On His way backstage, God kicked the cord out of the wall. The amplifier fell silent, the aural void near to bursting the eardrums when my Big Bro passed away. The Stratocaster solo that was his life cut off, the guillotine falling and we were in shock, unaware that a sentence had been handed down.

Sentence is unfair, perhaps. I am fully cognizant that his death was not a punishment. It is an inescapable fact of our existence that we are all not meant to last. Knowing it is inevitable does not lessen the pain, I am sure you would agree. Pain. Far too often it has been my travelling companion in the last few years. I have written three eulogies, now, in my life. I daresay I am becoming an expert.

Terrible occupation, it is, writing signs for people that I may be a limner of the departed. It is a spike of irony that Big Bro essentially taught me to read when we were kids, before I even started first grade. His eulogy another sign for me to paint:

Big Bro had a kind heart and beautiful, troubled mind. Growing up that trouble made him hard to reach, sometimes. As time went on, we drifted apart, the moon and the sun shining on the same sea but different waters. Our orbits were no longer the same. If I thought I was the sun, I forgot my partner the moon.

The sun, however, has a long memory for love. Eventually I came to see that Big Bro was my reflection, and I was fortunate to have it. We began to reach one another after years in different parts of the sky. I was humbled by his love and pride in me. I was astonished at his protectiveness. I was blessed that we could share these things.

Big Bro fought a lot of demons in his life, in his body and his mind, but one place he was happy was out on a boat, deep-sea fishing. It was there that he was happiest, absorbed in the joy of rolling waves and catching fish. He was happy, I think, because some demons cannot cross open water. It was there that he could be at peace, and I am pleased to know that he found some relief.

Big Bro made me realize that I am not the sun. If anything, I am closer to being the sea: restless, hungry and not the same without the moon to change the tides.

Big Bro was also a skilled guitar player, self-taught, and in love with music. It made little difference to him if he became a rock star, he simply loved to play. He could listen to songs and just start playing them, as if it were like breathing. His favorite guitar was a blue Stratocaster, and it had pride of place on his living room wall.

God kicked out the cord, the Marshall stack went silent and the stage was suddenly bare. My hands grasp at the phantom shape of that guitar neck, and my heart aches at the thought that he won’t be around to teach me to play. Big Bro is gone now, and I sit silent in the front row, echoes of a brilliant power chord fading into memory. Brilliant, strange and lovely.

Rock on, my brother, wherever you are.

I Can't Bring Myself To Erase It...

Chances lost...

Take You Higher, Take You Home

It is with sadness and regret that I have to let everyone know that Irish Gumbo will be on hiatus for the time being.

My Big Bro passed away suddenly yesterday, unexpectedly, and time is needed to get my head around losing a member of the flock.

Sometimes you have to blow out the flames to preserve the fire. Peace and blessings to you all.

" 'Good-bye, Sully. We'll meet again.'

And with that, Jonathan held in thought an image of the great gull-flocks on the shore of another time, and he knew with practiced ease that he was not bone and feather but a perfect idea of freedom and flight, limited by nothing at all."

---from Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach