Like It Does

I'd this bus yesterday, five full hours of crowded riding to parcel out the writing. Farmland stretching for miles beside me, from the dry southern Wisconsin fields to the much wetter west, I from one home to another rolled, and for company I'd these memories of this drive so many times before. Were I to rank them, the most memorable'd be a few springs ago, an early April return to the cities with Katie deep in the tail of that longest march. Before that it'd be a trip a few falls before, a long ride with Kirstyn - we'd just visited you at Concordia for the first time, and just as much lost as found it seemed you were - that stands out. So it is, that tangled bits of conversation linger in my memory's pathways as these miles roll by; this mind's entirely too littered with the past to think much about the present.

It's naturally so, I suppose, after this past weekend. Nostalgia - if that's what it is, though there must be a better word for how these recollections float, even if I cannot at the moment find it - was inevitable, given the way we tossed stories about like caterers with salad, Fitch and Dulf and I. Or that everyone in the bridal party was already married, and knowing some of the characters involved, that may well have been no less strange than the thought of Dulf now married, actually. Strange and stranger lives the bulk of us perhaps have lived, though it's readily apparent that without the strangeness, never might this wedding ever've occurred. But I'm fading towards tangents again. Anyways: out of the present and into the past I keep falling.

I tried distracting myself. Once more working my way through this particular short, leapt I right out of my own mind and into these characters, mining the story I'd already written for insights into what was yet to be written. But as with any story, it'll only write itself so much, especially given all these distractions. Once more I found myself combing the archives, hoping to stumble upon something... at least in theory. But you know how we are, and down down down the rabbithole I so easily slid. More and more often I suspect the past's where I'm best at living, and this ride'd only reinforce the notion, loaded as it was with rich yesterdays for landmines.

Certainly times have arisen in which I'd reason to wish I'd not so many of these histories kept, that I'd not so many records of other years' words. Fewer exchanges I perhaps these days as a result keep, some less lessons learned at least in part. Namely, that so little have I from the past learned that I've no good reason for keeping so many evidences of these tangled moments, of the events I may someday posses the maturity to better regret. Just the same, there's plenty of dialogue yet here to mine, so many yesteryear words to mine. So it was that into the last email exchanges with Kirstyn I stumbled, and even with as much as I've drank in the years since, seems the effects the drinking'll have on the doing haven't yet a bit changed. Once a fool, forever and always again, perhaps?

Like interstate interchanges I these exchanges I now view. These sentences are cloverleaf ramps between times and places, each a nosedive into a sea, the past paragraph by paragraph immortalized. As the lyric goes, grabbed the yoke I did, and I'd say it differently, had I better way of doing so. More perspective in the past years have I found, but sometimes I think all that'll mean is that I'm better equipped to recognize a higher percentage of the instances in which I've fucked it all up. In other words: my histories aren't the sort to encourage so much confidence moving forward, you know what I mean?

But. There's always but. For every fool, there's another fool taking exception. And not to call you names - but I see you taking tentative steps, and wonder if I'm not seeing just that. I've no good way to accurately describe the pride I've, watching you blindly feel out each next step; I've neither the words for it nor any similar experiences to lean back on, no way of using what I might have said then to express how it is now, and perhaps that's precisely what makes me happiest for you: this new and bright and scary and yet you with the bravado (fake or otherwise, little does that bit matter, I think) keep stepping forward, letting the river run her course unrestrained. Sure there're better ways to say it, I'm sure it - but those words for it are not my own, and the languages in which they're written? If ever I knew them, there's another bit of knowledge I've so easily let lapse.

There are plenty of other worlds too I've not the words for, of course. Such experiences abound; the more I see, the greater my appreciation for the slimness of my own world built so narrow. I'm thinking now of a question you posed the other night, though I'm sure to butcher the question itself: why, you asked, have I such hate for our parents? That's clearly not how you asked it - you've grown far better with tact than I - but the question remains essentially the same. A sloppy response, then - but a response nonetheless: it's not spite so much as indifference. May well be that some of dad's last words before I'd the bus were No man's an island, resorting to cliche as he's sometimes wont to do - but well. If that's the imagery we're using: I've such a preference for picking my own seas, rathering I'd drown in my undoing before I'd willingly float in someone else's story! Fiercely independent, Kirstyn always called it, and completely into everything you care about, but what was usually left unsaid in that definition was nonetheless a frequent point of contention: for all that I may care about, there's a great deal more in the world I simply just don't give a shit about. I'd be lying to say I've any skill at pretending otherwise, and you well know this.

And so it is, coming back around to your question. As much as the years'll sometimes soften the dynamic, so little still it changes; per the norm dad'd been grilling me, and none of it was meant unkindly I'm sure (this I'm well aware), but you know how it was and is between us. First it'd been alcohol ('whiskey'll kill you,' he told me no less than six times - yes, I counted); the last morning it was this opinion of babies (no self-respecting woman would ever want to be with someone that called babies assholes, he kindly informed me, marriage and procreation of course being the be-all, end-all point of life). So it was that halfway to Madison I'd no longer enough stretch and so snapped, I don't give a fuck what the hell you think being the basic gist, per the norm, though perhaps less eloquently was it put. The rest of the ride, though? The rest of the ride was quiet, and that? That was actually rather nice.

To poorly answer your question, then: no, I don't hate our parents. But I do mostly hate visiting. An asshole I certainly am, but with that too I've made my peace. I've seen enough of the past to imagine ways in which the present'll slide into the future, and truthfully? I rather like most of the narrative lines from here, like having my space. I do what I want to do, don't do what I'd rather not. Selfish? It completely is, yes. But as I figure they got one son to be proud of, and fifty percent's not such a bad percentage, maybe. Throw the foster kids in, and by any figuring I've the math for they did damn well (figuring AJ, Gary, Danny at most count as some sort of fail, the rest'd reflect pretty favorably, regardless the evaluation method chosen).

Besides, failing some standards is hardly the worst thing I can think of, especially given that the standards are not my own. Plenty of other things have I failed at that mattered to me more, and even then? Life went on, and continues to do so. Like it does, you know? Like it does.