Enola-->alonE

I grew up next to this small and kind of rough-around-the-edges town called Enola where my parents owned rental properties and where I would thereby be a frequent and unwilling visitor in the back seat of a car, staring dazedly out the window in thought while they performed tedious managerial tasks in summertime, weekend days, or evening hours. It was some time making these trips before I realized (or was told) that "Enola" spelled backwards is "Alone". But I remember, and still strikingly feel, the change in my entire impression of Enola, knowing it had this secret meaning or ironic parallelism. The association drained the joy straight from the town. In the back seat of automobiles my imagination created this swirling story about the founder and nam-er of this town "Enola"- his life, his history, and his obvious staggering alonE-ness.

I distinctly remember the first time I felt the incapacitatingly empty feeling of being alone...not just alone like "no one was there" but the kind of alone where you are acutely aware that even if someone could be there, you have no one to call upon. I had just cracked my noggin on a shelf at work and was gushing blood everywhere. Now, head wounds bleed a lot so it sounds worse than it probably really was. But nonetheless my supervisor immediately phoned the New York City ambulance to come and sweep and whisk me and my bleeding skull straight to the emergency room. It was the first and hopefully only time I will see the back of an ambulance.

Because my wound was minimal I sat upright in the back rather than laying on the cot, talking to the EMT as we sped past NYC traffic in my "emergency". It was winter. It was afternoon. It was already dark outside. I was crying faintly...more because of the empty feeling that fell upon me as I rode by myself holding gobs of quickly-crimsoning gauze to my head than from the injury itself.

Upon arrival the EMT delivered me to through the sliding doors in wheelchair & blanket and smiled as he turned and walked away. As I continued to be shuffled from waiting space to waiting space, tv room to tv room, I grew progressively more weakened by "alone". Others sat with their families or generous and patient friends awaiting their turn for treatment. I sat alone. I went into the exam room alone. I got anesthetized, sterilized, and stitched together alone. These were all okay because I had someone there to distract the hollow alone-pit from growing ever deeper; kids in the lobby, fellow wounded, the kind and funny doctor.

But then I was sewn, wrapped and patted on the back and it was time to go. Almost robotically I stepped out onto the New York street and headed toward the subway stop in my usual New York stride...as if it were just any other day traipsing around the city. And that's when the growing pit of alone became a bottomless hole. Here I was injured and bleeding, whisked, shuffled, assessed, stitched and released and no one even knew about it. No one ever would either, if I chose not to mention it. That felt awful.
I cried hard, wet.

(art about 'alonE'.)

Since that day I've been more inclined to moments where this feeling seeps back in...the most recent of these being last night. Because I can see the Alone train approaching from a greater distance now, I'm more cautious and more aware...but defenseless nonetheless. I sense the 'gutted out feeling of dropping a pebble into the empty well of my self' growing ever more frequent and more intense. I can hear the plink and the resonating echo. The bottomless hole somehow gets deeper.

In my pursuit to find the road to travel on in this life and someone to share the journey, I've begun to face the sad and melancholic music; its a windy one, steep and narrow maybe , not laid out flat and smooth before me like mid-western savannah lands...I have no idea what lie ahead or if anyone else is even out there feeling their way through the dark like I, because I can't even see the view on the horizon.

In limited-language-summary format I suppose alone is seeking the comfort of someone to hold your hand, to give a hug or to say 'hey, its going to be okay' or 'I understand, I'm making the trip too'. Alone is simply craving someone who will just be there to call and come when you split your head, mend your heart, lose your way, or otherwise get lost on the trippy road; and the paralyzing fear that despite all concerted efforts you'll end up in a metaphorical crummy town you've named after your own solitary sorrow.

Hardly/Strictly 2008

The sun penetrates the other hillside, snaking through the crowd and over to the other knoll where we lie...we look up at the gnarled tree torsos contemplating their annual count, presuming their historical tales...

...and in the park tucked between tall and wise evergreen trees I'm glimpsing Sam Beam, his beard, his guitar- taking in the acoustic side angle and falling down the spiral toward Wonderland, absorbing archetypal stories amidst my descent. I turn each one around in my brain and derive my own meaning, while still fixing my eye on the words that lie there on the stage (page). They're there. And they may be literal. But all around has fallen away. I slip into my day-dreaming.

Behind the tree today, my own versions of each word become incapacitating, inspiring, frustrating, limitless. I want to exist omnipresent-ly that I may simultaneously feel and experience all the moments that I conjure with all the people I am wishing were 'neath the tree with me. Recalling each reference, eviscerating each relived or newly-created moment. And (as usual) I'm thinking.........

I often wish I were a better storyteller, that I could generate a sort of ephemera or ambiance or mood...a guttural feeling, a wave of emotion that sweeps over one, few, or many as I divulge experience, thought and action in such a way that they feel connected to it on some primal level: love, faith, loss. (In my visual narratives, stories fall short when they become too abstract). Too, I wish our (American?) culture had a sacred story or stories with nuances and familial excerpts that only ancestors knew, passed through generations 'round fires...and that words were only stored in verbal transitive forms at times when history required they were best preserved as so....like tee-pee hopping with your parent's parents in a loin cloth and headdress.

What is it about narrative song writing and a solitary guitar that is hardly personal yet speaks strictly to you? ...And on days when you seem to need only that exact conversation too...
Perhaps the human-ness of the vulnerable one-man-show invests us all in his authenticity. Without the glitz of the back up vocals, drums and bass acoustics, we are allowed to see that he is but one of us.

In my world artists/albums, like intentions, get stored in vertical files while I continue to repeat the same beloved but tired songs. By nature our species follows habit: we sit in the same chairs each time we enter a familiar space, we park our cars and bikes in the same spots because they are familiar, and we even vote for the same political party as our parents did or as we have been brought up to do without questioning the value of the others sitting on the shelf. They may have exquisite notions and refreshing tunes but we are deaf to hear them.

Until the sun gleams through the meadow and reaches the other hillside to allow for seeing clearly for just a moment...long enough to dig out a forgotten tale...


~So may the sunrise bring hope where it once was forgotten~ S. Beam/Iron & Wine